by Willow Rose
"Nonsense," Tiffany had told her repeatedly. Not just to convince her mother, but also her worried self.
"It's just superstition."
But her mother wouldn't stop. Just this morning, before church, her old mother had looked her straight in the eyes and said:
"This child is a sign that darker times are ahead. I am tellin' you, darker times are ahead of us."
Luckily, Gregory was a Christian and he had taken Tiffany to church once they met, and there, she had finally found something she could believe in: Love. Nothing else. No dancing spirits or darkness lurking around every street corner. Just peace and love. Tiffany refused to let her mother destroy the happiest moment of her entire life by worrying about something so silly.
Jetta made a sound and Tiffany chuckled. Gregory grabbed her hand and squeezed it while Pastor Lawrence spoke.
They didn't even hear the doors being locked from the outside.
Chapter 2
The smell was the first thing they noticed. The smell of smoke. Gregory was the first to react. He sniffed the air and looked at Tiffany.
"Do you smell smoke?"
She lifted her nose, then shook her head. "No."
Jetta had opened her eyes and was looking up at her mother. Tiffany's arm was getting tired from holding the baby, but she didn't want to put her down. She was afraid she might cry. Not that she ever cried, at least not yet, but it sure would be bad timing if she started now.
Tiffany chuckled again when her eyes met Jetta's. Such an intense glare from such a small creature. Tiffany couldn't take her eyes off her. She was no longer listening to Pastor Lawrence's preaching - not that she ever really did, as she usually would doze off about halfway through his sermon.
"Okay, good," Gregory said and let it go.
But only for a few minutes. Until someone sitting closer to the door smelled it too. Soon, people were asking other people sitting next to them if they smelled smoke too, and they did. Tiffany smelled it too and soon her blissful smile turned into one of anxiety. Gregory rose to his feet and looked at the pastor.
"Lawrence, I think we need to get people out of here."
But it was too late. The sound of the flames licking the sides of the church was suddenly deafening and Tiffany felt panic rise, not just in her, but also in everyone inside the small building. It rushed through them like a blazing wave.
"FIRE!" someone yelled when she spotted smoke seeping in from under the door.
Screams emerged and people rushed to the doors leading outside. Gregory was in front, making sure Tiffany and the baby were protected from the stampede. He grabbed the handle and shook it, but the door didn't open.
"It's locked," he said.
"Try the emergency exits," Pastor Lawrence said and pointed to both sides, where exit signs were lit up.
It was already getting hotter inside the church and Tiffany felt her heart thump in her chest as she rushed—along with everyone else—toward the exit doors, but as someone grabbed the doors, they couldn't open them either. None of them.
They were trapped.
Tiffany turned her head and looked at Gregory for help. "It's locked, Greg. What are we going to do?"
He looked around, sweat trickling from his forehead. The place was an old movie theater; there were no windows they could crawl out of, no other way out but the doors.
"We're gonna die," some old lady in a pink dress screamed. "We're all gonna die!"
Pastor Lawrence grabbed a chair and threw it at the door, but it just bounced back from the heavy door. He rubbed his head as the entire congregation looked at him for help. Meanwhile, the heat grew stronger…on the verge of unbearable.
"I…I don't know what to do," he said.
Gregory grabbed his cellphone. "I'll call for help," he said. "I'm calling 911 now."
As Gregory spoke to the dispatcher, the fire had already reached the roof, and flaming pieces of the ceiling were falling among them. One fell on the old lady in the pink dress and knocked her to the ground as she cried and screamed for help.
Outside, as the firefighters arrived on the scene, they were met by a group of masked young men. They came with bats, clubs, signs, and faces painted with swastikas, brass knuckles, and—most importantly—guns. When the firefighters yelled at them to move, to get out of the way, the men started to shoot.
They had come to hurt people, and they did.
Chapter 3
She was the only survivor. The strange girl with the freakish appearance. As the firefighters and paramedics were finally able to get into the building, after the attackers had run and it had burned completely to the ground, they found her, still in her mother's arms, held tightly against her body. Her mother had tried to cover her face with a scarf, maybe to keep her from breathing smoke, and the media later speculated that maybe that had saved her life. There really wasn't any other explanation for how such a young baby could survive such a thing. It was either that or believe it was a miracle, but people liked the scarf explanation better. It made more sense. The pictures of the blackened mother, holding her infant, saving her life from the flames went around the world faster than any viral pictures of any cat ever had.
And they all agreed. What had happened was an atrocity. It was an act of terrorism. Yet, the perpetrators were never apprehended, and rumors soon began to be murmured that the police weren't doing enough to investigate it because the victims were all black. The world didn't care because they were all people of color and, therefore, their lives of less value than others. Tensions rose, not only in New Orleans but soon it spread to other big cities where clashes between blacks and the police were getting more and more frequent. Riots in the streets became an everyday thing. They marched in what were supposed to be peaceful protests, but some took advantage and smashed store windows and stole, destroying it for all the others. It was a protest, people acting out in despair because they didn't know what else to do because they felt worth less than everyone else in society, the experts explained on TV. But all the world saw was young black boys running amok.
On top of it all, the NFL decided to replace all players who refused to stand during the National Anthem with other players who would, and those replaced players were banned completely from ever playing again.
Meanwhile, Jetta was left in the care of her grandmother, who, on a regular basis, did her banishing rituals to try and push out the demon from inside the young girl. She would sing and chant and burn incense along with strange smelling candles and leave crystals all over the house to purify the place. She would even try and force the girl to eat herbs that she spat out just as fast as they came into her mouth.
Jetta didn't seem to mind much. She grew older and stronger, even though it was still whispered as she walked the streets with her grandmother that she was a witch, a demon sent to curse them, and that the fire had happened because of her.
Being only six years old, Jetta didn't care much what people said and her grandmother decided she couldn't hide her forever. The girl needed fresh air from time to time.
"So, let them talk," she finally concluded.
The old grandmother was becoming quite smitten with the little girl and cared deeply for her, even though she still believed she was sent from the evil spirits to curse them all. The way the world was going these days, it wouldn't matter much anyway. It could hardly get much worse, now could it?
Then the president was shot.
Part 1
Chapter 4
As soon as they found out the assassin had been black, things went from bad to worse for people of color. They weren't allowed to go to white schools anymore and couldn't even shop in same shops as whites without being harassed. Daily attacks on black neighborhoods followed. People were killed in the streets by masked men with swastikas on their sleeves, some beaten to death with clubs, others shot in front of their own houses. Even young children were killed for simply being of the same race as the man who had shot the president.
The assassin, it
turned out, was part of an underground movement of people fighting for black separatism, called Black Liberty. Their goal was to be separated from the whites and, soon, that was exactly what happened.
It became them or us and you had to choose a side. There was nothing in between. People in mixed marriages were attacked in their homes and separated, husbands or wives killed in front of their loved ones. Those that didn't split up were brutally killed in the streets, some even hung from the lampposts as a warning to others. And you couldn't hide. Your neighbor became your enemy.
It didn't take many years for the situation to accelerate into a state where it could be called a civil war. And that was exactly what they would later call it, the Second Civil War.
From the ashes of the old government rose a new leader who had new plans for the country. This leader, with a background as a general in the Air Force, and part of what they called the alt-right movement, was the one who had the vision of a different country, and a way to end the fighting, a way to stop the savagery.
It happened overnight. The first city to build a wall around itself was Boston. One morning, the citizens woke up to the military in the streets, setting up barbed wire and checkpoints all around the town. The point was to keep an eye on who came in and keep the fighting outside of town, was the explanation. And it worked. In the coming months, a calmness fell upon the city, as anyone fighting was simply thrown out and not let back in. The idea later spread to other cities. New York City was the next to follow, then Washington, D.C., LA, San Francisco, Miami, Savannah, and soon most of the bigger cities in the U.S. became protected areas where the citizens were safe from the fighting. Brick walls were later built where the barbed wire had been.
But that wasn't enough for self-acclaimed white president Patricia Neuman, who would later be called nothing but Mother, as she saw herself as the mother of a new and greater nation. Next, she started to throw out anyone of color from the cities she controlled. The military came at night and fetched them from their homes, deporting them to ghettos outside the towns. And not only blacks. Anyone of color was soon labeled as black too. That's what they called them. There was no African American anymore, no Asian, no Native American, and no more Hispanic or Middle Eastern people. If you weren’t white, you were black. It was as simple as that.
Tired of the politically correct labels, the president—or Mother—simply put them all in one category. She started to talk about having dirt in your genes as opposed to being white and clean.
They might have thought it was wrong. Lots of them did. But none of the whites disputed this new approach once they found out what was really going on. After all, it was them who had killed the former president. They had started it all. They had been destroying this great nation for too long, as the new president told them. Every problem in this country was somehow related to people of color, to blacks.
"We are already divided. It's time we split up. To save this great nation of ours," she said, standing in the ruins of the White House, where she and her forces had set up headquarters.
At thirteen years old, Jetta watched the—later to be famous—speech on TV in her grandmother's small apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans. When she turned off the TV, she heard the sound of heavy boots on the stairwell outside. Sounding like the drums from hell. Doors in the building were knocked in, people were screaming, shots were fired.
Jetta looked up at her grandmother, who stared at the front door, eyes wide, a breath stuck in her throat, her nails digging deep into the armrest of her old recliner.
"Nanna?"
Chapter 5
They didn't give them time to pack their things. Still, Jetta managed to grab her old teddy bear and a ring her grandmother had given her that she said belonged to her mother before the soldiers grabbed her by the arm and carried her out of the apartment that had, up until now, been the home of her childhood. The soldiers carried her down the stairs, while she heard her grandmother crying and screaming behind her.
"Nanna!" Jetta cried, but she couldn't see her.
Jetta was placed on the ground outside, where an officer approached her and looked at her face, placing a hand underneath her chin to lift her face to better look at it.
"What do we do about this one, sir?" the soldier who had carried her, said.
The officer scrutinized Jetta's face, while Jetta watched her grandmother be put on a bus, a soldier pushing her forcefully.
"What are you, child?" the officer asked.
Jetta looked at him. She didn't answer because she didn't understand the question.
"Answer me, child. What are you?"
She shook her head, and then looked at the entrance to the bus, where she could no longer see her grandmother. Panic started to erupt, and Jetta's small body was shaking.
The officer grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. "What are you, child? Black or white?"
"I…I don't know."
The officer shook his head. "I’ve never seen one like this," he said to the soldier.
"Me either, sir."
"One side is pure as snow, yet the other is dirty."
"Clearly dirty, sir."
"Yeah. She's got dirt in her blood. You know the instructions, soldier. Anyone with any hint of dirt in their blood goes."
"Yes, sir."
The soldier saluted the officer, then grabbed Jetta by the arm and pulled her forcefully. He lifted her into the air and she began to cry. He walked to the bus and put her on the steps.
"This one goes too," he said addressed to the driver.
Jetta ran up the stairs, her eyes searching for her grandmother in the crowd, but she couldn't see her anywhere. People were standing so close, it was hard to breathe, and as more people were stuffed inside the bus, Jetta could no longer move. She was pinned between a seat and someone's belly, fighting to even breathe.
"Nanna?" she cried, but no one could hear her.
So many were screaming, whimpering, and crying out names of their loved ones, her voice was drowned out. The pushing and shoving got worse and as the bus took off, some guy in big black shoes trampled on Jetta.
Chapter 6
The ghetto was like a small city itself. Once Jetta managed to get herself off the bus, she saw barbed wire, tons of soldiers, and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of black people. All the faces were strained and the eyes filled with the terror of uncertainty.
They were ordered to place all their belongings in a pile, including any electronics and cellphones since they wouldn't be able to use any of them in the ghetto. They would get it all back later, the soldiers said. But no one understood how they would ever be able to tell the belongings apart and get them to the right people when they were all put in the same pile. Those that complained, or even asked about it, were beaten with batons or tased.
They told them to get into lines and to walk forward. Jetta called her grandmother's name but received no answer. She pulled the shirt of someone walking next to her, but he pushed her away, mumbling something about her being a Halfling, and belonging to them, not belonging here.
Jetta didn't understand.
"Excuse me? Have you seen my grandmother?" she asked a lady walking behind her.
"Don't talk to me, you disgusting creature," the woman replied, then pulled her child away from her.
That was when Jetta realized that her grandmother had been protecting her. She had kept her at home and homeschooled her and told her to never go out alone, only so Jetta didn't have to face people and how they felt about her. She was used to staring eyes but had never realized people would find her appalling.
She looked at her own reflection in a car parked on the side of the road. Jetta stopped to glance at it, and for the first time, she found herself hating what she saw. She touched her face on both sides and realized she liked neither of the sides anymore. They were both ugly. Then she pulled the hoodie of her shirt to cover her face, so no one would see it.
A soldier came running to her, hit her in the
face with his rifle, then yelled at her to keep moving.
"Don't stop; keep moving," he yelled first at her, then at everyone else. "You need to keep the line moving."
Jetta wiped the blood off her nose, pulled the hoodie further up, to make sure it covered her face completely, then hurried back into the line, remembering her neighbor, John, who had been on the police force before this all had started. He had told her how he had been stripped of his badge one day, just out of the blue. One day, when arriving at work, he'd been called into the chief's office and told to hand over his badge and gun, told that he was no longer a part of the force.
"No explanation. No reason. No nothin'. Just like that, they took away everything from me," he told Jetta's grandmother, sitting in the kitchen of their apartment.
He told her there used to be blacks in both the police force and the Army, but not anymore. Blacks were not even allowed to be firefighters anymore. They were all replaced with smart robots, he said. But the robots were created to all look like white people.
"They're getting rid of us," he said, looking at Jetta as he spoke. "I'm telling ya. It's comin'."
Jetta's grandmother had called it nonsense, but Jetta had sensed something in her voice that made her know she wasn't so convinced. Just a few days earlier, she had been discussing it with another of their neighbors, Miss Melissa, who used to be a schoolteacher but wasn't allowed to teach white kids anymore, according to the new regulations.
"There are rumors," Melissa had said. "Of trains. Black freight trains that they use to transport people of color off to secret camps, moving across the country, the white man's sins covered by the blackness of the night."
Again, Jetta's grandmother had answered with a scoff. "Nothing but rumors and fairytales, Melissa. Nothing but fairy tales. You believe in Little Red Riding Hood too?"