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Beneath the Surface

 

A Vulture Sunbathes

The Haunted Landscape

The Pain of Anger

6 Killed In Weeping Water Fire

Beneath the Surface

by Graham Swanson

The heat rose to over 99 degrees in the town of Weeping Water, Nebraska. Thunderstorms and winds crossed the land but they missed the small valley town. The sky became clear and cloudless and the humidity rose to 100%. Despite the harvest season summer temperatures remained. Dozens of vultures swarmed from the horizon and landed on grain silos before the green yard along the creek. They lifted their wings and sunned in the dissipating fog. 

Frank backed his truck in. He hauled the wood and concrete he needed to begin the project. His truck bore his name on all sides. In his vehicle he carried 6 tool bags, 4 power drills, 3 power saws, and a set of blueprints for a picnic shelter to enliven and beautify his hometown. Frank had everything a man could want. A house he inherited from his father. Several CDs and land he inherited from his grandfather. He went to college, travelled the world, had many beautiful girlfriends, and ran his own successful contracting business. 

Before Frank got out and started he decided to finish his coffee and listen to his favorite talk radio show. He sighed in frustration and poured some liquor into his cup. His leg still hurt from a skydiving accident from years before. His collar bone hurt from a mountain bike crash years before that. The doctors cancelled their vacations and dinner dates to attend his wounds, and he never forgave them for recommending he quit performing these dangerous hobbies. 

Frank laid back in his seat, letting the anger simmer in his stomach as he lit his morning cigarette. He listened to his Talk Show. 

“...That’s what they think! The lizard people are in charge, people! They commit incest, they inbreed, and they control every facet of our lives from the food we eat to the chemicals in the water. When Musk betrayed us to the technofascist!"

It made Frank laugh. His favorite part was coming up. He turned it up louder so he could hear.

“...Every senator who has ever taken bribes, cocaine barrons, warlords should be sent to prison during the State of the Union! Every cop who has ever shut off his camera should be fired! Soon China will colonize the entire world!”

Frank nodded his head in approval with a salty smile on his lips. He turned sour only when the show ended and he had to begin his day. He set up saw horses and went over the blueprints. Behind him, his employee, Calipso, arrived in an old beaten up truck. Together they unloaded the lumber and concrete. Once on the ground Frank took a smoke break and Calipso enjoyed some water from the public faucet. 

Calipso didn’t speak a terrible amount of English but he tried his best. He came without his family, and became so desperate for a job that he lied to Frank about his qualifications. He told the contractor that he ran his own contracting company but it failed, forcing him to seek work. “I will stay three steps ahead of you. I’m very good with numbers. I'll be your best man."

None of what Calipso said was true. He was broke. He quit school in the 7th grade. He needed money or he’d become homeless in the middle of rural Nebraska.

Frank spent his break naming off the things he hated. Stars Wars- he always called the fans fat incels.  Football. When he worked in a bar in downtown , whenever their team was losing he’d play GOOD OL’ Nebraska on the jukebox and laugh at the sad fans. Elvis. 

“Elvis stole Rock n Roll. I hate him.” Frank said. The crueler his thoughts became, the more it made him happy. 

Calipso always thought of Elvis when he thought of America. He decided to interrupt his boss’s tirade. 

“Elvis had an old style, it’s not very punk rock, but he lived around African Americans, he learned to sing and dance from them. He didn’t know how to read or write music. He couldn’t have stolen anything.”

“You’re not wrong. Elvis was hillbilly trash, but he knew he was taking music from black people, he could’ve done something about it, but he did nothing!”

“He couldn’t even fire his manager. He wanted to travel the world and have diverse shows but his manager wouldn’t let him. How could he do anything?”

“I guess you’re the expert then!” Frank wobbled his head and waved his hands in the air. Then began to mimic Calipso’s voice. “He couldn’t even fire his manager! Why don’t you shut up and start clearing the ground!” 

Calipso put on welding goggles and gardening gloves. Frank rolled his eyes at him. He grabbed a shovel and began to dig. 

“God Damn! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I'm clearing the ground like you asked.”

“Is that my shovel?”

“Why yes, I assume this is the right tool.”

“Never Fucking touch my tools!” 

“What do you think I should use then?”

“Fine, use my equipment, because apparently you can’t be relied on to bring your own!” 

Calipso scowled, but held his emotions in. Speaking out now would only make things more difficult, so he compressed his frustration and began to work. 

“Put the dirt there!” Frank commanded.

Calipso obeyed. He filled a refuse can with with dirt and grass, carried it over to a vacant space and dumped it out.

“Not there, THERE!” Frank screamed without gesturing to any specific area.

“Boss, I can’t read your mind.” 

“I have to explain EVERYTHING?” 

Calipso sighed and started putting the dirt back into the bucket.

“Now what are you doing?”

“Moving the dirt.” 

“No, you’re wasting time! LEAVE IT THERE!” 

Frank limped around the area. His support sock darkened with speckles of blood. Vultures kept swooping down into the work site to scratch at the land. He shooed some away but they kept dropping down, so he reached into his bucket of tools and hurled a hatchet across the work site at them. “Pests! We can’t work if these birds keep messing with us”.

Calipso enjoyed the early morning. It wasn’t yet too hot to work, and the birds provided a splendid beauty over the valley. He kept digging, forcing the blade through the dewy grass and the moist earth. He almost filled a second bucket before the shovel blade hit something hard. He forced the shovel down again, but the blade bounced off the hard thing again. 

The vultures flew unharmed back to the top of the silo where they all gazed down at Frank. He left his blueprints to limp over to the silos with a level. He beat it against the metal walls until it shattered into pieces. The birds remained up high, undisturbed, their peaks and talons hanging over his head. “If I see anyone of you, you’ll regret it.”

Calipso Stepped on the blade of the shovel, the ground cracked, and he lost his balance. He held the handle of the shovel, but the blade snapped off and lay in the exposed earth. It wasn’t a rock. It was a blanket. He got on his knees and wiped away the dirt. The rotten blanket contained something underneath. He tried to scoop it out but it seemed rooted into the ground. When he unfolded it he gasped. 

“WHY IS MY SHOVEL BROKEN? THAT WAS A NON SPARKING SHOVEL! ITS FOR GRAVEL! ITS A 100$ SHOVEL YOU IDIOT!” 

“Boss, look.” 

“I don’t care!”

Calipso unraveled the blanket and a human skull rolled out. 

“We need to tell the police.” Calipso said reaching for his phone.

Frank took the phone away and leaned his gritted teeth against Calipso’s face.

“We tell no one. If the cops come here we’ll have to delay the project for god knows how long. I’ve already lost too much money ordering this wood from China and the city council wants this done in time for Limestone Days. Now bury it.” 

Frank picked up the pieces of shovel and walked back to his truck. Calipso shivered, put a hand over his stomach. He breathed slow and peaceful to hold back the vomit constricting in his guts. A tear went down his cheek. He took one more look at the skull, then the blanket. A poison feeling dropped from his guts into his bladder. When he saw it he remembered seeing dead animals on the road, and stories of death cults that murdered anyone who tried to bring justice to his own hometown far away. 

Calipso grabbed the fabric and saw faded cartoon characters on it. He looked back the skull, and notice the eye socket close together and a tiny set of teeth. The small cranium, the narrow jaw. It was a child. He wrapped it back up, and buried it. While his boss wasn’t looking, he stuck a strip of wood into the loose soil.  He finished his work for the day with a heavy frown permanently fixed to his brow. They worked throughout the heat of the day. They ate lunch from a gas station, drank Gatorade, school got out and kids walked all over. 

“We need to place this concrete now.” 

“Boss, that will take all day.” 

“I want that cement mixed and poured. I’ll pay you extra just do it.” Frank pulled the strip of wood out from the soil. 

Calipso poured the concrete powder into a wheelbarrow and mixed it with water. He spat through his gritted teeth, strained his back and neck as his muscles tightened around his stomach. The vultures lifted off and circled around the work site. One landed on the hood of Frank’s truck. It stared at the blood stain on Frank’s sock. 

When Calipso poured the concrete all color left his face. All the friendly old folk taking walks, the teenagers coming home from school, the plumbing trucks and heavy work trucks all rode by as if nothing happened. He took a flat metal spreader and smoothed out the concrete. Despite his best effort, bubbles rose in the mixture. It looked like the dead body beneath struggled to breathe. He watched the bubbles rose and pop on the surface, then sink down. 

Frank kept running off to his shop, and came back each time more irritable, but calmer, slower, reeking of old dirty beer. 

Calipso worked until the final hours of sunlight. The heat and humidity rendered his clothing sticky and overheated. He chugged water from the faucet while Frank prepared to lay support columns but his elbow snapped and he dropped the heavy beam. He called on Calipso to help him. Calipso took one end of the beam and let Frank take the other with his good arm. 

They guided the beam into place and poured concrete around it. 

“Careful now, we need this to be level.”

“You broke the level.”

“I’ll break you! Set it up right!” 

‘Boss, how do I check if we have no level?”

“Well, I guess I shouldn't have smashed my level! FUCK!” 

“We’ve gotten a lot done. Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow.” 

“Be here at 5am. He have to place all these beams. Then we can move on to the pearlings on the roof.” 

“What’s a pearling?”

“All this lumber here, what do you think? I need to go back to the shop and do desk stuff. 5am tomorrow.” Frank lit a cigarette and walked back to his truck.

“No, man. I quit. You’re crazy.” 

“What did you say?”

“You’re insane. I will have nothing to do with you.” 

“If you tell anyone, I’ll break your teeth and shove a rock in your mouth.”

“I don’t think you’ve won a single fight in your entire life. Good luck. I’m sure you can find some help.” Calipso jumped in his truck and left the site.

Calipso left town and left all the tools Frank lent him at a gas station. He drove for four hours thinking and thinking. He didn’t eat dinner. He didn’t shower. He didn’t drink water. He didn’t sleep. He kept thinking about the remains he uncovered. He didn’t want to lose his job, but he kept thinking about all the rude things Frank said, all the nihilism, all the resentment. He remembered working construction with his brother. He wanted to build a small house in El Salvador and unlike Calipso, his brother had a way of getting everything he ever wanted. He was always happy, until he didn’t get what he wanted. Then he shouted and bullied anyone he deemed responsible until someone appeased his whims. 

Calipso didn’t have a phone now, and not a single phone booth remained throughout the dusty streets. In the morning he went into the library and called the Cass County Police Department. He started crying and spoke so low they barely heard what he said. 

“There’s remains under a work site in Weeping Water, Nebraska. The contractor working there told me not to report it. It’s where the vultures are. In the park by the creek between downtown and the high school. It's under the concrete. I can’t show you myself because its a small town and I fear he may harm me.”

As soon as they asked him a question he hung up. 

Frank returned the next day and examined the workload. His elbow swelled up and the joints popped whenever he had to press a saw over the lumber. Even the strength to rip a staple out of the wood drove hot nails of pain into his joints. The vultures returned above him. They lifted their wings to sun, and let the cleansing light purge them of mites. Frank understood now, these creatures, when they lifted their wings, it was to communicate with his foes. The meth heads that wanted to steal his stuff, the bullies from High School who still hated him, Elvis plotting against him from a throne in hell, selling his secrets to the CCP. Everything he heard in the radio shows was coming true. 

The State Patrol showed up and kicked over his little traffic cones. Frank told them to leave but they began putting up tape despite his protests. 

“What are you guys doing on my worksite?”

“We have an investigation to do. Why don’t you just sit in the back of the squad car.” 

“Investigation? Investigate what? I’m a busy man. You all need to leave.” 

“If you don't get into the back of that goddamn car right now I’ll place you under arrest.”

Frank noticed their tasers were unsheathed. The sheriff and other cops pulled up behind them. The began tearing down the beams, and pounded the concrete to pieces, then started to dig. Frank watched in horror as they pulled out not just one skeleton, but another, and another. The vultures descended from the misty sky to surround the worksite. They all stared at Frank, than all at once, they stared into the plot of upturned land. 

Three morgue trucks came all the way from Omaha to recover the bodies. Frank kept telling the police that he had nothing to do with it. He told them in the back of the car, he told them in the interrogation room and he kept shouting it from his jail cell until he finally got word that the rest of the remains were found in his grandpa's farm. 

“No, no that’s not true.”

“You’re grandpa was a serial killer, Frank. You knew about it, and you thought you could cover it up.”

“You… you have to respect me!” 

“We don’t care what you think, Frank. We want to know how many bodies you’ve disposed of, and where you hid them.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“We don't know that yet. Seems that people went missing in this town until your grandpa finally passed.”

“It was Calipso. He controls those vultures. He made them report the bodies. You have to shoot those vultures They’re planning against me. He killed those people!”

“What did you know about these victims? We want to help you, Frank. We can’t help you if you’re hyperventilating and telling us stories about magic vultures. Are you a good guy?  Then you’ll help us, but maybe you're not, maybe you knew all about this. We can't help you if you won’t tell us the truth.” 

They repeated the questions over and over until Frank curled up in a ball in his seat. In his mind the vultures still pecked at the ground and peeled the flesh from a freshly carved scalp. When the police left him in the interrogation chamber, two men clad in black masks took their place. They took Frank by the shoulders and lifted him from his seat and dragged him out by his heels. The hallway they dragged him down hooked in crooked directions, then sank deep into the earth. At the bottom a vehicle awaited. 

Frank begged them not to take him, but they only hissed and yapped. The men shoved him into the back seat and drove him deep into the country. So deep that no radio signal could find them. They pulled him out into a field, where a fully built picnic shelter stood surrounded by vultures. The masked men dragged Frank into the center, stripped him naked, and washed him with faucet water. 

First they tied him to a heavy piece of lumber, and pushed the lumber onto the pavement. Then they drew sledge hammers and drills. The started knocking down the beams and unscrewing the bolts. The vultures watched from their perches as the picnic shelter collapsed, and then the men in the black mask lit the wreckage on fire. 

The town of Weeping Water spiraled into chaos. Word reached far and wide of a secret cult that acted in the town for generations. In the unrivaled seclusion of the family farmlands, they practiced ritual cannibalism, drank the blood of children to sustain their lineage, and summoned vultures as their familiar spirits. The folk of Weeping Water stayed in denial. Anytime anyone asked them about the violence, they will tell you its all fiction, that some resentful discontent made it all up. They point at the sign in the entry of the town- 1980 Class D-1 Runner Ups. Little do they know that blood drips down that sign, and the vultures lap it up. 

Maybe this is fiction, maybe it isn’t. If you really want to know, seek the forlorn valley of Weeping Water. Dig under the concrete of the depot pavilion, and discover for yourself what lies beneath. You will find the truth where the vultures sunbathe on the silos. You will see where the devil stamps his hoof.

Ghost stories about Weeping Water

https://hauntedplacesofusa.blogspot.com/2009/09/witchs-bridge-weeping-waternebraska.html

https://ghostsandstories.com/haunted-places-witches-bridge-in-weeping-water-nebraska.html

https://www.ghostsofamerica.com/6/Nebraska_Weeping_Water_ghost_sightings.html

The Watcher In The Grass

 THE WATCHER IN THE GRASS

Graham Swanson

https://www.asiapress.org/rimjin-gang/2012/06/news/homeless-woman/

Metaphorical Journey. Vladimir Kush

Esty

Kim Jong Un Observes Flood Victims Entering Rescue Helicopter

Satchi Art

    Hana lost her home and family in the “Arduous March” during the reign of the all mighty and beloved leader. They lived far from the city of hope and longing where the honored few enjoyed privileges like refrigerators. Their home lay at the bottom of the flood basin. With the trees gone, nothing stopped the mud from flowing into the road and washing it away. Their house slowly sank into the bog the army had created in their attempt to open more land for agriculture. 

With her parents dead and her home destroyed, she ventured out to find food. People already ate the bugs, rats, dogs, and she didn’t trust them. The agents of the government taught their people that the homeless are undesirable because they hurt the stability of their great nation. The glorious banners depicted images of the peasants receiving everything they would ever need from the benevolent ruler. 

Hana woke up hungry. She grew into her early 20s affected by the constant fasting. Her eyes swelled up and her chest wasted away. Getting up required a powerful effort to lift her aching body from the ground. Small muscles wrapped around her arms and neck. She looked at the gash in her hand. It still hadn’t healed yet. She feared the hospitals because they took her childhood friends there and they never came back. 

The darkness of morning covered the land. If she could get to the field before the others she may beat them to the grass. If she got there before the sun rose, she’d collect as much as possible before the army patrols showed up. If she acted fast, she might catch a grasshopper, but she hungered most for meat. She thought of a rabbit leading her through the trail in the hills. 

Once Hana’s feet found the familiar divots in the ground the weariness gave way to dizziness. She shivered in the mist of the autumn morning. She woke up feeling cold. She went to bed feeling cold. Her father’s army jacket kept her warm. Its olive green camouflage hung past her narrow knee joints. She rolled up the sleeves up past her lanky arms. She found more of her hair on the shoulder crease. She ran her fingers through her mane of black hair. Her hairline ripped, and she tugged out a fistful of locks. 

Hana already saw it happen to her neighbors. She expected as much. She got good grades in school. Not the best, but enough to inspire hope that she may be assigned to marry a wealthy doctor someday. So far the government hadn’t assigned anything  helpful, and since she had no dowry to give, she’d see no wedding day. 

The easy part of her journey came to an end. When she arrived at the field she found a drove of hungry peasants stuffing bags full of grass. Most of the field was mud but some grass grew back. Hana couldn’t think about it. Her mind couldn’t focus on anything but the bones poking her stomach. 

With one hand she shielded the plastic bag, and in the other she dug into the earth. She tore the grass out by the root and dropped a fistful into her bag. She foraged until the sun rose, lugged the bag over her shoulder, and marched on towards the foggy hills. The scant tufts of grass felt thin. The color seemed to fade. Winter drew near. Then there’d be no grass to collect. 

With half a bag full, a whistle blast rose over the horizon followed by a cascade of whistles. A dozen men popped out of the ditches with bayonets on their weapons. Trucks barreled down the roads in clouds of dust. The peasants in their ragged cloaks turned to flee back to the hills only to find another row of netted helmets and camouflaged jackets charging at them. Gun smoke filled the air as a wave of fire pelted the sky. 

Heads hit the ground as hot metal pierced their garments. Bits of fabric floated into the air as the Happiness and Security brigade grabbed men and women and huddled them together. The trucks pulled up. Hana looked through the heavy fog drifting down the hillside. Someone told the police that they’d come here. Someone was rewarded a TV or a slab of meat. 

Hana dove down the slope. She slid down the rocks while the guards fired down the hill. Their shots hit rocks and tree trunks. She remembered what her father taught her about avoiding gunfire. Keep your head down and run in sharp angles. He told her stories about how the guerillas defeated their invaders by using the terrain. She hugged her bag of grass tight as she jumped into the river below. 

The commander, Jaki, hero of the Happiness and Security Brigade, ordered his men to cease fire. his soldiers loaded corpses into one truck They pushed the captive peasants onto another. Once the trucks left he ordered his soldiers to stand at attention and report if they saw anyone get away. 

Jaki wasn’t like the others in the party or the city. He hated the ideology and thought their resources would benefit the nation if they spent them fighting the enemy, not themselves. He didn’t want to be a soldier. He just wanted to feed his family. But he knew if the secretaries learned he let someone go he’d be punished when they came back to the field, and his family would go hungry again. 

“Follow me, comrades. We must find her.” 

They fell in line and followed him down to the river. The soldiers combed the shore and turned over rocks.. One soldier hollered as he discovered a trail, and the military men charged  down the path only to hear their commander call on them.

“HALT! HALT! YOU FOOLS!” He barked with all his chest. The soldiers returned confused and anxious. The commander pointed at a red string tied around a stick shoved into the sand. “See that? It's a marker. This is a false trail. Radio it in and mark it on our maps. She’s not far.”

Lee, the oldest man in Jaki’s service, looked down at the ground while his commander spoke. While the rest chanted and roared for battle, he sat quietly and drank until he fell asleep. His apathy continued as he mumbled to Jaki. “She fell into the river. She’s dead. Let's go home.” 

“You’re slowing us down Lee! You’re a liability to the Happiness and Security brigade. If we don’t find that girl, they will liquidate us all.”

“They’ve killed our friends for less.” He remarked. He put his chest out like soldiers do. “What're you gonna do, report me? You know as well as I do…” 

The rain clouds in the distance rolled in. Jaki faced the coming storm and rubbed his eyes sockets. “She will avoid the rain. Search for caves. This ends today!” 

“We don’t have enough men to search every cave in the county. She’s gone.” 

“Maybe we don’t have to search the caves.” Lee pointed to the roof of a shack beyond the hills. 

When they arrived they found an old man smoking outside. They ignored him and entered the home. They turned everything over and ripped everything apart. They found no vagabond, no gold, most notably, no tobacco, and no cigarettes.

“Where did you get that smoke old man?” Jaki barked. 

“This is my last one. Sorry I can't spare another.” 

“Did you men find any tobacco tins inside?”

“No, no, no” they answered as they came out empty handed. 

“You saw someone coming this way. Where did she go?”

“I haven’t seen as much as a fox. Looks like the rain is coming. You can shelter here if you’d like.” 

The commander examined the cliffs over their heads. He saw a single root sticking out of the high rocks. Something had bent it. 

“She went up the cliff. Start climbing men!” 

“We don't have equipment to climb.” Lee protested. 

“You don't need equipment. Just grab and pull. Old man, you will give us a rope.” 

Smoke exhausted from the old man’s mouth. He pointed to the well. They took the rope from it and tossed the bucket away. They went up the cliff side single file following the rope. When one man got to the top he lowered the rope for the rest to climb only to panic when he felt the rain tap his forehead. 

The old man picked his bucket back up and sat down with it in his lap. The rain water splattered at the bottom. Thunder rolled and the wind blew hard. The men half way up the cliff hurried up the rope. At first the rain fell in careful threads but then once the wind picked up and the clouds darkened the falling waters collapsed onto them. It poured sideways in the wind, and cascaded from the top of the cliff. The rope became slick and they could no longer grip the rocks in the face of the cliff. One by one they dropped to their doom. The old man waited until his bucket was full, and then took it inside to boil.

Hana entered the rocky trail once more. One hand was black with mud. The other she made sure to keep clean. She intended to trade her grass in for rice at the black market in town. While she had a moment alone she bent down and imagined a hot bowl of rice cooked in vegetable broth. That’s when a mysterious man stepped out on the rocks.

She had never seen him before. He didn’t wear any military fashion or ragged clothes. He wore glasses and suspenders, he had gaps in his teeth and an open collar. He looked more like the people from the bootleg DVDs. He offered her a sparkling fruit which she took and consumed. 

“What have you got there?” he asked.

“I sell it.” 

“I'd stay away from the black market if I were you.” He told her. “The police are waiting.”

“Then my grass will wither and I will have nothing to eat today.” 

“I see. Better go to the Lieutenant today then and trade it for money. He needs the grass.”

“I don't want the money. I want rice.” 

“You will need money to bribe the guards.” 

 “I can’t leave yet.” Hana undressed and unburied her disguise. A simple workers outfit flowed over her frail malnourished body. Even with the buttons all the way up her collar bone poked out.

"I don't know anyone in the Land of Sparkling Fruits nor do I have family in the enemy zone. They shoot me if I leave, they shoot me if I stay. I won’t do anything to risk the others.” 

The rain storm fell across them, and they huddled under a gnoll until it passed. He held her and kept her warm. Her body was so light, he felt her heart pound against her ribs. She seemed to be asleep, but was wide awake holding the pit in her stomach. 

Hana walked on with her bag of grass to the next field. Harvest season usually meant that she’d find raw corn stamped into the dirt. Only she didn’t smell any corn, only smoke in the air. When she came into view she saw it in embers. They burned all the grass. Up in the hills stood ancient mining equipment once state of the art, now laying in disrepair, slowly sinking into the caverns. Laying in the field was the decomposed remains of a woman. Hana approached. The body had been rotting in the field for long enough for something to take her eyes, her tongue, even her brain. Hana put her hand on the jaw and opened her mouth. The teeth had been pulled out too. She opened her shirt to find bite marks up and down her flesh. A centipede crawled out of her eye socket and Hana clutched it with her soot covered hand and bit it in half. 

Hana carried her bag of grass to the outskirts of town down a winding dirt path. The market seemed vibrant with uniformed men sleeping in the grass, children picking pieces of seeds out of the mud under the trampling feet of the merchants, and a crowd sat in the mud facing a stage. The police in their clean olive green uniforms and gold shoulder badges blindfolded a man and shot him in the head in front of everyone. 

“Whoever turns in these foreign infiltrators will be rewarded.” The captain explained wiping the blood from his cheek. “Anyone who is caught taking food, films, USBs or other contraband will face the same fate. Those who know about these politically unreliable agents and do nothing will be sent to re-education camps.” 

The executed man died for the unforgivable sin of passing out fliers to people at the market.When he refused to give away the members of his secret group they gave him the death sentence. The shadowy camp they spoke of existed on the other side of the county. Those condemned to serve in it mined coal from sun up to sun down for the remainder of their lives. Black smog rolled from the hills into the sky and turned the clouds brown. 

A work site sat not too far from the market. The job was never finished and the scaffolding remained staggering in the wind. Graffiti covered the crumbling project. It demanded the removal of party secretaries. The police covered it up with their own banner, a big red symbol meaning “CANNON FIRE’. 

The man who bought the grass wore a loose army uniform. He looked as thin and worn out as the others. His rabbits fed the men who served under him. Unlike some he really did believe in the ideology, and hated buying grass from the homeless, but how else was he going to feed his men? He paid her less than last time.

“I need more money.” she whimpered, almost too exhausted to muster the strength to argue. 

“If you have a problem, take it up with the party.” 

Hana unbuttoned her shirt, leaned over his desk, and kissed his neck. He took her by the shoulders and slobbered all over her face and breasts. He grazed her bony hips, and sucked on her dry white lips. He undid his belt and guided her land to his loins. I won’t go into any more detail, but at the end he not only gave her the full amount, he also shared a shot of vodka with her. 

“This stuff is better. It comes from the palaces of Everwinter. I can help you out you know. I can tell you how to get onto a base. I can tell you where the patrols will search next. I know where they hide the Leader’s cow meat.” She took a few pulls. The strength of the liquor dulled her senses, and induced a slight euphoria. She blushed and tried to hide the collar rushing from her face. He laughed at her. “Silly girl. Go on back to your forest hovel. Consider my offer. You know they’ll catch you eventually.” 

Hana left the market with her arms crossed, head down, face hidden beneath her mop of hair. The man of the Sparkling Fruit offered to help her enter a new world. One of relative ease and possible freedoms, but she knew nothing of the world outside the borders. If she instead entered the world of the party, she may be liberated from the constant chase for food.  She looked up to the early evening stars for guidance. 

The autumn night brought darkness and bitter cold. The wind blew the storm away but also saturated the air with frigid elements. Hana crept into an abandoned building. Cracks went up the foundation, and some floors had collapsed. The wind blew right through the windows and gaps in the wall. 

Hana fell asleep without a blanket and shuddered all night long, then felt a warming pleasure, as her father’s army jacket fell over her shoulders. She gripped onto it tight, and never learned where it came from or who put it back over her. She awoke in the night after a brief rest. She remembered a trip to the city she took with her father on one special holiday long ago. 

The Immaculate Leader himself stood over the balcony of Victory Square and announced that his ingenious scientists had converted hair to noodles. Never again would his beloved people starve. How wild the crowd applauded with approval. They chanted LONG LIVE until their voices gave out. Then the great leader announced their latest victory, a hyper sonic missile capable of destroying any capitol in the world. In his own words, “Now the enemies of our nation will know why they fear the cleansing might of  nuclear fire.” 

People jumped and waved their hands desperate to capture the light radiating off his countenance. Men, women, old, young, rich, poor. Every decision in their lives led to this moment. At that time she saw only the bright colorful towers and glorious crimson flags unfurled for the world to adore. The choreographed dance routines and glimmering monuments to the great achievements of the regime went on and on and on forever.

Hana thought maybe the man from the Land of Sparkling Fruit put the jacket over her, or maybe even her father, but as she shifted in the darkness she saw a fire burning between her and a stranger. She peered nearer, rubbed her eyes, and fell back in silence, pressed herself against the wall and gasped in disbelief. The Great Leader himself had joined her on the floor of the abandoned building. 

The Great Leader watched the fire, his shoulders slumped with a heavy burden. Shadows hung over his face. He looked fat, but not strong and god-like, rather crushed by the weight of his own power, fully aware of the anger and fragility behind the illusion of immortality. The ruins around them consumed him, full of the echoes of hidden orphans, amid banners torn asunder, a rallying cry rang out. In the remains of the building, he began to shiver. 

Hana almost reached over to him, but she felt eyes watching her from the walls, the alleys, the hills, the grassy fields. She dreamed of a future full of great banquets and fat happy babies planting seeds in fertile soil. She refused to cow to the Great Leader, but she discovered the recognition and respect of basic humanity. Her journey was far from over, and in the faces of those who drew power from her, a determination was planted. One month later, she starved to death in a field.