Ultimate Corruption Chapter Three

The wind was bitterly cold as it bit my bare hands. Are they turning blue, or is that just my imagination? How far away is Uncle Roger’s house, anyway? My brain peppers me with questions so fast that my tired, cold, numb body can’t respond fast enough. The best I can come up with is “I don’t know.”

My brain isn’t satisfied. Are you sure this is the right idea? Maybe you and Iris will die before you get there. That would suck. Someone give me classes on how to shut my brain out, please. It’s annoying. The pocketknife in my back pocket digs into my thigh. That’s also annoying. I don’t need holes in my pants on top of everything. Cold, heavy frost makes my feet drag, as if I’m a prisoner, held down by iron balls, and thrown into the ocean to drown. Yeah. Not fun. Me and Iris are walking much slower than Uncle Roger. Iris looks at me.

“My feet hurt like hell,” she comments. I nod in agreement. I can’t even find the energy to speak. If I had actual food, I’d be fat because me and Iris never exercise. We hadn’t gone on a walk since this whole mess started, when Mom and Dad were alive…

“Guys, we here.” Uncle Roger said three magical words, and I couldn’t even make myself care that it wasn’t proper grammar. I had wanted to be a writer before all this happened, but me and my family never had enough money to send me to school. Hey, maybe I should write this all down one day. It would make a great memoir. I mean, earthquakes, horrible government, can’t get much more dystopian bestseller than that.

Uncle Roger’s house was huge, and it made me angry. All these years, me, my sisters, my family, had been living in poverty, and here he was living in a mansion? Ugh. No wonder my parents never invited him to Thanksgiving. It was around Thanksgiving right now, except colder than any year before. Stupid climate change. I stepped into Roger’s house, and all anger was lost in awe.

How did he afford such a good house? As if he could hear my thoughts, he answered.

“I stole this house. From a dead man. I don’t think he minds.” Iris looks sick at his words. She looks at me and her face is pale, like she’s going to puke.

My anger at Uncle Roger had dissipated. He wasn’t cheating us out of money. He was just a thief. And these days, if you weren’t a thief, you were dead.

Me and Iris were the equivalent of dead. We had never stolen anything, except for three years ago when Iris really, really wanted a necklace.

That was before things got bad. Iris still wears that necklace, a reminder of the bad old days that are still better than this.

Huh. Now I sound kind of deep. Maybe I should write poetry. Poems are deep. I ask Uncle Roger for a piece of paper.

Even though

Three years ago was bad,

Now it’s worse,

And there’s nothing I can do.

I crumple it up and throw it in the trash. My writing has gone downhill since Sawk. Everything had. I had the equivalent of an eighth grade education.

Nowhere near enough to get anywhere in life, not that it mattered now anyway. The only useful skill was thievery, a skill that I, sadly, did not have.

So many things I don't have.

If only...