Happy Remembrance Day,

not that that's an oxymoron at all...

Anyway, in the interests of self-promotion, here's what's so far of my novel/novella/short story/crapshake in its entirety, minus some parts I edited out because they were either crappy or unfit for immature audiences like you guys.

That being said, if you have a bunch of time on your hands, read away.

When I woke up it was one thirty two.

I collapsed back onto my pillow, the light coming through my curtains just so, in that somnolent, pacifying way that makes you want to just lie there forever and be content and warm and stagnant. But I'm a punk, so that's definitely not happening. I threw the covers aside, and blinked four times.

Then once more, for good measure.

Shaking the clouds of sleep from my mind, or attempting to as best I could, considering that my mind was sleep-clouded, and failing, I decided to sit there for a little longer. To pass the time, I picked the little bits of dried mucus that accumulate around my eyes during the night. There's little more satisfying to me than feeling that little tiny speck of hardened snot, which my mom used to call sleepy dust, in your fingers, rolling it between thumb and forefinger and then flicking it away to the floor, where it ceases to exist. Because of this, clearing the sleepy dust from my eyes is something I relish, and I was quite content to sit there for a few seconds, rolling specks of hardened snot between my thumbs and forefingers and summarily flicking them into the void that is anything further than a few inches from my face.

I blinked again.

I checked the clock.

One thirty three.

Giving my head a good shake in a futile attempt to rehabilitate my hair, I lurched forward off the bed, catching myself on the half-opened door of my room, and successfully not falling down again.

A step forward from yesterday's debacle of a waking up.

Scratching my head and sending millions of dead skin cells floating to the ground like a macabre and unhygienic snowfall, I yawned conclusively and stumbled into the hallway outside my room.

The inside front door was open, and light poured into the hallway through the large glass panel that made up most of the outer front door. I squinted for effect and sloped off down the house towards the kitchen.

Manic was in the kitchen.

Asleep, as usual, at this time of day.

An explanation is required, no doubt, being that not everyone has a sleeping Manic in his kitchen at this time of day.

That being said, here's your explanation:

Manic is my best friend.

He's my roommate, my rock, my work ethic, he's my advice, he's my counselor and psychiatrist, he's my library, my encyclopedia and my dictionary all in one, he's my life-support and my teacher, he's my president and my preacher and my doctor and my support group, he's my muse and my agenda and my critic. And he's my best friend.

A sleeping Manic is a beautiful sight to behold. Well, that is, when he's not asleep in a pool of blood or vomit, and he doesn't have any obvious wounds. But a healthy sleeping Manic is something I like to sit and contemplate whenever I can. It's happened before that I've fallen asleep just staring at him, and by the time I'd woken up again he was gone. He attributes my fascination with his looks to some deep-rooted Freudian thing about how my father, who never loved me, was as ugly as a nuclear war, but I'm mainly just happy he isn't freaked out by it, like most people would be. That's another thing you have to understand about me; I'm intense in all sorts of weird ways. Doesn't win you friends, but I get by. I have Manic. Which is more than you can really ask for, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway. Manic's face is all long and angled, his cheekbones jut out at different angles and he has scars all over his face. Some still fresh. His hell-black hair is spiked, and no two of the angles are equal. I think he and I came up with some sort of formula one night, in two respective drunken stupors, that calculated something like that, but that doesn't really make sense, in retrospect. At any rate, his hair is really cool, but only once you've seen his wardrobe can you truly appreciate the respect that I have for this guy.

He can make anything cool.

I had to go to piss by then, so I cut short my monologue extolling the virtues of my main man asleep in the kitchen and entered the bathroom. Entered is the only word you can use in this situation. Our bathroom is really only something you can enter. You don't walk into the bathroom, or stumble into the bathroom, and you certainly don't crawl into the bathroom. You must enter it.

The bathroom is in black and white, which is to say, it's been decorated using only black and white, but for all you can tell, all colour ceases to exist upon entering it. It's like you're in one of those science fiction movies where there are no colours so it looks super-futuristic, and everything's very minimalist and efficient. That's our bathroom, minus the robots.

It's so cool, I can barely believe it's mine. Sometimes, after a night of partying, or moshing, or just drinking, Manic and I get home and by the time I enter the bathroom I can't even tell that I'm in my own house, much less that the bathroom in the house is as cool as it is, so it comes as a total surprise to me. Bam, it hits me in the face like a comically bad video game, bam. What an awesome bathroom. All the tiles are white, except for one, which is black. Everything else in the bathroom is white except for the shower curtain, which is also black, and the mirror, which is specularly reflective. I clean it religiously, with lots of pomp and circumstance every time I have nothing to do. I'm a little bit intense, like I said, but when I'm bored or heartbroken or both, the bathroom keeps me going. I love cleaning dirt and gunk from the clean and pure white surfaces in the bathroom like I love picking the sleepy dust from my eyes, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, and flicking it away from me forever. I guess some part of me enjoys knowing things are being kept orderly and perfect, and Manic hasn't made a big issue out of it but I bet he's written about it in his journal. He keeps notes on nearly everything. Sometimes he lets me read from it but I know the boundaries between us cover that whole notebook more often than not. I've often wondered how he manages to write so much in one notebook and never get a new one. Which isn't to say he doesn't, but it's that there's this insanely complex drawing that he did a few years ago, a wacky, trippy self-portrait which is, in my mind at least, completely unreproducible, and yet it's always been on the cover. Either he redraws it every time he runs out of space, or he erases what he's written and writes over it when he runs out of space. They both seem equally stupid ideas to me, but he always has reasons for everything. I'm not very good at debating anyhow. I guess he sort of likes arguing like that, playing cat and mouse games with me. Does his ego good every once in a while, can't fault him for needing self-esteem.

Anyways, so this is all irrelevant, because I'm standing there pissing when what should happen but the doorbell should ring. Jarringly. So much so, in fact, that I jerked to one side and pissed on the wall.

"Fuck!"

Manic wakes up in a huff and a hurry.

"Shit fuck damn!" I curse and curse and grab some toilet paper, my still-sleepy hands fumbling to pull more and more from the roll to wipe up the ugly, wall-marring piss on my immaculate bathroom white.

"Wha's goin' on?"

The doorbell rings again.

"Shit fuck fucking God damn it!" I hurriedly wipe at the wall, smearing the hot hatred here and there, it's a duct-tape clean, it'll hold until I've dealt with whoever's at the door. It's still tough to deal with, all that piss running down the wall. It takes me a second to notice there's some on my pants, which I've just slept in. I take a step back and lean over to see myself in the mirror.

Disaster. I'm in no shape to be seen by anyone at the door, no matter the person or the importance of the thing which has lead them to my door so early in the morning.

Of course, to add to my humiliation, what's left of my sanity at this point registers that it is, in fact, the afternoon.

Manic has started walking, or rather, he's lumbering, but the point is that he's moving towards the door.

The bell rings again.

-
-

As far as the eye can see, there are only three colours: red, white and black. The rows upon rows upon rows of red brick houses, the miles and kilometres of white sidewalks and black roads, there's the blackened windows and doors and the white walkways and the red sky and the black smoke in the distance. The carbon copy houses are so harsh in their rigidity it's enough to make anyone even a little queasy.

Not Anders Henrik Dvorak.

He relishes the endless similitude. It makes him happy deep inside, gives him an impermeable grin that he just can't shut off. He doesn't blink.

Anders lives alone in the house at the end of the row. House 1-1A-0A. His wife and children live next door.

The rising white sun reflects off his now-thinning-but-still-gelled silvery-blonde hair, and his blue eyes twinkle maliciously. He walks quickly and efficiently to work, black imitation leather briefcase in hand. No one knows the combination to the lock but him. His suit is impeccable. His perma-grin is plastered perfectly to his face between his two slightly chubby reddish cheeks. He walks quickly and efficiently to work.

-
-

Once inside Corp.Kn, you really forget about things. It's not just some urban legend or rumour or what-have-you that's passed around, originating with some disgruntled former employee (and most of the former employees are either disgruntled or dead, so that's a fairly safe bet) and evolves as it's translated and re-translated and edited for effectiveness. You really do forget things. Something about the atmosphere induces forgetfulness — and I don't mean short-attention spans. It's more like forgetting things for good, not just forgetting that you were supposed to be at a meeting twenty minutes ago. It's... it's difficult to convey, I guess, but if someone were to ask you, and someone indeed has, what your name is, while heavily ensconced in the building, you might take a good minute or so to remember your name. Once home again, though, I know perfectly well who I am. It's just that I can't seem to keep track of it all while I'm at work. Like something else keeps pushing all that vital information out of my mind. It's almost like some measure the higher-ups instituted to keep you working hard, something out of a conspiracy theorist's wet dream but who knows what really goes on inside my head or those of the Seven. The Seven run Corp.Kn and no one knows who they are.

No one.

Not a single soul in the world could tell you what they're thinking. That's what I'm pretty sure of, at any rate. They're one of those typical super-secretive factions of doom running major corporations that you always hear about on the news. Typical doom-saying but I like to listen to what they have to say on the news. Most people don't, too boring, too weird, not enough time on their hands, whatever, they have their reasons. I think I remember

-
-

The light flickers a little. It's an unstable glow, switching, flinching, twitching, ever adapting in an attempt to keep you watching. Total attention whore but it works. The room is dark, and silent but for the dancing glow's soundtrack. Everyone is captured, each guy enslaved to his very core by this weak, psychotic, dancing nymph of an owner.

What a fucking lie.

I call it a lie.

But they keep staring.

Signs of life are minimal. Occasionally one will adjust his body, maybe blink once or twice, mostly they just sit in various positions of relaxation, held and not released by a sadistic device to which society has produced no antidote and shows no signs of either doing so or being prepared to.

What a fucking lie.

I watch from the sidelines. They take no notice of me. I make next to no sound but it doesn't matter anyway. I don't watch the screen. I know the power it holds. I stay wary and approach slowly. Someone's to blame for this whole mess, though I'm not sure whom, but someone's to blame and it makes me angry. Someone's to blame for the empty streets, the absence of youth. The newspapers, though they're few and far between these days, they reported the numbers. The news channels did, but who was watching? Someone's to blame, someone's the thief who stole the boys and girls from the world.

I'm no doctor, nor am I a preacher. I'm just a kid myself. So I fight the power any way I can.

And I have some fun while I'm at it.

My hand's bleeding a little from having broken the window but my adrenaline's pumping so it dulls the sting. I grip the hammer and get ready for some fun, take a few steps into the room, smash the screen to pieces. Smash smash smash smash smash tinkle tinkle.

Then I kick it off the TV stand.

BAM smash crash tinkle and they still haven't reacted. That's one of the things I love about this whole affair. Hell, there are a whole lot of things I love. The action, the violence, the adrenaline thrill, the comedown as I tell Alex the whole story, the counter-culturalism and anti-establishmentarianism, but one of my favourite bits is seeing the shock in their eyes as they register what just happened. As far as I can tell, they go through the whole range of post-trauma reactions within about two or three seconds.

Then it happens.

A short, stubby guy in the front is the first to get to his feet. He probably hasn't used his legs in a few days so he's unsteady at best. His mouth opens a few times, sucking at the air of the now-pitch black room. He lazily swings an arm in my direction, still unable to produce a sound. His eyes are black like everyone else's, pupils expanded so much there's no room for anything else. He starts breathing hard and another guy is on his feet, and another two behind him. They all stand there for another second or two, arms swinging, legs wobbling and then we're off to the races.

The short motherfucker in the front starts it off but he trips over the TV stand and goes down. The three behind him are a little more agile and they all clear it easily. Two more arise from the nest on and around the couch. None of them are in much shape but they speed up quickly. The lack of television kicks their survival instinct in, gives them wings. They're all going to die without some animated stimulation soon and while killing me won't bring the happy pictures back, it's the least they can do in an attempt to retain some dignity. Besides, I can't exactly see them hurriedly fumbling over the remnants of their machine, trying to piece it back together. Might be funny, though.

If there's one benefit to the conformity of the houses, it's being able to elude the TV zombies. I know every house in the country inside and out before I even take a step inside. Might as well live in one of them myself, I know the layout so well. I think for a second about Alex, back home, alone, and pray that he's safe.

A hand from out of nowhere shatters my concentration as it grabs at my faded jean jacket and misses and I speed off down the stairs, grab the bottom pole of the banister with my free hand, whirl around and fly up the stairs. I like to take them three at a time but tonight I go for four, I'm feeling cocky, what the hell. I look back down the stairs and the three taller ones are at the bottom of the stairs now, the fat short guy's just behind them and there's a girl I hadn't noticed starting into the hall.

This is the second best part. Where things get crazy, where they get random, where the danger switch moves from the Off position to the On position and I see how long I can last before I have to bail and run.

I've never managed to stay in a house long enough to watch them die.

My mind goes blank and I let my legs carry me somewhere I haven't gone before, a strategy I haven't tried yet, a scheme I haven't yet pulled. The hammer, old and worn but far from dead, weighs heavy in my hand.

This is my night, and I'm out on the prowl.

-
-

"Corp.Kn stands for The Knowledge Corporation. We run the country's knowledge. We set quotas, define rules, make sure no one's cheating. We perform one of the most essential functions in the lives of Americans the world over: We keep things in check, make sure you don't get overloaded with the weights and doubts of painful knowledge. It can be a terrible burden to carry too much knowledge, and we here at Corp.Kn understand that. That's why we're here to help you out. For more information, visit our hypersite, corp, kn.usa”

"Cut!

That's a wrap, everyone."

The applause thunders.

It's only a 15-second spot, but it means a lot.

Michael James, the famous actor, steps off the set and a hustle of underlings rush up to him to peel his shiny black Corp. Kn suit from him. They unbuckle his buckles, unholster his gun, unlace his boots, and in seconds he's standing in front of the crew in only his underwear.

No one laughs outwardly.

"Beautiful, Mikey, just stunning, incredible performance." The smiles are both fake. The director slaps him on the back, right between the shoulder blades.

Michael James shudders a bit, and the pain in his face is easily read. He crumples to the perfect white floor like the most intricate sculpture made of nothing more than imagination, like he'd been deflated by something more than a pinprick.

No one's in any hurry to attend to him.

The hum of chatter fills the room, bends the walls like the building was a balloon being inflated.

"Hey, medic, medic!"

A tall man, skinny like loneliness, shuffles through the crowd, parting couples and interrupting conversations. As he walks, he pulls out a syringe and begins to fill the chamber with an antidote, brandishing the needle in front of him as if to split the sea of bodies. Upon arriving at the motionless frame of Michael James, he crouches efficiently, and turns around slightly.

"Sec! Sec! Hurry, I'm about to administer the dose!"

This time the people are more obliging of the men moving towards the set, falling quiet and drawing aside, personal comfort and chit chat thrown to the wind. Don't get in their way, everyone is thinking. Don't get in their way.

Five black suits worth of muscle get down on one knee in a circle around the actor. They wear suits identical to the one he just had removed, but their faces are covered by skintight hoods. Reflective black circles for eyes and a smaller circle where the mouth should be, covered in a filtering mesh should the atmosphere become less welcoming.

The needle punctures the skin, drives right in, and the plunger goes down, down down down eyes open with a flash and suddenly he's human again.

The doctor darts back faster than possible.

The words come.

"HELP HELP OH MY GOD DON'T HURT ME SOMEONE SOMEBODY HELP ME THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ME SOMEBODY SAVE ME OW FUCK FUCK OW AOW AARRGH AA-"

He's unconscious again but strong enough for the second injection. The doctor pulls a second syringe out of his bag and loads the chamber with a clear substance.

The five black figures move back in one motion, and the white coat of the doctor completes the juxtapositional dance by moving forward half a second later.

The needle punctures the skin, drives right in, and the plunger goes down, down down down eyes open with a flash and suddenly he's inhuman again.

The hum of the crowd rushes back in to fill the vacuum, the unsightly moment forgotten altogether.

It's remarkable what you can erase from the past if only you try.

-
-

These past few days have been pretty shitty. Anaïs left the a few days ago. We had a huge fucking fight, an absolute disaster. I've been drinking non-stop since then, I don't know what fucking time it is, what fucking day of the week or date of the month it is. No fucking idea. Just an absolute disgrace, drinking booze for breakfast and I'm fading. My head constantly hurts, both from the alcoholic abuse that I'm subjecting it to, and I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that she's gone, Gone with a capital g. She's gone. It's too real and unreal at the same time. I guess this is denial. I can't really believe for real that she's gone. I woke up a few times with a warm body next to mine in bed and it was Anaïs for a few seconds but it turned out to be only fucking Henry's sister, Alice. I'd forgotten I'd called her over the night before to fuck her and she got all pissed that I called her Anaïs — she was as shitfaced as me, if not more so, she starting bitching at me and I just lay there and tried to go to sleep. I was worried she'd wake up the neighbours but it turned out it was three in the afternoon. I ended up convincing her that I'd been dreaming, and we fucked again. She's decent, pretty damn good, she knows what she's doing, but she's just not the same. It's funny, I had to apologize to her because the girl I love left me. Fucked up world, man. I guess it's mostly just because Alice is a stupid bitch who only thinks about herself. She was too pissed at being mistaken for another person that she overlooked the fact that she was being used as a substitute for Anaïs in the first place. If you think about it, it's only logical that I'd call her by that name but whatever. Like I said, the sex was good. I guess I can't really complain that I have someone and something to lessen the pain the void she left has caused me. It really kills me how I was just never good enough for her, she always wanted me to be perfect and that's just something I can't do, but I wanted so badly to make her happy that I'd try and fail, time and time again. The failure fucks you up a little, builds up in your head, gains some importance and that's dangerous. You don't want too much failure in your life. If it takes too big of a portion of your mental pie, at which point I stop thinking for a second, lift myself up a few inches from the bed with great effort, draw a vague circle-like oval in the air with my index finger, and slump back down, your thinking starts to get warped, you start to imagine you're just not good enough even if your goals are completely unrealistic. In this case the goals were someone else's. I still feel like I failed, though. Goes to show what an impact she had on my life.

Oh Anaïs, Anaïs, Anaïs, what have you done to me?

Fuck it, I want you back.

I'm too tired to do shit right now. And my head hurts, I want to die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream, like Hamlet said. Or Shakespeare. Or Francis Bacon. Whatever. I'm not even supposed to know that. I'm in possession of illegal knowledge. All the literature got burned ten years ago, when I was nine. My dad managed to hide all of our family's. I still have a lot of it, among the piles hidden in the hole we dug out of the ground underneath the floor boards in the basement is Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Ridiculously old play, almost half a millennium old and it's so good. I mean, there's a lot of incomprehensible shit but what I can understand is just brilliant. I wish I could write like that. All of my poetry is shit. Mostly I burn it.

My mind slumps to the pillow and my consciousness collapses into sleep as the phone rings down the hall. It's muffled enough for me to pretend I hadn't heard it, and I'm tired, so fuck it, I need my beaut

-
-

Anders Henrik Dvorak strode into the Great Hall of Wealth and Unity with an air of confidence. His grey irises shone in his eyes with a look of calculated confidence, and you could hear the cogs of his brain whirring if you listened close enough. The high-speed motion-capture cameras of the press were going off four or sixteen times a second, depending on how rich their respective employers were, and there was an air of pomp and circumstance about the whole affair. In the background, the hum of conversation whirred. There were no placards in the crowd.

"I am here," he paused with great dignity, "to inform you all of something I'm sure you have all heard about." He paused again for effect, letting his words sink in. "This thing of which you all have no doubt heard many things," he paused again, annoyingly, and marveled at his position in history, being the one to reveal America's plans for the future. Then he continued. "This thing is Act Zero-Zero-Six-Nine-Three-Nine-Five-One-A." The crowd hushed furiously. "The Most High Court has decided." The hush grew and grew, like a black hole, swallowing all the sound nearby, travelling outside the fabled doors of The Great Hall of Wealth and Unity, stretching down the steps to the doors, down the road and across the lawns, onto the sidewalk, across Forty-Sixth Street, along the sidewalk on the other side of the road, down the lawns and right up to Henry Hanrahan's house. You could hear Henry watching television in his basement for a few seconds, before the silence swallowed him up, too, and Anders Henrik Dvorak spoke again into the wirophone. This time his voice, instead of being a self-important, booming declaration, was a whispered interjection of a voice, like that of a child trying to tell his mother some terrible news while she speaks on the phone.

"It has been passed."

He quickly strode off the stage from the podium, and his aides and bodyguards followed.

The crowd never rioted. They all stood there, standing stock still, waiting for him to return and say something else, anything else, just not that.

Elena fainted.

And thus the twenty-seventh Royal and Empirical American Public Press Conference of 2504 was adjourned.

-
-

Manic ducked and ran and dodged and whirled and smashed a slender girl in the face with his hammer. It was quite a pity. She was a beautiful girl, long dark hair, light brown caramel skin, perfect teeth, eyeballs fully black and trying to kill him. She went down in a spray of blood, clawing at the air, and caught his jeans pant leg near the knee, yanking him down. Another whack to the back of her head and he was free, but now an older boy with a knife in his hand was upon him and it was dark but the light from the street lamps outside reflected dimly off the blade. Manic dodged but the knife bit into his cheek, a little slice and he was bleeding too and things sped up. He brought the hammer up swiftly from the floor and caught the boy between the legs, and tripped him as he fell. Bringing the hammer up to strike a decisive blow he caught a taller boy behind him between the eyes, and he landed with a thump on the wall to wall carpeting. Quickly the knife caught him in the ankle and his attention was returned to the first boy, jabbing away at his lower legs and he kicked him in anger, in frustration, he kicked with the energy of one who has just killed two people he might have befriended in another life. He kicked with a manic energy and he kept on kicking and kicking and kicking and soon he realized that he was kicking at nothing. The skull had shattered and the blood was quickly staining the carpet and his shoe and now he was angrier than ever, he shouted knowing he wouldn't be heard, he shouted himself hoarse, straining to get out all his rage towards the television and those who operated the system that kept it running, everyone responsible in any way for killing the youth of the world, he shouted until he could shout no more, and then he smashed the window to smithereens and leapt out of it before the Corp.Pol showed up, crying as he ran through the back yards, crying as he sprinted through the shadows in the alleys, crying as he jogged up to his front door and slipped inside so as not to wake up Alex, and he cried until he could cry no more and promptly fell asleep in the entrance way.

-
-

I'm infatuated with the past. All the culture I really love is more than a hundred years old, give or take a few years. The music I like, the literature I'm into, they all come from such a long time ago. All my friends give me shit for it, especially Henry, that asshole. They all listen to logic-prop, this genre that absolutely disgusts me, it's just a steady beat repeated over and over, no talent required. All the clubs play state-sponsored tunes, too. There's something wrong with listening to music that the government creates, as far as I'm concerned. Music's about art, about talent, about creativity. What does the fucking government know about that? What does the Ministry of Culture have on the fucking Clash? They were this awesome punk band from Britain.USA a good one hundred thirty years ago, and fuck if they ever put out shit like the logic-prop Top 40. I could go on, naming incredible bands and artists that shifted the world's paradigm back in the day, but no one these days gives a fuck. All the originals have been destroyed, all that's left are copies kept hidden by the owners, guys like me, there can't be too many of them, keeping them stashed away, pulling them out late at night for a forbidden listen. What a fucking shithole of a world we live in. I read books from 200 years ago, 500-year old plays, listen to 100 year-old music and it's all illegal. It's fucking illegal. I could be shot and killed, executed summarily for owning stuff like this. That's fucked up for you. My dad used to tell me stories of when he was a kid, before the Great War of '24 lasted eight years and ended with the United States of fucking America ruling three quarters of the world's land mass. What a gip, what a cop-out. Before the constant propaganda, before the executions, before the nuclear disasters at Grey River in Canada and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia made the north pole ice melt entirely and dams had to be built in all the coastal cities north of the 36th parallel within a four months to prevent the cities from being overrun by the ocean. What a fucking shithole of a world we live in. Back in the day, there was freedom of speech, my dad said, you could say whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and the government couldn't touch you, let alone kill you. Couldn't fucking touch you. Man, where have we come since then?

-
-

"What the fuck?"

"Ma'am, I don't even know. I have no idea."

"No seriously, what the fuck happened here?"

"I'm telling you, I don't know, ma'am. I just don't know."

"Well that's just fine and fucking dandy, mister, but did it cross your fucking mind that maybe I will need to know?"

"I guess you might, ma'am. I guess you might need to know."

"You guess. That's cute. Real fucking cute."

"Ma'am, there's no need to lose your temper. We have everything under control here."

"Unh huh. That's funny, because it sure as hell doesn't look like you do."

"Well, ma'am, what do you want me to say? I can't make you see that everything's under control. If you don't believe me, there's nothing I can do."

The lady stared grimly at the old black man in the postal uniform. I hit the pause button on the remote and the frame froze. Manic still wasn't home yet and I'd already seen this movie a thousand times. It was one of Manic's favourites, made in 2025, during the war. It was an "epic moment in filmmaking," according to Manic, and I'm hard-pressed to disagree, not knowing much about film history, but also because it's an awesome movie. At this point, however, I'm more worried about Manic. He went smashing tonight, and usually he's back by now. I fucking hope nothing happened to him. I always get worried fucking sick, like I'm a little pussy, but I worry that he's gonna get hurt. I try not to bring it up too often but I think he can tell. He's probably written about it in his notebook though. Or notebooks. The couch is worn but it's familiar, it's comfortable, and if I sit low enough in it, it gives me something warm to press my shoulders into. It helps take my mind off Manic and his fight against television hypnotism. I reach over, grasp the coffee mug and slowly draw it to me, being careful not to spill any. It's lukewarm at best but it's more than half full and I need it to take my mind off my situation. I sip it slowly and inhale the scent. The digital clock shows one thirty one.

-
-

Vladimir was thinner than possible. His pasty white skin stretched taut over his bones, like it was straining to crush him but his fragile frame was holding out, like his bones were far too big for his infant-skin.

But infant-skin it was not. It was cracked, peeling, it was hardened with wear and raw in places. His hands were unrecognizable. They looked like plastic that had had something sharp run over them many times more than something sharp should ever be run over plastic, scratching and re-scratching and spreading out in different directions but the effect was always the same, the plastic deteriorates and so do Vladimir's hands. His fingers and continuously curled around a non-existent utensil, a weapon, a tool maybe, like he was ever ready to take up arms against any foe should his arms ever be strong enough to raise one above his waist. Everyone mocked him for it. It was a constant subject of reprisal in the prison, you could hear the derision in their smiles as he walked by, clad in a stained white t-shirt and his pants even more so. Holding his cafeteria tray as if it were an infant, cradling it, his arms shaking from the effort, his forces draining, he would fall down at the nearest table, taking great care to ensure his food did not spill before setting it down, at least. Whether or not it was intact by the time he managed to get up from the floor was another story. Sometimes a kindlier inmate would protect it for him, but for the most part something was missing or damaged by the time his head peeked above the surface of the table.

He'd gotten over it a couple of years ago, the business with his food. Being so skinny, he could often not manage even half of his meal and came to regard the stealing of his food as more of a favour or a service than an injustice. Besides, he always thought to himself, they are all bigger than me. They need it more than I do. It's the least I can do to help out.

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The planes fly overhead.

Not far from here, I can hear the bombs dropping. You can hear them for miles around, but that's not the point.

Here, you can feel them dropping. You can feel the shock, the thud, the explosion, the dulled thump and the echo, reverberating all through the skies and it gets into your head and starts bouncing off the inside of your skull, dancing around, here, there, everywhere, you can't keep up with it anymore, the lights you can see them now even though they're not there and still the planes fly overhead.

There are so many of them, they cover the sky like a criss-crossing pattern, like deathly metal woven crossways into the air, the wings pointing one way and the bodies pointing the other. They go on as far as I can see, a great quilt of contrast, of bombs and of clouds, of propellers and winds, of bullets and raindrops and suddenly it's raining water and explosions at the same time, and I'm getting soaked as the city gets destroyed. I'm standing up outside and the streets are empty, everyone's gone or dead or hiding, I'm the only one out and I stand in defiance, irking both Mother Nature and Father Blake.

The planes fly overhead.

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Also, I renamed it from A Rebel to Tame to: 2101: A Rebel to Tame, because it's like 2001: A Space Oddysey, and because the year is a cool year.

Anyway, good night/morning.

Compliment an emo kid.

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