The Eighteenth of Brumaire
-
He had been forced into compromise. He was exhausted of violence, he wanted nothing more to do with it anymore. He lived in this city, he really had no life, no ties, to anywhere apart from it, all of them had been sundered. He had felt betrayed by the loss of power. In Copala City, they had had so much more power over their own lives. Here everything was ruled by the Duchians. Most people went to work for Duchian storeowners, most lived in housing owned by Duchians, most were represented by political groupings controlled by Duchians. Even in Copala City, where they had been in constant threat of losing their power, they had not been as helpless and powerless as this. That was, above everything, why he believed so strongly in independence.
In the end, however, he was a selfish person. All of those who had survived were selfish; one had to be selfish, to step on others, to reach out of the great pile of corpses, to reach out for a single breath of air. He did not want to lose his life, not when he was so young. He loved youth, he loved his youth, he wanted to live it all out, he did not want to die and leave it unfinished.
They were in the WC; this was to prevent neighborhood gossips, snoops, or worse, from looking into the window and giving it all away. They could not be seen as being connected; that would be the end of it all.
"Things are on track for our Christmas Day surprise," said a woman. The same who had threatened him two weeks ago. "The necessary...you know what... have been done; the materials have been procured from reliable sources. We have also the Patriarch helping. On that day - on the 25th of December - all of this will be so beautifully lit up. Kristjan, are you ready?" She smiled, falsely - too wide, it was too wide to be sincere. "The necessary writing is prepared, yes? And also, you are..trusted enough?"
"Yes," he said. A lie, a half-lie. They had been condemned by the Duchian central government for founding a youth organization, which had something to do with disrespecting law. It made absolutely no sense, but then again it might have been something else. "I've moderated my appearance, I've made myself appear...milder, and I don't imagine that they'd find any objectionable in what I've prepared, anyways...it'll make sense, anyways, if all goes well on your end."
"It will," said the woman. "Do not doubt us. Anyways, I've another thing to tell you. On the part of the youth, all is going well. If nothing else, our message will be heard. No doubt some of it will have fallen on fertile ground, however. God has willed it."
This was the end. It was the end, on Christmas Day it would be the end, all would fall, and they all would be snuffed out. They would not succeed; they would be crushed, and independence would die, murdered in its infancy. He would die, they all would die, die. Streams of blood, flowing down the streets of their city; spat upon. The vise on their city would be tightened further, tightened, tightened, tightened, gradually, until it finally perished. They would be responsible for the death of all of their compatriots, of their city, so young and yet already fallen into the abyss the tricksters had dug for it.
"God has willed it," he muttered to himself. "And it is due to begin today?"
"Yes. They're already in place; I imagine you'll hear about it but a few minutes. Our party."
"And the...housewarming party? How is that going?" The housewarming party was but a cover for an event, occuring at a small apartment overlooking a major street in Anastasia City - major enough so that, perhaps in the case of some sort of Christmas tour, if such a thing would happen, in which Queen Anastasia would come to the city from her home in Spain or Fremet - which was it again? - to see the people of her city, the only territory which she actually ruled. If everyone who was attending could make it, the materials would be prepared for something mildly unfortunate. The Queen was not to die, no one was to die; the appearance, however, that someone, someone connected to the Duchies, wanted her to die, would be created. If she did not come, if she didn't care at all, which was indeed highly, highly likely - well, that did not matter. They would find someone else of similar standing to do the same thing to.
He was disgusted to be thinking such things, but he had been drawn into this. His only hope for survival now laid in these bloody plots being fulfilled; if he refused to support them, he would be dead; if they failed, he would be dead, albeit in a more metaphorical sense, as well.
"Well, although it is possible that some of the attendees are...delayed. It is difficult to procure some gifts, you know, necessary gifts..."
Her implication was obvious. Weapons, or perhaps not weapons exactly - those could, in the modern day, be relatively easily made, if crudely, but it was not as though they were planning to kill anyone with them - not they, he didn't want any part of this, only her and whoever she worked for or with - but it was they, he was as involved as she was, even if it was not by choice. In all likelihood it was smokeless powder and possibly bullets, although perhaps even those could be made from scrap metal, although it would decrease the level of realism required to truly make the whole thing seem likely a Duchian plot.
"That's fine, I guess. Do we have anything more to discuss?"
"No. Have fun, I guess."
Somewhere in the Duchies
A woman was waiting at a baggage carousel for a single piece of baggage. She was moving to Anastasia CIty, her husband was there; they had been separated when the motherland had imploded, but they had found each other again. In the single piece of checked baggage was but clothing and towels, as well as unopened toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste, disinfected on the instructions of those who employed her. The insides and outsides of the suitcase had also been disinfected - they checked, apparently - and she had worn gloves while handling it.
She had been instructed, however, to include something else. She would be paid for it, she was told; it was also necessary for "the Revolution." Well! The Revolution! She no longer had faith in revolution. She was still a socialist, she guessed, but she had lost any faith in revolution or, for that matter, democracy. Given power, the masses would simply misuse it and bring themselves to their own destruction, reduced, in the end, to mindless animals eating each other, and destroy the progress of civilization. For a society to be truly governed in the interest of all, it had to be governed by the incorruptible, by technocrats who would manage the government and the economy. Perhaps they would be elected, in some unusual fashion, to prevent corruption, but all of it would be strictly regulated. She had been invited to build it in Anastasia City, she was excited for that. She had been responsible for unprecedented economic growth, by thousands of percentage points. GDP from but about 22 million euros to almost a trillion, in but four or five months; that was her! An economy 44000 times larger than it was before - she was responsible for the greatest economic miracle that had ever happened, and yet no one recognized her. That Donohue or Donohoe or whatever he was named - even he was nothing compared to her. But then again, the rabble had torn all of her work apart, in but a few days!
There was a Yosainese, or perhaps many of them, who had accomplished something similar; she wanted to meet them, talk with them about their feats, learn from them. Warn them against what the masses could do, tear at flesh and factories, reduce a nation to ashes, its remaining sane inhabitants to a pre-industrial state.
She was unstoppable. She was the New Woman of the new society she intended to create, intelligent and forwards-driven, able to do anything, absolutely anything.
Her intelligence had been applied to her dropping off of the baggage.
She had arrived in Istkalen from Europolis but two weeks ago - she had not intended to stay for so long in such a nasty country, but unfortunately it seemed more economical. (She had not even wanted to transfer through that country, but it was cheaper. She also had been told that security regulations were lax in the country, so that was good). Two tickets on the Istkalen-Duchies leg had been booked - one for a nonexistent person - or existent, the person had died a few days ago, but the death had not yet been reported, and probably never would (part of a welfare scam, apparently) and one for her. The ticket for the nonexistent person had, just to be extra careful, been booked on Tor, running off of a drive running on Tails, a cliched, very much so, solution, but the only one she could, unfortunately, perhaps, think of - she was an economist, not a specialist in security. She had then physically destroyed the drive, just in case, even though there was no chance, even then, of anything being found.
She entered twice, once wearing a prothetic mask, alongside sunglasses and a shawl wrapped around her head, as to disguise herself as the nonexistent person, dropping off the baggage. She then proceeded to, discreetly, change out of that disguise into another simpler one, which had been stuffed into a carry-on, consisting of a baggy jacket, a disposable facial mask, sunglasses, and a cap, then exited the terminal and, after dropping off the carry-ons with a friend and taking those which she actually needed, in the secrecy of a car, which drove out, circled, parked in a garage in the city, and drove back again, dressed as herself, re-entered, still carrying both boarding passes. When boarding, she picked the pocket of the person directly in front of her as to replace his boarding pass with hers; and then again when they had entered the airbridge. If there were cameras, she doubted anyone would care, although they might.
She was now standing here, waiting, but not appearing to wait; she was a distance away from the carousel, and it seemed more as though she were waiting for someone to enter and pick her up, which was half-true. If someone was to see her, it would seem as though she were just waiting for someone, although she did, without turning her head, occasionally glance towards the carousel, although it could not be seen in light of her sunglasses.
Within the luggage disguised of that of the unknown person (she had not checked anything under her own name), on the inside, she had carefully embedded grains of smokeless powder, melting parts of plastic and then allowing a thin layer of it to cover it again, so that it could still be retrievable. There was enough to fire, perhaps, a few shots from a gun, but nothing more. It was spread out, as well. If it had been intercepted, it would not have been in Istkalen; it would have been in the Duchies. THe Istkalener police would cooperate with a Duchian investigation, that was certain; but it would merely be a wild-goose chase, too many precautions had been taken. Although it was very possible that she could be discovered, very, very, much so.
Somewhere in Anastasia City
They were waiting for the arrival of other guests. They had already been given a 3-D printer, a drive containing blueprints for a gun, and a uniform that was almost an exact copy of what a soldier in the Duchian rank-and-file would wear, hand-sewn apparently, although there were a number of flaws. If one was, however, looking from the middle of the crowd, amid screaming and general chaos, one's mind reeling with shock from something unspeakable that had just happened, and looking up at a roof perhaps six or seven stories away, one would not notice them.
Touching gifts, very touching.
Another box, left by a young-ish man, 25 at most.
One of them opened it; it contained bullets.
"Found a place to make it." he whispered into the ear of the one who opened it. "Got the metal from..unusual piping for sale at a collective store, I imagine they put it there on purpose. They're good enough. They might be able to tell the difference, but in the past life, I was...good in metallurgy, a machinist, actually, I had the rough skillset. Anyways, I made something like this when I joined the maquis back..there, and then again when it all went to shit again, so they're not...entirely amateurish."
"Didn't know you'd be here," the one who opened the box responded, in a whisper again."Pleasantly surprised. I don't imagine that you've annulled..."
"No. But that should be discussed after it happens, I don't know when it'll be, though, they didn't tell me. You'll be the one to do it, I imagine, though?"
"Can't answer that. But you can guess, I can imagine. Do you know when the one with the powder will come?"
"Whoever it is will have had to smuggle it, I imagine they'll be late. Are you nervous?'
"Of course. We all could die, or suffer a fate worse than the death-factories. The Duchies are a terrifying place, it all seems democratic but there's something rotten under the surface, I feel."
"More so that most other capitalist states? I'm sure Inquista's worse."
"Inquista is a bit more open about that, here everything is drizzled in honey, that's what makes it really terrifying and rotten. But really, I'm nervous. It seems all too tight."
"It is. But we've been in situations like this before - "
"For better reasons. As much as I think we're living in piles of rot, Areai and it all was far worse."
"Doesn't matter, really. The knife may be sweet, but it is the knife nonetheless."
"But they aren't the same knives, to extend that metaphor."
"It isn't as though we can bail at this point, anyways, someone will get rid of us, if its them or the Duchies."
Elsewhere in Anastasia City
"Is this the police?" an elderly lady, the president of a cooperative butchery, asked. "I have suspicions about my granddaughter; she's been using my store to move suspicious packages, and initially I didn't want to call because it'd just seem like an old hysterical lady talking, but now they're loading large packages of something - I think it's fertilizer - into the trunk of a car - hers. She's been expressing a lot of odd things, she talks about the class war - and of course we're all socialists here, but we don't talk about it constantly at the dinner table, people get sick of that sort of thing, instead you enjoy the food and the cake I baked for her especially, and which she didn't eat, instead she just kept yakking on and on about it while refusing the cake, I'm so upset. Anyways, she also talked about people's protracted war and Third Worldism, which we don't endorse in this household or in this cooperative, it's really worrying. She used to be so nice, a good nonsectarian, but libertarian, Marxist, but she's become this, I think it's her new partner, he's a bad influence, and of course I told her, 'don't hang out with people from that country, we may seem related but in reality we're entirely apart, and in any case it'd be better for you to marry a woman, like the rest of us - not the men, don't misquote me, they're supposed to marry other men - because it just works better that way, more rapport, and then maybe have flings with men if you really want,' that's traditional, it's better, and it doesn't cause things like this, but she just had to run off and do it, and now she's been brainwashed into becoming a terrorist Maoist, well, she'll get what she deserves!"
She then proceeded to launch into an extended rant on the issue; by the time she had finished, her granddaughter had long since left. She hung up as soon as she was done, not bothering to give her name or address.
She was in her car, and she knew she was going to die. She was going to die anyways, though, why not die young, for the Revolution! That was what her boyfriend had told her, and he was here with her. They would share a last embrace, and then both of them would become martyrs for the Revolution, lost in a glorious blaze.
They drove a bit, talking, about life, uni, work, the class war, about all of those things. She really loved him, she thought, they got along so well, and now they were together, finally together, about to be united, in death as in life. Death unites people far more than life, and martyrhood particularly. The Revolution, the great people's protracted war, would arise from their sacrifice, the sacrifice of lovers, they would truly live forever, in that way. It warmed her heart.
They were parking now, outside of a Roscoes. She looked to him, hugged him, kissed him, and set off the bomb. A fifteen second delay, and then it would begin.
He pulled away from her, and got out of the car, coldly. She reached out; he ignored her, started to walk away.
Eight seconds left. Seconds were longer than she thought. Still time; she opened the car door, ran out, screamed, "What the fuck are you doing!" all in an instant
Time.
-
The car exploded outside the Roscoes killing several people , the death toll was soon counted at 19 with the store took out of commission due to the investigation. Headlines were soon coming out of a suspected terrorist attack at the Roscoes in Anastasia that also destroyed housing units. The major parties were quick to united and condemn the act . The Prime Minister John Peter Key announced the raising of the threat level authorising calling the military up to do foot patrols in key areas and being given extra powers to conduct random checks on people if they suspected they could be a threat or were acting suspicious with emergency power laws brought into effect. Immediately he contacted the Anastasia mayor and the cabinet and her were discussing the response to the situation in the Anastasia City.Quickly he was quoted saying "Today my fellow Duchians and Anastasian Duchians I bring bad news. Today we have raised the terror threat in Anastasia city and our nation after a callous act of terror and murder today. This act was the bombing of a Roscoes store, I utterly condemn this act of barbarity and murder against the Anastasian Duchians , we have word that at least 7 children were killed in this attack and that to me epitimises the selfishness of those who committed this act. You killed children, Duchian children , they may have only just arrived but they are make no mistake fellow Duchians and we mourn their deaths today. We will investigate, we will find you and when we find you I can assure you it will not end pleasantly for you. We will get our justice for the people you murdered and the population of Anastasians you seek to terrify. We will stand with the Anastasian government and people in not stopping until we find out who did this terrible disgusting act and find the animals who committed it. Terror will never go unpunished in the United Duchies. Thank you and goodnight." Other leaders backed the PM's tough stance and determination in his response to the terror attack with all of the major parties leaders standing on stage behind the PM. John Peter Key prepared for his visit to the scene and the hospital and families under police and military guard.
-
"We have happily established a hold over the drug trade in Anastasia City. Our revenue has been restored to pre-exile levels, although with the legalization of 'soft' drugs I as director have had to make a number of changes. I have lowered our set prices for legalized drugs in order to undercut legal industry, and significantly raised the price of 'hard' drugs, which we continue to hold a monopoly over, to compensate. As a result we have had to increase 'enforcement' against possible competitors, which has had some negative impacts on profit, but with the continued planned expansion of our role in the nominally above-ground dairy trade, this will be offset. However, to further increase revenue, I have directed my subordinates to begin the release of ievonuia onto the Anastasian drug market."
The director of the Bomballey Cartel, a drug cartel run on market socialist principles that was the successor to Areai's "Haanean Empire in Exile," which raised funds via drug smuggling and dealing, paused. In accordance with the principles of self-management and the revolution to come, it was necessary for her to disclose everything; but it could destroy her. No matter; what she had done was for the good of the workers of the cartel and the advancement of the revolution.
"Studies...conducted under my tenure have also demonstrated that Anastasian independence would have a positive effect on our profits. The state would be much weaker, and not as able to enforce drug legislation against us; we would no longer have to operate in fear of the law, allowing us to significantly increase revenue and thus better the lives of the workers. As we well know, ievonuia in certain concentrations provokes extreme violence in most; to have such violence occur on a mass scale would create the chaotic situation needed to provide public support for the ousting of the present Anastasian municipal government and therefore the instability that might lead to independence. I have thus instructed the workers to adulterate what they can with ievonuia. Obviously as it is a drug that is ingested, not everything could be adulterated, but as much as was possible - particularly the ice cream distributed to the NIcoleizian adolescent market, our most profitable product - was."
She sighed, and continued.
"In accordance with the socialist principles that the Bomballey Cartel operates on, this must be put to a vote to this council, which appointed me to make these decisions but now, upon election, must approve them again, as we all know very well."
The actions were quickly put to a vote, and approved almost unanimously. Someone, however, spoke.
"So your intention was to provoke violence. Of course ievonuia accumulates in the system over time, and therefore daily consumption would almost inevitably produce the effects that you desire, but how long should it be until we expect it? We must prepare."
Her answer was simple. "Adulteration and release of ievonuia into the drug market began perhaps two weeks ago; it' should thus begin, really, right about now. Today. Any further questions?
None.
"Now," said the director, "my term has come to an end. A vote, in accordance with the socialist principles of the Bomballey Cartel, must be held on whether to renew my powers or to allow them to return to the Council."
The vote took place. The decision was divided, but by one vote her continued tenure was approved.
She exhaled. "Good. Good, good, good."
-
The police had noticed the problems with drugs in some areas though it had been no worse than some of the worst areas of other major cities despite some perceptions in some media. The police stepped up enforcement introducing spot checks on people that acted suspiciously or they saw with levels of consumption far higher than declared income. The tax departments had noted a list of those with suspicious asset levels to delared income , the problem would be solved. The government saw Anastasia as sucess with more housing and apartments quickly built with services now up and running fully with doctors , schools and leisure centres all opening. They expected the stadium and city centre to be fully ready by 2023-2024 with prefab housing, soon Anastasia would be more connected than ever with more walkability than ever before.
-
8:30, the 23rd of January 2022
It was very strange that she was flushing cleaning fluid and rubbing alcohol down the toilet, but she did so anyways. She was 73, and had, in her home country, been committed as anyone to the revolution. Her daughter had told her to do it, to flush all these things down the toilet, for the victory of the world revolution. She had been asked to do far stranger in the past, and those strange things had turned out, in the end, to be pivotal for success; she could not let her cause down.
"40 liters of bleach and 40 liters of ammonia," she had said, "separately. Also, all the rubbing alcohol and cleaning products you can find."
And so she flushed and flushed, flushed all of her bottles of bleach and benzalkonium chloride and rubbing alcohol, and ammonia ( adding to these three bottles of vodka,just to be safe. She had even gone to the store earlier that day to buy even more cleaning products; she flushed them, too. Flush, dump, flush, dump; at a certain point she began to lose track of what she was doing, so automatic it was. When she had cleaned through all that she had gathered, she was surprised. She had thought she had more.
She hummed the Internationale to herself and hobbled away from the toilet, leaving behind her so many empty bottles; she would clean them up later.
Such was the scene fifty-fold in the city center of Anastasia City, flammable materials, oxidizing agents, and substances that when mixed produced less than pleasant substances, being flushed down the toilet into the sewers of Anastasia City.
7:30, 23rd of January 2022
The remainder of the stolen fertilizer had now been used. They had been promised three glorious days; and now they were to come.
They had come from a construction site run by the Syndicalists. Easy to smuggle things in, to lower oneself into a sewer, to walk about, to think, to dwell on things, to decide, without anyone noticing.
Two stood, shoulder to shoulder, in the sewers of Anastasia City. A platform had been set up, their explosives piled atop, elevating it all above the collected slime and muck of the Anastasians, dark, awful in smell, to detonate in exactly an hour and ten minutes. Fifteen such devices, ten in the city center, the other five scattered elsewhere, all of varying strengths.
They had shared years together, fighting against the Haanean Empire for two decades, trying to get by in a violent and scarred land for a decade more, and finally ending up here. They had hoped, finally, to be at peace, to love; and yet they could not.
"They'll kill us," said the other hoarsely. "They'll kill us. They know all, they see all, they know."
"What choice did we have?" said the first. "What choice? They came to us, threatened to kill us, to rip us apart, if we did not participate. What can we do? Death either way."
"We're a sick nation," muttered the other. "SIck, dying. It's the end. Oh, God, I don't want to die here, for this. They shouldn't have come, why did they come, the demons?"
"If we succeed," said the first, "if we succeed, we will be free of it all. No more of it."
"An hour, an hour and ten minutes...God, is that all?" The other sighed. "We've got to get back." He paused. "We've lost ourselves," he muttered. "They have stolen us from ourselves, and we are gone..."
8:30, 23rd of January 2022
Five uniforms, five firearms, bullets enough.
First to dress, then to ascend to the room, then to shoot, when the signal was given. Shoot indiscriminately; hatred needed to be created. In chaos, the Duchies needed to be seen as acting too much, pushing too hard, killing. The people of Anastasia City had to realize this for themselves, and thus an example of what they might to had to be made.
They would be fooled, and the almost certain denial of the government would worsen things. The city would fall into a maelstrom of anger and destruction and hatred, and independence would prevail.
7:30, 23rd of January 2022
"The sacrament is administered!" shouted the priest. Before him, a congregation of perhaps 20; but in small churches across the city, perhaps more, perhaps a few less.
They had willingly drunk it all up, as they did. It was to be a day of revelation and rebirth, and thus this was necessary. The Patriarch, God, had ordained it!
They would see the truth, they would see the world for what it was, and they would strike. The unbelievers would fall under their drug-fueled - no, God-fueled, Holy Spirit-fueled! - anger, heads cut off, blood running through the streets of Anastasia City.
It was all inevitable.
They were smiling at him, now. In an hour it would begin. Wonderful, wonderful! The apocalypse would come, and they would be taken up for their holy acts, into blissful Heaven!
8:30, 23rd of January 2022
It had been given to her, a jelly-like mixture in a container. Lots of it; she was told not to touch until the signal. It had been easy, they said, to obtain it all; the petrol, the diesel, all of it.
She looked out her window. A tree, some bushes, passerby. Enough to cause chaos. She had lived on chaos, not causing it but reveling in it, safely from a basement or a bunker; now, she would get to cause it.
It would be dangerous. To set it aflame, to throw it out the window; and yet she was willing. Who cared if she died, she would enjoy it immensely.
Across the city, 15 others were thinking the same thoughts, worrying about the same things.
Chaos would spread, would take hold, soon.
8:30, 23rd of January 2022
She had doused her apartment in alcohol and cleaning fluid, the walls, the floor. In her hand, a match. She stood on the balcony; she would run and scream, when she had lit and thrown it. The same, she knew, would happen elsewhere, twenty, thirty other times.
To cause a revolution, there needed to be disorder, and she was tasked with creating that, with stirring the Anastasians to fear and to violence.
Long live the people, she thought, long live the eternal cause of socialism.
8:30, 23rd of January 2022
Molotov cocktails filled the trunk of the car. He and others, thirty others, were tasked with this. When the chaos would begin, when in the streets gas flowed and heads rolled, they would stand above it all, the agents of destruction. To light them, to throw them into every business they could find, amid the chaos and the fear - that was their aim.
He put on the bridal gown. They could not know; and the mystique of those who had done that in the past, who had vandalized and urinated, who had brought the homeless and the addicts to the encampments before the Roscoes locations, was maintained.
Long live independence, he thought, long live socialism. Long live the Free City of Anastasia.
-
The ground beneath her feet trembled. She had been going for her regular morning shopping on the morning of the 23rd, and she made little of it, and was returning home. Here, things were peaceful, safe. Welcoming, even amid the constant demonstrations.
In a split second, the road before her bulged, and she became, suddenly, aware that something was terribly amiss. In her throat a choking sensation - it was returning, the darkness, here, to this veritable paradise - she turned to run as the road and sidewalk cracked upwards.
As dust, dirt, and fragments of what once had been road and sidewalk were propelled through the air, she stumbled, trying to run, pushed over by a seemingly invisible force. She clawed at the road, clambering up again, and ran with an ever greater ferocity. There was no thought in her mind but that of survival; she thought, again, that she had found herself somehow back in her home country all those months ago, as the coarse dust thrown up tore across her face, as great fragments of concrete fell, now as blood and disembodied body parts, arms, heads, fingers, fell from the sky.
She closed her eyes, burning, tightly. There was a slight smell of something like bleach, with the much stronger smell of sewage and gas; it was a little difficult to breathe, although not very much. She could hear screaming from around her, arms and shoulders jostling her.
Again she was thrown off her feet, but there was now a terrible, burning heat. The screaming grew louder; she struggled to get up as the masses behind her began to run. Narrowly she did, struggling, running, as even more fell atop them, dust, bits of people, bits of concrete and ashpalt. A gas explosion, she guessed.
She ran and ran and ran, she did not know for how long, until at last the smell and the screaming faded away. She herself screamed, involuntarily, it felt as though she were again back there, back in the hell which her country had turned into.
She opened her eyes again. The air was clear, and for a moment she thought she might have imagined it all, but her clothes were torn, her body covered with dust and streaked with blood. Around her were so many others, desparately looking around.
Behind them, the street, devastated.
Suddenly the crowd began to compress in on itself. Screaming again.
"Murderers, looters, criminals!" screamed someone, and she realized that what had happened in her home country was repeating again. She struggled through the crowd, dozens more struggling like her, towards a door on the other side of the street. Lifting herself onto the sidewalk, she saw the crazed hordes again, biting, stabbing, beheading, the crowd. She saw heads rolling on shoulders, on the ground, blood spattering faces and clothes and ashpalt alike, and she almost threw up as she struggled into the building.
Such was the scene, not exactly replicated but closely, fifteen-fold in Anastasia City that day.
There was a terrible shaking in her apartment; photos, calendars, and clocks came crashing down. The lights that were on went immediately off, and she found herself suddenly cowering on the floor. Smoke began to fill the room
She opened the window, and found herself in a great cloud of thick smoke.The faint sound of screaming from some distance away.
The apartment next to her was aflame. On the balcony was her neighbor. "Fire," she screamed. "Fire! For the sake of whatever you believe in, help me! Help me!"
She heard the sound of smashing glass from below.
She closed the window and ran. The hallway outside her apartment was filled with smoke too, billowing from under the door to her neighbor's apartment. She coughed, she could barely see, and yet she made it into a crowded, hot stairwell, itself beginning to fill up with smoke.
A second shaking, a second force, which pushed them all to the side.
It was difficult to breathe; the air was thick with humidity and the smoke as well.
Two stories down, the force of the crowds in the stairwell began to change; first going down, they began to go up. She was caught between two crowds, one desparately climbing upwards and one desparately running downwards, slowly being crushed by their force.
The smoke in the stairwell was growing thicker.
"Fire!" screamed someone. "The ground floor is on fire! Get out!"
She began to try to push herself forwards when she had heard that, the smoke growing ever thicker. She screamed the same thing herself as the resistance grew too great. Imbeciles, she thought of those above her. Did they not realize what was happening?
She pushed herself out of the stairwell on the first floor, as many others tried to push in.
"What are you doing?" shouted someone.
"The ground floor's on fire!" she screamed. "Do you not understand?"
She made her way to a door to an apartment whose occupant had been in too much of a hurry to close it again. She opened a window inside it, looking down. Meters away, she could see a tree, bushes, sidewalk, and a car on fire, terrible black smoke rising from them all.
Below her, storefronts burning, their windows shattered. She guessed that that was what it was, someone throwing a firebomb into the building. But this window was not directly above them; it was directly above a wide expanse of concrete wall, below which were bushes still not aflame. She was lucky.
She pried open the screen, lofted herself onto the windowsill, and jumped.
Across the city, stores and lobbies were lit aflame by actors hiding within the screaming crowds running from flames and explosions and crazed mobs, throwing Molotov cocktails into every ground floor window they could see.
-
The police responded with the riot police in strong presence bringing in police from around the Baltia Duchy supporting. They would have order , the armed police from soldiers sprung into action but focusing on firing blanks where they could. The arrests started piling up but then they soon realised that these people were not criminals but the victims. They seemed to have some sort of drug making them savage. They restrained as much as they could but this was something bigger, there was ringleaders to this.
Meanwhile the fire department started putting out the fires there was some damage but nothing they couldn't manage. The cabinet of the country however were put on alert. The police and media would be releasing as statement revealing they suspect terrorism and organisation but not releasing too much details. The police were ordered to be as soft as possible with the people in the streets but they had to protect life and tragically some did die but only where they had to protect others lives.
-
The signal had been given. Dressed in Duchian military uniforms, armed, they ascended to the roof of the building. Electricity, water, and gas was gone for them, cut off by the sewer explosions; it did not matter.
There remained a crowd before them fleeing through the streets. They stood, trying to show themselves, and shot indiscriminately into the fleeing Anastasians.
Many turned their heads upwards as they heard the gunshots as bodies began to fall, the crowd screaming ever more hysterically.
"Soldiers!" screamed someone. "It's them, it's them!"
The stores behind them were burning, there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, but run. The shooting continued for a short while longer, and the five "soldiers" withdrew. A car was waiting for them below; they undressed, and fled the building, stuffing themselves into it.
The car ran over dead bodies, speeding through the streets of Anastasia City. In it were the very last of the explosives; one of the "soldiers" held a remote control. If the Duchians were to find them, they would blow themselves to high heaven, and no one would ever know, really, who they were.
-
She was going for a walk. Just a normal thing, normal, normal...
She hadn't been able to go out, properly, since it had happened. She had been out on that day, and ever since she could not go out without remembering, without trembling, without, in fear, seeing again what had happened, without running back to her home to escape it all again.
She thought back to the echoing, piercing screams; the scratches across her knees and legs and hands and arms; the dust covering her, the smell of metal of blood. The feeling of burning pieces of flesh, pieces of what once had been living, breathing, thinking people, falling from the sky, on herself, on the street before her.
She closed her eyes tightly, hyperventilating. Putting her hand to her chest, feeling her pounding heart, she tried to steady herself, leaning forwards, swaying. It wasn't happening now, she was safe. Completely safe. Nothing was happening.
She looked up, opening her eyes, staring upwards into the bright blue sky above. Everything was at peace, she told herself. The birds were flying, the sun was shining, everything was fine. There was nothing to worry about. It would not happen again, it would not repeat itself. She was safe, the city was safe, everything was fine.
She could not run back this time. She would not. She would have to be brave; she would have to overcome this. She needed, she wanted, to be free of what had happened; she wanted to live again, to live as she had used to. Her fear held her back; she had to escape it, she had to.
She tried to smile to herself, to reassure herself. A small step forwards, then. Another.
She sighed, and looked up again. The sky was still blue, still bright.
Safety.
For the next few hours, she wandered the streets of Anastasia City. She occasionally ducked into a store, to buy little candies, to buy a little purse, to buy some jewelry for herself. To buy a bag of produce (cabbage, potatoes, broccoli, bananas).
She was still frightened when she was in a crowd. They reminded her of the screaming masses on that day, desperately clumped together, trying to flee fire on one side, crazed murderers on the other; the masses which had been gradually hacked at.
She didn’t want to be caught in one again.
Any bang, even the slightest, made her jump; the breeze rustling through the trees as well. She remembered again the explosions, the quiet, terrifying, aftermath, when everything was calm, too calm.
But she was happy. She had done it, finally; gone out, interacted, done things. She had finally lived, normally. She was recovering, she was slowly being let out of the cage built around her by the great apocalypse of that terrible day; she was overjoyed, really.
She was walking home, carrying her bags of groceries with her when she found herself again in a crowd.
The breath of others on her, the feeling of warm bodies passing against her, pushing against her, back and forth; the feeling of being within something she could not control, something moving constantly, aimlessly; she did not like any of these things.
Bile rose in her throat. She began to pant, her steps becoming quicker. She stood on tiptoe, trying to see above the many heads of those surrounding her, trying to see into the open, trying to see how to get out of this trap.
She couldn’t see anything, they were all too tall, too tall, what was she going to do? She pushed at the others; she was running now. She felt as though she were being crushed again; she felt as though she were drowning in the crowd. She felt, again, doomed.
She felt something damp slap against her neck; it slid down her shoulders, too slimy, down her arms.
She turned around.
It was long, pink-colored, sprawled out across the whole of the crowd.
She felt the others begin to move immediately; they were moving in all directions, everywhere, faster and faster and faster
Someone screamed.
“Look! Look! Look up!”
And suddenly they all began to run. She was paralyzed, for a moment; her legs would not move, but for a second.
As she turned, as the crowd behind her pushed her, forced her to flee as they were, she saw something brown, oddly shaped, being thrown out of the window by hands covered in blood.
More screaming, the screaming was everywhere now.
More things were being thrown out of the window now by the hands, with more vigor.
They were being thrown at them, she vaguely thought. At them…
Something red, blood dripping profusely onto it, raining onto the crowd, flew almost gracefully through the air.
And now everyone was screaming, she was screaming as she smelt it again, blood; as she felt it splatter on her hair and her face and her clothes and her hands. She was really running, running so quickly.
She heard them collide with the earth.
She collapsed and began to vomit as the organs continued to rain down.
—-----------------
Inside the apartment, there laid a woman on the ground. Her chest and abdomen had been ripped open; a pentagram had been painted beneath her.
“Hail Satan!” proclaimed letters written on the wall in blood.
The perpetrator could only think of how cheesy it was, that he had been asked to do it all. Satanic panic was quite old, it wouldn’t work. He laid himself beside her, holding a knife to his chest, to plunge into his own heart.
—------------------
She lit a candle as she prepared to leave the house.
She was at unease.
For this, where would she go? They had told her that it was moral, that it was right, that it was holy, but was it?
Would she merely pass into nonexistence? Would she really receive an award when the time came? Or would she fall into the fires of the deep, to be endlessly tortured?
They would come for her if she did not do it. They had told her that her death would be painful; that she would be known as a traitor. She would be disowned, she would be cast out, she would be worse than a rat.
But her conscience would be intact, to her death.
But conscience and morality did not really matter, did they? She might pass into nonexistence, and then her very last conscious moments would be that of unimaginable pain.
She did not want to die in pain.
And so she would do it.
In ten minutes, a mechanism she had prepared would turn her gas oven on, but it would not light. The gas would spread, spread, spread, until at last it would reach the candle and combust. She had taken precautions. She had plugged all the windows, all the vents, tight; none of it could escape.
She turned to look at what she had one last time. All of this would be gone soon, she thought. There wasn’t much, anyways, most of it was new. All of her really treasured things she had left in the homeland; what little she could take with her, she had left in Copala City as she fled through the sewers.
“Goodbye,” she thought, as she closed the door.
—-----------------
Business was doing very well, very, very, well.
She had always been a good cook, she thought to herself. A good cook and a good person.
The events in her homeland had changed her. Morality was now about survival; if one stuck to one’s principles, one would surely die. One had to comply, one had to conform, to the most disgusting of things.
Initially she had not liked it. She still didn’t like it, but what could she do. She knew that the things she did were bad, that they should not be done; but if she did not do them she would suffer terribly.
She would always choose immorality over suffering. Her countrymen were people without mercy; she would die terribly if she did not conform to their ways. And so she allowed herself to be carried along by the wave of the masses, objecting internally but not externally.
She had vomited after they had told her to do this.
They had given her some bizarre type of meat, “for free,” they had said.
There was always a catch. She had asked them what exactly was in it.
Just meat, they had said, meat. And some shit in one of the packages.
They said all this without any emotion.
She wished she had not asked what type of meat it was.
“Pickled fetus,” one had said to her, softly laughing. She did not know whether he was being serious or not; she decided not to press on.
They had wanted her to make sausages and ground meat from whatever the meat was; to contaminate them with feces; to sell them to the public.
She had said no, and they had threatened to kill her. What to do but do it?
And so now she found herself in her food truck, near the municipal assembly, selling innocent people food made from God knew what and a touch of salmonella culture. It had been prepared elsewhere; they had taken away the evidence. They were kind enough to do that, at least.
She was going to lose her license, at the very least. Perhaps she could somehow convince them to send someone to come forward, to claim that they had contaminated her food when she was away.
If they caught her, she would simply tell the police that she had bought it from someone else. Then perhaps she would kill herself; they would come for her, and that wouldn’t be pleasant. Better to go out through a way of her choice.
—-------------
A dead man had been impaled; he was being turned over a great fire, stuffed into a dead pig.
Night had fallen. Thirty had gathered in a park on this special day.
They were dressed in white robes, white veils, embroidered in crimson; they were gathered in a circle around the great fire, save for one, who stood above them all, balancing on an outstretched tree branch.
“Hail Satan!” she screamed!
The 29 others prostrated before her, again and again and again
“Hail Satan!” she repeated.
Did any of them really believe this, she thought? She was worried that some of them did.
Before her, they prostrated again.
She rose her arms; outstretched, she began to chant gibberish, those before her following, mimicking her in perfect unison, as they continued to prostrate.
“On this day,” she screamed, “we gather to consume the flesh of those who dare oppose us! We gather to proclaim the victory of sin, the victory of Satan, over the order of God! We defy on this day, we defy in the greatest possible way!”
Before her, the others rose, and raised their arms as she did!
“We consume!” she screamed again.
The two tending to the pole on which the dead man was being cooked removed him from the fire, and set him on a table before the woman.
She jumped from the branch. Taking a knife from the table, she began to cut into the body.
“We consume!” she screamed.
The others began to walk towards her.
—---------------------
One of Pope Tabitha’s private planes, specially modified to allow for parachuting and skydiving, began to descend as it approached Anastasia City. Strictly speaking, it was not to land there; it was merely taking a circuitous route to Europolis, and then back.
The plane was not carrying Pope Tabitha. Its only passenger was a man who had carefully groomed himself to look as much like what Jesus had most likely looked like.
He was wearing special clothing, which would illuminate him, to make it seem as though a halo surrounded him.
He would parachute down, in a parachute specially designed to blend in with the night. It would seem as though he were flying, floating down from Heaven.
His responsibility was to evangelize. To look this this would convert more. In the name of salvation, sometimes it was necessary to lie. God would know it was for a good reason, he knew it. Pope Tabitha herself had told him.
A few minutes passed; the plane was now at a speed and an altitude where it was safe to parachute down.
He prepared himself. He had practiced; nothing would go wrong.
The door was open; below him, in the midst of the dark of the night, the bright lights of Anastasia City.
As he had before, he jumped.
He was safe; the parachute deployed as the plane continued into the distance, his clothing turning on, illuminating him. He tried to remain straight-up, for the benefit of the public. He would have to be a believable Jesus if he was to convert anyone.
-
The sun was shining brightly as he made his way to do his weekly shopping trip at Roscoes.
"My friend," screamed a protestor, one of perhaps a dozen standing near the store, on the public sidewalk, "my friend, do not give yourself to these people! They're no good! Buy Anastasian!"
One of them even offered him a bag already filled with groceries, of which there were many in a cart they had carried with them. "A gift for you! Be a patriot, don't shop at Roscoes!"
As he walked past them, they all stretched their hands out, screaming, wailing hysterically. "Don't go! Don't go! Save yourself! Save your city!" Tears ran down some of their faces as they protestrate before him, laying down their pickets and begging him, between loud sobs, not to go into the store.
He ignored them. He always ignored them. As soon as he entered the store, they would stop and go back to where they had been, holding up their signs and shouting their slogans. "Buy Anastasian! Anastasia for the Anastasians!" and so on and so forth. It meant nothing, really. Their cries were meaningless, their tears those of crocodiles.
As usual, there were large numbers of people streaming out of the store, carts packed to the brim with whatever they could buy, running, running to a truck in the distance, where they would dump everything before presumably driving away, as they did every day. They were always reliably replaced, within a few minutes, with many from another truck, who would do the same. He admired their efficiency, if nothing else.
Inside, there were still a few of them getting out of the store. And so he began his leisurely and short walk to the stationery aisle. His mistake.
The stationery aisle was where they had chosen to make their last vigil. Shopping carts blocked it off from the public; two, pretending to be employees, stood by the carts, pretending to do work, never looking up. Their hands merely flicked at products on the shelves, moving them right, then left; they seemed totally engrossed in their useless endeavor. All of this in but a minute.
Dressed in long white robes embroidered in red, wearing masks of James Mizrachi-Roscoe's face, the rest had piled all the stationery they could find in a pile at the end, Unfortunate for the interloper, their intended sacrifice. It was only a few seconds after they had walked away from the great pile of stationery on the floor, arranged themselves in two lines of six, the thirteenth of them facing them all, that he was thrown by the "employees" into the middle.
He was shivering, looking up at them, hyperventilating, eyes wide. He wiggled, tried to get up; the thirteenth stepped on his shoulders to hold him down, and he screamed, bucking up and down.
She stuffed something into his mouth; he could not spit it out. He whimpered, trying to cough, trying to scream, moving from side to side, up and down, all the while.
No matter. The thirteenth drew a knife, shining metal emerging from a hilt carved intricately, demons smiling from behind twisting and turning vines,
The twelve others joined hands, raised them in the air. "For the glory of James Mizrachi-Roscoe," they chanted, at first softly, in whispers, gradually louder and louder as the thirteenth raised the knife, as their victim's squirming became more violent, his whimpering faster, his eyes fixated on the knife so quickly plunging down, still wide.
The chorus of voices behind her, chanting again and again, "For the glory of James Mizrachi-Roscoe," continued to crescendo upwards in harmony. Two of them broke from the rest of the group; they walked to the pile of stationery; both taking matches in concert, they set it on fire, great yellow flames quickly spreading through the whole of the pile, dark smoke rising and spreading through the store. They smiled, at the fire, at each other, before running, prancing, almost dancing, onto the pile. The flames rode up onto their robes; they danced madly, without care, as they quickly enveloped their body in terrible heat.
The victim would see no more as the knife plunged into his chest. He stopped moving so significantly, his eyes still open. He was still alive; his last moments, the thirteenth thought with glee, would be so painful.
The thirteenth reached into his chest from the hole she had made, trying to reach for his heart.
