Welcome to Dystopia

by Gordon Van Gelder

  I read somewhere that there are people who don’t panic, and I guess I’m one of them. I watched Eight State burn. It scares me now what I felt then. I wish I could say I cried, or that all my sadness turned to rage. Instead I felt my blood pressure drop. The sound in the world got a little quieter. I looked down the street and saw a row of fires, bomb after bomb. I heard tires screeching and machine gun fire, and I knew—just knew—that there was nothing I could do for anyone at Eight State, and half my friends had been in there. But maybe if I got to Temple in time, I could save the other half.

  You know on the news they said it was a paramilitary outfit. I say it was a bunch of assholes who decided to get a lot of guns, make a lot of bombs, buy up some Army surplus vehicles and make their own uniforms. The news said they came at our city because we said we were a sanctuary, because our mayor spoke out, because we marched. They said they did it in the name of law and order. But I didn’t see any order that night. I saw burning buildings, shattered glass, flames, and rising smoke. I heard people screaming and shooting, shooting that wouldn’t stop. I heard sirens everywhere. Police cruisers racing from block to block. An ambulance on its side, on fire, in an intersection. And body after body, ruined and run over, or smoldering, or just full of holes. The couple the police captured said they just attacked wherever the people were. It was a Friday night, so that meant clubs and restaurants, downtown streets. It meant us.

  Everyone was on the street in front of Temple. They hadn’t hit the place yet. I found Jacob there. He still had his guitar. We stood there and wondered what we were supposed to do. Nowhere felt safe.

  Then we all saw it, a tan Humvee barreling down the street toward us. It ran over a dozen people and looked like it would plow through the rest of us, except that another car, racing in from a side street, crashed into it and knocked it on its side.

  This is our city. You understand what it’s like. As soon as the Humvee stopped, we were all over it. We got two of the tires off. They’d locked the doors, so we broke the glass, dragged three of those motherfuckers out, and threw them in the street. They got shoved around a lot. One of them shouted at all of us: We’re the New Patriotic Army of the East and we are coming for you. You could tell he practiced it. He tugged at his uniform when he said it, like his clothes gave him his power. So we pinned them down in the street and stripped them naked. Someone set their clothes on fire.

  That’s when the police showed up. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t. I don’t even know what I wanted to happen. I wanted to hurt the men who had attacked us. I don’t think I wanted to kill them. I know a few other people did, and would have done it. I don’t know if I would have stopped them.

  But the street was filled with sirens and flashing lights. The police hauled off the men we’d beaten up and a few of the people who’d been beating on them. The officers looked scared and exhausted. There were ambulances and paramedics scrambling around. Blood all over the pavement. And then the lights were gone and it was quiet and we were all standing around again, staring at each other, listening to the city explode around us. It still didn’t feel safe to go home.

  “You got your car?” I said to Jacob. He nodded. We got in and drove out of downtown, under the highway, and to the shore. We were the only ones there, and it was dark and quiet. The highway above us was empty. We could hear the waves against the rocks. And without either of us saying a word, we crawled into the backseat and fucked. We did it because we survived, and because it was better than screaming at the sky or burning something down.

  We’re kind of a thing now. I hope that’s okay. It’s been two days and the New Patriotic Army keeps saying they’re coming back. A few of us have left town and I don’t blame them. But the rest of us are staying here. This is our city and we all have this feeling, more than ever, that we make it what it is. So we all have each other’s numbers now. We check in all the time. We’re buying guns that we don’t want to use, but we will if we have to. We’re a sanctuary now in a bigger way than we were before. And we’re already partying a lot more, a lot harder. It feels like the best kind of resistance, to insist on living how we want, and to keep doing it, until they put us in the ground or learn that it’s a lot better to join us than to fight us. We’d even let them in if they wanted it. I wish they did.

  Please be safe, and come back and visit when this is all over. Our town misses you.

  Love,

  Ali

  ONE FELL SWOOP

  James Morrow

  Dear Mom and Dad: Sorry about this tyrannosize Facebook message, courtesy of Uncle Oliver’s account and password (unlike some members of this family, he trusts me), but it seemed like the best way. Yes, it’s really me, your estranged firstborn (I’d be your prodigal son if I had the resources), the college dropout (sorry to break the news so abruptly), the professional loser, the perpetual loner, the mikado of incommunicado, living in a North Broad Street dump (though obviously that’s about to change), delivering pizzas because he slept through most of his classes at Villanova.

  You can understand why I hesitated to get in touch these past ten years, but now that I’m famous and a bona fide national hero—have the media started pestering you for interviews yet?—I like to think we’ll stop disowning each other. Family dynamics aside, what I did last week will probably prove controversial, so I wanted to tell you my version of the Rosewood incident inmediatamente, and you can judge for yourselves just how proud of me you want to be.

  It all began when I got an email from Brick Quillin of the Nihilistic Rifle Aficionados saying he wanted to talk to me about “that amazing six-minute video” I’d posted on YouTube. He was referring to “Dark Alley Allegory” (check it out), which I made eight years ago starring my former girlfriend Monica Cartwright as a snacky but naïve Buddhist who gets chased through wet nocturnal urban streets by her wannabe rapist, then bursts into a gun shop just before closing time, at which juncture the proprietor laterals her a Glock and she blows the wannabe’s you-know-what off (I heard Monica moved to the suburbs and married a proctologist, and I think I’ll look her up now that I’m a celebrity). The gist of Mr. Quillin’s communiqué was that he wanted to tête-à-tête me, so we arranged to have a beer at O’Leary’s on Cottman Avenue the following evening.

  Somebody’s ringing the buzzer. I’ll start a new bubble in a minute.

  Whoever it was, they disappeared. No sooner had Mr. Quillin and I ordered our Pabst Blue Ribbons than he revealed that he reports directly to Dwayne LaRue—yes, the Dwayne LaRue, the NRA president whose photograph sits next to Jesus on Aunt Sally’s big doily in your living room.

  “Here’s the deal,” Brick began (he insisted I use his first name). “Every time one of these school shooting things occurs, there’s a great hue and cry throughout the land, and some Demoncrat or other—we call them Demoncrats—the fucker sets out to gut the Second Amendment. Last month Mr. LaRue decided we should ‘settle the question in one fell swoop’ and ‘solve the problem once and for all,’ mostly because he’s sick of the nasty mail he gets every time somebody’s third-grader goes down. God, that was a beautiful video you did, Joshua.”

  “Glad you liked it.”

  “Mr. LaRue believes we need what he calls ‘the definitive event.’ I was there when he closed his eyes and fired his antique Colt .45 at his map of the Delaware Valley, where he grew up, and the bullet hit the Philly suburb of Rosewood. ‘Once the definitive event has become part of our national dialogue on guns,’ he told me, ‘the country will find itself on a brand new calendar keyed to A.R. versus P.R.’”

  “Ante-Rosewood versus Post-Rosewood?” I suggested.

  “Bull’s-eye, trooper. If we can bring it off the definitive event, then whenever some socialist Congressman from Connecticut gets out his Constitution gelding kit, all we need do is spit in his eye and say, ‘Sorry, Clyde, you’re making an A.R. argument, and this is a P.R. world, so go home to your fucking “Kumbaya” garage band and leave politics to the adults.�
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  “Mr. LaRue is obviously some kind of genius.”

  “You’ll be part of a team—the Four Musketeers, we’re gonna call you, which is more appropriate in this case than when Mr. LaRue’s favorite novelist, Victor Hugo, used it, because Athos and company mostly wielded rapiers, whereas the definitive event will turn on actual firearms.”

  “Alexandre Dumas,” I said.

  “Each of you will become a living, breathing embodiment of what’s wrong with every damn hypothetical statute designed to prevent so-called gun tragedies. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

  “This republic would be in the crapper,” I said, nodding, “if the NRA wasn’t out there protecting our God-given freedoms from the God-given freedom takers,” after which Brick give me the biggest wink in history.

  “Musketeer Number One, Duke Heston from Exton, he’ll be using a brace of handguns instead of his customary AK-47,” said Brick, “thus giving the lie to the notion that banning assault rifles would accomplish anything. Musketeer Two, Whitley Sprague from Warminster, has absolutely zero history of depression, drug abuse, or antisocial behavior—he’s never even gotten a speeding ticket—so that ipso facto ruins the argument for mental-health background checks. As for Musketeer Three, Julius Eliot from Ardmore, he imported his Beretta ARX 160 under the strictest conditions imaginable, with paperwork stretching from here to the moon, and so—phffft!—there goes the case for making it super difficult to put together a legal private arsenal.”

  “You people have really thought this through.”

  “Finally, there’s you, Joshua, Musketeer Number Four.” Brick passed me a one-page script. “You’ll be making the case for arming classroom teachers. Mr. LaRue wrote your lines himself. May I assume you have a rifle?”

  “A Galil ACE and a FX-05 Xiuhcoatl.”

  “Forget the Mexican. Use the Jewish.”

  “Listen, Brick, I’m certainly willing to play my part, but I’m probably not the ideal casting choice.”

  “Oh?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve had schizophrenia issues.”

  I was about to given him a full disclosure, including the two years I spent at Cedarbrook after burning down the Tuckermans’ house, but Brick pooh-poohed my concern, saying, “That doesn’t matter, son. You’re the point man for our Packin’ Pedagogues initiative, period, full stop, which means your psychiatric history is irrelevant. Do you follow my reasoning?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hell, Duke Heston, he also has a spotty record in the sanity department, but he’s our answer to the assault-rifle sophists, not the background-check fetishists, so his mental condition will prove massively beside the point once the whining starts. And just because Julius Eliot pops two different kinds of antipsychotics every day, that doesn’t mean he’s not the perfect symbol for the futility of regulations, given how the People’s Republic of Massachusetts made him jump through a thousand hoops before his Beretta came in the mail.”

  “At least Whitley Sprague has all his marbles.”

  “Now you’re catching on, Joshua. He’s our sanity icon. Normalcy on stilts. Okay, sure, he got his Remington GPC as a door prize at the Keswick Fire Department barbecue, no questions asked, and somebody’s bound to bring that up—but in the context of the definitive event, it wouldn’t matter if he got the thing out of a Cracker Jack box.”

  “It all sounds very logical, Brick, but I’m afraid I could never articulate those arguments myself. Will there be a press conference afterward?”

  “Leave the spin doctoring to Mr. LaRue and me. Your job is to show up at the event site with your Galil and your John Deere minicam cap and your script completely memorized.”

  It’s the buzzer again. Next bubble coming soon.

  Visitor ran away again. Anyway, the big day dawned under a bank of thunderheads, and by the time my Galil and I got to Rosewood Elementary it was raining ferociously. Mr. Quillin introduced me to Julius Eliot, whose hard-to-get Italian beauty was a wonder to behold, then Whitley Sprague, armed with his door prize, then Duke Heston, who was indeed packing two single-action, magazine-fed pistols instead of a rifle.

  We all proceeded directly to our assigned classrooms. I was in charge of Ms. Peterson’s second-graders at the far end of the hall. After hiding the Galil under my jacket, I burst into the room.

  “Here’s how the game is played,” I explained. “If somebody here can produce a firearm, thereby demonstrating that this school takes self-defense seriously, I’ll turn around and go home. So, boys and girls, imagine I were to visit the coat closet. Would I find a pocket pistol in any of your galoshes? Raise your hands. Nobody? Too bad.”

  The storm reached a pitch of fury, rain battering the window-panes, thunder booming, lighting flashing. Naturally I thought maybe the meteorological commotion would screw up the recording of my conversation with the youngsters, but I needn’t have worried. The John Deere minicam has a great noise-reduction filter.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a Dan Wesson in the gerbil litter?” I persisted. “No? I was afraid of that.” Then I turned to Ms. Peterson and asked, “Do you by any chance keep a Kel-Tec in your desk?”

  “What?” she mumbled. I don’t think she was processing my question very well.

  “You should look into the NRA’s Packin’ Pedagogues initiative,” I explained.

  Now came the ratta-tat-tat of Julius, Whitley, and Duke getting the job done. Ms. Peterson’s kids started chattering excitedly. She herself turned white as a ghost.

  “I’m disappointed in all of you,” I told the teacher and her class, then pulled out my Galil and opened fire.

  Brick had warned us we’d probably get arrested, but of course President Orloff paid our bail (a cool ten million per musketeer, but that’s his idea of cab fare), so here I am back in my Broad Street dump, trying to set things right between you and me while waiting for Mr. Nesbit at Doubleday to call back (he mentioned a $100,000 advance).

  If you’ve been following the story, you know that most of our lawmakers acquitted themselves beautifully. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the grieving families this night,” noted Senator Paul Armitage (R-Alabama). Thoughts and prayers: an inspiring sentiment, don’t you agree? “Speaking on behalf of the entire US Congress,” said Representative Portia Mitchell (R-West Virginia), “let me express our profound appreciation to everyone who lost a child, especially if you loved that tyke to itty-bitty pieces, because there comes a time when we must put the Constitution first, and you all rose patriotically to the occasion.”

  I’m not sure I can corroborate President Orloff’s account of the parents’ behavior that morning. As far as I know, they didn’t really cheer Julius on. None of them actually helped Whitley reload. The President insists he heard a recording of a mother talking to Duke. Supposedly she said, “I won’t do any special pleading for my freckle-faced Brucie over there, and that’s his twin sister Megan with the pigtails, because we can’t let our American way of life fall into the wrong hands,” but I must admit I’m skeptical. All four of us musketeers were in police custody well before the moms and dads arrived on the scene, so I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any parental kibitzing.

  When it comes to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I’m pretty sure Mr. Orloff isn’t exaggerating. It’s a white enamel star surrounded by gold eagles, and you get one for making “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States.” Next week they’re flying Julius, Whitley, Duke, and me to Washington, all expenses paid, and Mr. Orloff will personally hang the medals around our necks.

  Back in a minute. The damn buzzer again.

  finishing this will be hard fuck / leaking all over keyboard fuck / monica cartwright got up her nerve this time / she had kept glock from dark alley allegory fuck fuck / said i did her 2nd grader that day / welcome to p.r. world mom and dad fuck fuck fuck / wish i could enjoy it with you / life not fair fuck fuck fuck fuck / all i can do is press return / love josh
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  BK GIRLS

  TS Vale

  In the beginning was the word.

  John 1:1. Right. I know that now. But what about in the end? How can these words matter, if all I can do is burn or bury them?

  Don’t know. Doing this anyway. For me and my BKs.

  My hands are shaking. This is a mess. Too much to say and all I have is this one sad piece of paper.

  But this is it. This is me now. Me with this crumply page from Our Lord’s Little Lambs, A Coloring Book, writing in the dark on this stinky futon, under this scratchy sheet, ugly stubby pencil poking holes with every other letter but I can’t help that, I can’t help how all this is. All I know is this has to come out. I will go crazy if this doesn’t come out.

  Maybe even die.

  Will die if I get caught with this. I don’t know but I think they’re almost done with me. The acting is getting hard.

  Got to keep going. Oops, sorry for writing this right across the outline of the Lord Jesus’ haloed head but can’t waste an inch. This one single coloring book page is all I’ve got and thank you, brown crayon blob, I bet you are the reason I have it at all.

  I don’t get trusted to wear a bra let alone talk to the little kids. But I do get trusted to tub-wash endless fucking laundry and go rake compost heaps. Sometimes I find stuff. Nothing to get me out of here, not me or any other BK, but still. I found this.

  Yeah. Some poor kid picked the brown crayon. But here, brown is for dirt and Jesus is always peach. Rip-tear-smack, out in the compost it goes.

  I look peach. My dad does not. Not that they know that here. Even if they’d watched for a while, first, they wouldn’t have seen him, Mom and Dad have been divorced four years. Four years plus the almost two I’ve been here. I don’t know the date anymore but I know it’s spring and I’m five months pregnant after two times it didn’t go so well. And. I know the date that I got snagged.

  Thursday, July 19, 2018.

  My name is ____________________________. I’m twenty now. I was riding my bike in a place where bad things don’t happen: ____________________________, on ____________________________ Road. My mom’s name is ____________________________, my dad is ____________________________ My number was ____________________________ and I am so sorry I don’t know anyone else’s by heart, my phone with my whole life in it got drowned in acid, I’m pretty sure.