Collar

Just kick her up the bum, I thought. One kick. Doesn’t even need to be hard. A nudge would be enough.

Bruce rounded the corner. His scowl deepened like he knew what I was thinking. My brief moment of treason slipped away into the past. Just like all the other moments I’d spent in this house.

Lady Harrington’s old bones creaked as she stood up straight. She raised a dust-covered finger up to my nose. “The new girl missed a spot.”

So? It’s one dusty windowsill in a house with a thousand rooms. Live with it, you hag. “I’ll have a word with her at once, ma'am,” I said.

“No need, James.” Lady Harrington said. My eyes flicked to the locket around her neck. A heart-shaped charm cast in silver and threaded with rubber wires. It was close enough to grab. I pictured myself snapping it from her neck. How long would it take me to die afterwards? Would it hurt? “Bruce, fetch the new girl won’t you?”

“At once, ma'am,” Bruce rumbled in his heavy voice. He thundered down the corridor, leaving me and the lady of the house alone.

Lady Harrington faced the window. One little nudge. How well would those old bones survive the three storey drop. If it killed her, would I have time to gloat over her corpse before her locket sent the death signal to my collar?

The two of us watched the gardeners down in the potato field. UV lights loomed over them, shining spotlights of artificial sunlight onto the vegetable patches. I had never been out to the garden myself. Did the UV light feel like the sun used to?

“The new crop looks good,” Lady Harrington said.

“Indeed, ma'am,”

“You’ve done well keeping the gardeners motivated, James. Well done,” she said.

Pride swelled up in my throat like vomit. “Thank you, ma'am.”

The gardeners had the same motivation as all the other collared workers. Myself included. And if the collars weren’t enough? There were enough armed guards on the walls to keep anyone focused.

Bruce returned with the new girl, Sandra. She was so young. Couldn’t have been more than twenty. She looked tiny compared to Bruce whose shoulders practically scraped the paintings off both walls.

Lady Harrington pointed to the speck of dust on the windowsill. “What’s this?”

Sandra glanced up from the floor. “A window?”

My stomach clenched.

“Indeed,” Lady Harrington wasn’t amused. “What is your job?”

Sandra locked eyes with Lady Harrington. “I’m a courier for the Resistance.”

Bruce and I locked eyes for an instant.

“You are my cleaner,” Lady Harrington said. “As such, I expect you to clean.”

“I am a courier for the Resistance,” Sandra said. “I serve the people. Not you.”

“I see.” Lady Harrington’s jowls trembled with rage. She snapped open the heart-shaped locket. Inside was an array of tiny buttons. She pressed one.

The defiant look was ripped off Sandra’s face in an instant. She shrieked. Dropped to the floor. Grabbed at the silver collar around her neck and the tiny glowing barbs hooked into her flesh. The smell of cooking meat filled the corridor.

Bruce fiddled with his own collar in sympathy. So did I, it turned out.

Even after ten years it’s hard to watch Lady Harrington switch one of the collars on.

Lady Harrington snapped the locket closed. Sandra was still twitching on the floor, her feet kicking out into the air. Steam hissed up from under her collar.

“Next time I tell you to clean, miss. I expect you to do a better job.” Lady Harrington nodded to Bruce, who hefted Sandra up by one arm and carried her twitching body back to where he’d found her.

“Hard to get the help these days, eh James?” Lady Harrington said to me.

I hate you. We all hate you. “Indeed, ma'am.”

*

I passed by the maid’s room. They all whispered amongst themselves. Sandra, on her feet by then, was glaring at me.

There was a small, starved part of me that was ashamed. I was mostly glad it hadn’t been me.

I got to my room at the end of the servant’s dorm. One of the perks of being Lady Harrington’s chief butler was having my own space with my own bed. Just down the hall the rest of the servants were packed into tiny rooms. They were lucky if they even had a single bunk to themselves.

It’d been a long time since anyone had mentioned the Resistance. I’d forgotten if they were even still around. Once the sky burned and the food stopped growing it’d seemed like everybody was part of it.

I’d done my bit too. Leveraging my year of medical school into joining the Medical Corps. Long marches across hard, barren soil – digging the graves for the waitresses, white collar workers, and freelance artists who had tried to fight against people who had been stockpiling guns, food, and medicine since before the sun stopped shining.

They didn’t leave survivors. Anyone who came out of a battle in halfway decent shape was fitted with a collar and put to work on one of the estates.

Eventually my unit was captured and it was my turn to be put in a collar.

My pillow smelled strange. Like lavender and berries. It brought back memories of trudging through the rocky countryside. With her.

There was a note under my pillow.

All it said was “Kitchen. Midnight.” in a familiar hand.

*

The anxiety was like a weight in my guts. It reminded me of the first time we met. A lifetime ago when we both slept rough in abandoned council flats, eating out of old tins. Before the wealthy came out of their bunkers with their guns and collared soldiers.

The night guards were out. The lights of their collars blinking in sync with mine. Some of them gave me stern looks as I passed. But as head butler I outranked them. They had no reason to challenge me.

The kitchen was deserted. The lights were off and only the faded smell of the day’s meals remained. That and the smell of lavender and berries.

“Leave the light off.” My wife Lynsey, stepped out of the shadows. Aside for the wrinkles around her eyes and the grey threaded through her red hair she looked exactly the way she did back then. So beautiful it hurt. She wore a black beret and a leather jacket with a red cormorant on the breast. The symbol of the Resistance. She had no collar but she still wore our wedding ring on her finger.

All the shame of the past ten years rose up at once. All the people who had been brought in with collars and put to work. All the times Lady Harrington had pressed the switch in her heart-shaped locket to discipline her servants while I turned away.

“James,” she said. Her eyes glistened. “What have they done to you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sound so different,” she had the same scouse accent she’d always had. Like she’d never left Liverpool.

But my own accent had been washed smooth by the years spent listening to Lady Harrington. Compared to Lynsey I was a ghost.

“I can’t stay long,” Lynsey said. She took a metal tube from her inside pocket and presses it into my hands. Her hands linger on mine for a moment. “This will scramble the signal in your collar and any collars nearby for five minutes.”

“Wait--” I started. She put a finger on my lips.

“Five minutes. Grab whatever she uses to control your collar, switch off as many collars as you can. I’m not sure what kind of range you’ll have but you’ll likely have to get up close. We’ll be back tomorrow night. Tomorrow night you’ll be free.”

She kissed me. For an instant I’m a young man again with fire in my heart, ready to take the fight to the aristos hoarding all the food and medicine.

The kiss stops and I’m standing in a cold kitchen, the lingering stink of burned potato in the air. I’m forty-five years old and I’m a loyal servant of Lady Harrington of Cheshire with the collar to prove it.

“Tomorrow night,” Lynsey said.

Then she was gone. The metal tube she’d given me the only evidence this hadn’t been a dream.

*

Lady Harrington bent over to run her finger across the windowsill. It came back encrusted with dust. She sighed.

“It appears I wasn’t firm enough yesterday,” she said. “Bruce, fetch the new girl again won’t you?”

“Of course, ma'am.” Bruce’s heavy footsteps receded around the corridor.

“I thought you were going to have a word with her, James?” Harrington said.

I fingered the tube in my pocket. “I did, ma'am.”

“And yet, she still missed the spot on the windowsill,” Harrington said. “Take your hands out of your pockets.”

She fingered the locket around her neck. The air was thick and stifling. My scalp seemed to shrink onto my head. It’d been a long time since the pain receptor in my collar had gone off but I could still remember how much it’d hurt.

I pressed the switch on the tube Lynsey had given me.

Lady Harrington opened the locket, pressed the button. My collar hissed. I flinched.

There was no pain.

I lunged for her. Ten years of frustration pumping behind my legs. She screamed. I grabbed the locket. The silver was cool in my hand.

A huge arm clamped down on my throat and dragged me away from Harrington. It was Bruce. His huge fist crashed down on the back of my head.

Next thing I knew I was face down on the rug. It can’t have been more than a few seconds later because Harrington was still screaming. “He’s got the locket! He’s got the locket!”

Sandra, the new girl, punched Harrington in the temple. The old lady crashed to the carpet. Unconscious, but still breathing.

Bruce was looming over me. His huge hands clenched into fists. I held up the locket so he could see it and opened it up. There were three tiny switches inside. One labelled ‘ACTIVATE’ one labelled ‘DETONATE’ on labelled ‘RELEASE.’

I hit release.

The barbs gave one last tug on my flesh before they receded and the collar fell away. Bruce’s and Sandra’s did the same.

Bruce touched the angry red marks around his throat and stepped over me. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t make a sound. He just put his hands Harrington’s throat and squeezed.

The gardeners were still working under the UV lights. None of them had any idea this would be their last shift. I scratched the flaky skin on my neck and smiled.