Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

by Austin Aragon

  Travesty

  By

  Austin Aragon

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Austin Aragon

  All rights reserved.

  https://authoraragon.wordpress.com

  Cover art by Matt Bulahao

  Writing is fun, getting paid for it is not. Or better said, it’s not easy whatsoever to make money off it, and more so it’s not really fun to turn a passion into a job. This book was rejected by numerous agents for being “too controversial in today’s subjective market.” Well I suspect the other side of that coin is that I am also a new author, but I do like to think that they only mean this current novel is too radical or touchy—not my writing! So with a dead end reached in traditional publishing, but a desire to show you, my dear reader, what I have been working on, I went to self-publishing. Will this book reach the audience I would have through traditional publishing? I don’t know. But if you want to make an aspiring author’s day, one free way you can help me reach my other potential readers is through word of mouth, and leaving a review when finished.

  My final warning though, reader, is that this novel is controversial, and may very well rub you the wrong way. But would you rather read fluff, boring and unthoughtful tropes of genres you’ve read countless times before, or something that makes you think, heck, maybe even angry—I know I would. I have a philosophy: everything we do should be educational. What you read should leave you with something new to ponder, to research, to talk, and to hopefully even write about. Only this way is the cycle of literature truly completed, its future safeguarded.

  Contents

  Chapter I

  PART I

  Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV

  Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  SUMMER

  Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI

  Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  PART II

  Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  FALL

  Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  WINTER

  Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII

  SPRING

  Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII

  I

  “Is he there?” says Creon.

  “Yes,” I say, peering out from behind the lawn chair at the fence line.

  “I don’t see him.”

  “Because you’re five.”

  “So, you wanted to play!”

  I raise my finger to my lips. “They’ll hear us, they’ve already started climbing over.” I turn to my side and grab the pistol. “Take this and get to the sniper’s nest.”

  “Roger,” says Creon.

  “It’s ‘yes, sir.’ Did you even watch the movie?”

  “Yes, sir,” says Creon, his face glowing red. He runs to the swing set and climbs up the metal pole with the plastic pistol in his mouth.

  “Tengo! Ten oclock!”

  Creon makes gun noises while climbing.

  “You can’t shoot them with the gun in your mouth! You’ll just kill yourself!”

  Creon glances back at me. He tries to grab the pistol while holding the pole tightly with his thighs, but falls. I try to rush over to him before he cries.

  “What’s going on!” says Dad, poking his head out from the kitchen window.

  Too late. Creon’s nose is bloody and he coughs up spit. The plastic pistol broken underneath his leg.

  “Nothing!” I say. “He’s fine!” Snap barks and runs over, his hair hackling. I grab and stroke his fur to try and make him quiet while I whisper at Creon to shut up.

  Dad rushes over to Creon, picking him up and cradling him in his arms. “You’re almost twelve, Peter. You need to behave like an older brother and act responsible when I say watch him.”

  “We were just shooting the spies crawling over the fence again,” I say.

  Creon buries his face inside Dad’s shirt as he walks back to the house. Dad hands him off to Mom and turns around. “Come here.” I walk over slowly to the porch. Dad drags the lawn chair back onto the porch and sits down. “Why do you guys play violently?”

  “I don’t ever hurt him.”

  “You may not directly, but this type of playing is centered on killing, why?”

  I sit on the edge of the porch. What does he mean? It’s fake.

  “Peter, it is already dangerous enough and out there…”

  “We’re just playing.”

  “And it’s because of that new war movie, right?”

  I look down at my dirt caked shoes.

  “Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Dad sits up. “Hold on a sec.” He comes back with a book. “Ever heard of an obituary?”

  “No.”

  “It’s what people write about someone when they die.” He sits down on the edge next to me and places the book onto my lap. “These are obituaries about soldiers who died in the last war, almost a hundred years ago. Read them and tell me if war seems fun after it.”

  I hear the small birds chirping—morning. Can I say they waked me when I don’t remember falling asleep: kept up all night from bad thoughts, or did I fall asleep very quickly and had bad dreams till I woke? I exhale, white mist rises into a huge puff above my face. Muscles rigid from the cold, I remain lying on the hard bench beneath my back. I always hated that the birds began singing before the sun really rose. It’s like a tease, talking about something that hasn’t happened yet, spoiling it for everyone else.

  Chirp!—get the fuck up humans!

  Why?

  Because the sun is coming.

  But it’s still dark out, lend me so more sleep, please.

  Then you’ll miss it.

  Some things are better that way.

  I rise, aching into a sitting position. I try rubbing my numb hands together but the friction hurts them more. I grab my lighter with its ancient American flag painting on the side, flick the cap, and rotate the switch down with my thumb. Nothing happens—right, it’s broken. My ass hugs the frozen wooden beams of the bench as I look around. Eventually I find the pistol that has sunk into the dew glazed dirt by my feet. I grab it and place it inside my sweater.

  The bench I am on rests atop a small hill, but high enough to see the roof tops of my old university about hundred meters away. All around the bench is beer cans, trash, and other items from parties and one night stands that have happened here since time immemorial, all covered in the morning frost and slipping away into the earth. Meters out each way are the endless green and brown and yellow vines of my hometown I never cared to learn the names of, but for some strange reason now, really wish I had. They form a natural fence around the top of the hill, which if not for a hiking path cutting in behind the bench, would create a circle. Mixed with the vine bushes are a higher wall of Fir and Maple that give a sanctuary feel to this clearing covered in trash.

  I used to come here to think. The place perfect for the shade it gave during the heat. I look out at the brown shingled roofs of the college through a gap in the larger wall of trees—whether they had been cut down for this view or simply did not grow there, who knows. Sticking higher into the sky than the rest of the campus buildings and treetops is a whi
te plastered bell tower, which always seemed out of place compared to the red brick everything on the East is built with.

  I remember how if I really focused, I could make out the hands and guess the time from here. I lean forward and cup my palm around my eye, squinting to try and see the black hands on the clock.

  “Yeah right, that was my kill!”

  My eye is looking through a scope now. There’s a Herculean lying in the dirt. Red tracer rounds skip about it.

  “Isaac!”

  I drop my hand and fall back to the bench. I slap my face a few times and pull at my hair. A small brown bird lands on the ground before me. I pull out my pistol and aim. It pecks hellishly at the dirt for something.

  “Bang.”

  I follow the hiking path back to an avenue that connects the college to the nearby town Raleigh, and wait to flag a ride.

  “Where to?” says the cabbie as I get in the back seat.

  “In town, I need to go to the Law office of Mr. Reeves.”

  The cabbie gives me a queer look as he drives—I keep forgetting I am hideous now. The side mirror confirms this: scars run along my fucked up face from that horrible burn. Now, why did they out of all places, leave my birthmark alone? There it is, surrounded by fresh pink skin on my chin, the birthmark that looks like a raindrop.

  Next to the entrance sign that says welcome to Raleigh, is a new and bigger electric billboard that wasn’t here since my deployment. The board is trimmed with shimmering red, white, and blue stars. In the center of it is a crudely drawn portrayal of a Herculean beaten and bruised, lying on the ground with its pronged hands moving up and down over its frowning face. Its three tails usually connected to the rear of their heads severed off and limp before his knees. To the left of the Herculean are three humans: a young schoolboy, a woman in a dress suit, and a man with an engineer’s apron on, all holding flagstaffs with fluttering banners and speared on the bottom, poised in a motion of stabbing the Herculean. The flags carried by the staffs are one of the US, North Carolina, and the Party. Above the defeated Herculean it says: Which army are you in? Join the People’s Core. We saved Earth once, we’ll do it again.

  Red brick buildings pass by through the tinted windows as we enter town, and the flags of America and the Party greet me at every street corner as the taxi nears Mr. Reeves’ office. Maybe I should have been more specific with the email I sent him; I only titled it anomalously as the one who survived. Will he help me or turn me in? God, I should have just pulled the trigger. Well, at least though, if he turns me in, the Party will probably answer that earlier wish.

  “Here’s your stop,” says the cabbie.

  I hand him a wad of cash—the last of it actually, I’ll have no use for it soon—and exit the cab. I close the door and walk towards the steps of the legal office.

  “Hands up! Get on the ground!”

  I turn around to try and see who it is. The cop fires his Taser. My whole body shakes. I feel the pavement on my lips. My thighs become warm, wet—I pissed myself. Then my younger self appears before me wearing pajamas with palm trees on them, his chest covered in stained blood. He starts screaming and laughing at me for being a failure, for not succeeding as he warned me earlier. I lie soaked and stiff as additional cops arrive and cuff me. I feel a cold prick on my neck. “Yep, it’s Private Peter,” says an officer. “We have him,” reports another to his radio.

  “Hold on right there!” says someone else.

  I raise my head higher, and look through my younger self jeering to see an older man at the doorstep of the office I intended to visit.

  “He came to me in good faith,” says Mr. Reeves.

  “Do you know what this man did?” says one of the officers shocked.

  “And anyway, I doubt he will be having a hearing once the whitetops get their hands on him,” says another.

  “Exactly why I am coming,” says Mr. Reeves.

  That night I am flown to a New Founding Fathers Department correction facility. I’m dumped into a cell. “Get out of your clothes,” says a Party Representative standing in the doorway.

  “It’s fucking freezing.”

  The side of my face explodes in pain as I fall against the brick wall for support. All I see is the white beret of the Party Rep on top of his head as I slide to the ground. I watch as he removes his bloodied glove and places it underneath his overcoat.

  “Take them off.”

  I strip naked. A hose is brought in and they spray me down with ice cold water. I slip and fall onto the ground biting my tongue by accident, and the blood from my face mixes with the water. A towel is thrown onto the wet floor before me.

  “Like that will help now.”

  Fuck!—I am flat on the cement amongst the soaked floor, cradling my hip. The Party Rep towers above, “Want another visit from my boot?”

  I stay quiet. My younger self sits on the bunk laughing and pointing, swinging his legs back and forth to mimic the Party Rep. They leave and the door is closed. The cell’s window that is just out of arm’s reach left open, where the cold wind blows through never letting me fully dry. I uselessly wrap myself up inside the wet blanket.

  “I told you! I told you!” says my younger self.

  “Go away,” I whisper.

  “Why Peter?” I say.

  “Yeah, why?” says Peter.

  “STOP!”

  “I told you! I told you!”

  “He’s right you know,” I say.

  “Yeah, you fucked up,” says Peter.

  “Big time,” you agree.

  I crawl up against the corner of the wall on my bunk. “Just, just leave me alone.”

  I hear the clanking of the cell door —another morning. “My god, what have they done to you?”

  “What would you possibly expect?” I clench the blanket around my body tighter.

  Mr. Reeves stares at me for a moment, then leans against the cell bars shaking his head. “It’s time to go to your evaluation.” He throws some fresh clothes on the cot.

  I put a shirt on—what is he talking about?

  “You are being mentally evaluated. I was able to argue in your favor that someone like you returning from your events, and having committed no heinous crime yet while here, is very possibly mentally damaged. Even insane from their tour they survived, and needs professional help before any indictment takes place.” He guessed me right. I must have given him an expression of agreement as he continues, “What happened, how did you even make it back over here, and your face?”

  “If they let me talk, you’ll find out.”

  “Oh, they will Peter. See, I believe they are just as curious at your arrival here as anyone else is. Part of the evaluation to determine your sanity is an oral recitation of your events on Nova Terra.”

  Jesus, I don’t want to do that. It’s why I wanted to kill myself in the first place. But then again…I guess it’s what I’d have to do anyway in order to reveal my story. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Is that not self-evident?”

  “No, you don’t know me at all, or I you.”

  “On the contrary, everyone in the states knows something about you.” He must be talking about my receiving of the Medal of Honor, before my downfall. “You were cherished as a model citizen, a hero of this country. Your believed death in the Kuplar campaign was made into a national day of mourning. Then, as of yesterday, you were labeled the most wanted terrorist of America, the greatest threat, for crimes coming out of nowhere. It doesn’t take a genius to see the conflicting situation here. There must be something else. Something they don’t want to be revealed.”

  “Some of those accusations are true.”

  His eyes widen, “Which?”

  “The murders, the drug addictions, manslaughter of a fellow marine—”

  “Good God sir! Are you really what they claim?”

  “I committed those crimes, but only because they made me. And this goes deeper than jus
t obeying orders. They made me do them.”

  “Ah, and I am guessing you are trying to reveal how they did that, and the higher-ups responsible for it? “

  I nod. “But you know you’re just insuring your death too, talking like that, and trying to aid me.”

  “They would never…”

  He has the right mind about it, thinking the Party is trying to hide something—a healthy suspicion that took me too long to gain myself—but he is still blind, ignorant to it all. “I will give you one last chance Mr. Reeves. My end is here, and it won’t be a happy one. Go back to your family, your friends, go finish living your life.”

  “What could have possibly happened to you?”

  “The truth.”

  We walk down a hallway, through a nicer area of the facility covered with flowerpots and large windows, to the room where the psychologist awaits my evaluation. My footsteps move in rhythm with the fresh falling rain against the glass. My younger self appears again, cutting in and out of corridors to stare me down as we walk. He jumps out into the hallway and grabs the torso part of his pajamas stained in blood, and shakes it at me. “Why are you doing this? Why Peter! I said not to tell. I said to go back and fight! Go back and be brave so I can become someone. Why are you so selfish! You’re a coward, a coward that would rather let little children like me die, than try and defend them and your country like a hero!”

  Deep breath Peter, nice and slow, you got—a baton nudges my back. I open my eyes, and take the next step breaking through the phantom.

  Mr. Reeves pauses before a door. “Okay, I need you to go into that room and recite everything that happened on Nova Terra to the Psychologist. Being truthful will be the only way I can help you out the most successfully.”

  “What happens if I am proven insane?”

  “The punishment brought against you will be tremendously reduced. But you also wouldn’t have the opportunity to fight them in court. You’ll spend the rest of your life in a military clinical ward on probation.”

  Jesus. They have already taken away so much from me…and to think they can still lock me up for the rest of my life too, and that’s if things go well. But also, I have to prove I am not insane if I really want to reveal my story—the whole reason why I came back here. But then again, they will no doubt defeat me publicly, where I will end up with capital punishment as the consequence. I’d be sane to try and plead insanity, and insane to try and prove sanity. Fuck, what have I gotten myself into? I should have just pulled the trigger. My ugly scarred hand begins its awful twitch, and the darkness creeps into my peripheral—I can’t see! I am falling!