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The Noise Tax
The Noise Tax
作者: Lucy Grove

Chapter 1

作者: Lucy Grove
The walls of our home were white, while the numbers on the decibel meter were red. It was the most obvious thing in the house.

I sat at the dining table, staring at the number on the display. 28. It was safe, for now.

Dad sat at the head of the table, holding a newspaper and turning the pages, barely making any sound. Mom was in the kitchen, and the sound of her chopping vegetables was so careful and measured it was almost inaudible.

I did not dare breathe too deeply. Even breathing too loudly came with a fee.

Dad had explained it once. Air itself was free, but the air inside our home had been bought and paid for when he purchased the house. If you used a resource, you paid for it.

In front of me sat a bowl of plain chicken broth with noodles and no meat. Meat cost extra, and my account balance was insufficient.

The week before I had accidentally knocked a glass off the table. The glass itself was 5 dollars, the cleaning fee was 10 dollars, the disruption fee was 20 dollars, and the decibel meter had spiked to 80, which added another 200 dollars in fines.

My allowance had been docked into the negative, so this week it was plain broth.

"Gary, she's still growing," Mom said as she carried a dish out from the kitchen, her voice suppressed to barely a whisper.

The decibel meter flickered to 35, still within the safe zone.

Dad set down his newspaper and adjusted his glasses. "Sandra, rules are rules. She broke a glass, she made noise, and thus she must bear the consequences. That's what accountability is."

Mom bit her lip and said nothing. She set a plate of roasted chicken at the center of the table.

The smell drifted over and I gulped. Then my stomach let out a sound entirely on its own, a low, involuntary growl.

I looked up at the wall in horror. 41.

Dad's fork paused in mid-air. He reached for his phone and opened the black accounting app. "Stomach noise, one decibel over the limit. A fine of 10 dollars has been added to your tab. You now owe me 245 dollars."

I lowered my head as tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. I could not cry. Crying would cost me 100 dollars per second and I could not afford it. I clenched my jaw and forced the tears back.

"Eat," Dad said, lifting a piece of chicken onto his own plate.

"Remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as free noise either."

The doorbell rang, sharp and urgent. The decibel meter jumped to 70 and Dad's brow creased, his expression darkening. "Some people have no manners at all."

Mom hurried to the door, and the moment it opened, my Aunt Lisa burst in. She was carrying a large cake box and an enormous LEGO set under one arm, her voice filling the entire room before she had even stepped inside.

"Jenny! Happy birthday!"

The decibel meter went wild. 75, 80, 85.

Dad's expression hardened. "Entry fee, 50 dollars. Noise fee, 300 dollars. Cash or check?"

Aunt Lisa stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at the decibel meter on the wall, then at me, curled up in my chair.

"Gary, are you out of your mind? Today is Jenny's fifth birthday and you're charging me a noise fee?"

Dad rose from his seat and positioned himself in front of her. "This is my home. In my house, you follow my rules. And this cake and these toys, did I approve of them? There's no room in this house for this kind of clutter."

Aunt Lisa's hands were shaking with anger. She set the cake down on the table with a loud thud and the decibel meter maxed out.

"I'm not taking it back! Jenny, come here. Let me cut you a piece of cake!"

She reached for my hand and her fingers were warm, but I did not move. I looked to Dad instead.

"Jenny," he said. "Your choice. Eat the cake and your debt doubles this week. Refuse, and I'll take 10 dollars off what you owe."

I pulled my hand back. If my debt doubled, I would owe nearly 500 dollars. Next week there would be no broth, only water.

"I... I don't want any," I whispered, my voice coming out smaller than I intended.

Aunt Lisa stared at me as though she could not believe what she was hearing. "Jenny, what are you afraid of? I'm right here. He can't do anything to you while I'm here."

I shook my head. She did not understand. Once she left, Dad would settle every account, and the interest would pile up in ways I could never repay.

"You see?" Dad settled back into his chair, the corner of his mouth curling. "See? She's smarter than you are. She knows how things work."

Aunt Lisa drew a slow breath, then crouched down in front of me until we were eye to eye, her voice going soft.

"Jenny, tell me honestly. Do you want the cake? Forget the money. Forget your dad. Just tell me. Do you want it?"

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  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 9

    On the evening of the third day, the sun went down. No police car pulled up outside. No phone call came.Dad sat in his chair in the basement without moving, like something carved from stone. When the last sliver of light disappeared from the gap beneath the door, he stood up, took the hammer in one hand and the decibel meter in the other, the same one that had defined every hour of my short life.He was going to settle the final account.Rat had fled. He had crawled out of his hospital window and dragged himself on a broken leg through the city's back alleys and drainage tunnels, vanishing the way a rat always does, into the dark places no one thinks to look.He had not counted on Dad's ability to map every vein of a city the way other men read a balance sheet.Dad found him in an abandoned civil defense shelter on the edge of town. Rat had been trying to climb aboard a freight truck to get out of the city for good, and Dad blocked the only exit.The shelter was dark and damp,

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 8

    The potassium would not kill him. It would only hold him at the edge of agony, his heart lurching and stuttering, his body screaming without being able to stop."What do you want from me?" Rat managed, shaking so hard that his teeth chattered."I'm here to collect," Dad said. He produced a printed sheet covered in line items."Pain and suffering. Lost wages. Funeral costs. And the price of a life."He tapped the last entry. "Your life isn't worth a single finger on my daughter's hand, so you'll be paying in installments. With interest, in the only currency you have left."Dad adjusted the drip rate on the IV, calibrating the flow until the pain held steady at exactly the level he wanted.Rat wanted to scream and throw himself off the bed. Instead, Dad pressed a folded towel firmly into his mouth."Shh," Dad said. "This is a hospital. Disturbing other patients is a fineable offense."He sat down and watched Rat writhe against the sheets, thrashing like a creature caught in a tra

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 7

    The private investigator had come through. For the right price, one could find out anything, down to what color socks a man wore on a Tuesday.The burglar went by the street name Rat, and his real name did not matter.What mattered was that he was a gambler, and most of what he stole ended up lost at underground card tables before the week was out.Dad studied the photograph of the man, a wiry, rat-faced figure caught mid-stride by a surveillance camera, and looked at him the way he used to look at a debt that would never be repaid."Bad debt gets written off," he said to himself. "Permanently."He opened a fresh notebook, but he was not doing financial calculations this time. He was mapping time, routes, and probability.Dad had spent his career as an actuary, and he applied that same precision now, working out what time Rat left his apartment each morning, when he ate, when he arrived at the gambling den, and which route home gave him the lowest chance of being seen.On the wh

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 6

    The officers pulled Dad away. The paramedics lifted my body onto a stretcher and drew a white sheet over me, and I left the house for the last time.Mom sat crumpled on the floor, her expression completely blank. Aunt Lisa arrived not long after, and the moment she took in the scene she fainted where she stood.When she came to, she threw herself at Dad with everything she had, and it took two officers to pull her off him.The apartment descended into chaos, and through all of it the decibel meter climbed and climbed, until Dad finally stopped moving and the number drifted back down on its own. 28. That same dead, familiar 28.In the days that followed, Dad became someone else. He stopped talking, stopped eating, and stopped sleeping. He sat on the edge of my small bed and held the decibel meter in both hands, staring at the number on its face without blinking.He gathered every ledger in the house and burned them. He deleted the black accounting app from his phone completely an

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 5

    Dawn came and the rain stopped.I was awakened by screaming, except I was not really awake at all. I was already gone. I drifted somewhere above it all, looking down at the scene below me.Mom was on her knees, holding my bloodied body, and the sound that tore out of her was unlike anything I had ever heard her make."Jenny!"The decibel meter maxed out instantly, its red light flashing and shrieking in the early morning silence.Dad came bursting out of the bedroom, hair disheveled, still in his pajamas. "What is all this noise about? It's barely even mor..."The words died in his throat. He saw the blood on the floor. He saw me, pale, still and no longer breathing, cradled in Mom's arms.Then he saw the cabinet across the room, ransacked and hanging open. The metal lockbox lay on its side in the middle of the floor, completely empty.Dad's eyes went to the box. He crossed the room, picked it up, and turned it upside down. Not even a single coin fell out."Where is it?" His v

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 4

    If Dad's hidden savings were stolen, he would lose his mind, and every bit of that rage would land on Mom and me. I could not let that happen.I had to do something, but I could not make a sound as that would cost money.I was sweating through my pajamas, my mind racing. My hand found the coin in my pocket, small and cold against my fingers. It was everything I had.One dollar. It was not enough to buy a piece of candy or a sheet of paper.However, it could make a tiny bit of noise that stayed under the limit.The burglar had his hand on the bedroom door handle. The knife was raised.There was no time left. I took a slow breath, flicked my wrist, and let the coin roll across the floor.It spun and caught the leg of the coffee table with a bright, clean ring. It was small enough to get lost amidst the lightning. The decibel meter ticked up to 38.That was under the limit, so there would be no fine.The burglar froze. He spun around and looked toward the wardrobe in the corner o

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