Soul
Soul didn’t recognize who she saw in the mirror.
In small ways the disassociation arose in long black hair grown dull, swallow skin dotted in dark moles only making her look even more washed out, or pale hazel eyes she was sure once held the sparkles of youth. But what she noticed most of all was the sad sighs, the change in her voice, now all raspy and indifferent, and the dissolution of the fluid ways in which she had once behaved. Adaptable, interested, aware.
“I might as well be a fucking ghost.” She bit out as she pulled at an eyelid exposing soft pink flesh. She stared hard, looking for a piece of her soul. The longer she lived the more she was certain such archaism was a lie.
’Souls’ must be a lie meant to spread hope and placate fears like religions once had.
It was all a lie.
Ironic considering her name.
She released the eyelid, thin skin snapping shut as she placed her hands on the sides of the sink and let her head hang.
She couldn’t find soul anywhere in the world anymore. It’d fled generations ago. Once a reality full of saturation and vibrancy was plowed over and built on top of, courtesy of psychopaths with infinite pockets and an insatiable need for control. Thief’s and parasite’s who stole all the freedom and luster of life, hoarding and dictating who got the benefit of its illusory privilege.
it would cause a spiraling curse of decay that swept through society, carving wounds through generations, plummeting the world into a desperate poverty that would curl its fingers into her father and strip him of his own soul. And through him is where hers would first begin its decline.
She’d been born with one, a soul, just like her father and his father before him, rare, even more rare in lowborn populations, but predictable in bloodlines with soul histories. But they weren’t blue blooded highborns. They came from lowborn and dirt poor bloodlines. The only inheritance anyone in their family had ever received was a funeral bill and the unpaid debts of the deceased. Souls didn’t survive lowborn lives It was a life of endless sacrifice and it hardened her father’s hands. Jed Hightower was a mean, broken man. Beat to shit by life, so much so that there was never a chance in hell that it wouldn’t beat her too. And it did, like it beats down all lowborn through hard hits, skipped meals, and leaky roofs. By the time she was ten the doctors calculated her soul was only thirty six percent intact.
At thirteen, it dropped to a meager fifteen percent. That same year her fathers own rage would kill him, his heart bursting in his chest, no longer able to hold all his anger and pain. It was a blessing in disguise. They both got the escape they needed. But the incident would still have a drastic effect, pulling her down four more percent.
Her grandmother took her in afterwards. And if there was any reason to sit above the rest as to why Soul didn’t believe in all this ‘soul’ nonsense, it was because if anyone in this world actually had a soul, deserved a soul, it was her Grandmother. She had a heart of gold and possessed a delicately maternal disposition. In an almost magical way, the small woman could always create calm within chaos. Able to set up boundaries and snug safe spaces while insisting one ate, even if it was just some salted oats or ration crackers from the weekly food line.
But her sweet Gram was born soulless.
Soul cracked an eye, met the calcified ring staining the drain of the sink, grimaced then let her attention warily drift back to the obituary. Grams obituary. She had no money for a funeral, or an urn, or even to cover the retrieval fee from the furnace. What remained of Marie Hightower would be swept into a barrel and sold off to a corporation to make fertilizer. The funerary director had given her a sad little piece of paper from a printer running dry on ink with a look of pity. A clip of the formal obituary that would be added to the labor registry for serial deactivation and archiving.
Bile funneled up the back of her throat, acid stinging her nose.
“Nope.” She stubbornly snapped her eyes back shut, fighting the burn of tears and vomit.
This was always meant to happen. Gram was old and that‘s what happens. ’We get old and we die.’ Or that’s what Gram would tell her while making her own after-life preparations in the weeks prior. Like she knew what was coming.
Gram’s soft words and steady courage did nothing to temper down the rage Soul inherited from her father. She was twenty six now. Plenty grown enough to know that Gram was old but she wasn’t that old, and rationing what little meds they could afford had extended her life some but not enough. Not like it could have if they were highborns, with their money and fancy doctors and intact souls.
Maybe that’s why Gram had always been so nurturing, telling the young girl to protect her soul with all she had.
Because souls got you places in their world. Fame, fortune, notoriety. Access to good neighborhoods, educations, and lifestyles only the bluest of bloods could ever afford.
Gram safe guarded her eleven percent like it’d save her granddaughter one day. Deliver her from the slums of Steele City to somewhere better.
Soul’s eyes rolled next the envelope beneath the obituary.
• Earlier that day •
This one felt heavier in her hands. It was a cheap white envelope with a single sheet of paper tucked inside, the same as always, but this one sagged between her fingers with the weight of a damn brick. One of those old heavy red ones from before all the masonry turned grey, pumped full of air and foam for cost efficiency.
She didn‘t have to open it to know it wasn’t good. Dr. Maywell wore the news on her face, her refined features crestfallen. But she wouldn’t say it yet. Custom and etiquette would dictate that the number only be mentioned after Soul opened the envelope and saw it for herself.
Yet she made no move to. Only stared with tired eyes. She didn’t believe it mattered, so why the fuck was it so hard to just look?
“There are options available for extending the life of a soul.” The doctor suggested after it became clear Soul wasn’t going to open it. “Stabilizers and beta blockers. Treatments to help alleviate some of the stresses we face. But… these treatments can become quite costly over time.”
Extend. Prolong the inevitable decay of a made up number. Soul shook her head and tucked the unopened envelope into her shoulder bag.
“I can’t afford them right now anyways.” Gram died, the death registry number pinged in a data system, and the vultures of capitalism had already come to circle over her head.
•••
The envelope lurked like a brave cockroach refusing to scurry away when the lights clicked on. The little orange bottle of pills sitting next to it was a spider with prey in its sights. Dr. Maywell had pressed them into her hand before she slipped from the shabby exam room. ’These are some samples from a sales-rep. Take them. Just incase.’
Parts of her felt bad for the older woman. She’d been assigned to Soul, who, just like all those born with souls, was given complimentary yearly exams. Dr. Maywell had watched her grow, and just like Gram and so many other lowborn, had hitched her own hopes to Soul’s soul. She’d let them down. the inadequacy had always been there, her quiet companion, but now it was a beast come to consume her. Funny because any reason she once had to excel has now growing flowers in some rich assholes garden.
She exhaled, a wave of irritation overcoming her, straightened out, plucked up the envelope, and tore it open. The report slid easily free and the ripped remnants of the envelope fluttered onto the grimy green tile of her ‘new’ bathroom.
The folded edges sprung open, her eyes zeroed in, past all her vitals and chart notes, right to the bottom left corner where a little box was headed by, ’Measurable Soul Percentage’. There, in a bold black letter and a thin little percentage mark, loomed the number;
1%
The singular quantity of ‘one’ had never felt so large.
