Hello to all my Movers and Shakers!
Hoo-boy, what a hiatus. I hope you all have been well!
I do have some exciting news about my first short story, which you can hear about on the sister site to this page, at Lady Nightshade: The Series. If you enjoy my writing, please visit that site for updates on the progress of my original series. I’ll also be posting an excerpt from Episode 1: The Calling there later this week.
I know it’s been a while, and I wish I had something else to post at the moment. Still, it seems only natural that, when I come back, I end up coming to you with a rather grim piece of short fiction.
I wrote this after reading about the fiasco with the Covington Catholic high school students and the “SJWs” whose antics have painted them as racist proponents of hate-speech. These children have received death threats for something that ended up not being anything like how the media presented it. (It later came out that these students were trying to bring some positivity to what was turning out to be a rally filled with hateful speech, racial slurs, and other unpleasant things.)
Make of it what you will; I might catch some flak for this, but my pen would not be silenced, this time. I could not restrain this one.
Read on if you don’t mind potentially being triggered by a politically incorrect viewpoint- or five.
It’s easy to pass judgment when you only have one side of the story.
The Party controls the Media. The Media controls what the People know. They think that this is the full story, but they see the world only in sound-bytes and video clips and think them the whole truth. They will put me on trial for standing up for my Faith, for questioning the motives of the Party when they condemned a man at the accusation of a woman’s pointed finger without any evidence that he had ever wronged her. They will damn me for wanting to be the person I was born to be, for being heteronormative and white and for not wanting to sleep with someone of the same gender as I am. They will punish me for wanting to be my best and get ahead on my own merits, and for demanding to know why they won’t let me succeed despite all the work I do. They will turn a deaf ear to my cries of injustice, to my pleas to know why they are punishing me for using the brain I was born with, for being smarter than some others. They will cry for my blood because I am not part of that so-called ‘Religion of Peace’, and because my views don’t align with their arbitrary definition of ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’.
I don’t fit their narrative. Therefore, I am evil.
By the time anyone finds this, I will already be hanging. As I stand on the gallows awaiting my death, you will scream condemnation at me, ravenous for my blood, unwilling to listen to the side of the story that they have not allowed you to hear. You will not pass a fair judgment upon my mortal life. Is this what our ancestors fought to build? Is this what they sacrificed themselves to create? A selfish mob, ready to tear out the heart of someone who, had my voice been known, may have swayed you to think me innocent?
No. The nation our ancestors bled and died to create so long ago does not exist, in this moment. Right now, driven by their gluttony, their greed for power- ever more power- the Party will silence me. The Sheep will make certain that no dissenters still live. The Mob will sacrifice me, and the Party will keep these sheep subjugated until they no longer can tell the difference between freedom and fear. The Party will use these idiots until they have served their purpose. Then they will discard them.
“Hang it!” someone screams. A woman, though they no longer call her that. They eliminated the concept of gender long ago, just before they destroyed traditional gender roles for good, demolished the family, and stole our freedom at the muzzle of a gun. I am one of the few who still knows the Old Words, the True Words. They still live in the Old Books, the ones that the State missed during the Coup. How I miss my books.
“Conservative number one-thousand seventy-two,” someone intones. A man, this time. His falsetto voice and the lisping lilt to his words mark him as one of the Rainbow Party, a subset of The Party. They used to call themselves LGBTQ-plus. His skin is patched black, in places, and he is wearing a garish swatch of eye-shadow, as though he can’t decide which gender or skin color he wants to be.
‘Conservative one-thousand seventy-two.’ They’ve even stolen my name. It’s easier to demonize someone when they’re only a number.
At least they haven’t tattooed it on my arm.
“You have held your outdated religious beliefs above the legal rights of two mxn who wanted to marry. You have claimed that a womxn lied when xhe accused a mxn of raping xr.” Actually, I never said any such thing. What I actually said was that I thought there should be more concrete evidence than a woman’s unsubstantiated claim before they put a man’s life on the chopping block.
“You were found in the possession of illegal literature. For going against the Laws of the Par- People, you are hereby sentenced to the Judgment of Gaia-Earth. Let Gravity take you as It wills.”
A fancy phrase for saying they’re going to execute me in just a minute. They can’t even call it what it is. Doing so would subjectify me, make me human. How does he even twist his mouth to make that ‘x’ sound? The human tongue doesn’t easily allow for a three-consonant pattern like that, and it shows.
“Representative of the People, the hood, if you please.”
A man approaches. In another life, he might have been a soldier, a man of honor. There is sorrow in his eyes, and defeat. He wears his hair blond, shaven on the sides, with the rest of it in a bun on the top of his head, and there’s a nose ring through his septum, but his eyes are kind. I have seen him on the holo-screens many times at events just like these. He holds a black bag between his strong hands.
“Please.” My word is a whisper that only he can hear. He meets my gaze. “This isn’t right.”
He presses his lips together. “I’m sorry. I have a family.”
He used to be one of us, before he let the Mob cow him into silence.
I swallow back the tears and fix my eyes upon the horizon. The sunset is beautiful tonight, a blush fading into shades of garnet, ruby, and sapphire, brushed with brilliant swatches of topaz where the dying light hits the underside of the clouds.
I gulp. “So did I.”
The hood blocks out my view of the setting sun, but it does not matter, anymore. I close my eyes, holding that last sunset in my mind as, for the final time, I chant the words of the prayer I have whispered in secret my entire life.
“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
The wood creaks beneath someone’s feet. My heartbeat thunders in my ears. “Representative, the lever, if you will.”
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
There is a hitch in the footsteps crossing the platform. A gunshot rings out, the kind man chokes, and in the crowd, someone screams, but the rest of the crowd jeers. The Mob rules all, but the Media rules the Mob and the Party rules the Media. The Mob sees only what the Party wants it to see. The Mob thinks only what the Party wants it to think. The Mob does only what the Party wants it to do.
The Party celebrates the death of a man who hesitated in carrying out the Party’s will.
“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
“See what happens to those who defy you, the people!” The lisping falsetto rings out again. “These persons would deprive you of justice! They would lord their learning over you. They would kill animals and take away the rights of the womxn and reestablish the Patriarchy!” A collective gasp runs through the crowd. “They would subjugate you, if they could, would place rich people in power! Do you want that?”
A roar goes up from the crowd. I can’t tell if it’s one of anger, of horror, or if it is one of agreement or jubilation. There’s too much noise.
I raise my voice, hoping that God will hear me above the shouts of the Devil all around me.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever! Amen!”
Let the good men stand aside, and you will see: This is how Evil triumphs. This is how Freedom dies.
Someone shouts. The lever groans and gives way. The floor drops out from under my feet.
The noose snaps taut around my neck, and the crows roost upon these martyred bones.
And so it ends.
I confess: I was not formerly a political person, and I still am not, by and large. I have my opinions, but I keep them quiet. Eight years of being told that I am in the wrong- that I should keep my head down because of my religion, race, and dissenting opinions- left their mark. I go to the polls and make my voice heard there.
This last bit of chicanery, however- the one where a group of high school children were demonized and received death threats after someone shared only a piece of a video- I just couldn’t keep this inside. That video was proven to be showing only a fraction of a larger picture, which later should have exonerated these innocent children. Instead, their reputations and their normal lives were upended courtesy of these so-called “Social Justice Warriors” and the Mainstream Media.
I don’t like bullies. These people- the media and these SJWs- are just that: bullies.
After watching the news for the past two years and seeing several common themes, I could not help but wonder what it would look like if the mainstream media and the people they support and defend actually got the chance to run the country how they want it to be run. This story is what I ended up with. Looks a little draconian, doesn’t it? Only if you don’t subscribe to the Official Party Line. Still, of everyone I’ve ever met, there is only one Party whose members really don’t seem to want to hear anyone else’s differing opinions on the subject, and get irrational and violent when met with dissent.
This is why Mob Rule would never work.
Like I said, it’s a bit darker than what I usually write, and I might catch some flak for this. I hope that people would respect that this is the way I see things going, but let’s face it: this is the Internet. If anyone ever actually reads this, there will be people who like it and people who want to crucify me for writing it. That’s just how it is.
After all, it’s easy to judge someone when you only have one side of the story.
It’s also easy to judge someone when you have never met them and you don’t know who they truly are. Still, I have a thick skin. Sticks and stones, and all that.
Here’s to hoping that the media starts offering both sides to every story again sometime soon.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to post something more positive later this week. Again, if you like my writing and want to see something less political in nature, please visit Lady Nightshade: The Series for updates on my original series.
On that positive note, I bid you a fond goodnight.
Cheers, mates!
-Amanda
