Skin Trade Read online

  Skin Trade

  Written by Tonia Brown

  Edited By Stephanie Gianopoulos

  Cover by Philip R. Rogers

  Copyright 2012. All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  A Word from the Author

  Hey there!

  I wanted to take a moment before you got too deep into the story to prepare you folks for what you’re about to read. Skin Trade is the story of Samantha Martin, a young woman who gets wrapped up in a world of deviance and violence, but does her best to find both redemption and freedom despite her terrible situation. Some of the deviance and violence she suffers is part of the following narrative, but some of it is backstory—things that happened to her many years ago. Underneath all of this runs a theme that some of you might find a touch unsettling. Sam is under what we now consider to be the age of consent, but during the time period in which the novel takes place, her age of fifteen was considered old enough to take as a wife or, God forbid, a whore. To make matters worse, during her early teens, she was mistreated in some pretty horrendous ways.

  Hate it as we might, the 1800s saw kids marrying as early as twelve and having large families long before what modern society deems as the age of consent. When you consider that the average life span for anyone back then was almost half of what it is now, it made all sorts of sense to start raising a family as soon as possible. Nowadays, we treat children with more care, protecting them with laws and such in order to give them a chance to mature, in both body and mind, before they take on the mantle of adulthood. But back then, things were different.

  Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that sexually exploiting kids was ever acceptable in America’s history. But a girl’s eligibility as a spouse at the age of fifteen, or even younger, was considered normal. Sam’s backstory of sexual abuse is tragic, but it’s also just that—her story. I couldn’t rewrite her life any more than I could make Mr. Theo white and a slave owner or make Mr. Boudreaux not … oops! I’d better not get too far into the tale or it might ruin a few things for you.

  Before you slip off to read, I would also like thank a few folks who made this novel what it is.

  First of all, let me thank you, the reader, because it’s your interest and support that make novels like this possible. Otherwise, I would still be scribbling random thoughts in a notebook and squirreling them away with the intention of someday getting back to them. Having an audience is one of those things that kicks my writing process into gear. Thanks for kicking me! (Wait a minute … that didn’t come out quite right …)

  Next, I must give a huge thanks to both Stephanie and Philip. Once again, this dynamic duo has teamed up to make me look like I know what I’m doing. Between Stephanie’s editing magic and Philip’s awesome artwork, I have a novel I am quite proud of. I really don’t know what I would do without them. Well, I suppose I do, but I’d rather not think about it.

  Thanks to Drew Mellon for all of the help he gave me about the art of trapping. I could have never written this book without him. Next time you need someone to help you learn the ins and outs of skinning a full grown human, give Drew a call. (That said, any mistakes or liberties I’ve taken with the act of trapping and skinning are my own fault.)

  A big shout-out to the beta readers for this work: Scott Vogel, Samantha Rice, Rose Welch, Wanda Harward, Robin Marlow, Jess Leonhardt and Tonie Ervin. Thanks for being there and, as always, thanks for your honesty. Your comments, criticisms and commendations are priceless.

  And thank you Tony. You know what you did. Will you do it again?

  ~ Tonia Brown, February 28th, 2012

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I trapped and skinned my first undead when I was fifteen years old. I wasn’t strong enough to break open the skull bare-handed to get to the brain—a main component of the tanning process—but my mentor helped me along. He was a good soul in that manner—fast to criticize mistakes, yet always quick with a kind word should the situation call for it. We enjoyed an easy rapport until he found out I wasn’t quite the young man I purported to be. That is to say, everything changed between us when he discovered I was a girl.

  I entered his guidance just before the sixteenth anniversary of my birth, and had I been any older, the obvious hallmarks of my fairer sex would have kept him from teaching me his trade. But I, flat in the bosom and narrow of hip, made a passable boy as long as I kept my hair cut short and blamed late-blooming hormones for the feminine pitch in my voice. This was but a partial lie, for my late blooming did indeed keep me looking much like a boy. Mother Nature skipped over me in the menstrual department, leaving me without a cycle well into my teens. I was thankful that I hadn’t reached that plateau of womanhood, or my masculine lie would’ve become a lot more complicated. Indeed, it would be easy for me to believe that the hand of fate guided my actions, for everything seemed to fall so neatly into line. Yet the first lesson I learned under my mentor was this: Fate had precious little to do with the shape of our lives.

  We made our own future. We fashioned our own destiny.

  I should have realized as much, for fleeing my old existence and donning the mantle of a male was all an attempt to control my own destiny. From escaping to the borderlands to finagling a much-coveted spot in an all-boys workhouse, I worked hard to become something I wasn’t in an attempt to change what I no longer wanted to be. Taking up residence so far into the border zone was risky, considering the chance of attack by the undead, but I supposed no one in their right mind would search for me this far from the safety of the secured sectors. I constantly reminded myself that at least it wasn’t the hot zone, that overly active region that butted right against the dreaded Badlands themselves.

  Little did I know I would end up there soon enough, and with so much blood on my hands before all was said and done.

  Chapter One

  Master Blevins’s voice boomed across the small room, waking all of us with a start. “Rise and shine, my little dumplings!”

  Rubbing at my tired eyes, I groaned with the room full of boys. I didn’t remember falling asleep, nor for that matter did my body act as though I’d slept. Passed out was more like it, the end result of exhaustion on my overworked muscles. Weeks upon weeks of manual labor were bound to make any body ache, no matter the age or shape. (Or sex, for that matter.)

  The workhouse overseer, Master Blevins, assured us weeks ago that we would do nothing more than pull weeds for the summer. Instead, we pulled plows. Everyone took it in shifts to till the seemingly endless fields by carrying about fifty-pound yokes attached to two-hundred-pound ir
on wedges. When not turning soil, we planted, crouching and stooping, crawling and bending, seed by seed, bit by bit, until the whole border-zone farm was sown. It was hard but honest work, for honest room and board. A few hundred acres completed so far, with hundreds more to go. Thus was the life of the workhouse lad. Thus was the life I signed up for. Which had to be better than the one from which I ran.

  It had to be.

  “Come on, you rejects!” Blevins shouted. A series of loud bangs sounded as he beat the doorframe with his steel-tipped cane, a favorite taunt of his. “It’s already well past seven. Chores await you. Up and up and up to work. This might be your day off, but that’s no reason to lie about, getting fat and useless.” Under his breath, he added, “Too late for some of you as far as that’s concerned,” then finished with a resounding, “Uncle Sam isn’t paying me to let you sleep all day. Is he?”

  I groaned in unison with the other boys, then rolled over, right atop my bunkmate—the boy everyone referred to as Stinky Pete.

  “Mornin’, Sam,” Pete said.

  True to the name, Pete’s breath rolled over me in a stomach-wrenching cloud of utter and complete revulsion. I grabbed my nose, but it was far too late. My nostrils were full of Pete, full of putrid fish and rancid cheese and fetid cabbage with just a hint of week-old wet garbage that had been left in the sun to rot. No one really knew why his breath smelled so bad, not even Pete. He brushed his teeth like the other boys, but it just wasn’t enough to stave off the horrendous smell. It was as though something had died deep inside him, rotted very slowly, and was now trying its best to crawl out through his mouth.

  I imagined it was just what a revenant smelled like.

  Everyone else, including Master Blevins, avoided Pete like the plague of which his breath smelled, but I liked him. Granted, he was all elbows and knees in the bunk, punching and kicking me hard enough to leave bruises on occasion, yet his waking self was very different. The fully awake Pete was kind and considerate, two rare qualities in a workhouse full of randy, rowdy young boys. He was also big, with the height and girth of a full-grown man at his tender age of fifteen. The lad used this size to his advantage on more than one occasion, encouraging the less savory kids to leave the newcomer alone. (That would be me.) Stench aside, I considered these excellent qualities for a close friend.

  “Mornin’, Pete,” I said from behind my clenched nose. Rolling away from him, I sat up and drew a clear, Pete-free breath from the opposite side of the cot.

  The cot shifted as Pete rolled off the opposite side. He let out a small grunt in time with his weight hitting the floor. “What do ya think is for breakfast?”

  “I hope it’s not porridge again. My poor gut can’t take much more of it.”

  “Eat it long enough and you’ll get used to it.”

  “If I ate as much as you did, I’m sure I would.”

  Pete laughed, a sign of his usual good humor. The other boys, yawning and scratching various body parts as they slowly woke up, began changing out of their nightclothes. I snatched my bundle and darted for the outhouse, intending to change in private as I attended to my morning constitutional.

  “Got the skitters again?” Pete called out after me with another laugh.

  “Yeah!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Damned porridge!”

  This practiced routine was my idea of hiding in plain sight. Pete always pointed out that I used the toilet first thing every morning, to which I joked and kidded about my aching bladder or fussy stomach. Over the course of the weeks, this little act gained me the undesirable moniker of Sickly Sam. We sang the same song in the evening, with Stinky Pete ribbing Sickly Sam about my irritable bowels, while I rushed off to the outhouse to change into my nightclothes.

  The morning air was crisp and clean, belying the warm afternoon well on its way. It was these summer days when I was glad of my short hair, though cutting the almost two feet from my beautiful blond mane was the most heartbreaking necessity of my disguise. The pageboy I now sported was practical, functional, and had the added benefit of keeping me cool. I often wondered why more women didn’t just cut it all off when the mercury climbed into the high nineties. No more troublesome plaits or painfully tight buns. No more ribbons or bows either. Good with the bad, I supposed.

  I made my way through the tree-lined walkway that led to outhouses a few hundred yards from the back door of the barracks. Having been raised in the safe zone—that tight line of states hugging the east coast of our nation—I couldn’t get over the open spaces of the borderlands. Sure, I had to share my room with a group of rowdy boys, but that was for safety’s sake. (Keeping everyone close made for an easier defense should a wandering undead wander into our midst.) Aside from the cramped sleeping quarters, the workhouse felt practically empty, even when all of the boys were present. And the worksites themselves? The vast empty fields were enough to send me into a fit of vertigo the first time I laid eyes on one.

  As I walked, my mind wandered, planning my glorious Saturday, the only free day we workhouse lads got out of the week, after the chores were finished, of course. Maybe I could talk Master Garret, the workhouse’s blacksmith, into teaching me how to temper a blade? Or sling some ammunition? Perhaps Pete would show me how to properly fire a gun—a talent about which he constantly bragged. The day teemed with endless possibilities. It was only a shame that it wasn’t full of endless hours as well. All too soon, it would be Sunday, and we would spend that most holy of days working for God by building new churches or repairing the old abandoned ones.

  “Where do you think you’re heading?”

  I froze in mid-step, cringing at both the question and the sound of the voice. A voice I had come to recognize and loathe.

  “I asked you a question,” Thomas Ramsey said as he stepped out from behind a tree a few feet ahead of me. Tall and lean, Tommy could’ve passed for handsome, had I been inclined to see any of the boys in such a manner. He narrowed his eyes at me and demanded, “You gonna answer me? Or you just gonna stare?”

  “Maybe he’s gonna throw up on ya,” George Walker said. The dark-skinned boy slid out from his hiding spot and sidled up next to Tom.

  That left but one fool to make the morning’s run-in complete.

  “Or maybe he’s gonna shit on you,” Boris Dunn croaked.

  Boris rolled out from behind his tree, and I felt silly for not seeing the rotund boy hiding there in the first place. Now that he was here, it made a complete trio of morons for me to deal with. Thieves, troublemakers and all-around thugs, the Ramsey Gang were just little criminals waiting to grow up and become big criminals. In the meantime, they loved to pick on boys like Sickly Sam.

  In other words, those they saw as easy targets.

  “Going for a morning wee?” Tom asked.

  His minions laughed low at their master’s wit with all the grumble of growling dogs.

  “Why?” I asked. “You want to watch?”

  Boris chuckled at this until George elbowed the lad in his ribs. A difficult feat, considering Boris had a clean two feet on George in height.

  “Got your clothes too?” Tom asked. “Course you do.”

  “What of it?” I asked.

  “Why you always changing in the outhouse?” George asked, then laughed with his usual annoying titter.

  “Yeah, in the outhouse,” echoed Boris.

  “You think you’re better than the rest of us?” Thomas asked. “Gotta have your own changing room? Can’t just change in the company of the rest of us, like the rest of us?”

  “Maybe I just don’t like your company,” I said. “I find the company in the toilet much better. At least the waste in there doesn’t talk as much, and there is very little difference in the smell.”

  Little George stopped laughing. Boris furrowed his brow as the insult worked its way past his thick skull and into his even thicker brain. Sensing the pressure of eyes upon me, I threw a quick glance over my shoulder. The workhouse windows were filled with faces pressed against the filt
hy glass, gawking at the unfolding scene before them. I once more looked to Thomas, who smiled at me far too knowingly for my tastes.

  “You know what I think?” Thomas asked.

  “I can’t imagine,” I said.

  “I think you just don’t want to strip in front of us.” Thomas cocked his head at me, his crocodile grin all tooth and sneer. “I wonder why that is?”

  “Maybe he’s got a bite mark,” George said. “And he don’t want us to see it.”

  “Sure,” Thomas said. “He’s always sick. Maybe there’s a reason he’s sick. Maybe he’s infected.”

  “If I was sick, you would be the first to know,” I said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I would make a point to vomit in your shoes every morning.”

  A soft chorus of oohs arose from around us where the boys forwent watching from a distance and began to gather for a ringside view. I wished they’d mind their own business, but this spectacle was too good to ignore. I had to admit, if it were another young lad taking on the Ramsey Gang, I would’ve been right in the thick of it with the other lookie-loos.

  George started up his laughing again. “Or maybe he’s embarrassed by something. Like maybe he has three balls or something.”

  “Yeah, three balls,” Boris echoed, then joined George’s laughter.

  Over their tittering, Tom said, “Or maybe he ain’t got no balls at all.”

  I dropped my bundle in surprise as my heart leapt into my throat. They couldn’t possibly know the truth! I had been so careful. So methodical. I clenched my fists to keep my hands from trembling. “What are you saying?”

  “I think you know what I’m saying.”

  “He’s sayin’ you got the backbone of a girl,” George said.

  “Yeah, girl,” Boris said. “A little scaredy girl.”

  “What do you think, Samuel?” Tom asked. “Since you’re not man enough to undress around us, maybe we should start calling you Samantha.”