J. Stephen Howard writes

BOUNTIFUL HARVEST

 

  

“You broke the poor boy’s jaw,” an awe-struck Principal Goodjoy said.

Although other students tended to shrink from the principal’s death-stare, Trish thought she appeared smallish behind her Mahogany desk. Sitting on it like a prop, a golden apple winked under fluorescent lights, revealing the inscription, Outstanding Leadership. 

Principal Goodjoy appeared to reset her own jaw, likely at the thought of Brad Filmore’s breaking. “Appleton College Prep isn’t known for fighting. Not since I’ve been at the helm.”

Trish tried to seem concerned, but she must not have been trying hard enough.

“Are you smiling? Trish Mathers, are you actually smiling after what you’ve done?”

Her voice had risen in pitch as she grew more indignant by the end of her question. Done sounded like plinking glass, giving the principal a cartoonish quality.

“No, ma’am. Maybe I can’t hide the fact that Brad had it coming.”

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, Trish attempted to clamp down on them, but it was too late. A trickle of blood issued from her teeth after they raked against her bottom lip.

Besides being a boy, Brad was two years older than her at Appleton College Prep, which spanned the middle and high school years. He’d been teasing her for having such a flat chest.

He’d had a weird obsession with her, friend Marcy had suggested. Everyone, Marcy went on to explain, thought Trish had the pretty face and eyes of a young woman twice her years.

Principal Goodjoy gave an unsettling look, like she was contemplating how to get rid of something terrible. “It’s not normal, Trish. Not normal, at all. We’ll see what your father has to say.”

    

As it turned out, he didn’t have much to say, for they’d had many discussions about her aggressive behavior before. He simply told her to get in the car.

“Where’re we going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. You don’t get to ask questions after behavior like yours.”

Trish’s father was a wiry man but not one to mess with. George Mathers worked as a robotics specialist, fine-tuning androids for the manufacturing industry. So, his eyes appeared narrow and square, as if he were always analyzing something.

Those slits of appraisal spoke volumes to Trish, who obediently got into the car.

A few blocks from their destination, Trish had an inkling of where they were going. “Dynamic You? You’re taking me to that gene-splitting, horror factory?”

“You’ve always had a flair for the dramatic. I believe you came out of your mother’s womb with your fists raised. That’s how I remember it.”

“You can’t do this to me! I have rights.”

“Not since that boy you beat up went to the police. The choice is either jail or gene manipulation for you.”

They’d pulled up in the parking lot of Dynamic You. Some others nearby were staring as Trish argued with her father.

Trish tried to stop the tears, but as she resisted, they came flowing down her cheeks nonetheless. “It’s not fair! You should hear what Brad said to me.”

Her father turned and the parallel lines of his forehead and chin had an earnest effect. “I don’t need to, honey. It won’t change the fact that you overreacted with aggression once again. It won’t change how this has been an ongoing problem.”

Following this first visit to Dynamic You, Trish remained at home, receiving school assignments there until she’d received her full regimen of gene manipulation treatments. So when it was finally time to go back, word had gotten around about how Terrible Trish might now be more tame than anything else.

That’s why Brad, the same boy she’d given a beat-down to, awaited her return like a snake let out of its cage.

“How’s it going, strawberry shortcake?”

“I’m doing well,” Trish said, the words oddly springing from her lips as if unsure of how they’d land. It was like she wanted to sound sarcastic but instead ended up being more genuine. The last-minute adjustment, though, made her appear to have taken a blow to the head.

“Sure you are, you low-life, hottie-wannabe that only a drug addict could like.”

The drug addict reference was about a former boyfriend named Eddie who died from an overdose on Identity X. The illegal drug helped users and abusers to temporarily change their personality. Temporarily was the key word, and it was the reason anyone serious about a change opted for an edit to his or her DNA-sequence. Identity X-ers weren’t content to settle for one persona. They got a rush from the shift in personality, so to settle for one would’ve been unthinkable.

Brad’s stinging remark came in hard and fast like a well-thrown baseball but then got absorbed by the thick padding of Trish’s new personality.

Brad waited with the leer of a hyena. His eyes looked like a grid of asterisks set in his moon-glow face.

“Have a pleasant day,” Trish said and walked on to her math class with Ms. Joyce.

Many more attempts were made by Brad and his confederates, but Trish remained as placid as a still lake under a cloud-filled sky. But it wasn’t as if she didn’t recognize the storm brewing inside; only, it got pushed into the distance until it receded. It gave her the feeling of being stuffed with cotton.

One evening, Trish’s father surprised her with a gift. It was the latest Weisenhart Hovercraft with pink trim and automatic balance control.

Her father stood with arms folded and a plastered-on smile that together suggested he’d done great work. Satisfaction was something George Mathers seldom effused.

“What do you think, honey?”

“It’s great, Daddy.” Great came out like a sad note from a broken trumpet.

“You’ve been asking for this for a long time. Great doesn’t express gratefulness.”

  

A misshapen thought lie buried in a mountain of junk she’d accumulated inside her mind since the gene manipulation treatments. I’m one of his androids that needed adjusting.

“Thank you, Daddy. I’m just tired.”

“I wanted to reward you, honey, for all the good things I’m hearing from your teachers lately.”

True enough, Trish had been doing much better at school, and it seemed in large part due to her newfound sense of focus, now that her temper could no longer be piqued. And it was also true that she’d been imploring her father to get her a hovercraft well before she had trouble with bullies at school.

Yet, she had no interest in her new toy as she headed for her bedroom.

“Aren’t you going to try it?”

“I’ll try it out tomorrow. Now, I’d just like some rest.”

Tomorrow winked in her mind like a hidden jewel. She’d made a sudden decision. Tomorrow Trish would unpack the stuffing inside her and unleash her old self on Brad. It took an effort to work up her anger now, and so she pretended to go to bed early to build it up enough for a confrontation the next day.

She wasn’t sure what would happen, but she did know she was tired of feeling like some stuffed animal.

The next day, Trish went to school with a sense of purpose simmering underneath her cool exterior. She kept focusing on how she’d been before the gene manipulation treatments like some magician trying to remind herself how a trick worked. Yet, she had to be careful not to reveal the sleight-of-hand element up her sleeve.

In math they multiplied mixed fractions, which was too easy for her. She almost longed for something more challenging to get her mind off what would happen later in the day.

Then, in English they read a classic poem about walls and fences by Robert Frost. She agreed with the sentiment about how good neighbors kept to themselves. If only buttheads like Brad could take a cue.

To discuss the piece, students were assigned partners. Incredibly, the teacher paired Trish up with her number one bully who’d failed this course. That took some effort, for though it was the new policy, the school didn’t like to make students repeat middle school classes. Since Trish had received gene manipulation treatments, there didn’t seem to be any concern about a relapse back to her old, violent self.

Trish’s plan was to confront Brad during break after English, but she wasn’t sure she could hold her emotions at bay in class.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Brad said, giving more of a snarl than a smile that revealed a chipped front tooth. The jaw that had been broken still appeared puffy and more pasty-looking than the white of the rest of his face.

Trish was all about getting down to business. “What do you think the poet’s message is?”

“I think you’ve put up a wall.”

She tried not to flash her annoyance, but that raw bottom lip was getting more and more exposed as she bit down on it.

“Let’s stick to the poem.”

“I think I miss the old you. She’s hiding there, you know, behind a wall.” The way Brad said wall was like his whole face went into a goofy spasm.

The teacher, Ms. Jennings, kept casting side glances in their direction. Was that the beginning of a smile starting to curl her lips upward? Had she planned the approaching confrontation between Trish and Brad? Of course she had, since everyone knew the story of how and why she’d ended up at Dynamic You.

The others around the pair all pretended to be absorbed in their literary discussions, but anyone could see there was a spotlight on the former Terrible Trish that had everyone focused.

“Um, Frost did write about how good fences make good neighbors.”

“What if I gave you a big kiss in front of everyone now? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Trish huffed. “I think we’d better start talking about the poem or—“

“Or what? I’m just talking. Don’t you like talking to handsome guys?”

A murmur rose from students in the vicinity.

Brad was trying to flirt. Or was he? Could it be true that he did like her, and that was why he’d acted like a jerk, because he felt insecure about expressing his feelings?

Regardless, Trish sure didn’t reciprocate the crush. Still, it made her wonder about his motivations, past and present.

For her part, Ms. Jennings’ intentions seemed clear. The English teacher known for her unhealthy curiosity of her students’ personal lives looked transfixed by the conversation between Trish and Brad. She was so distracted by it that a student had to remind her to go around and check the pair-share conversations.

Brad gave his best dreamy look, which fell far short because of his uneven features, which included a pug nose and oily skin. He then pinched Trish’s arm. “Nah, I’m just playing. Do you think a stud like me would be interested in a sad twig of a girl like you?”

Trish felt something rise up from her gut. In one way it was similar to being nauseous, but in another it was a new, unsettling feeling. It was like trying to start an old car after it’d been in cold weather for a long time. The effort itself would cause a great wheezing and whining.

Her fist flew up, ready to pound Brad’s pug nose into an unrecognizable, even flatter shape. Yet, it didn’t lash out at Brad.

For a moment, she thought someone had grabbed her hand but soon realized no outside force held her back.

Then there was Ms. Jennings’ face, which looked as if it’d seen a bomb go off. Perhaps one did, for Trish had no motor control, and tiny pricks of pain spread throughout her body like it was slowly shattering into countless pieces.

As for Brad, he looked frightened out of his skin. What had been alarm at Trish’s oncoming attack turned to a sense of being creeped out. Disgust was signaled by the turning away of his head while his hand reached up to cover his mouth.

Brad’s rat face was the last thing she saw as the sound of approaching sirens intensified.

A girl in a pink-striped shirt leaned closer to Trish as the fog cleared.

The haze surrounding everything dissipated until clarity clung to Diane, as her name tag proclaimed.

“Good. You’re awake.”

Diane was chewing on gum like Asteroid Blast was going out of business. She might’ve been sixteen or seventeen, this plump girl with an oval face who made exaggerated expressions.

Trish’s eyes took in the whole room around her. The safe color of powder blue on the walls plus the IV lines in her arms made it clear she was in a hospital. “Why am I here?”

The last thing she remembered was standing in her living room as her father gave her a hovercraft.

Diane shivered, causing her plus size body to tremble. “Oh, you poor dear. Silas will want to see you right away. I’ve never seen a genetic schism this bad.”

Now that her mind was clearing, Trish understood this girl before her wasn’t old enough to be a nurse and was, in fact, a candy striper. One thing was for sure: the girl had no bedside manner.

“Stop looking at me like I’ve got Martian Typhoid. Who’s Silas? And, hey, come to think of it, I don’t think you should be here in my room.”

Diane went cross-eyed in response to Trish’s aggression. She bit down on the corner of her mouth, causing her mouth to be lopsided.

“Yes, Silas will fix you up.”

“Why do you keep talking about him, this Silas guy or whoever? What’s a genetic schism?”

Then, flashes of what’d happened to her came like bright traces on the inside of her eyelashes. Every time she blinked, it seemed, a scene of her becoming paralyzed coupled with the feeling of something breaking internally imprinted itself.

Diane smiled a quite pretty smile. She seemed to relax as she witnessed Trish coming to terms with what had happened. She nodded in anticipation.

“Is Silas a geneticist? How can he or anyone fix me?”

Trish figured the best she could do was go back to being the kind of girl her father wanted her to be, but this Silas person represented a fantasy that was nice to imagine.

Then, she met him and learned all about the Bountiful Harvest mission. She never looked back as she reclaimed her aggressiveness while learning to channel it as a great, telekinetic force.

[In this excerpt from Bountiful Harvest, the fifth book by J. Stephen Howard and the sequel to Fabled Circus launching November 27, 2017, the reader is given the origin story of one of the members of the eponymous group the novel gets its name from. They’re all that stands between Earth and the DNA-hungry alien invaders known as Mutatio est Vita (“Change is Life”). These misfits were forced to alter their genetic structure by their disapproving parents. Under the treatments by geneticist, Silas Troy, they have attained powers that represent the ultimate of human abilities (telekinesis, for example).]

www.jstephenhoward.com

 

www.jstephenhoward.com