by Ross Anthony
It took my mother dying for me to find my father. I thought she was the most pure and honest person. I held some resentment toward her for that.
My whole life I wondered about my father, the donor, and I thought so little of him. All the while he was a part of my world the whole time, someone who, up until that moment, I had seen as a gentle giant. Aside from some of his food dishes, I thought he could do no wrong either.
My mother insisted I always live in truth, but she couldn’t seem to manage it herself. Everything she had ever said and done was immediately raised into question.
“How could she lead me to believe we were abandoned, that he never wanted me? Why?”
I continued in search of my inner peace. To my immediate right, a building boasted the colorful moniker for Queen’s Corner. For as long as I’d known it to be there, it was a bar solely focused on the entertainment provided by drag performers, and a mighty successful one at that. Every other day the sounds of cackles and cheers could be heard alongside classic tunes from the like of Cher and Dolly Parton. Now, the building was dark, windows smashed, and the sidewalk littered with glass and other trash. As I examined the building further, I found, painted along the brick wall, a giant red equal sign with a slash through it: the arithmetic symbol meaning “unequal to.”
The equal sign had become a universal symbol of equality, most notably for my people. This use of the unequal sign felt like a call to strip that away.
My whole being, already destroyed, felt more defeated and hopeless than ever before.
The darkness that followed behind the car in my dreams was closing in on me. I wasn’t going to escape it.
A fear was rising within, as all the weight of my lonely reality crashed down on me.
Eight
Fire rose around me and quickly dissipated into ash. It began to swirl like a vortex and burst into a flaming bird, the phoenix.
It looked at me with its familiar ocean blue eyes, which reminded me of my mother. It seemed to give warning as its fiery aura intensified with every flap of its wings.
I looked down at myself, and I too was covered in ash. Suddenly the dusty material began to whirl around me, pulling out any oxygen I had in my lungs. The ash sparked as it spun faster. The heat was rising against my skin. I felt my feet lift off the ground, my hair tossing around wildly as it suddenly turned to flames.
I woke up gasping for air, like I’d just been trapped in a vacuum. The back of my neck was hot and sweaty, while a cold sweat dripped from my forehead.
The dream felt similar to the one I had the day I was supposed to go to Greece.
I didn’t know what to make of it, but I felt a sense of dread feeding the fear I already had.
I forced myself out of bed, hopped in the shower, and threw on some regular street clothes.
I pulled my bedroom door open and entered the empty apartment.
My mother’s small urn, her ashes resting inside, sat next to the record player in the living room. The coffee table still sat pushed off to the side, where we had danced. Dishes were piling up in the kitchen sink, and a film of dust was beginning to form on the furniture and fixtures.
Since her passing, I hadn’t done anything with the apartment. I didn’t have the energy, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to that last day with her.
The hospital staff was a significant help in my mother’s death, though I decided there would be no need for a funeral. Aside from money being tight, there was no immediate family to come anyway. There were maybe a couple of people at Blondie’s who may have wished to give their condolences, but I felt no desire to associate with the diner, or with my donor.
Still, while I was angry with my mother’s lies that had come to light, I was working on forgiveness.
Despite everything, that was something she had excelled at.
I pieced myself together and hurried out the door because the Color Wheel was gathering to watch the speech of the succeeding President Stetson.
Peter was nervous, though I went back and forth on the topic. I understood where he was coming from. However, it seemed like he was overreacting just a little.
Although, I admit that there was uncertainty with any possible outcomes after seeing the inequality sign painted on that wall a couple of days prior.
We turned the television on, and it didn’t seem to matter what channel we picked because the coverage of the rally was the same on every single one.
On the giant screen, it showed a huge crowd of predominantly white people. There were a few people of color who looked to be protesting, and each time before the camera panned away quickly, it looked as though men in all black attire took them away.
“Did you see that?!” exclaimed Peter.
“I did,” I replied.
Everyone else remained silent, perhaps unsure or not paying attention like we were. Our eyes were glued to the spectacle.
The crowd cheered wildly as the compact man dressed in royal blue approached the podium. He had his salt and pepper hair combed over neatly, and his powerful black eyes locked into the camera. As the crowd simmered, he began:
“From the torch of Lady Liberty, to the golden gate which rests on our western shore, equality is what this great land of America promises. Equality is what we the people tirelessly fight for as we clock in and out of our daily lives. However, recent events have proven that our nation has gone astray on this promise. We’ve been allowing people of colored nations to cross over into our land, taking with them our employment and financial stability for our families! We’ve set aside the great words of our creator and have allowed the homosexuals to run rampant amongst our streets, sprinkling their toxic lifestyles on our youths, thus infecting them with the sins of the devil. But fear not, for I am here now!”
The crowd cheered uproariously.
“Yes!” He smirked, “I am here to redeliver on the promise of our once great country. Know that our president will not have died in vain, and we will honor him with the Cleansing of America. We will start by removing such filth as the homosexual foreigner who took our leader’s life. Know that those who do not share the colors and values of our Christian founders will be purged from our country. They are not welcome here, as equality in America is strictly for the pure. Mark this day, for this is the beginning of the rebirth of our nation. This is the beginning of a new era! It’s time to sweep the streets and clean up America!”
The crowd began to boom with joyous cheers. They were enthralled with their new leader.
Peter jumped up and turned the television off as fast as he could.
No one spoke.
The nervous energy that filled the room had turned ominous.
Stetson’s condescending tyrannical verbiage and the roaring of the whitewashed cheers echoed in my mind.
It felt like everything the world had seen before.
As Peter had feared, the life and freedoms I’d taken for granted were going to be stripped away, as with everything else that had already been taken from us.
The most tragic significance was that I hadn’t even started living yet.
Sitting there, while the room filled with hostility, I wished for nothing more than to hide in my mother’s arms, but I couldn’t.
In a way, I was almost grateful for that, as she wouldn’t have to endure the dark times that waited ahead.
History wasn’t going to be made. Rather, it was going to be repeated.
Nine
Mass deportation began as the first step of Stetson’s planned “clean up.”
American borders were shut down. No one could come in and no one got out, unless one was being sent out.
The first to go were the Mexican, Muslim, and Asian immigrants. They were stripped of their green cards, visas, and American citizenship status, and sent back to their home country. Many who were undocumented were turned in or captured like stray dogs.
If they happened to have children that were born on American soil, they were detained at the border and sent t
o facilities where they were treated like prisoners.
According to some reports, before all but one news source, Stetson-approved of course, was shut down, the children were given zombie-inducing amounts of mood stabilizers. It was in effort to keep them calm and under control in between medical and scientific experimentations.
The kids all shared one giant room, forced to sleep three to a twin cot. For every ten children, there was one toilet, and one slice of bread for every two kids.
If a child made it through the scientific invasions, then they didn’t survive the malnourishment and vice versa.
In an interview, bringing truth to the hearsay, Stetson boldly justified this by stating, “It will better our people’s knowledge of human health, while saving thousands of dollars with free testing. We can’t rely on the test results we get from a monkey, can we? No, because that’s assuming we were once monkeys, which I can tell ya, I am and never was a damn ape. So, you see, this is how they’ll contribute to our society. After all, we own them and this is what they were born in our country to do.”
Soon after, another announcement was made by President Stetson on his America the Great news network.
“To further stick to my promise, as I am a man of my word, all blacks will be allocated to a local shelter where they’ll be prepped for mass transport to Africa,” he started. “We’re finally cleaning out our inner cities and returning what we stole,” he chuckled. “We’re an honest people,” he shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
I was in disbelief.
What was happening was growing to be more unfathomable every time Stetson opened his mouth. He seemed to feed off of the uneducated fears that remained in the greater portion of our nation.
The portion I had hoped I’d never have to admit still lingered.
This type of hatred was exactly the reason I didn’t like politics, and why I ignored it almost entirely until my friendship with Peter.
I didn’t understand how the rest of the government could allow Stetson to keep doing what he was doing. Everything he had been saying was entirely unjust and anti-American.
We as a country had reached another level of discrimination, and Stetson had single-handedly isolated the whole of America from the world.
After Stetson’s update, we never heard any further details from the president, other than his claims of monetary gain and hefty decreases in crime nationwide.
“All thanks to the Cleanse,” he promised.
If anything, it had to have been fake news.
Word had gotten out from rogue news sources that riots were breaking out across the nation like wildfires. However, they were extinguished as quickly as they were started.
The people didn’t stand a chance against the heavy artillery and censorship from the government.
The speed at which everything was happening was just as unimaginable as it itself was. It had seemed planned, as if all the cleanup had been carefully thought out over a very long period of time. The execution of it all was exceptionally well done.
I cautiously walked the streets to and from campus. I watched as several groups of various ethnic backgrounds were hauled off by government officials slightly resembling S.W.A.T. They wore black, bulky outfits and on their back they had “Borders” printed in bold red.
They appeared to be a souped-up version of the Border Patrol and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.
If there was any form of resistance by those to be deported, Borders beat them into submission. I had only ever heard of such events in history class. Never in my wildest thoughts had I imagined I’d see it in real time.
One man had tried to run, but they took him down with stun guns, and with their bats, they beat him unconscious and dragged him into the back of one of the deportation vans.
All the while a mass of cheering white skinned people began to form around the scene.
It all made me wonder, again, about my old childhood friend Mya.
If she wasn’t the one in the body bag all that time ago, then she’d be living through the current nightmare of what I was seeing around me. No matter the outcome, Mya’s life was laced with tragedy.
At that moment, I would’ve given up everything to sit down with her again and enjoy the innocence of orange creamsicles and Go Fish.
Nothing but peace and innocence. At least that’s how things were for me, back then.
With the exception of a couple of silenced protesters, the rest of “White America” decided to keep its ignorant face occupied with screen time and follow along with Stetson.
They’d grown complacent, not questioning a thing. If they weren’t being affected, then they didn’t seem to care what was happening around them.
Though I was no better than the people described. I, too, remained silent. I knew that if I wanted to survive, I had to mind my own way.
I wasn’t proud to walk around in my white skin. I was privileged. I was lucky. My awareness of this fact was laced with guilt.
I was alone.
I hadn’t returned to Blondie’s, nor did anyone from the diner reach out. Nicolas was still absent, which ate away at me. It left me to continue to wonder if he was abstaining from men, or if he was out seeking someone else. It had occurred to me that I could’ve done some investigating of my own on the HomoSphere, but my time off of it had further ingrained a disdain for it. The promiscuous lifestyle it promoted wasn’t of my taste, and if I had seen Nicolas on there, then it would it would simply have made me jealous.
There was no word from Peter either. He had gone dark, afraid of what the world was becoming. It wasn’t without reason, as the unequal sign was popping up in more and more places: bumper stickers, clothing, sign posts, and graffiti. It had officially become a movement amongst the people of the United States. Stetson hadn’t even enacted it, but he most certainly was not preventing it. If anything, he encouraged it with his speech about ridding our land of the “filth,” in which he included people such as Peter and myself.
It was exactly the type of politics that Nicolas spoke about controlling him, and what was keeping him from me.
It was with that, I decided I wasn’t going to wait for Nicolas or accept the reasons for his actions.
At the end of Art History, I hurried after him. He wasn’t going to ignore me this time.
“Nicolas!” I shouted from behind him. He was wearing full-length, straight cut jeans and a gray long-sleeve button up top, which hugged his body as tightly as I wished to.
He turned to face me. His eyes lit up, and my chest burst with joy. The light then quickly died out.
“Not right now,” he whispered as he took a few steps backward. He seemed rushed. “Meet me, here, at the entrance of the hall tonight.”
I moved forward toward him, but he kept spreading distance between us.
“I really can’t do this right now,” he warned.
He turned and hurried away. I didn’t even have time to get a word out. I was confused, but I respected his wishes and turned to leave.
Standing behind me was Moose, who had seemingly appeared from thin air.
He puffed his chest at me.
On him, he wore a black shirt, which had the red Alpha Omega Psi symbols printed on it. Though it was different from the first time I saw it. There was a faint gray inequality sign positioned on the black background centered in the red Omega symbol.
He stared down at me with vicious hazel eyes. His brows furrowed with an eternal annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” I said in effort to not provoke the beast.
“You will be soon, little bitch boy,” he said as he moved to the side to let me pass. “You seen Nicolas?”
I tried to not show my unease and disgust for his incorrect use of grammar. It was hard to believe that he was at the top of his high school class. Though I considered that maybe he spoke poorly on purpose as a way to distract his audience from something he didn’t want them to know.
“I haven’t,” I lied rat
her plainly.
He grunted and smirked, “See you, faggot,” as he turned and disappeared ominously around the corner.
Moose carried with him a heavy, dark energy. Long after he had gone, it hung in the air like sulfur.
Night fell, and I left for Huntington Hall.
The streets were expectedly quiet, due to Stetson’s call for a curfew. Now, America was to be in bed by 11 in the evening, and out no earlier than 5 in the morning.
If one was caught out during this time, there would be a fine of no less than $300, but no more than $1,000. Stetson had also made it abundantly clear that jail time was not out of the question.
“Only savages roam the streets at night,” he was quoted. “We must do everything in our power to contain them.”
In addition to the curfew, the people who hadn’t been removed from the nation hid away in the comfort of their homes.
I looked at my watch. It was 9 in the evening. Perhaps I, too, should’ve been home, but I’d rather have been with Nicolas.
I kept my head down and walked at a steady, but inconspicuous pace. A chill came in off the ocean, making the evening all the more unsettling, but he kept me going.
A few blocks down, I finally saw the beckoning light of the campus.
I rushed my way through the lit pathways to Huntington Hall, where I found him waiting for me on the steps.
I hurried up to him. “Hey...”
He shushed me. “Follow me,” he whispered as he hopped up from the step and grabbed my hand. He pulled me rather aggressively around the corner and into the darkness of the building.
I was growing impatient with his antics. I’d waited for so long to have this moment with him.
“Come on, Nick,” I erupted. “I’m tired of your mysteries, and these goddamn games-”
He grabbed me by my shirt and pushed me up against the wall, bringing his mouth to mine. There was more passion and longing in his lips than before. The heat radiating from his mouth subdued the cold on my back from the brick and mortar. His hands were all over me, mine all over him. He gently bit down on my bottom lip and lightly tugged, which piqued my arousal. Then he let go and pulled himself away to take a breath.
