Electronic Gags

by Kudakwashe Muzira

  * * * * *

  Freddie enjoyed taking his mother round the wildlife refuge so much that when she left, he felt devastated. Tonight, the second night after her departure, Freddie sat alone in the living room, thinking about Michael. Was Michael still alive? Were security agents torturing Michael and his comrades? He switched on the TV but quickly switched it off when he discovered that most of the television stations were churning out government propaganda. He opened a John Grisham book. He loved Grisham’s books. They talked about a time when there was rule of law in America, a time when ordinary citizens could take the government to court and win. Not even John Grisham could take his mind off his worries.

  He dropped the book and went to his room. Before he went to bed, he checked the balance of his electronic gag and found out that he had eight lucres and thirty-two cents in his account. Now that his mother was gone, the airtime could last him more than three days. When he was at work he only spoke when it was necessary. He and his colleagues mostly communicated by writing notes.

  After more than an hour of turning and shifting positions on the bed, Freddie fell asleep, dreamlessly at first, before he started dreaming about Michael facing a firing squad.

  “I didn’t betray you Michael!” he shouted.

  Michael kept looking at him with accusing eyes.

  “Michael I swear to God, I didn’t betray you.”

  Michael kept glaring at him. He had to do something to save Michael from the firing squad. He had to do something to show Michael that he didn’t betray him. Suddenly he had a gun in his hands. He opened fire at the firing squad before he untied Michael. “Run Michael, run!”

  “I can’t,” Michael whined. “My leg is injured. Go without me, Freddie. Now I know you didn’t betray me.”

  “No Michael, I can’t leave you.” He carried Michael and ran away from prison, security agents in hot pursuit. He killed many policemen and CIB agents but more kept coming. Now he was beginning to tire.

  “I can’t carry you anymore, Michael,” he said. “I guess we have to surrend―”

  A nasty electric shock enveloped his neck, spreading all over his sweaty body. “Jesus!” he shouted, bringing the shock back. He panted, trying to recover his wits. It took him fifteen seconds to realize he had finished his airtime talking in his sleep and had to shut up to avoid electric shocks, which the NASP manual euphemistically termed payment reminders.

  His watch read 3:02 a.m. He got out of bed, worried he would fall asleep and start talking in his sleep again. He would never again fall asleep without adequate airtime.

  * * * * *

  Michael and his fellow prisoners had been on death row for more than two months, knowing that each day could very well be their last. Whenever they heard the stamping of boots and the creaking of the prison’s gates, they feared the guards had come to take them to the firing squad.

  When a guard came to take Michael to Cabinet House at Professor Reed’s request, all the members of cell 13 thought Michael was going to face the firing squad. When he returned hours later, they all looked at him as if he was a ghost.

  “Michael! You are alive!”

  “Where did they take you?”

  Michael told them everything that had happened to him at Cabinet House.

  Now all the inmates had electronic gags and had no airtime. They lived in silence, praying for a miracle that would deliver them from the jaws of death. The silence was so unbearable that they looked forward to the four minutes of free airtime they got at twelve for singing the national anthem. Although they hated the anthem, a song that idolized the supreme leader and his regime, they sang it loudly, happy to use their vocal chords without attracting electric shock.

  Sometimes CIB agents interrogated the prisoners for fun, forcing them to speak without airtime. When a prisoner refused to answer their questions, the CIB agents beat him and when the prisoner answered the questions, he suffered electric shocks. The prisoners had to choose between electric shock and beating. They soon learnt that the best thing to do was to give short answers and agree to all accusations to shorten the interrogation.

  One night a prisoner tried to commit suicide by singing a hymn. He only managed to sing for seventeen seconds, ignoring the electric shock, before he fainted.

  Today, as Michael sat in cell 13, a twenty-square-meter room he shared with six other prisoners, he tried to answer the question that had vexed him since his arrest. Did Freddie betray him? Freddie, the man he considered his best friend. The kind and considerate Freddie. Did he, of all people, betray him?

  He had discussed this with the other occupants of cell 13. Everyone else believed Freddie betrayed them. Michael had resolutely defended Freddie, but now he wasn’t so sure. Now that the electronic gag had confined the prisoners to silence, Michael found it difficult to defend Freddie from his own doubt. Telling the other prisoners that Freddie was innocent was easier than telling himself the same.

  Michael looked at the walls of the dark cell and spotted two big fleas descending towards him. He took a piece of concrete from under his bed and squashed the insects. Bulging with blood, the fleas were purple, cruelly reminding Michael of mulberries, his favorite fruit. The smell of the entrails of the fleas filled the cell, almost overpowering the smell from the squat hole.

  Holding the piece of concrete, which was reddish brown from crushing fleas full of human blood, Michael scanned the walls for more fleas. The prisoners in cell 13 called the piece of concrete the mouse because they held it like a computer mouse when they crushed fleas on the cell’s walls. Michael had pulled out the concrete from the cell’s cracked floor. The prisoners also had a “stylus,” a stick of matches that they used to squash or flush out fleas hidden in cracks and crevices on the cell’s walls. The other occupants of cell 13 sometimes helped Michael kill the insects but mostly it was Michael who killed the pests. He was angry with the Ward regime and he vented his anger at the fleas. The prisoners only managed to kill big and medium-sized fleas. It was difficult to spot the tiny baby fleas in the dark. There were so many fleas in the cell that Michael believed that if the insects were to be collected, they would fill a bucket. During the day, the pests hid in crevices on the walls and came out for dinner at night. There were a few greed fleas that wanted to feast during the day and Michael deleted most of them with his mouse.

  Michael felt movement in his bowels and would have gone to the toilet straightaway if he was home. He had to wait for five o’clock, the time the inhabitants of cell 13 had set as the shitting time. Since prison guards only gave prisoners in each cell two buckets of water every day to flush their toilets, the occupants of cell 13 decided it was better to defecate one after the other and then flush the squat hole with one bucket of water, saving the other bucket for emergencies. When it was hot, like today, the inmates soaked their shirts in the bucket or sprinkled themselves with the water to cool themselves. As for pissing, one could take a leak any time.

  Once every three days, each prisoner got half a bucket of water for bathing.

  * * * * *

  Security chiefs and members of Cabinet chatted at the Brandon Ward airport, waiting for the president’s return from the FAO summit in Rome. Some of them impatiently looked at their watches, anxious to go home. President Brandon Ward’s flight was scheduled to arrive at 7:15. The time was 7:42 and the plane was nowhere in sight. Ward required all his ministers and security chiefs to welcome him when he came from abroad. On arrival, he wanted them to brief him on the affairs of the state.

  Away from this group of powerful people was a crowd of National Party supporters, dressed in the party’s colorful regalia and singing the party’s songs. The National Party’s symbol, Brandon Ward’s face, was dotted all over the party’s regalia.

  “He is here!” Air Marshal Gardner said.

  “Where?”

  “There,” he said, pointing westwards.

  The rest of the group couldn’t hear or see anything. Air Marshal Gardner had worked with airplanes f
or most of his life and he was always the first to hear the president’s plane. Eight seconds later, the others heard the drone of the Boeing 787 VIP.

  “Gardner, you have radar in your ears,” General Robinson said with a laugh.

  Like kids looking at their father’s car, the security chiefs and members of Cabinet watched the plane circle before it descended onto the runway. They walked to the airplane and stood in a line in order of seniority, members of Cabinet first.

  Cameramen focused their cameras on the stairway as President Brandon Ward and his wife came out, followed by the president’s bodyguard, Assistant Police Commissioner Evans, six CIB agents, the president’s secretary, Lopez, and Foreign Minister Henderson.

  The crowd of National Party supporters broke into the song Viva Ward the Father and Savior of the Nation. If God was listening, He must have felt envious at the praise that His creatures were giving a fellow creature. CIB agents stood between the president and the National Party supporters. Some of the women escaped through the CIB cordon and laid pieces of cloth in the president’s path as if he was Jesus on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

  Smiling, Brandon Ward greeted the vice president and chatted with him for a minute before he greeted his young brother and chatted with him for over two minutes. Then he greeted the ministers of Defense, State Security, Interior and Information before he greeted the lesser ranking ministers.

  After greeting each minister, the supreme leader asked, “Patriot, is there anything of interest that you want to tell me?” None of the ministers had anything to tell the president, meaning everything had gone smoothly during his absence. Brandon Ward then greeted the security chiefs and asked them the same question. Only the CIB director-general had something to tell the president.

  “I don’t know if you will consider this interesting, Your Excellence.” Director-general Sullivan cleared his throat. “A day before you left, on the second half of the first lady’s birthday, we arrested a rather interesting rebel.”

  “Tell me more, director-general,” Brandon Ward said, suddenly erect, his jetlag forgotten and the smile gone from his face. If there was one word President Brandon Ward hated, it was the word rebel.

  “We arrested a member of the Police Special Branch. NASP caught her ridiculing you. A―a...” he wanted to say a day before but corrected himself in the nick of time. “During the first half of the first lady’s birthday, she was in the VIP lounge as one of the security personnel protecting you at the national stadium, Your Excellence.”

  “What!” Brandon Ward exclaimed amid the ecstatic singing of National Party supporters. “Commissioner Hunt, you must thoroughly vet the policemen you assign to protect me.”

  The police commissioner said nothing, knowing that the supreme leader brooked no reply when was angry.

  “I no longer feel safe,” Brandon Ward went on with his tirade. “Why do you admit rebels in our police force? A rebel in the Police Special Branch! What is this country coming to?”

  The director-general disliked the police commissioner and saw this as an opportunity to discredit him. Before the president assigned him to the CIB, the director-general had been a policeman and the police commissioner had unfairly treated him. Now it was payback time. “The rebel won the President’s Sharpshooter Competition in the women’s category,” the director-general added mischievously.

  “Jesus!” Brandon Ward shouted. “A rebel sniper! Did you interrogate her, director-general?”

  “Yes, Your Excellence.”

  “Was she working alone or she is part of a conspiracy?”

  “No, she was working alone.”

  “Still... an armed rebel sharpshooter in the VIP lounge near me. Commissioner Hunt, how did the rebel sharpshooter end up in the VIP lounge?” President Ward frowned, “If she wanted, she would have killed me with one pull of her trigger. Commissioner, if you can’t vet the officers you assign to protect me, send them to the CIB for vetting.”

  “Should we eliminate her, Your Excellence?” the CIB chief asked.

  “Of course! But wait until I say so. Patriot Christopher and I came up with an interesting plan to eliminate the rebels in our prisons. I have to discuss the logistics of the plan with Patriot Christopher before we can set it in motion.”

  The president then walked to the crowd of his party’s supporters. His face lit as he listened to their song.

  Ward you are a messenger from God

  Ward the Lord sent you to save the nation

  Ward you are our savior

  Ward you are the father of the nation

  Ward you are our light

  Drunk with joy, he looked at the women who were dancing to the song and spotted a young woman who was provocatively shaking her backside. She was beautiful and about twenty years old. He was going to make enquiries about her. He wanted her and he would get her. The country was his garden and he could pick any flower he wanted, young or old.

  Chapter 4

  Freddie’s misery kept mounting. He tried overworking himself but work didn’t help him forget his problems. He had lost interest in his job. What was the use of saving wild animals when the government was rounding up and killing people at will? What was the point in saving polar bears from extinction when he couldn’t save himself and those he loved from the predatory Ward regime? What was the point in maintaining the balance of nature in the wildlife refuge when there was no balance in his life?

  He opened a bottle of brandy and took a sip. He used to be a moderate drinker but since Michael’s imprisonment, he increasingly took to the bottle. In the past, Freddie rarely drank spirits but now he welcomed anything that contained alcohol. He drank to forget but it didn’t help. The more he drank, the more he thought about Michael. The only positive thing he got from alcohol was that it helped him sleep.

  As the brandy got into his veins, Freddie felt that his world had come to an end, that he had nothing to live for. Suddenly, he began to weep.

  “Why is this happening to me?” he asked. “Why is this happening to my country? Brandon Ward, you bloodthirsty dictator, why are you doing this to us?” He sobbed. “Why don’t you just kill us all and have the country to yourself?” He knew he was treading dangerous ground but he was too drunk and too emotional to care. “Policemen, soldiers, CIB agents, why do you kill your own brothers and sisters? Why do you kill innocent people in the name of Brandon Ward?” For more than ten minutes, Freddie let out his feelings between sips of brandy.

  He took one last sip from the bottle and put it on the floor. After a look at his watch, he threw himself on the bed and waited for the CIB to arrest him. He took another look at his watch. Nine minutes had passed and there was no sign of the CIB. Fourteen minutes later, he took another look at his watch and fell asleep.

  He woke up just after six, surprised to be alive and free. Although he didn’t remember exactly what he had said last night, he knew he had said something dangerous. Maybe he had escaped detection. He sighed with relief.

  “In the name of President Brandon Ward, I order you to come out with your hands on the back of your head,” a voice said over a loudspeaker. “Freddie Young, we know you are in there.”

  Like a sheep to the slaughter, he opened the door and went out. Nine CIB agents pointed their guns at him. Six of the agents had assault rifles. CIB agents normally worked in pairs when they went about arresting people. Freddie’s bold challenge to the Ward regime had made them cautious. They decided not to come at night, fearing an ambush.

  “I was wondering when you would come,” Freddie said, suddenly more angry than afraid. “You have come to kill me to please Brandon Ward.”

  “Shut up and move forward!” the agent in charge shouted.

  “When will the bloodbath end?” Freddie asked. “Aren’t you tired of killing unarmed civilians?”

  The agents looked at each other, unsure what to do. This was their first time to face such open defiance from a civilian.

  “How many people did you kill since you
joined the CIB? How many will you kill? You are all―”

  “Shut up or―”

  “Or what? Or you will kill me? I am already dead. You killed me the day you took my friend. We are all dead.”

  “Shut your beak!”

  “Do you think you are alive? You are just Brandon Ward’s zombies. You died the day you joined the CIB.”

  “In the name of―”

  “In the name of who? Brandon Ward?”

  One of the agents punched Freddie, breaking his nose. “If you say one more word, I swear I will kill you,” the agent shouted, pointing his rifle at Freddie’s head.

  “Come on shoot me,” Freddie taunted. “When you go home go and tell your wife and children that…” He broke off in mid sentence when the agent kicked him. “…today daddy shot an unarmed man in the name of Patriot Brandon Ward?” Freddie finished his sentence, wincing with pain.

  The agent was about to shoot Freddie when his superior stopped him. “Don’t kill him,” he ordered. “I want to kill him too but the supreme leader said he has a special elimination plan in store for all rebels.

  * * * * *

  Although Christopher Ward owned six houses and a ranch, he spent most of his time at the First Building. Christopher Ward was one of the few people Brandon Ward truly loved. There was nothing the president would not do for his brother. Christopher was the only person Brandon allowed to criticize him. The supreme leader enjoyed his brother’s company so much that he had given him a whole wing of the First Building with five floors. Brandon enjoyed chatting with Christopher in private. Although he enjoyed the titles that came with his position as the President of the Ten Districts of America, Brandon Ward sometimes missed being called by his first name. Apart from his wife Cassandra, Christopher was the only person on first name basis with the supreme leader. In fact, Christopher was the only one who called him Brandon. His wife called him darling Brandon, dear Brandon or sweet Brandon but never a simple Brandon.

  Today the two brothers smoked cigars as they played cards.