A Mother's Tale

PREFACE:

The world in which this story takes place is a part of a universe that I began to create in 2008 at the age of 17. This particular story was intended to be very dark, with extreme depictions of hate, oppression, and violence. I had abandoned it in 2014 with around 6,000 words. This version stands at 2,000 as it had been part of a design for the "Doomsday Diary" dystopian fiction challenge from June of 2021.

The intent is to show the effects of being born into a totalitarian regime, a regime which I had designed to both reflect failed ideals of the past, or extreme versions of the ideals of the present. I also wanted to present a teenage, almost preteen-aged mentality to the 24 year old protagonist, as this regime considers anyone under the age of 25 to still be a child.

The female perspective was necessary to give a more meaningful experience to the themes of violence against women, sexism, race, class, and hate that may appear in this work.

As a result of that, some instances of controversial subjects may be too intense, or offensive, for some readers.



A Mother's Tale

By Jeffrey Bilodeau

Usually when I would wake up early on days like this I wouldn’t spend so much time looking in the mirror. Today was different though. It’s my twenty-fourth birthday, and in one more year I’ll be considered a full grown woman. I can’t believe the face I see staring back at me, how much it reminds me of that photograph of my mom that’s inside the heart-shaped locket sitting on my vanity.

It’s a funny thing. I’d always hated her while growing up because it was her fault we were treated the way we were. It was her fault that all the other kids would point and laugh at me while calling me names like “the whore’s daughter.” She knew it was illegal for low class citizens to have two kids, and so did my dad, which could only explain why she hid it from him. I’d always felt like she deserved what happened to her. When the Party had learned of her treason they raided our home. They destroyed everything I had, and then they took her away to the clinic to have the abortion.

That was the last time I saw her.

In my memory, I had always thought of her as a coward. She looked so weak and pathetic with her frantic screaming and crying. Fighting against the Grey Guards the way that she did. Thinking she could get one of their guns. At five months it was still just a fetus. It wasn’t even a human, and she already had me. I was supposed to be her number one, her only one. My dad even cried for weeks, and I really could never understand why. They weren’t supposed to have a second child, and she had been lying to him for five months. Just because she died She was a felon. A criminal. A traitor to the Party. What I had always thought is, dad should have been happy she was gone. He could have found someone who wasn’t such an embarrassment, someone who wasn’t a disgrace.

It had already been hard enough for them to have me. Why did she want another one? The Party doesn’t approve of breeding within the same race due to their pro-miscegenation laws. The only reason the Grey Committee approved their request to conceive me is because my dad possessed the genetic traits that supported darker skin pigmentation, even though he was light. Yet somehow, I still ended up with my mother’s blue eyes, her light blonde hair, and her light skin. It wasn’t right that I had to be the only one in the District with that combination. I always hated her for that. It was her fault. I always hated not being able to look like the other kids in my school.

*****

There it is again. Her heart-shaped locket. My dad used imaginative story telling to say how he had found it. Many years after the Great Revolution, when the toxic rains had finally stopped and most of the bodies returned to dust, the Party had assigned his demolition crew to one of the old towns over by the Forbidden Zone. He said they were tearing down some dirty old house, and when the walls fell, he was overtaken by this view of an immaculate garden in the backyard. He said he went back there in disbelief that a garden could be abandoned for so long, and yet look as though it had been trimmed the day before. While back there, he had seen something glistening in the sunlight inside a pile of rotting wood and dirt. He couldn’t help but to take it home and give it to my mom. He said it was so she could always keep him in her heart when they had to be away at work.

She had been wearing it that night they came to arrest her and take her in. But during her struggle with the Grey Guards, it had been pulled off her neck when she was placed into a choke hold. Right before they got her eyes with mace and used the taser on her—and she still kept fighting them. A few weeks later my dad found out she had died. The Grey Committee said they wouldn’t return her body since she committed treason and assaulted members of the Party. Almost immediately, he removed his photo from it and replaced it with a photo of her from when she was twenty-five.

He had given it to me for my thirteenth birthday, just a few months after she died. I hated it. I hated him for giving it to me. I never wanted to look at it, and I certainly never wanted to wear it. I couldn’t believe he thought I wanted anything of hers. I’d thrown it away so many times over the years, but my dad always managed to find it and place it back to my room.

I was younger then. Perhaps I was stupid, or naïve. I picked up the heart-shaped locket from my vanity, feeling the weight of it’s silver in my hand, and I opened it to look inside. That’s mom. The woman I had spent so many years hating and despising because that’s what a good Party Member would do. She used to say “You’re so lucky. They’ve selected you to be on the Grey Committee. When you become an adult you’ll be a high class citizen.” And then she would complain about how the Party made her work the fields. I had always thought she was selfish for that. I had always thought it would have been a great honor to know you’re the one picking food for everyone else to eat. You are the one who is feeding the Party, and when the Party eats the world eats too.

I’ve made up my mind. I’ll wear the locket when I visit the clinic later. As I approach my last year of school, and I’m getting closer to my assigned position on the Grey Committee, I’m beginning to see a different side to the world. A different point of view to this Grey Reign that I’d once admired so much, that it caused me to hate my own mother.

*****

The Grey Party was always brilliant at hiding it’s true self behind committees full of young women such as myself. We had always felt secure, and why shouldn’t we? Before the Great Revolution civilians could easily own weapons, the big and powerful kind that the soldiers use. It was part of the reason the Grey Party had to take back control of the world. We weren’t safe with civilians owning those things. The Party also implemented the most advanced surveillance systems the world has ever seen. Cars, phones, televisions, and computers all possessed microphones, video cameras, and tracking devices that were always enabled to ensure our protection from attacks. Every street corner and lamp post had been outfitted with cameras. The skies were patrolled by low flying drones which were armed with ammunition to keep us safe. Nothing could hurt us. Safety was the priority.

Or so that’s what we have all been taught. It was not too long ago that I had found myself alone at school. Many of these classmates still called me "the whore’s daughter.” They would tell me I don’t deserve a slot on the committee because of my mother. No one would sit next to me, or speak to me outside of the insults. Then one day it happened, a girl my age came up to me and told me she had something important to show me regarding my mother. I told her I didn’t care about anything my mother did and I wasn’t interested in knowing the secrets of a traitor. This girl though, she really insisted.

She had asked me for over half the school year. I considered her my friend. I never had a friend before. I had always been alone so that was new to me. She started to bring up my mom again, and despite me still hating my mother, I would listen because this girl was my friend. She wanted to meet the next day after school down the alley past Sally’s Donuts. She’d known about the heart-shaped locket—the same one I’m wearing around my neck right now—she said bring it because she wanted so see my mom's picture. I thought it was odd, I really didn’t like the idea of having my mom's photo with me all day, but I promised her I’d bring it.

The next day after school I found my friend standing near the back of the alley where she said to meet. Three boys our age were hanging out with her too. I’d never been with a boy before, never kissed one, never held hands. They made me feel nervous, even though one was cute. "If she trusts them I can trust them too right?" I thought. She called me over and introduced everyone to me. The boys were actually her step brothers, and the cutest was their younger brother—high class citizens can have more than one child, and they were very high class. She asked about the locket. I removed it from my pocket and the cute boy grabbed it. He said something that sounded like “that’s her.” And that’s when it happened. The two oldest boys threw me to the ground and held me there.

My friend knelt beside me while I was pinned to the ground, and she showed me photos of my mother that had been in an envelope. Her face was swollen, covered in cuts and bruises. Most of her teeth were missing. I almost feel like one eye was missing too. My friend then—I don’t think I’m going to call her my friend anymore, I’ll just call her The Bitch–The Bitch begins to explain the truth I never knew. My mom had actually never been pregnant. Both her and dad had surgeries to make them sterile after I had been born.

The Bitch called the cute boy over and she whispered something to him. She then turned back to me and explained what really happened. Her father, being of the highest rank in the Grey Committee, had wanted my mom to leave my dad and to be with him. When she refused, he falsified documents regarding her pregnancy and he not only had her arrested, but he had tortured and raped her for years before he finally murdered her.

It was at the conclusion of that story when the most horrifying moment of my life began. The boy I’d called cute began to force himself upon me while attempting to remove my clothes. I screamed and begged for help, but the other boys were holding me down too tight and I couldn’t break free. The Bitch walked over to me and repeatedly kicked me in the head until I could no longer scream or struggle. Then she told me one last secret: her father murdered her mother so he could be with mine, and when that failed, he executed the father of her two step brothers, so everything I’m going through is their revenge.

I fought and I fought until I had no fight left. The Bitch kept kicking me as the third brother prepared for his turn, but just before he could start, a drone appeared in the sky. With three quick, loud, popping sounds, all three boys fell dead beside me. When The Bitch saw that, she decided to run, and I heard one final pop and watched her fall.

Innocent people never run from drones.

*****

That was six months ago. I feel pride by wearing mom’s heart-shaped locket, knowing she wasn’t a traitor. Especially now that I'm at this clinic. I reach down to my stomach and feel the kicking bumps from the squirming fetus inside me. I hope that one day, in the future, when I am actually ready, that I will be as good a mother as she had been.