If This Goes On

by Cat Rambo

  “Don’t do it,” I said to him, and he knew exactly what I meant. And of course, he never listens to anyone. I knew he’d eventually find a way to slip one out from school, take into his garage, and dissect it on the workbench with his father’s old tool-kit.

  It’s been three months since I’ve seen anyone collared. It was that kid in the year above, the one that usually kept to himself, the one you’d catch staring at you across the lunch hall with a look in his eyes that was both far away and way too close.

  I don’t know the exact details of the incident—sure, I’m aware of all the conjecture and rumor that spread afterward, but that’s as unreliable as you can get. All I know is what I saw. He was shouting at Mr. Phillips, gesturing, spit flying from his mouth, some argument they’d got into. He picked up a trash can to throw it. At that moment Mr. Phillips gave a verbal command, and the kid just dropped. His body spasmed and shook. Almost comical, as he did spin half-a-turn on the ground, legs bent, arms crooked, sort of like he was running on the spot.

  But yeah, I guess it wasn’t really that funny.

  Security took him away, and it was a few weeks until he was allowed back. He’s okay now. Sits quiet. Does his work. Never asks questions in class, but never disrupts either. Definitely what they call a “good pupil.”

  The collars had been part of our everyday school life for over a year when David finally sneaked one out. It might have been last Monday, or maybe it was the Friday—the days all roll together in my head.

  He laid it down on the bench and started taking it apart. He stripped out the metal work, the core wire, showing me the tiny motherboard, which he said controls both the shock and the voice trigger. “Easy enough to smuggle it out of school,” he said. “Smuggling it back in—that’s the challenge.”

  In Dead Poet’s Society they stand on their desks. My desk has my name printed on it and is bolted to the ground.

  “Don’t do it,” I said to him, but he’d been engaged in an on-going debate with Mr. Garvey for weeks, something to do with amendments and rights, a discussion that made the rest of the class glaze over (me included) but seemed to fire up both David and Mr. Garvey more and more. You can tell Mr. Garvey can’t stand David. I don’t blame him. When David thinks he’s right, he gets this tone in his voice, like he pities you for not being able to keep up. Like it’s not enough for him to be right, but he’s got to humiliate you as well.

  When I pointed this out to him, he muttered something about how when male apes engage in combat, the victor humps the loser as a show of dominance.

  “So you want to hump Mr. Garvey?” I asked.

  “Metaphorically, yeah.” He reached into his drawer and rummaged around. On his computer screen, Ferris Bueller was singing about Central Park in the fall. David took out a pair of scissors.

  “Cut my hair.”

  “I’m not a hairdresser, dumbo.”

  “I know that, dumbo. That’s why I want you to do it. Just chop away.”

  I knew better than to ask. It’s a shame, as David’s hair was actually nice, not too long, not too short, swept over at the front, but in a way that looked natural. I lifted up a handful of hair and hesitated.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I want Garvey to look at me and think, ‘What the fuck is wrong with that kid.’”

  “David . . . everyone looks at you and thinks that anyway.”

  He gave me the finger, so I hacked off a clump. David smiled as the hair tumbled into his lap.

  You could see security giving him odd looks when he came in the next day. This was the day he decided to smuggle the dismantled collar back in, looping it round the handle of his bag, so you could barely notice. His hair was lopsided. He’d ended up shaving one side as well, then stopping before it was complete. It gave the impression of someone who’d staggered out of a medieval asylum, a description that made David’s eyes light up. He’d dug out his old school uniform, which was a size too small.

  “You look like a freak,” I whispered before I filed through the metal detector ahead of him.

  Sometimes it’s tough being friends with him. I could be popular. Recently guys have been asking me out—to the movies, to the mall, to parties. There’s a whole different world I could have if it weren’t for David. Then I imagine having to sit there, sipping on a soda, listen to inane fucking conversations about cellphones or sport, and I remember that David isn’t a weight—he’s an anchor.

  David claimed he’d been playing rope-a-dope with Garvey for a while. Sometimes David will act dumb and let Garvey score a point over him. If you squint, you could see the tactics that David’s using; it might look like he was surrendering territory, but really he was leading Garvey into uncertain lands.

  On that day, last week, he sidetracked Garvey into an argument on rights, although he made it look like Garvey had initiated it. People were already yawning. Then David said something about how the exercise of your rights cannot infringe on another person’s. Garvey leaped on that, and they went round and round, until David pointed out that he was quoting something Garvey had said a few weeks before, so either it still held true, or Garvey didn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

  Mr. Garvey told David to apologize.

  David stood up and told Mr. Garvey that he was sorry. He added that he was sorry that Garvey didn’t know what the fuck he is talking about. David then started recounting the plot of The Breakfast Club as if it was a historical documentary, drawing special attention to the scene where the kids ran free through the halls. That was around the time I sunk into my seat, and stifled a giggle. David asked if Garvey had ever stopped to think about what that meant, about what all we’ve sacrificed.

  David had taken three steps from his desk, moving towards the blackboard, and that was when Garvey gave the verbal command to activate the collar. David’s body jerked. He staggered forward and there was an audible gasp in class. You could tell some people were horrified, and some were secretly excited to see a collar going off. David stumbled forward a few more steps, and his arms flew out, like a marionette with its strings all tangled.

  Then he raised his head and smiled at our teacher.

  “Mr. Garvey? Go eat my shorts.”

  He took off the modified collar and threw it to the ground.

  There’s that scene in the movies where everyone starts spontaneously applauding at once. Sometimes it begins with a slow-clap, sometimes it’s an eruption. You can watch compilations of them online, the kind of cheesy cliché that can really ruin a movie.

  Sitting there, that’s exactly what happened as David walked out of the room. Even the kids who couldn’t stand him were banging on their desks, hollering. Mr. Garvey just stood there, staring at us, like we were animals in a zoo, and the bars weren’t as solid as he thought.

  A week passed. David was absent. His parents didn’t pick up the phone.

  My mother sat me down for “a talk.” She told me he’s a bad influence. She said if I wanted to do well in life, go to a good college and have a career, then I needed to stay away from boys like that.

  One evening I held strands of hair in my hand, looking in the mirror, scissors poised. I wanted to slice, to cut, to destroy, but I didn’t. I was scared of people making fun of me. I was scared I’d look ugly.

  A guy on the football team told me about a party that weekend. I told him that the freezing point of blood is thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. He said if I wanted, he could pick me up in his car. I spent Saturday night in my room instead, with the lights turned off, imagining what all the other kids were doing, standing around the pool, laughing, joking, pretending that another school week was a thousand miles away.

  David returns on Tuesday.

  His head has been completely shaved. He is pale, and he walks with a slow and deliberate gait. He doesn’t look over at me. He sits at his desk, a fresh collar on, his hands folded. He
copies down notes. He listens when other kids ask questions. He repeats back the phrases that Mr. Garvey tells us to.

  He never disagrees. He never rolls his eyes at something Garvey says.

  He doesn’t even blink when I throw a rolled up piece of paper at him as Garvey writes on the board. He just turns and looks at me. His eyes are vacant lots, where once there used to be cities on fire.

  Something inside me breaks, and it’s not my heart.

  “What’s wrong with David, sir?” I ask.

  Mr. Garvey turns and looks at me. “Nothing.” He turns back to the board.

  “What’s wrong with David, sir?” I repeat, louder, even though I know.

  Mr. Garvey turns again. I know I can keep asking forever, until the school crumbles and falls, and wild deer roam the overgrown grounds outside, and I’ll still never get a proper answer from him.

  I think of those kids in the movies, running in the corridors. Standing on desks. Getting high behind the bleachers. Breaking into the school at night. I think of glorious, wild, untamed youth.

  I am already out of my seat and running for Mr. Garvey. I think I’m shouting, “What’s wrong with David?” but I’m not entirely sure anymore. Mr. Garvey is yelling the command, and pain rips through my neck, yet still my legs are moving, and my hands are out. That’s when Mr. Garvey reaches for his gun and pulls the trigger.

  They tell me I’m lucky. The bullet grazed my skull. They were going to open it up anyway.

  I can name all the States. I can tell you that John Hancock put the first signature on the Declaration of Independence. I know that the tallest mountain is McKinley. I can’t tell you what that anger feels like though anymore, that helpless rage. I can’t watch those movies either. They seem jumbled and strange, like a language I’ll never learn.

  I can sit next to David in class. We nod, and we copy down answers, and we listen intently to what the teacher says. We are good pupils, just like they wanted us to be all along.

  About the Author

  Jack Lothian is a screenwriter for film and television and is currently showrunner on the HBO / Cinemax series ‘Strike Back’.

  He’s had short fiction published in Hinnom Magazine, Parsec Ink’s ‘Triangulation : Appetites’, Helios Quarterly Magazine, ‘Down With The Fallen’ from Franklin/Kerr Press and ‘Out of Frame’ from Omnestream Entertainment, as well as stories in forthcoming releases from Weirdbook, Fantasia Divinity and New Salon Lit. Jack can be found on Twitter @Jack_Lothian

  Editor’s Note

  Controlling the population effectively requires getting started when they’re young, a theme explored by “Good Pupils”. Many of the stories in the anthology dealt with the coming generations—this one, I thought, helped capture the helplessness of those caught up in a system designed to grind them down.

  At the moment, we see a public school system designed to grind kids down and prep them for service sector jobs, while at the same time expensive private schools prepare the next wave of business owners. The current administration has indicated that charter schools—schools funded privately by groups—are a major part of its agenda and it should be noted that these schools are free of many of the regulations district schools must follow. At the same time public schools are still recovering from the last recession, with many still at funding levels less than they were in 2008. These educational systems are funded by income taxes, and some states with the deepest educational cuts, such as Arizona, Idaho, Kansa, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, are also cutting their tax rates. Kansas’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the state’s level of educational funding is, in fact, unconstitutionally inadequate.

  Seems as though we should be able to learn something from all this.

  All the Good Dogs Have Been Eaten

  Gregory Jeffers

  He’d grown too old to outlive another dog. Not to mention the commotion of raising a puppy. There wouldn’t be another. He picked the aluminum pie pan that had been Nelson’s food dish off the worn pine floor. The dog’s death had hollowed out another numb absence in his soul.

  A wind gust whapped the window.

  Four years ago he might have adopted some mutt from the SPCA pound, but they—like most other non-profits—had gone belly-up. Shuttered from lack of government funding and failure to lure money from the few who still had any. The wealthy continued to salt it away, though to what end, Stone could not fathom. There wasn’t much worth saving for and little to buy, but perhaps it wasn’t like that in other parts of the world. Or for those with all the money. Seemed to him greed ceased to make sense when nothing had value.

  But greed, like all diseases, lacks logic. He left it at that. Bottom line: there was pitiful little he cared about anymore.

  Two cluster flies buzzed at the kitchen door, batting themselves senseless on the smudged glass.

  “Dumb persistence,” he said to the dog’s bed. “That’s what insects are all about. Funny how well bugs have done during all of this.” His voice trailed off as he once again realized that Nelson was no longer there. Dead for almost a week. Stone set the pan on a table next to the wood stove and wrung his hands over the warm cast iron top.

  He stared out at the blowing snow. The wind skimmed the tops off the snow drifts, creating eddies of little white cyclones. Keeping a dog had its own set of problems. People who had money kept dogs for security and protection. They could afford to feed them. Most other dogs ended up at best underfed, scabby with mange and fleas. Often worse. Domestic dogs became dinner for packs of predators.

  Damn, he’d heard in the cities desperate people were preying on them. Eating them, for God’s sake. Then again you couldn’t believe everything you heard.

  He leant to retrieve Nelson’s chipped water bowl and poured the slimy dregs into the sink before dropping the bowl into the overflowing trash can.

  “How the hell this pail gets full so fast is beyond me. Nothing much comes into this house lately, doesn’t make sense so much goes out.”

  The habit of talking out loud was beginning to bug him. It hadn’t bothered him with Nelson around, as far as he remembered.

  He’d taken to hunting again since the Collapse. Nelson had been a good bird dog. Earned his keep. He’d either come by it naturally or his previous owner had been an upland bird hunter. But shells for the shotgun were nearly gone. Slugs for the deer rifle too. He had plenty of ammo for the thirty-eight but it wasn’t worth a damn for hunting. He had the bow and plenty of arrows, if he could still nock and draw, but he hadn’t drawn a bow since the year he retired.

  He’d give it a try tomorrow. Except now he remembered. Depending on how things went this evening, there might not be a tomorrow.

  Snatching up the handle of the stubby galvanized trash can, he hauled it to the door, and pushed his feet into the wide maws of his unlaced boots.

  Outside the snow had started up again. He trudged through the crusty drifts from last week’s storm to the hole he’d dug the previous fall. Nearly full now. He dumped the can and ambled over to the small cemetery further in the backyard, closer to the woods.

  He stared over the stubby picket fence at Nelson’s grave. It’d taken a half day with pick and shovel to dig it. If the early snow cover hadn’t slowed the ground-freeze, he’d never have gotten it dug and old Nelson might be waiting for spring in the woodshed. The thought made him grimace. He knew what predators or vermin would have done to that carcass the very first night.

  “But I did it, Nelson. I got you in that bed of dirt in the nick of time.” He listened for a moment, then when he realized he expected some sort of acknowledgment, grinned at the tinge of embarrassment burning his cheeks.

  The wind came up into his face. He gritted his teeth, folding his arms over his chest. “Last time I come out without a coat this winter.” He let his gaze move across the other grave markers to the one in back where he’d bu
ried Jane two years earlier. She’d let her will to live subside shortly after their oldest child, Aaron, had been shot at the Albany State Massacre. It had been the end of the road for her.

  For him, Aaron’s death proved just another unbridgeable abyss. Detours. Alternate routes. This had become his new mantra. Outflank, outmaneuver, outwait. Outlast.

  Stone had gotten “his affairs in order” as they’d told him. Not much in the way of affairs anymore. Affairs. Ha. He had a flash of the young intern when he had tenured as a professor at Plattsburgh State. Sally? Sarah? God, the memory had a way of protecting the heart. He burned again with the guilt. Jane must have known almost from the beginning, but had she been too proud to say anything?

  So he said it for her, just as he had at least once every week for the last thirty years. “What an asshole you can be, Stone Reiss.” He shook his head, and his body followed in an involuntary shudder from the cold. A ghost of grief passed through him.

  Back inside, he raked down the fire so it was safe, then stared at the stove. Safe from what? What difference did it make now if the cabin burned to the ground? He boxed up the remaining food for his nearest neighbor, Ethel Woodridge. He holstered and strapped his thirty-eight, layered up in everything he owned that was warm, opened the door and slouched back into the tumult. The snow had turned to sleet, hurling sideways, pelting the cabin wall, pinging off the windows and needling his face. He closed the door behind him and stared at the knob. Done. That’s all there was to it.

  He slogged alongside the ruts in the dirt road, protecting the box of groceries with an open coat flap. Trucks had driven through last night it seemed. He didn’t want to know. Federal troops? Russians? Didn’t matter. Two sides of the same coin. Couple more months, the greedy bastards would be done with all their precious gasoline and have to continue their oppression on foot. That might turn the tide.