Sunrise

“Sunrise,” he thought.

“It’ll be sunrise, or I don’t know a damn thing about anything.” He knew they could not address the issue till then, when all of the servicemen switched on their phones from being mysteriously turned off from the moment they left work Friday until the moment they clocked in Monday. It’s true nobody likes to be called in on their weekend off. These men had additional aversions to answering that phone. Nobody wanted to work on their weekend off especially since they all knew that answering the phone meant aiding in the killing of yet another few dozen citizens whose only crime had been refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Families, the lot of them. And children. Defenseless children, who at the time had no choice in the matter save for the choice their parents had made.

“Yea,” he thought, decidedly.

“No one’s coming until sunrise.” He fumbled in his pocket, a moment of panic! Then relief as his fingers found the cool, pitted blob that barely held any resemblance to its heart shape. He could see her picture still expertly embossed right into the metal, but only with his mind’s eye. The actual reality was that the fire had left a mottled mess that one could just barely tell was ever an engraving.

“I wonder if it hurt….” He absently wondered to himself as he blankly stared into space.

“FUCK YES IT DID!” he snarled through gritted teeth as he slammed his fist on the table at his side. Surprisingly solid, which was a little funny because it had seemed so very unstable when he had considered it earlier. He had also, apparently, underestimated the craftsmanship of the locket. It had cut into his hand drawing blood, which was probably only possible because it had been partially melted when it fell from what was left of her.

“The fire had probably given it strength,” he reasoned.

“It does that.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t the radiating beautiful strength one tends to immediately notice and admire but the mute, ugly strength that begins to infect one who has lived to see and endure far too much. The strength of which he, himself had become an unwilling bearer.

“Strength like this is not the kind you wear,” he thought.

“It’s the kind you bear.”

He began once again to walk slow, deliberate circles around the small room he currently inhabited. Hearing the soft thud of his heels with each…measured…and deliberate…step. He was thinking, anticipating all the while mulling over the circumstances in his head. He gave a sarcastic half-chuckle mid-step.

“Heh.” escaped his lips unbeknownst to him. He, in his loud silence, had remembered the look on the Queen Mother’s face at the moment he cracked her. Like an egg and suddenly, causing her composure to run down her chest like yolk right in front of the nation she had pressed under her iron thumb until that explosive moment. Her chest, once taught and puffed with pride and a commanding presence, heaved breathlessly as the sudden realization of her vulnerability hit her like a slap in the face. By her own fury and rage, her command had seen her weakness. They had seen the crack she was hoping only she had detected. Her surety melted in the same instant it had come. She realized she no longer had the firm grip she had only moments ago used to squeeze the balls of a whole population into tip-toed, terrified obedience that acquiesced in a voice a few octaves higher than it had in the initial offering of its fealty. D remembered in amusement watching her gaze fall to the floor as she stood, mouth agape and embarrassed, in front of a number of her devoted population. Her eyes scanned the space that replaced the landscape in her focus. Back and forth, it left her horrified as she realized-- this was no longer “Her” state. She now lived in the state of Doubt. Her illusions floated down to rest all over her. Her new train wore the snickers of her subjects--once scared-into-submission—now freed of the burden of their blind fear. They saw now, and all too well. She blinked in what felt like slow motion, looking first at one serviceman, then the next. She exhaled incredulously as she watched smirks turn to the ear closest them to bestow upon it the gift of a stifled snicker during a quick moment of intimate exchange. Exchanges executed in their entirety very quickly, obligating each party to sheepishly throw up their composure as if a shield, hiding the betrayal of their forbidden mindfulness. As quickly as her hold on them fluttered off their heads like a kaleidoscope of Monarchs taking flight, they scrambled to again feign unquestioning obedience as they returned to offering respectful silence in anticipation of her reaction.

“The scene was quite captivating, really,” D mused. A chink in her armor was all the porcelain goddess could withstand before the network of cleverly-hidden spider-vein cracks crisscrossed over her flawless exterior. She was more than a little nervous now. The essence of her weakness was now for the world, laid bare. One more citizen so bold as to buck her authority even a little would be enough to reduce her to porcelain powder. He chuckled as he recognized this silent victory that rang out to all of the onlooking nation in sing-songy echoes, one telling rolling over the ending of the same rendition before it. Rolling right on into the expectant ears of the rest of the world.

“What do you get when you give The Queen Mother the ‘D’?” He spoke the answer, laughing out loud.

“Powder.” He didn’t even try to hold his laughter in, congratulating himself on his clever wordplay.

“Cuz you put the ‘D’ right up in the middle of the WORD ‘power’ just like I crawled right up in the middle of HER power….HA!”

“Or the illusion of her power. “ He thought.

“SOMEBODY’ll get it,” he said in an effort to console his timid inner comedian.

“Haha, we gave her the ‘D’…” he continued with another laugh.

“And I don’t mean Dallas.” he concluded. That was it for his comedy skit for the moment, for then the memory of what ensued instantly sobered his countenance.

“Burn her.” rang in his ears. Those two words signaled the motions that put an end to everything he believed in or held dear. His beautiful, precious Anna, somehow remained graceful, pure and admirable even as she howled in agony and attempted to flee the flames she would never escape. Before he could react, she was dowsed in accelerant and lit on fire, bursting into flame like it was spontaneous combustion. He raged against the hands that gripped him, struggling with all his might to break free and go to her. What would he have done had he reached her? Joined her? He soberly nodded the reply to himself. Absently, he worried the ruined locket between his thumb and the crook of his pointer finger, working his thumb firmly back and forth over the groove the fire had made during its disfigurement. The atrocities unfolded again in the space in front of his absent gaze. And again, and again. He closed his eyes to escape the memory, which only served to burn the backs of his eyelids with the reliving of the tragedy. It was never over, it was never finished. It always replayed instantly as if out of some mocking, artificial courtesy someone had rewound the tape to the exact moment of her condemnation. Those heartbreaking, furious, and flat words of finality would never find rest in his mind, ever.

“Burn her.” the order rang out.

“Burn her.” And again, she burned.

“Burn her.” Into infinity, she was lit over and over and over. She flailed helplessly over and over and over. The memory never quite played this far in its cruel, taunting echo, but D forced his mind to move past her agonizing wails to the moment she fell against the stone wall, finally dead, and slid down it roughly to a sudden sitting position. She slumped forward, finally expired, as the fat under what used to be her skin smoked and sizzled. It smelled like some sick sacrificial animal on that awning. Indeed, she was sacrificial. For the Queen Mother’s fury had only been incited upon the defiant and unashamed declaration of her love for D, which was a betrayal to the Queen Mother’s delicate sensibilities. Love was not a luxury afforded to ANYONE in times such as these. If Her Majesty was made to deny her own love for her King to kick off the initial uprising, then no one left alive would be permitted to enjoy its deliciousness. It was an apple which was for her, harvested prematurely, and therefore tasted of juicy, bitter garbage that pursed the lips and twisted the face of the one it was intended to bring ecstatic intoxication. Her own love, she was made to renounce. Why should anyone else be blessed with its sweetness? If she, the Queen, was made to endure the death of Heart, why then should anyone below her be free to enjoy what she, herself had been made to extinguish?

Her perfect, doting, marvelous King was put to death by her own hand to ensure that the power of the nations fell to her. A deed which she endlessly attempted to justify against the accusatory remarks of her conscience to no avail.

“It had to be done. For my daughters,” she objected each time her conscience rose to defy her justifications.

“Did it?” The still-small voice within her whispered. She never had the nerve to look herself in the face and answer that one. For she knew to answer truthfully would irreversibly condemn her in her own mind. If she could never forgive herself as it was, how much farther then would she be from redemption if she dared to answer that tiny, pain-ridden question?

“Did it?”

As D continued to slowly pace the floor with brooding steps, he remembered the last time he saw sweet Anna. Her black hair half wet with sweat precipitated in fear. Her delicate white hands tied roughly and tightly behind her back as she was held by her arm by the emotionless serviceman. Pulled up uncomfortably and lopsided, struggling to find ground with one tippy toe as her hair was grasped and yanked back by the same man (if we dare call him that…though he was simply obeying orders.) to force eye contact with the Queen, who awaited an answer.

D paced a little quicker as he recalled the serviceman kneel next to Anna’s smoldering remains as he was being led away, screaming hysterically. After picking something up out of her lap, the serviceman stood and, trying to go unnoticed, struck a posture that spoke “inconsequential.” The serviceman turned and departed as the others carried D out of view of the terrace.

His walking turned to determined trudging as his memory returned to the Queen’s accusatory interrogation.

“What reason do you now offer me for your betrayal to the crown?” The queen scoffed.

“Why did you fail to disclose the location of this traitor in your home?”

D’s pacing came to a sudden stop by the window. As he lifted his fist to his mouth, locket secured within, he briefly recalled a hushed whisper from behind his cell door as a shiny object shot from underneath….

“For love.” The voice boldly insisted.

He remembered kneeling to retrieve the tiny mystery from the shadows. As his hand closed around it, he brought it up to his face and regarded the mysterious form, becoming suddenly aware of its distinction. He protectively closed his hand around the still-warm locket that had fallen from Anna’s charred neck.

“What grounds have you to deny your Queen her traitor?” the Queen roared.

Anna lifted her gaze, defiantly meeting the Queen’s.

“For love.” She said, unfaltering and unwavering.

Sunrise……finally.