Freedom's Light: Short Stories

by Brad R Torgersen

  Daniel put his painting up on the display board, dutifully accepted the praise, and headed back to his seat. He saw Colin, the boy who got in trouble with an unapproved sketch a few weeks ago, coming up the steps to the dreaded Guillotine. Few things were harder than being forced to destroy one’s work, and Daniel could only look on in sympathy. Colin performed the ritual of destruction without complaint, and the teacher smiled, satisfied.

  The slogan praising the defeat of the human spirit still hung at the front of the classroom, and Daniel felt a sudden urge to tear it down. That, however, would serve no purpose. He had made his choice. He had the Room now, fellow artists who shared his vision. Someday the world would be ready. Till then, they had to cope, to survive. Colin, clearly scared away from further defiance by a recent beating, would have to do the same on his own …

  Unless …

  No. Too soon. Too risky. I can’t.

  Why not?

  The bell rang before Daniel could formulate an objection.

  Daniel pushed his way through the crowd of exiting students and hurried to catch up with Colin on the path leading from the school building to the rail station.

  “Hey, Colin, wait up!”

  “What do you want?”

  “Uh …” Daniel, startled at the burning hatred in the normally reserved boy’s eyes, momentarily forgot what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry about your painting.”

  “Sure you are,” Colin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Now leave me alone. Won’t get time to talk anyway before my Friends get here.”

  “I just want to show you something. Please?”

  “Fine, whatever. Make it qui— oh, hi, guys. What took you so long?”

  Two members of Colin’s group of Friends had blocked their path, and the third came up from behind.

  “Well, well,” Jason, the group leader, drawled, clearly enjoying himself. “First you blow an assignment, and now we got us an unapproved association.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “Whatever shall we do?”

  Colin rolled his eyes. “Just get on with it. I’m busy.”

  Daniel watched as the other two Friends grabbed Colin’s arms from behind in a practiced motion. Jason stepped up, aiming a punch under his victim’s ribs …

  Daniel’s brain sorted through the options, first the impulse to physically interfere, and then the equally strong desire to simply walk away. Much to his own surprise, he—or rather the subconscious part of him—had settled on something different.

  “No, wait!” he shouted. Jason flinched, his fist missing the target.

  Four pairs of eyes turned to Daniel, expressions ranging from disbelief to hostility. Once again, he considered running away, but it was too late.

  “Wait,” he repeated, trying to buy himself more time to think. “OK, so, Jason, guys … I have a proposition for you.”

  Jason turned to him, eyebrow raised, smirking like a cat considering a new breed of mouse.

  “I got a proposition too, O’Malley. You go away, and I don’t kick your butt.”

  “Whatever,” Daniel shrugged. “I was going to make sure Colin here doesn’t cause problems for your group ever again, but hey …”

  “No worries,” Jason chuckled. “We take care of our own, like Friends should.”

  “If you say so. Seems to me, two violations in less than a month … looks like you got no control. Almost like you can’t do your Pioneer duty, or something.”

  Jason backhanded him across the face. Daniel stumbled back, feeling blood in his mouth, but managed to keep his balance.

  “OK,” he said, raising his arms in mock surrender. “That totally just proved how in control you are. Bye. But I won’t offer again.”

  He picked up his backpack and turned to leave, but Jason grabbed his arm.

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” Daniel shrugged again. “I help take care of your problem and you, I don’t know … I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Surprise me.”

  “No problems, ever?”

  “That’s what I said. We gonna stay here all day, or what?”

  Jason waved his hand, and the two boys released Colin’s arms.

  “Thought so. Come along now.”

  Colin did not resist when Daniel grabbed the back of his shirt and pushed him roughly ahead.

  “Better do as you promised,” Jason shouted. “Or I will …”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Daniel waved at the group behind him without turning. “You’ll thank me later. A new paint set would be nice.”

  “Where’re we going?” Colin finally asked after they turned off the path leading to the rail station and towards an abandoned area that had once been a local strip mall.

  “Away,” Daniel said curtly. “Keep walking.”

  He felt a twinge of guilt, wondering if Colin had actually expected to get hurt, but then decided it was better to stay quiet until they were in a private spot.

  “This will do,” Daniel pointed to the doorway leading to one of the less disgusting spaces inside the former shopping area. “We can talk in here. No cameras.”

  “Is this when you turn me into a perfect little Citizen again?” Colin glared at him, apparently having gotten over the initial fear. “You got brainwashing equipment in here somewhere?”

  “You got me. Brainwashings-R-Us. Welcome to my dungeon.”

  Daniel dropped his backpack to the floor and pulled out his sketchpad.

  “Here, you idiot. That’s what I wanted to show you before we got interrupted.”

  “That’s the sketch for your ‘Hope Is Lost’ painting. You won. Congratulations. I’m not playing.”

  “Look,” Daniel said softly. “I know you think I gave up, doing what the teacher wanted. But the truth is, there’s more than one way to fight them. Look at the sketch again.”

  Colin frowned, turning to the window to get more light.

  The sketch perfectly mirrored Daniel’s painting that had been praised by the teacher and voted as best representing the ‘Hope Is Lost’ theme. A small mouse scurried down an alley, trying its best to escape from the cat behind it. The desperation of the prey animal was palpable, even in the black and white sketch—the tension in its muscles, the fur standing up in mortal fear. The cat’s sharp claws were within striking distance, the fatal contact only seconds away.

  Except …

  “Oh,” Colin whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  The alternate version of the sketch had one detail that did not make it onto the classroom painting—a small hole in the foundation of one of the alley’s buildings. From the positions of both animals and the implied speed, it was clear that the mouse had an excellent chance of escape. Hope might have been tenuous, but it was not lost. Not in this version of reality.

  “I’m painting this version this week. With my good paints.”

  “But … What’s the point? What good is art that no one gets to see?”

  “Ah, but here’s a beautiful part. Of course, there’s a catch … Actually, two.”

  “Forget brainwashing,” Colin chuckled. “You’re about to grow horns and ask for my immortal soul, aren’t you?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. First, you stay out of trouble at school. You’ll have a better way to fight them now, one that does not involve getting beat up. Second, no one else can know what I’m about to tell you. I need your word on this, right now.”

  “You got it.”

  Daniel eyed the other boy for a while, and then made the decision.

  “Next Wednesday at four, come to the Liberty Gardens building. Oh, and … put on a better shirt, OK?”

  Daniel took the long way home. There was a place he had wanted to visit for a while, and today seemed a proper occasion.

  He saw the lilac tree immediately. It was hard to miss in its new incarnation. Some of the residents must have taken care of it over the last several weeks. Most of the dead branches had been pruned, and the soil around the roots looked freshly watered and free of
weeds. The sprout, once so tender and hesitant, was now a healthy-looking branch, and the buds had opened to reveal flowers of a rare pinkish-white color.

  Daniel breathed in the floral aroma and laughed in pure joy. Then he reached into his backpack, took out the sketchpad and a freshly sharpened pencil and went to work on his next creation.

  About Marina Fontaine

  Marina Fontaine is a Russian by birth, an American by choice, and an unrepentant book addict. She runs Small Government Book Fan Club on Goodreads, Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance group on Facebook, and a cultural commentary blog, Marina’s Musings.

  Marina is the author of Chasing Freedom (a 2016 Dragon Award finalist for Apocalyptic Novel) and The Product, a dystopian novella published by the Superversive Press. Room to Breathe, Marina’s contribution to the anthology, is a backstory for one of the characters in Chasing Freedom.

  Marina lives in New Jersey, working as an accountant by day and a writer by night.

  @MashaK99

  marinafontaine.blogspot.com

  Victory Garden

  Tom Rogneby

  John trudged up the driveway. His body felt like it had been put through a wringer before he got off the bus at the Floyd’s Fork station. After walking the steady uphill path for a mile or so, all he wanted was a hot shower, a meal he didn’t have to chew too hard, and a few hours of sleep before he had to go back to work. He was lucky to have his job as a miner at the old landfill, but picking through the garbage of six generations of Louisvillians for scraps of metal and plastic was hard work, and a couple hours on the bus didn’t help.

  “Not what I expected to be doing when I was 40,” he grumbled to himself.

  Noting for the umpteenth time that he needed to repair the step on the porch, he unlocked the door and went inside. The screen door slammed behind him, sending echoes across the house.

  “Honey, I’m home!” he called out. Happy to see him, Bess came out of the kitchen and came over to greet him. Scratching her behind the ears, John sat down to kick off his boots.

  “How’s it going, girl? Did you have a good day? Any luck finding a job?” he asked as Bess leaned in to get the full effect of the scratching. The old mongrel had been his companion for a few years, and she did an excellent job at keeping rabbits and such out of the garden, and strangers out of the house during his long work shifts.

  John dropped his boots on the mat next to the door, and started shedding his clothes as he walked back to the bathroom. Dropping his work clothes in the bottom of the tub, he turned on the shower. He stepped in and started washing the sweat and grime he had accumulated during a twelve hour shift at the Louisville Municipal Recyclables Recovery Facility, or as he and his co-workers called it, “The Garbage Mine”.

  In the few minutes of hot water the ancient water heater gave him, he made sure to rinse out his clothes as well as he could. Once the trickle of water went from tepid to cold, he rinsed off as quickly as he could, shut off the shower, and stepped out.

  After toweling off and putting on an old pair of jeans and a faded tee shirt, he wrung mud-brown water from his work clothes. Taking them to the backyard, he put them on the clothesline and pulled down and folded his second set.

  “At least I’ll smell OK in the morning,” he grumbled, repeating his evening mantra. “Riding on the back of the bus so that I don’t gross out everyone else on the way home is enough.”

  As he stepped back in the house, he grabbed the leftover rabbit leg and what was left of the tomatoes he’d grilled the night before from the refrigerator, and headed to the living room. Slipping his ID card into the remote control for the television, he thumbed the power button. Rather than showing the second quarter of last Saturday’s football game, the screen flashed the logo for the Metropolitan Planning and Enforcement Division. Swearing under his breath, John pushed the “Message” button on the remote. The fleur-de-lis on the screen faded and was replaced by the face of Bob Couch, Junior, his neighbor and the neighborhood agent for MPED.

  “Greetings, my friend! As part of my normal inspections of our block, I found several infractions of the new food regulations on your property. As you know, our friends at MPED are always working to ensure the safety of our residents. To that end, a new regulation on non-regulated food production has been passed. In short, growing of produce outside of the community gardens, which the Metro Council has graciously put at our disposal, is prohibited. I noted that you have many fruit bearing trees, bushes, and vines scattered around your property, as well as garden beds. I’m sorry to say that all of these must be removed immediately,” Bob recited, a practiced look of concern on his face.

  “However, for a small fee, I would be happy to assist you in the process of acquiring a license to run your property as an orchard. Of course, that will require you to donate a percentage of your harvest to the community food co-op, as well as submit to regular inspections from the Metropolitan Produce Council. If you are interested in exploring this option, there is no need to destroy your fruit trees and such at this time. Please tell me if you want to go after the orchard license when you message me indicating that you have torn down your garden beds. Non-essential access to telecommunications from your home have been disabled until I receive confirmation of your compliance with this order. Success and happiness!” he finished with a false smile.

  The television picture changed back over to the fleur-de-lis, with two pieces of text at the bottom. The first one blinked “Reply”, while the other said “Summon Emergency Services”. No matter which button on the remote he mashed, nothing changed on the screen. Finally, he turned the screen off with a huff of disgust.

  “Don’t feel like watching football anyway,” John grumbled as he scrubbed the stubble on his face with his hands. “What am I going to do now?”

  His fruit and vegetables were a huge part of his food supply, especially in the winter when produce of any kind was hard to come by. It didn’t matter how many punches were still on your ration card or how much credit you still had in your account when there just weren’t any apples on the shelves.

  He would also lose out on having fresh food and preserves to trade with, which would mean losing a lot of the little luxuries they bought. The dollars he made separating recyclables from compost at the dump were enough to pay his taxes and buy a few things at the stores, but anything beyond survival depended on his ability to provide something to his neighbors that they could not get for themselves. The skills he had in the garden and the kitchen went a long way in helping him live, rather than just survive.

  I wonder how many hours the illiterate little bastard worked on that speech. Probably has it memorized from some class or another downtown, John thought bitterly as he leaned back on the couch. At least the son of a bitch waited until September to pull this. I might have just enough put back already to pay his bribe and still have a jar of jam to celebrate Easter with.

  John reached over and picked up his plate. He ate the rabbit and tomatoes, chewing mechanically. His mind was going over what he had and how he could cheat his way out of this predicament. The stubborn and devious streaks he had inherited from his parents weren’t going to let this go.

  “’Small fee’, my ass.” he hissed under his breath. “Officious prick made sure there was still some harvesting to be done so he could get a bigger haul out of me.”

  Still racking his brain for a solution, he put his plate on the floor so that Bess could chew on the leg bone and lick the juices from the plate. He scratched the mutt between her ears as she gnawed, then he thought of a little hidden spot in the woods behind the house.

  John went out the kitchen door and walked to the shed to get a couple of tools and a basket. Grabbing tomatoes, peppers, and the rest of the vegetables from the garden, he filled the basket for the last time. Using a spade, he pulled up the remaining tomato and cucumber plants and threw them on the garbage heap. He carefully pulled up each of the strawberry plants and put them onto his mother’s old garden car
t.

  A smile broke his face as he thought of the possibility of running into moonshiners while he planted his illicit strawberry patch under the big tree he used as a perch to poach squirrels and rabbits. He couldn’t do it with a .22 like his father had taught him, but the bow and arrow his father had left him did the job just as well, and it was easy to hide in the eaves of the shed.

  After taking down the lattice for the beans and peas, John tore down their garden box and the strawberry beds next to it. The fancy tiered box came down pretty easily. Now that he looked at it, it probably would have started collapsing in the next few years anyway. The other strawberry beds came down just as easily.

  As he hummed and cussed to himself, John heard his neighbor, Jim, coming across the lawn. Jim was a good sort, but John had learned years ago to be careful what he said to and around him. Being a member of both of the main families in the neighborhood meant that what Jim knew, they knew. John’s father had run afoul of Jim’s father and his cousin, Bob Couch, Senior, after John had repeated some of the things which were said around the dinner table one night. It wasn’t anything that his dad hadn’t been able to handle, but it had meant regular trouble with the authorities over the years.

  “Whatcha up to, neighbor?” Jim asked as he looked over the growing pile of old lumber. He was still tall, and had been athletic while they were growing up. Now, an impressive paunch sagged over his beltline. He wore what to a lot of folks would think were rough clothes, but to somebody who made his living sifting through the leavings of a hundred years of garbage, the affectation of commonness was insulting. Jim worked for the Metro roads department, but John couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen callouses on his neighbor’s hands. Those who could pull strings worked indoors, while those who couldn’t, well, they just worked where they could. It was the way things worked in Louisville.