Alternative Truths

by Bob Brown

  But in the end, no matter what the gimmicks, we did it right. Peaceful. Like you’re supposed to. But that’s not how they play, is it? Not how they stay on top. So they sent in the Blue Shirts and we had our very own Kristallnacht, right here in the good ole US of A. There was blood. A lot of blood. And that’s when people got scared. Started going quiet. Started disappearin’.

  And all the time, those folks on the TV jest makin’ shit up. Makin’ people mad. The world was goin’ down the toilet but it wasn’t the Government’s fault. It wasn’t the Corporations’ fault. It was your neighbor’s fault. “See that fat Jew? Don’t cha know he’s been pissin’ in the font and touching up your kid sister?” “See that Muslim? What’s with that beard? What’s with that hijab? Why can’t they dress like Americans?” That’s the sorta stuff we wuz hearing. Every. Damn. Day.

  Sure. Some people fell for it. Some wuz jest too damn scared to speak up. To call it for what it was. They got real good at lying too. Whole neighborhoods got wiped out by their bully boys and all we’d hear is it was some terror attack. VeeBs wuz getting’ strung up and they made out like we wuz tyin’ ropes round our own necks and jumpin’ out of trees. Jest to make the Blue Shirts look bad.

  It got real bad for a while. Real bad. But you can’t fool all the people, right? Dose who could—they got out. Went North. Went South. Found a way to Europe. Others joined the Brigades. Only now, we wuz startin’ to give it back. A lot of the regular troops had joined us by then. I reckon without dem we’d never had had the cahunas to make The Declaration. I mean, who wants war, right? I sure as Hell didn’t, but I put on the uniform anyway.

  You kiddin’ me? You won’t find it in any damn history book. History’s written by the winners, Pal. Don’t cha know that?

  Let me guess. The Righteous Fight? The whites fighting back. Retaking what was theirs. That’s what you read, right? What a joke.

  It weren’t nothin’ like that. There wuz the Old Man, setting up his dynasty. Making hisself king. Dishing out favors to his bully boys. And all the time, tryin’ to keep us fearing and hating. Only we Americans . . . Well, we never been keen on kings. So forget what you read. It was us against them. Right against wrong. Plain and simple.

  I’ll tell you another thing for free too. The people who had all the money before the war, dey still got it, and more. Wonder how that happened, huh?

  Easy for you to say. What are you, anyways? Canadian? Dey still lettin’ you guys through the wall, huh? Figure you must be livin’ on bear shit up there. How long you think you can hold out? I mean, you got to know that once Big A’s finished in Asia they’ll be comin’ for you? Not that it’s gonna happen any day soon. I mean, nukes worked in Iraq and Mexico but those Chinese are crazy. They’d rather burn than kowtow to the Old Man’s son. Don’t blame ’em neither.

  Damn straight! But I’m still here. Lots of us are still here. Drivin’ the cabs, waitin’ the tables, cleanin’ the streets, teachin’ your kids. And if I could do it over, you know what? I’d do it all again—like a shot.

  Why? Well you tell me, Pal. You tell me.

  END

  ALT RIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENT’S END

  Gregg Chamberlain

  “Turn it off!” The Chief of Staff gestured towards the wall-sized screen at one end of the sub-basement room. “I can’t stand to watch anymore.”

  The FOX News logo blinked on and off in a lower corner of the screen while, on the main image, the President rose from his seat and advanced towards the podium for his widely-publicized and Twitter-promoted speech before the United Nations Security Council. The camera zoomed in for a close-up on the President’s face and the triumphant smirk spreading wide across his jowly features.

  The camera view pulled back just as his gait faltered during his approach to the dais. One foot slipped off the edge of the first step. The thick presidential torso wobbled. A black-suited Secret Service agent reached out to help and was clubbed to the floor by a surprise swing of an executive arm.

  The President almost seemed to dance a jig, then he began pogoing up and down and spinning ’round and ’round on tiptoe. He goose-stepped first one way then turned and kangaroo-hopped the other way, all the while yelling a loud and steady stream of nonsensical gibberish.

  “The best, the biggest, the brightest, the bushiest grab at the pussycat, pussycat, I love to dance the polka all night long, the girls they are so pretty in the city, Missus Kitty, and she knows America the Great big wonderful world of country time lemonade is the best when you’re fired, you’re fired, you’re fired, fired, fired, firedfiredfiredfiredfired . . .”

  The Secretary of State clicked the remote. The screen went dark just as the President’s head spun around a complete 360 and then exploded, spewing a shower of sparks, shrapnel, and steaming silica gel in all directions.

  “Well, that’s it,” the Secretary muttered. “We’re screwed. Absolutely, positively, completely, and thoroughly screwed. All the way up the chute where the sun never shines.”

  The others gathered in the meeting room-turned-medical bay all nodded. As one, they looked towards the ultra-modern convalescence bed at the far side of the room. Every variety of monitoring and medication machine surrounded the bed, with tubes and wires attached everywhere available to the gross lump resting beneath a sterile sheet.

  “You know, we could look at this another way,” began the Press Secretary.

  “Oh, give it a rest,” interrupted the Presidential Counsellor, blowing a raspberry through her plumped lips. “Even I couldn’t sell any alternate factual spin we could possibly put on this.”

  The Secretary of State shook his head. “We’re screwed,” he repeated. “Screwed, screwed, blued and tattooed.”

  “Wonder what the Veep’s doing?” mused the Secretary of Commerce.

  “Ha!” snorted the Chief of Staff. “That I can say. He’s already holding a press conference, denouncing ‘a scandalous conspiracy’ and promising a full joint Senate and Congressional Committee of Investigation. He’s paving a straight path into the Oval Office and guess whose asses he’s gonna kick to the curb along the way.”

  “Knew we should have kept him right in the loop with us from the start,” muttered the Attorney-General. “He’ll milk that plausible deniability for everything it’s worth, including a second-term electoral ticket.”

  ~o0o~

  The President’s Senior Policy Director sighed. He looked again at the sheet-covered form on the diagnostic bed. “You bastard. You couldn’t wait until at least the mid-term before having a major stroke?”

  “Oh, give that a rest, would you!” groused the man who had been Senior Strategist to POTUS 45 from the start. “We all know whose fault this is. We just have to look in a mirror. We knew it was a gamble, but we all agreed to go the M.I.T. route with the artificial human prototype.”

  He glanced once more at the sheet-covered body, surrounded by beeping, blinking medical machinery. He sighed.

  “But I knew it in my gut, I just knew it,” he muttered softly to himself. “I knew we should have gone with the cloning.”

  END

  MELANOMA AMERICANA

  Sara Codair

  “Melissa, you should get that checked out,” said James as he watched me prod the brown spot on my arm. It was shaped like an amoeba and was the color of dog shit.

  “Mom’s melanoma looked just like that,” he continued, picking up his tablet and bringing up images of people whose skin had been visited by a bunch of sick dogs. Most of them were accompanied by ads for sunscreen, UV proof fabric, and spray tans.

  “You think the insurance will cover it?” I looked away from the spot and turned on the Sunday evening news to remind myself that other people had bigger problems than skin spots. Network 7 was airing “live” footage from the Middle East. More radioactive refugees, deemed “zombies” by the newscaster, were crawling out of the quarantine areas only to get shot on sight. Their skin was red, blistered and peeling off. Their heads were covered by dust an
d patchy, tattered hair. One woman’s face was so melted I wondered how she could breathe.

  “I don’t care if the insurance covers it. Your life is more important than money.” James sat down beside me and turned the TV off. “I love you. I couldn’t bear living without you. I don’t care how much it costs. We’ll get this fixed.”

  I looked into his eyes, his soothing bottomless pools of black coffee. They were surrounded by creases that hadn’t been there five years ago. We met at a Sanders rally in Vermont. Back then, I was working on my MFA and he was developing Ice Cream apps for Ben and Jerry’s. So long ago and yesterday at the same time.

  I ran my hand over his cheeks, like petting a porcupine. These days, James worked a 60-hour week doing IT support for a cell phone manufacturing facility. He was making the lowest salary he had earned since college.

  “Okay, I’ll see a doctor,” I said hoping I wouldn’t regret it. There were plenty of people willing to loan money to us these days, but the interest, and the payback would be the end of our middle class freedom.

  ~o0o~

  Monday morning came and I kept my promise to James. It was the first time I’d left the house in two weeks. Three blocks away, I regretted it. There wasn’t a building downtown that wasn’t plastered from foundation to roof with advertisements. I felt sick. I recognized some of my own designs on the flashiest of them.

  Every corner had protesters. Some had matted hair and torn clothes; others looked like they were on their way to a shiny office in suit coats and button-up shirts. At least the police backed them and weren’t doing anything the stop them. One officer was sipping coffee and smiling.

  Closer to the city’s center were the factories and the working poor. Men stumbled to and from brick buildings looking more like zombies than humans. Their eyes sunk into their skulls and bones protruded out from under their tattered blue jumpers. The tips of their fingers were scabbed over. Toes poked out from the tips of their yellow work boots. One man toppled over into a pile of trash while others stumbled through the hazy air.

  Here, the protesters were angrier. Their lips curled back in snarls and their fists punched the air in front of a tall building bearing the pompous face of President Trump. One bold protestor threw a pile of shit at the presidents’ ugly mug. A police officer smacked him in the head with a baton. The protestor wiped his hand on the officer’s pants. The officer kicked and hit him while others trained their guns on any protestors thinking of intervening.

  I sped up, tightened my grip on the steering wheel and slammed on the gas, anxious to get through Lowell’s Great Again Manufacturing Center into a calmer sea of ads, storefronts, and office buildings. I pulled into a parking spot in front of a bright red building that said, “Walk in Emergency Services and Urgent Care”.

  ~o0o~

  “Welcome to WESUC,” beamed a perky girl with blonde hair and hot pink lipstick. “How can we be of service today?”

  “I have a spot on my skin that I’d like to get looked at. My husband thinks it could be skin cancer.”

  “Very common these days, but thankfully, very treatable. Can I have your name, credit identification number and date of birth?”

  “Melissa Whitfield. 00978653. June 25, 1987.”

  “Thank you, Melissa. It looks like you only have basic coverage.” She paused. “However, Blue Wall Insurance is running a special today. You can upgrade for just $599.”

  “Does my current coverage cover skin cancer?”

  “It covers 50% of the diagnosis cost and 50% to 70% of the treatment, depending on how far along the cancer is. An upgrade will get you 65% diagnosis coverage and 75% to 80% treatment coverage. It will also give you expedited service so you don’t have to wait, and access to private rooms should you require any hospital stays.”

  “Do I have to pay the full balance now?” I asked.

  “Yes—if you want the special price. If you wait, it’s $1299.”

  I thought about how much money was in the bank and what bills were due when. I looked at the spot on my arm. Yes, it had uneven edges, but the coloring was consistent throughout. I didn’t know for sure it was melanoma. “I’ll stick with my current coverage.”

  “All right,” said the girl. “Please have a seat in Waiting Room D. Your estimated wait time is two hours and fifty-seven minutes.”

  “Three hours?” I gasped.

  “Two hours and fifty-seven minutes. It would have only been seventeen and a half minutes if you had upgraded. Unfortunately, the special expired. Please proceed to the waiting room. Next please!”

  ~o0o~

  History unfolded as I waited. The table in front of me was filled with outdated magazines from before Trump was elected. There was an article about the dangers of GMO’s, an opinion piece about Obamacare, a report on global warming, and a plea to save the bees. I read the oldest magazines I could find, reliving a time when we were at the brink of disaster and not stewing in it.

  Before the 2016 election, I’d had faith that humanity would clean up its own mess. One of the first dates James took me on was to a butterfly sanctuary. We held hands like teenagers, marveling at species seldom seen in the wild. It had been one of the most romantic dates of my life until the tour guide started her speech of environmental doom. She believed that in ten years, most of the butterfly species in her sanctuary would be extinct. I didn’t believe her. Four years later, after Trump had, in a public ceremony “fired” the smiling head of what had been EPA, I knew her prophecy would come true.

  A year later, James took me to Southeastern Massachusetts to meet his family. We stayed in a tiny motel with its own private beach. We spent the evenings walking along shore, collecting sea glass and shells while we made plans for the future. On our last walk, James got down on one knee and proposed. We’d need a boat if we wanted to visit that spot now. The beach and the hotel, both are under water. Now his parents are in danger of losing their home too.

  ~o0o~

  “Melissa Whitfield?” said a hoarse voice.

  I looked up from an article falsely predicting that Trump would never build the Great American-Mexican Wall and saw a short Hispanic girl glaring at me from behind a chart.

  I stood. Without speaking, she led me to a moldy door numbered 5b. It creaked as she pushed it open. I could barely see the floor through its reddish brown grime. Mint green paint was peeling off the walls revealing the layer of moldy blue it had been meant to cover up. A tattered blood pressure cuff hung on a rusty hook.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked the woman.

  She took my arm and all but dragged me to the exam table. “This is the basic care room. You get what you pay for. Now, let me take your vitals.”

  I nodded. Discarded needles poked out of the trash bin that desperately needed to be emptied. My instincts told me to run, but I had waited three hours and wasn’t sure I’d get better care at another facility. If this one had the best reviews, I was afraid to know what the others were like.

  I stayed silent while she checked my blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels with her old equipment. The most modern device in the room was the tablet used for notes and to photograph the suspect spot.

  “The doctor will be in shortly,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “Don’t,” said the woman. Her shoulders sagged as she left the room and locked the door behind her.

  Feeling trapped, I paced around the room, careful to steer clear of the trash can. I poked at the spot on my arm, wishing I had been measuring it for the past three months like James had suggested. If I could’ve convinced myself it wasn’t cancer, I might have found the motivation to break down the door and leave. I took out my phone to call James and tell him what a bad idea this doctor visit was. I had no cell service.

  When the doctor arrived two hours later, his lab coat was specked with vomit and his forehead glistened with sweat. He looked at his tablet, at me and, at the tablet again. He sank onto the stool next to the exam table a
nd shook his head.

  “Next time they offer you an upgrade—take it.” He paused and glanced at my arm. “If there is a next time.”

  “If?” The rest of the sentence caught in my throat.

  “Definitely melanoma,” he said. “I can biopsy it to prove it or just take it off now and be done with it. If I biopsy and confirm that it’s cancer, it’s gonna cost you ten times as much to have it removed and you’ll have mandatory radiation therapy. Or, I can lop it off now and you’ll pay about $100 out of pocket. Stay out of the sun as much as possible and protect your skin when you can’t avoid it. You’ll probably be fine.”

  “Take it off,” I said, trying to focus on him and not the room. “I don’t want to deal with the insurance.”

  “Thought you’d say that,” muttered the doctor. “The only people with basic care are the stubborn ones like you.”

  Without warning, he stuck a needle in my arm that made it go numb. He took out a scalpel, burned it with a lighter, sliced a chunk of skin off, cauterized it, and slapped on a bandage. I watched, not feeling a thing.

  “Look out for infection. If you get fever, chills or red lines go to the emergency room and take whatever upgrades they offer.”

  ~o0o~

  “Aren’t you glad you went?” asked James twirling a finger through my hair.

  “I guess,” I muttered, suspecting the medical ordeal wasn’t over yet. “The place was really unsanitary. Whoever wrote those rave reviews either had premium coverage or was being paid to lie.”

  “Just keep it clean and take your antibiotics. You’ll be fine. People survived a lot worse in the old days.”

  “But, more of them didn’t.”

  ~o0o~

  My arm was throbbing the next morning. The wound was a black splotch surrounded by red, purple and blue but there were no red lines or spider veins. I washed it, smothered it with antibiotic ointment and then popped a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics. I looked at myself in the mirror. My brown hair was a tumbleweed. I had deep purple circles around my eyes. If my students hadn’t been waiting for me to do a live chat, I would’ve gone back bed. I glanced at my throbbing arm once more before going online to teach my class.