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Goldie Bear
By Emily VanOverloop
Destroyed. The Guardians told me my family had been destroyed. Some accident left me without my memory and my only remaining relative was some uncle twice removed. I was supposed to live out the rest of my life in the Chew with him. Like hell.
“Goldie, don’t be too late,” my uncle had yelled at me one day as I closed the door on my way to the market. That was the last time I’d seen him. He was a shit person—verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive to every person he encountered—it was no wonder why he ended up in the Chew. I decided living on the streets of the Chew was better than living with him. That was three years ago.
Oh, the Chew. The Guardians and everyone in the Colony regarded the Chew with so much disdain, it had become a threat. “You don’t want to end up in the Chew,” they’d warn their children.
The Chew and the Colony were separated by a hill. While the Chew was desolate, dirty, and poor, the Colony was the exact opposite. I often climbed to the top of the hill and looked down on the Colony. Every house looked the same. Every house had one man, one woman, and one child. The Guardians distributed three meals a day to each house. Every day, the children went to school learning the ins and outs of how to succeed and prosper in the Colony. The men went to work, making sure to uphold the Colony standards. The women stayed home. I wasn’t sure what they did all day, but they only left the house to go get essentials from the market. Other than that, every member of the Colony went to the same church on Sunday mornings. Attendance was mandatory.
If I’m being completely honest, I hated everything about the Colony. Who wanted the same thing day in and day out? They didn’t have any kind of entertainment or fun that I could see. The Chew at least had some variety—the kinds of people, the kinds of entertainment, the kinds of food. I thought life was much better in the Chew than the Colony gave it credit for. But there was something to be said about having a home and three meals a day.
I was sitting at the top of the hill, looking down at the orderly houses as the sun started to set. I’d never been able to shake the feeling that I was missing something. Part of me felt like it belonged in the Colony. A cool breeze blew across the grass and I watched it ripple down the hill. Hopefully, my task tonight would cause beautiful ripples, too. I breathed in the fresh air and closed my eyes, knowing that it might very well be my last sunset.
“You coming, Goldie?” my best friend’s high-pitched voice startled me. I turned and saw Lacey had dyed her hair bright pink this afternoon. Subtle. I stood and dusted the grass from my pants.
“Promise me something?” I said as we started the trek down the hill. “If I get wiped tonight, do not let anyone name me ‘Goldie’ when I come back.” She laughed but nodded. My uncle had started calling me ‘Goldie’ based on my hair. He said he despised the color. I despised him.
I used humor to cover my fear. If I got wiped tonight, I wouldn’t even care about the name ‘Goldie.’
While the Guardians insisted I lost my memory and my family in an unspecified accident, there were a remarkable number of similar stories in the Chew. Eventually, someone had the good sense to question this and had us all gather in an old war bunker below the hill. Twenty- five people showed up that night, including Lacey and me. We’d been best friends ever since. The group decided to call themselves “The Chew-sers.” I rolled my eyes every time someone said it.
The twenty-five Chewsers were all younger than thirty. Casey, the oldest of the group, was the one that found me within a week of me leaving my uncle. He had found all the others with the same story and convinced me to come to that first meeting. He knew Zach and Isaac from the market. Supposedly, they were brothers, but they couldn’t look or act more different from each other if they tried. They were good friends, though.
Casey had set up the bunker with all kinds of supplies. Most of them were smuggled in from the Colony. Casey claimed he’d been working on getting everything for years but didn’t ask all of us to join until he was sure there was enough evidence of something wrong. I wasn’t sure how much I believed him—it almost seemed like he knew too much—but staying in the bunker was a lot warmer at night than staying alone on the street. Besides, what did I have to lose? Lacey was the only other girl my age, so I clung to her. Zach and Isaac trained everyone, but were a few years older than us. Casey was older than them and acted as the group’s leader because he’d found everyone. I didn’t know many of the others, but considered them all my family. Everyone was friendly because we were all after one goal. Our memories.
The theory was that the Guardians would wipe memories clean. For some reason, we’d all had our memories wiped clean from our lives before. Recently, we’d discovered we all had a faint scar along the base of the neck. It wasn’t an ordinary scar, though. It was blue. Casey’s father had just passed away. Out of curiosity, he decided to cut his father’s scar open. He found a mechanical chip in his father’s skin. When he put that chip into a screen, a video of sorts played showing all of his father’s memories. Turns out, he wasn’t Casey’s father at all. His last memory had shown him questioning his boss about some sort of business transaction that didn’t make sense to him. Instead of answering him, his boss called the Guardians. Before going black, “wipe him,” was heard coming from a Guardian.
“You’re not going to get wiped,” Lacey said as we finally made it to the entrance of the bunker. “You’re the best fighter we have. Casey wouldn’t send you if he didn’t think you’d make it back. You’re too smart for him to let go.”
That was true. Zach and Isaac had been trained for hand-to-hand combat sometime in the past. Casey’s other theory was that muscle memory couldn’t be wiped. So, I trained with them as much as I could. Physical exertion felt better than the mental exertion I put myself through when left alone.
I let her boost my ego before going in because I didn’t want Casey, or anyone, to see how scared I really was. If I succeeded tonight, we’d all get our memories restored. If I didn’t, I’d either wake up without a memory again, or die. I took a deep breath and Lacey pushed the door open.
“Finally, the woman of the hour,” Casey said at the front of the room. I was only sixteen or seventeen, hardly a woman but still one of the oldest in the room. They pressed me forward with a round of applause.
“I haven’t done anything yet,” I said. At the same second I stepped up to Casey’s table, a knife whirred past my head. I shoved Casey out of the way and ducked as someone’s fist came toward my face. My training took over.
Duck. Dodge. Punch. Duck. Dodge. Punch. I wasn’t even sure how many people I was fighting.
“Enough,” Casey yelled. “We don’t want to wear her out before she leaves.”
The fight stopped. Zach and Isaac removed their hoods and smiled. Zach had a slit over his left cheekbone. “Impressive,” he said. I didn’t know if he was just being nice because of what I was about to do, or if I should actually be proud that I got a punch in on one of our toughest fighters. I smiled anyway.
“Anything new?” I asked Casey as Lacey brought me over some water. Fresh water was hard to come by in the Chew, but we had a barrel of water that Casey had smuggled in from the other end of the tunnel attached to the bunker. I was going to take that same tunnel to sneak into the Colony and get back our memories. I tried not to choke on the water.
“We’ve got it narrowed down to three houses,” Casey started, opening a map and pointing. “Once you leave the tunnel, you’ll go four blocks straight and then turn left. Follow that street—Prosper Avenue, I believe—until it dead ends. Then turn right onto Forest Lane. There are only three houses on that street. It has to be in one of those. It’ll either be in with the Bears, the Foxes, or the Toads.” I stared at him. Seriously?
He put his hands up in defense. “Hey, I didn’t name these people.” He looked at his watch. “It’s just about time.” I nodded. Lacey and Zach started handing me supplie
s—flashlight, gun, knife—and I strapped them to various places on my body without even thinking. Thank goodness for muscle memory.
“And it’s in a security box. Likely under a hexagon.” The hexagon was the shape of the Colony’s flag. Casey had done some serious work finding all of this out. He’d kidnapped a Guardian from the market not too long after he’d discovered the chip. The Guardian answered all his questions, but Casey still killed him.
“Why don’t they want us to have our memories, again?” I asked, my fear getting the better of me. I rubbed my palms along my shirt. I hated sweaty palms.
“Hey, hey,” Casey turned my face toward his. “You can do this. You will free us and once we all have our memories back, we can go join the Colony. We all deserve to be sheltered and fed.” He tried to smile but I knew he was too bitter. I nodded and made my way to the door.
“Wait!” Lacey grabbed my arm. “Wear the goggles. Maybe we can help.” The goggles were set up to stream my view back to the screen. They also had speakers attached to the earpieces. We’d never tried them outside of the Chew though. Lacey strapped them to my head and turned them on. Her smile filled the screen in front of Casey.
He just shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
I turned back to Lacey and hugged her as hard as I could. She sniffed and I knew she was holding back her sobs—she was always overly emotional. I turned to hug Zach and Isaac. Hopefully, I would make them proud.
“Why does she have to go alone?” Zach suddenly demanded of Casey. Casey was as shocked as I was—Zach hardly ever showed an opinion about anything-- and fumbled for words.
“It’s risky enough with just me going. We don’t want to risk our memories being destroyed. If I’m found, they can’t trace anything back,” I explained. Rationale always calmed me down. “All of these supplies were once theirs. Nothing will expose you all.” I swallowed. “I want to keep you safe.”
With that, I refused to make eye contact with anyone else. I walked out the door opposite of where Lacey and I had come in and entered the tunnel. I clicked on the flashlight. For some reason, I thought the tunnel was going to be the worst part, filled with dirt and bugs and all kinds of things I didn’t want to see. I was pleasantly surprised to find a cement floor with brick walls. It was just like the bunker.
“Can you still see me?” I couldn’t remember if the goggles had microphones or not.
“We see you,” I could hear the buzz from the bunker and Lacey’s excited voice. “I knew these were a good idea!”
“We’ll see how long they last. You guys will need to be quiet though. Who knows how far the sound will carry?” The buzz quieted. I could picture them all surrounding the screen, watching my progress. I knew Lacey was proud of me, so I pictured her smile the rest of the way through the tunnel. I was doing this for her. And for me. I wanted to know what destroyed my family.
The tunnel went on much longer than I thought it would. I was about to ask Casey how much longer when I finally saw the wall at the end. I ran the rest of the way, eager to get out. I climbed the ladder and pushed the button by the opening in the ceiling. A hexagon started slowly moving to the right.
“Kill the light!” Casey whisper yelled. I turned off the flashlight and waited a minute before climbing out.
I poked my head out slowly and looked around. All I could see were bushes and trees. I pulled the rest of my body out but kept low to the ground. I crawled toward a tree and slowly snuck around it. The street was right on the other side. It was too dark to make anything out, but I wasn’t going to use the flashlight again.
“Go forward. You’ll see streetlamps soon,” Casey’s voice came over the earpiece. Apparently, the goggles still worked.
I recited the instructions in my head for the billionth time and forced my feet to move. The street was smooth, like the floor in the tunnel. There were no streets in the Chew, just dirt paths. My boots almost felt too heavy to walk on it. Their thud was sure to wake anyone nearby. Stepping lightly would take too long. I had to risk it. I crept along the street. Casey was right. By the time I reached the second block, streetlights lit up every doorway. How many times had I stared down at the Colony and not seen these? Luckily, the street between the rows of houses was still fairly dark in the middle. That’s where I decided to stay.
There were no signs of life—human, Guardian, animal, anything. I knew I’d left late in the evening, but how early did these people go to bed? Granted, my sense of time was currently skewed. I felt like I’d been out here for hours already.
“Forest Lane is coming up on your right.” Casey’s voice startled me so much I jumped. I stopped for a second to take a breath. I had to admit that the air did feel cleaner down here.
I saw the street sign for Forest Lane and felt my heart rate increase. I picked up my pace. The Bears, the Foxes, and the Toads. I rolled my eyes and decided to start with the farthest house from the street. If I needed to run, at least I could shave off some time trying to get back.
All three houses were identical on the outside. White brick with black shutters and a black door. There wasn’t a trace of light coming from inside. It was almost disorienting.
“Can you hear me?” I whispered.
“Yes. And see you,” Casey answered. “See the number pad below the doorknob? Type in 7-8-1-7.” I did so and heard the release of the lock with a beep. It was deafening in the silence from the house. “That’s the risk you’ll have to take,” he said.
I tiptoed in and quietly shut the door behind me. I’d always wondered why the crime rate was so low in the Colony. The threat of the Chew couldn’t be that bad. But looking at the almost empty house, I could see why. Nothing to steal when everyone had the same things.
“He said it would be on the bottom floor. There’s no underground floor on this row of houses,” Casey informed me. At least that narrowed it down a little.
Casey had asked the Guardian he kidnapped why they kept something so important inside a civilian house. “Easier to wipe one house than a whole building.” I still got chills when I thought of the Guardians flippant answer, as if it were no big deal. Anger started pushing me forward.
There was a white couch with a white coffee table. There was a screen on the wall opposite of the couch, but nothing else on any wall on this floor. The kitchen was the same. A solid metal table and chairs next to metal appliances. It was stark and cold. It even smelled sterile. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in this house. I checked under the coffee table but already knew the box wasn’t in this house.
I tiptoed back to the front door and made it outside without a problem. Phew.
“One house down, two to go.” There was a little relief in Casey’s voice. “Try the Foxes next. To your left.”
“Who did I just do?”
“The Toads.”
There wasn’t a lot of space between the houses, so I was exposed the whole way to the Fox’s front porch.
“1-2-3-4.” Casey was on top of it. “Original, I know.” I smirked but didn’t dare make a sound.
If the Toad’s house was cold, the Fox’s house was…hot. There was stuff everywhere. My flashlight shined on so many different odds and ends just to get through the door, I had no idea how I would find a box in here. I shuffled through some stuffed toys and made it to another white couch and coffee table in front of a screen. This couch, however, was no longer white. It was stained in so many places. There was even a small orange handprint on the center cushion. I smiled at the thought of a happy child. I forgot that these people didn’t know about the workings of their government. I wondered if it was better to remain blissfully unaware or to know what was wrong and not be able to do anything about it. It was better for me if I pretended they didn’t know any better. Because how could they have let this happen to anyone, let alone to someone like me? No. It was better if they were unaware.
“This isn’t it. It’s gotta be the Bears. Get going.” Casey’s directions made me jump. I hurried back to the do
or trying not to trip on anything. As soon as I shut the door, a light flicked on in the house. I ducked below the front windows and prayed my black clothes were enough to keep me hidden.
The shadow of a figure appeared in the window. “Thought I heard something,” a man’s muffled voice sounded right above me. If I hadn’t been hiding under the window, I wouldn’t have heard him at all. I held my breath, sure that he was about to open the door and attack me. As I reached for my gun, the light went out.
I nearly cried with relief as I gulped in air. Adrenaline coursed through me. I knew this quest would be risky, but I still wasn’t prepared. I shook my head, trying to regain some composure.
“Get it together, Goldie,” Zach said in the earpiece. “You’re almost there. You got this.” It was no secret that I liked Zach. Casey was smart to put him on. He knew I’d probably step up to show off for him. Bravado.
I stood and took in another deep breath. Besides that little almost-incident, it had all been too easy. Where were the Guardians? I thought they patrolled the streets at night. I crept to the Bears front door.
Once Upon A Dystopia: An Anthology of Twisted Fairy Tales and Fractured Folklore Page 16