Autonomy: a novel

by A. R. Braun

  “Scared little girl takes a fake mark, then fires a shot at my head at my blind side. Scared little girl hides in motel rooms and shoots men married to children or animals when they don’t expect it.” He rushed to her side without moving his feet. “Didn’t anyone tell you that you can’t be a coward if you’re going to be a Christian?” he shouted.

  She wept.

  He smiled an evil grin. She noticed he sported a gold tooth now, in the left side of his maw. “Yes, young Scout, cry like a little girl. You’d think you’d scraped your knee.” He harrumphed. That’s so … so … you.”

  He jabbed her in the arm with the pen, making her cry out, but sending sweet relief. As he walked away to get a view of the world he owned below, he continued. “You will take the real RFID chip and be my personal assistant.”

  She forced it out: “So you can have a PA that looks like a little girl?”

  He turned and pinned her with his eyes, one brow raised. “Well, yes, that is in vogue now, isn’t it?” He snickered again. “But no.” He wiped his face as if to purge himself of her. “I want you because you’ve got true grit. Don’t think I don’t know about your little escape from Mack and Lelila, a couple of very dangerous young people who not only tortured you to what should’ve been the brink of sanity, but intimidated you with what must have been the most sinister torture known to modern man—outside of waterboarding.

  “Which I have legalized again, by the way. Oh, that Obama, outlawing it. His bleeding-heart ass is out of my way now. Who do you think helped him pass an unconstitutional law? Bush, too. Barak eventually proved as untrustworthy as Bush. I yanked the platform out from under him.”

  She rammed the bed with her fists, jiggling the IV bags. “Stop babbling! Just tell me what you want me to do so I can refuse!”

  “Petty little American bitch with a middle-school mentality and a daft vocabulary to boot.” He glided over again and picked up her bed with his pinky, making her moan with terror. He dropped the bed with a crash, forcing her to cry out.

  He stared her down with his wide eyes. “You’ll take the microchip willingly or I’ll waterboard you.”

  She looked away again, her stomach turning.

  “If you don’t see it my way, you’ll have brain damage and physical damage, also.

  “Shall I order it done?” he barked into her face.

  Scout hung on to the memory of her dream. It was all she had.

  He recoiled as if he could read her thought. “You’ll go insane if I do it. It’s like Chinese water torture. It’ll fuck up your whole sense of reality. You’ll really think you’re going to drown.”

  She sobbed, hot tears leaking from her eyes.

  “I will have your soul. I won’t rest till the deed is done.”

  She bawled.

  “Well?” He tapped on his watch. “Time is agony.”

  She heard what sounded like a little girl screaming in a deafening falsetto until she realized it was herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Balefully, Scout recovered and was taken to a warehouse on the outskirts of Wampum by Velvet and his cronies. Forced out of the car and into the building with her wrists cuffed by a police escort who’d driven execution vehicles ahead and behind of Velvet’s limo, Scout wept, begging to be let go. There was also a military escort. They led her through many dark halls and passageways until she came to a room with red walls like blood, a board that resembled a teeter-totter—only rectangle-shaped—a hose and a towel, plus a couple of long metal bars and what looked like a mechanical screwdriver.

  They took off her flip-flops but let her keep her shorts and halter top on.

  Keening, Scout could barely force pleading words out as she became choked by the sobs that overtook her. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her body, for they didn’t air condition the space. They lay her on the brown, wooden board where her head was closer to the ground than her other end—which was up toward the ceiling—and nailed a metal rail over her feet, then her hands. She saw Velvet nod to a military serviceman. He placed what looked like a washcloth over her face, leaving room for her nose and mouth to “breathe.”

  Trembling, she was now slicked with sweat from head to toe.

  Help me, God! If I don’t get out of here, I’ll go insane!

  Velvet’s voice close to her face: “Now Scout, all you have to do is agree to the RFID chip, and I’ll stop this.”

  “Go to hell!” was her muffled response.

  “Such an impetuous child.” He sighed. “Like I said before, young Scout, waterboarding causes permanent damage. First, a gag reflex, horrid pain as you’ve never felt, dry drowning and damage to your lungs.”

  “Damn you!”

  “Scout,” he yelled in her face, “waterboarding causes brain damage. Surrender to the microchip now.

  “Don’t make me do this to you.”

  He always turned it around on her, making everything her fault. God, she hated the hypocrisy of that.

  “So we’re going to have to proceed, then?” he asked. “Will you remember your name afterward, I wonder?”

  She screamed, then begged for someone to save her. Of course no one would. This was bigger than her.

  “One more chance,” Velvet cried. “Then I’m ordering it done.”

  “F-f-fuck you … d-devil,” she cried.

  Velvet sighed again. Underneath the cloth, she could visualize him nodding at the soldier to go ahead with the torture. She tried desperately to hold on to the dream of she and her family in heaven, along with Tim and Bill.

  “Before we start the procedure,” Velvet cooed, “I have an interesting piece of information you need to hear.

  “Your friends, Bill and Timothy, we cut off their heads.”

  Scout shrieked. Tears gushed out of her eyes, making her even more dehydrated. So that’s why they’d been in heaven in her dream.

  Oh, my Lord, Jesus Christ, save me now! Make me have a heart attack and die so I don’t have to go through this torment!

  Yet she was too young for a heart attack and she knew it.

  Water poured onto her face. The effect was instantaneous. In a matter of seconds, she gagged and found she couldn’t breathe. She thrashed and flailed on the board as hard as she could.

  Flashback to her childhood: Scout at eight years old, in a pool while on vacation with her mother and grandmother, one minute frolicking with the other children, the next going under and not being able to return to the surface. Until her mother dove in and saved her.

  No one would save her now.

  Scout had never learned to swim. She’d pitched a fit about having to take lessons at the YWCA and had quit. She’d quit a lot of things, the coward she was before she got involved with Tim and Bill, making the satanic reign pay by executing men marrying children or pets.

  Was what Velvet said true? Was she still a coward? A good explanation for taking the fake RFID chip instead of suffering in the death camps with the rest.

  All she could do was mumble: “MMMMMMMMMMM!” amidst choking and gagging. After about ten seconds, the water stopped pouring down, and they rolled the board upward, H2O falling out of her nostrils and mouth. They had the wood on a see-saw-like support.

  The cloth still on her face, she was able to breathe sweet air in again as she blew water out of her nose and mouth with all her might.

  Velvet’s voice: “Take the mark now and I’ll stop this.”

  She screamed, wept, grunted, but would not give in.

  Back down she went. More water poured onto her face, the feeling like at the pool as a child when she was sure she’d drown. She couldn’t stand it, the pain excruciating, along with the knowledge that she’d have brain damage, reduced to a retarded citizen by their insane cruelty. She’d probably also need to lug around an oxygen tank like older people so often did. As her grandmother had. This caused her greater anxiety than she could bear, like when she’d paced around the motel room with her mind on fire.

  She tried like hell to fo
cus on her dream of being in heaven with the ones she loved. She also dwelled on an eternity in the lake of fire, which would be much worse than this—but the agony of being waterboarded ruled her, made her want to give in, made her have to give in.

  When they pulled her up the second time, she’d have done anything to make it stop as she snorted out water and gasped for breath.

  Anything.

  ***

  Scout lay a long table in what looked like an operating room: a bright space with what she knew was two-way glass. Partitions walled her away from contact with others, but she saw her insulin pen on a metal table nearby. She immediately jabbed herself with it, savoring the sweet medicine’s power to restore her health.

  She found it difficult to form thoughts and to breathe. Had she suffered brain damage and damage to her lungs as the Antichrist had said? Scout had to struggle voraciously to put thoughts together. She found she could if she tried hard.

  She’d caved, but now, she thought better of it. Velvet had told her to wait, that he’d be in after a short while to talk to her, followed by the doctor and nurse who would perform the operation to implant her with the real RFID chip.

  I’ve got to find a way to kill myself before they give it to me.

  Yet, again, she was in the state of mind of a murderess. That would also land her in hell, she presumed, going against the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment by offing herself.

  The curtain pulled back and Walter Emmett Velvet strolled in, accompanied by two secret-service men. The Antichrist smiled his fatherly grin and pulled up a chair. He wiped her sweaty brow with his white-as-heaven handkerchief.

  Though the air conditioner worked its ass off, Scout was sweating bullets, about to become one of the damned.

  He wiped her hair from her face. “You made the right choice, my child.” He smiled wider. “After we’re done here, a seven-course meal awaits you. Then it’s off to England to the paradise of my mansion.

  “Why did you ever have faith in the PanzerChrist in the first place? This God-dog you worshiped, I mean, really. A deity that requires you do many strange things that make you a pariah and drive you insane or he’ll throw you in an everlasting hell isn’t worth the cost of tea in China.

  “You have to balance out work and familial responsibilities, you have to join a prison ministry—and there could be a riot inside that could get you raped in the ass and get your head removed—and you have to visit sick people in the hospital, commoners who will tell you to fuck yourself royally because of all the pain they’re going through.

  “And ‘Love thine enemy.’ Nonsense! Your enemy will destroy you! Don’t you know it’s been scientifically proven to be a lie? For one to fill an ark with every species of animal, arachnid and insect on the planet, Noah would’ve had to travel to Australia. Impossible!”

  He pulled down his index and middle finger on both hands when he said, “This ‘God’ is a bully and a tyrant. ‘Worship me or I’ll burn you in the lake of fire forever’! What kind of ‘God’ is that? An unlovable one who plays pranks on you and wins through intimidation. A dog, like we’ve been saying all along.

  “I’m saving you from a dictator, that’s all.”

  Scout tried to force it out, but feared being waterboarded again: “H-He … H-He’s …”

  Velvet cocked his head to the side and sounded like Mr. Rogers when he said, “Hmm? Speak up, young Scout.”

  “H-H-He’s a … miracle worker. He teleported those animals from Australia. And He’s … God … He died for us … so He has a right to demand we worship Him.”

  Velvet bounded up, knocking over the chair. He changed into a devil again and bellowed at her, the din akin to 100 lions roaring at once.

  Scout whimpered.

  And then he was himself again, the “kindly” British chap. “Back to the waterboarding facility, I suppose?”

  Anxiety flooded Scout’s mind like the water had flooded her nasal passages and maw. “No! I’ll take the chip! I’m just sayin’, what you’re doing is … is … evil.”

  Velvet put his hands on his hips. “Evil? I wouldn’t be here coercing you into submission if it wasn’t for your God-dog. That is truly evil.

  “But He won’t be your God much longer. Not when you have my ‘mark,’ as you so crudely put it.”

  The secret servicemen chuckled. Velvet joined in on the revelry, then he stopped abruptly and narrowed his eyes to slits.

  The Antichrist managed a smile. “Well. Ahem. Time for the operation, then.” He straightened his Brooks Brothers suit, pulling it tightly on him. “I’ll go fetch the doctor and a nurse.

  “Goodbye, holy Scout. Next time we speak, you’ll be a new person … and mine.”

  With that he and the secret servicemen left.

  ***

  So this was her creed. Always a coward, always the baby, taking the easy way out. Wasn’t that why she’d ended up at Mac and Lelila’s place? Why hadn’t she taken the initiative and asked a boy she fancied out, being like all the other girls at this moment?

  These days, girls could be more aggressive than boys.

  Not her. No. She lay on a hospital bed, waiting for the mark of the beast because she had no mettle, no mayonnaise. Why couldn’t I let myself drown on that board? She was so ashamed. And, to think, her friends Tim and Bill had taken their beheading so valiantly.

  She had to do something. Had to take action, show she had cojones. Well, not literally, but figuratively.

  So she moved. Got off the bed—but not before grabbing her insulin pen—and crawled underneath one of the partitions where an elderly, wrinkled woman with bright red hair streaked with gray frowned down upon her. Her obese frame quivered at Scout’s sight.

  The lady was about to scream when Scout rushed to her and placed a hand over her mouth, the other hand holding the pen in stabbing position, inches from her face. Scout shook her head, showing the lady shrieking was a no-no.

  Then she moved to the next partition, doing the same until she lunged through the hallway, waiting room and out the hospital doors, then sprinted into the street—dodging cars—and booked into the park to hide.

  An excellent time to do so. Night had fallen.

  She climbed a tree about a hundred paces from the lagoon and waited, listening to the sirens wail.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Starving.

  When was the last time Scout had had a meal?

  If I don’t get something to eat soon, my diabetes will wreak havoc with my body.

  From her vantage point, she’d watched the execution vehicles and military jeeps race down the street and even drive through the park. She’d spied soldiers and cops running around, searching frantically for her, but she’d stayed still, quiet, hidden in the tree, not moving an inch.

  Finally, they’d given up.

  The hunger was driving her insane. Tempted to bite into her own arm, she climbed down—still clad in the hospital gown; “Bare butt to the world” sang sweetly through her mind, like a children’s song—and moved toward the Mexican restaurant next to the park.

  She approached the dumpster.

  How the mighty have fallen.

  Yet with her new state of mind—difficult to think, to reason—this didn’t seem such a bad idea. Perhaps becoming retarded would help her accept her fate and not be such a chickenshit. Maybe she’d take her waterboarding and beheading like a trooper now.

  Of course, they had a bar over the dumpster so she couldn’t get it open.

  Thank God the sun had gone down. The scorching heat dehydrated her in spades. Her mouth was so dry, she had to work hard to get enough spittle to swallow.

  Scout found she could get it open a crack, so she tried her best to reach into the pile … but she couldn’t get enough purchase.

  Great. What am I gonna do now?

  She strained her shoulder to reach harder for a garbage bag she was inches from. Scout almost had it, a little farther. Finally, a stroke of luck. She got it and pulled it towar
d her. She ripped the bag open. Inside, bits of cold food issued their stink into her nostrils.

  A half-eaten burrito. She had to fight the flies for domination. She put it to her lips. The cold food reeked a bit, made her cringe, forced her to pull it away.

  Her stomach growled. Again, and again, and again, a rabid lion.

  She found herself eating it. The meat was a bit funky-tasting, but she got it down, sweet nourishment. Now if she could only have a soda!

  I’m a bum. An eighteen-year-old hobo. I can’t believe this.

  “What … what am I—urp!—doing?” Her soliloquy sounded like lunacy to her. Eerily appropriate because she was talking to herself, a surefire sign of insanity. “In back of a restaurant with—getch!—no place to go.”

  She vomited upon the asphalt until she dry heaved.

  Standing there holding the empty burrito wrapper over a mound of regurgitation, Scout realized this had to end, and now. She wept.

  “I wanna die,” she sobbed.

  Movement in the star-filled night sky above her. Something had taken off from the roof of the hospital.

  What is that? A large bat?

  Yet bats weren’t human-sized. It had launched off the six-story roof and headed her way like a bullet. A red body with a severe face. Horns. Cloven hooves. More menacing the closer the beast came to her. She could see the scowl, the sharp teeth, the scaly skin.

  It’s Chancellor Velvet!

  Scout cried out and ran toward the park. The wings fluttered like someone taking burlap outside and beating it with a broom.

  He fell onto her back and knocked her over. His huge erection snaked large, larger, larger still, stuck in between her ass cheeks, a hot dog in a bun. She shrieked, thrashed, flailed, but he held her still.

  He rose, yanking her up with him, and he threw her with so much strength she slid all the way down the alley until her face was inches from her vomit on the ground next to the dumpster. This brought more dry heaves.

  “GET UP!” Velvet had appeared close to her.

  She pushed herself up by her hands, got to her knees and stayed there, doggy-style, not wanting to rise and look at … it. What if he was still in demonic form?