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Holly’s Story
I
Corrugated iron and plywood
“It’ll be alright.”
Those were the words of my roommate Kit as she embraced me. I had just lost my job serving at The Black Cauldron Tavern.
“And it’s rent day today,” I sobbed.
“Yes I know,” Kit soothed, “you did remember that it’s gone up this week?”
I looked at her aghast.
My name is Holly and I’m poor. Desperately poor. Kit and I live in a shack on Grand City’s slum, commonly just known as the Shacks. Corrugated iron and plywood create our home of 12 by 6 feet. At least it was right on Shacks Beach, meaning we could wash in the clear blue Illakian Sea.
That shack was, like many others, rented at extortionate rates off Lord Black, who owned a lot of land on the Shacks and in Grand City as well. Our contract with his company stated that he could as much as double the monthly rent at any point, and I had forgotten that it had gone up by 10 lira to an unbelievable 60 lira a month, each. Bearing in mind that I only earned five lira a day from the Cauldron, you can see how extortionate it was for a small square of land, but Black’s properties were always the cheapest, because he could control market prices by owning so much land on the Shacks.
It turned out that I was L10 short on the rent, but the collector at Lord Black’s office said that someone would be round to collect the rest in the rest week. But that in turn gave me an even worse problem – tomorrow I would have to pay the poll tax of five lira, and I now did not have a single penny. It was no use asking Kit for help; though she wouldn’t admit it she was as desperate as I was, because she had sold all of her clothes except a long shirt. One of our biggest problems to us poor is that clothing and textiles is taxed heavily. All I can afford at the moment is a tattered grey bikini that I bought at a state confiscations auction. And you have to have clothes; as well as been humiliating, being nude in public is now also illegal.
I lay awake that night wondering what to do. Kit was not in for most of the night; she was out getting enough money to cover her tax tomorrow. But I would not stoop to Kit’s activities to earn money. I love Kit, but we have different principles. For Kit was a whore. Almost all shack girls were prostitutes once; it was seen as the only way to earn good money while not needing good clothes or housing. But then the new Emperor came to power and started cleaning up Illakia morally. About a year ago, prostitution had been outlawed (for the woman), so had public nudity and curfews and the such had been introduced, making life doubly harder for poor women as poll taxes and clothes taxes went up at the same time. Most, like Kit, continue under the radar, risking the punishment, and who can blame her really. But I was scared; I had seen too many good girls from these streets been strung up publicly and being branded and flogged. And my mother as always had an influence.
My mother had died when I was 14. She had been just as poor as me now, and there was no help for poor mothers. I had never known my father. My mother was a hooker, and all she wished for was that I didn’t follow her down that path, having a child by an unknown father. Her dying wish has remained with me to this day.
Shack girls were sometimes called waifs by superior middle class types in Grand City because to their eyes we all looked the same. We didn’t eat a lot. My old wages of five lira only really left me one or two lira a day to feed myself with (after taken out savings for rent and tax and clothes costs, because these cheap clothes don’t last long), which was enough for about one meal. Not feeling hungry in itself was considered a luxury. So we were all thin and all tanned, because we did not wear much clothes in the boiling beach weather of the Shacks.
I tried to get comfy in my bed – a salvaged mattress on the floor. The floor of the shack was basically the sand of the beach, with cardboard at the entrance and a stolen piece of carpet in one corner we laughingly called the living room. A draft breezed in from the ill-fitting door straight onto my bed and I shivered. I was naked (wearing the same bikini 24 hours isn’t good for you) and I had a thin white cotton sheet which just covered my thighs, which was the only bed covers we could afford and which we shared. For washing we used the sea; for toileting we used a bucket which was thrown into the sewer; for water we used the only state relief, the right to two pints of fresh but invariably boiling hot water; for cooking we had to try to buy as much cooked food as possible, which cost more, because lighting a fire was so time consuming and dangerous.
I eventually got some sleep and woke up early. Kit was not home. I worry for her safety at times. I had decided that to pay my tax, I would have to sell everything I own this morning. I would have to worry about finding a job another day. I could list all my personal possessions in on breath; one bikini, one mattress. I just hoped it was enough.
I stood up and slipped that grey bikini on. The sun was creeping in under the door. I guessed it to be around eight o’clock, which would give me enough time to get down the market, which also had a bumper day on tax day.
I was about to open the door to go and have a quick wash in the sea when it opened for me. In walked two muscular guys, no less six-four in height. As the blocked the sunlit doorway, I cowered backwards, taken aback.
“You Miss Cable?” the first guy said.
“Yes,” I replied hesitantly.
“I’m Devon Mann and this is Harland Stuart, and we represent the letting agency of Lord Black.”
Bailiffs. Come to collect Black’s precious missing L10. Shit.
“H-how can I help?”
“We’ve come to collect a missing ten lira that was not paid in rent,” Mann said. “Lord Black’s company has been very generous by guaranteeing that if the outstanding value is paid today no penalty charges will be incurred.” I remembered that one of the other ridiculous clauses we were made to sign up to is that Black can impose penalty charges of 200 per cent of the outstanding value per day - meaning I would have to pay L20 tomorrow, L40 the day after and so on – with him able to claim our bodies as slaves when that figure reached L500, an extremely cheap slave.
“I don’t have that money.”
“That’s okay Miss Cable,” said Mann, “as you may know your lease allows the company to repossess any personal property you may have as payment. Mr Stuart here is a trained evaluator.”
“Oh.”
“Now Miss Cable, what in this room is your own property?”
“Just my bed. Everything else is my roommate’s.”
“Okay,” Mann said casually, “how much for the mattress.”
Stuart looked at it with concentration. Did they give evaluator certificates out for nothing these days? A thug bailiff with a bad haircut?
“Bad condition,” Stuart grunted, “say seven?”
Mann sucked through his teeth in mock anxiety. These guys were making my skin crawl.
“Not enough Miss Cable,” he said. “Now what can we do?” I shrugged. These guys were also scaring me. “What else do you own Miss Cable? Clothes?”
My bikini! “Oh yes, this is mine,” I said, subconsciously covering me body at their stares.
“How much for that, Mr Stuart?”
“Bad condition. Probably not useable again for clothes, just fabric. Could get three lira in an auction.”
“Well, look at that!” Mann exclaimed mockingly. “Are you prepared to hand over that bikini to pay off your debt?” he asked sickeningly.
Get this over with? Six lira tomorrow I make that. That’ll just keep growing if I can’t pay tax. Get out of this now.
I turned away from them and undid my bra, looping it off my shoulders with one arm across my breast throughout. I held out the bra to them and one of them took it.
“I’m glad you saw sense Miss Cable,” I heard Mann gloat.
With my back to them I used my free hand to unhook my panties off my waist and then stepped out of it, moving my hand in front of my crotch. I heard Mann come over behind me to pick up the panties. His breath was hot on my body as he leaned into me.
“Good girl Holly,” he snarled at me. I shivered. I yelped as he planted his grubby hand on my ass cheek. “A little bird told me you’re out of work Holly,” he said, “I know plenty of bars where you could work for Lord Black.” Black’s strip joints; even Kit looked down on them.
“Fuck off,” I built up the courage to say.
“Feisty,” Mann laughed as le left, Stuart picking up the mattress. “Good day to you Miss Cable!”
Kit found me lying naked on the floor, crying in anger and shame, my body quivering in trepidation.
In my hand was leaflet posted on the door asking all women with surnames A-M to present themselves at nine o’clock at the Shacks Registry Office to pay poll tax.
It was ten to nine.
To be continued
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