Woke

She hears him, howling beyond her door.

She feels the room shake, as he batters the frame.

“Please! Open up, bitch!”

She stumbles back, back, back— till her shoulders slam against the wall.

Please?

Why would a New Deputy say please?

She hears him again:

“Police! I said lemme in you cunt!”

Police.

Ah. That makes more sense.

Not that she has done anything illegal.

No, she’s been a good girl.

Like most women, she has become an expert in the law— reading each new proclamation as soon as it goes live.

She’s worn her cross and habit every time she’s gone outdoors.

He rattles the doorknob.

“Bitch, open this door— in the name of God and the President!”

She knows he will break through.

It doesn’t matter that she’s been good.

This deputy probably doesn’t know the laws anyway.

That doesn’t matter.

It never has.

He will break into her home, then he will do the worst.

And if she survives, she’ll be detained, in one of the Re-Education Camps.

Everybody knows what these camps really are.

There isn’t any education there, except from the New Deputies “teaching” detainees what it means to be a bride of the state.

Breeding camps.

She quickly grabs her effects.

Her fingers shaking.

From fear or from rage, she’s too wired to tell.

She places her cross around her neck, she fastens her habit, veiling her eyes.

To be made to dress like this in her own home!

It’s both.

Fear and rage.

She grips her Bible, her knuckles tight.

She’d rather be gripping a knife.

She hasn’t done anything wrong!

She’s gone to church every day.

She hasn’t said anything against the administration on her social media, she hasn’t said anything against the administration out loud either, atleast not within earshot of her phone.

She hasn’t even cursed since “use of vulgar language” has become a favorite pretext for the New Deputies to stop and frisk “suspicious women”.

But she knows being a “good girl” never truly protected her.

It was just her way of keeping her head down. Her way of minimizing the target on her backside.

But she was assigned female at birth.

Un-winnable.

It never mattered how good she was.

That double X target was never going to go away.

And her deference might not have helped at all!

Some of these incel bastards took offense to deference. Or rather they took a woman’s deference as an invitation to test her limits— to push to get a reaction, probably in the hopes that her reaction would break one of their brand new public decency laws, and land her in a camp.

And now one of the new Deputies is forcing his way into her home.

It doesn’t matter that she’s followed every new law to the letter.

This scumbag could make up whatever he wants, accuse her of anything.

And it would be his word against hers.

He could plant contraceptives or abortifacients or lewd images to make any accusation stick.

She’d heard of that happening.

He could rape her, beat her to hide the act, then publicly accuse her of bribing him with sexual favors, and somehow the beating would look like self defense— and she’d look like a sinful woman in need of re-education.

She’d be detained, held indefinitely.

Forced into the service of the country.

Like so many others who had done nothing wrong.

The New Deputies.

Their manner of enforcement isn’t just quietly approved, it’s celebrated.

The administration has offered pay outs and bonuses to for each detention, regardless of whether official charges are ever filed.

Her doorknob rattles.

She cries out “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

She could smell a stiff scent seeping under the door, that sharp coppery tang.

His voice is both piercing and barbed: “nothing wrong? You little lying slut. I know what you did.”

People said they chose to make the badges out of copper to remind the public of the smell of blood.

And that was to remind people that The New Deputies could act with whatever violence they wished— it would be in effect sanctioned by the state.

According to the law, it would in fact be justice.

Another loud thud on her door, it splinters in the center.

Another.

The crack widens.

She does not want to see what evil presses in from the other side.

His face is livid and red, and spit is flying from his thin, pursed lips.

She is shaking too much, she can hardly stand. Her face is hot with tears. “No, please!”

“No? No? Bitch! Cunt! I said I’m police! I said I know what you did, now open the fuck up!!!”

A loud thud and an immediate, deafening cracking sound, half her door falls inward, the other half swings wide on its hinges.

He’s holding something in his hands, he’s holding it like a gun.

She squeezes her eyes shut and wishes she could just go back in time, back to before this man was at her door.

Her pastor’s voice rings out: “God bless the New Deputies— and their holy mission to keep our women safe from themselves!”

She opens her eyes and sees she’s in church. Her mother is with her again.

She hasn’t seen her in 10 years, not since she overdosed.

All she wants is to reach out and hold her and tell her not to take those pills.

But she understands why she did it.

And besides… right now both women are too paralyzed to move.

Her pastor calls all the men to the altar.

They shuffle out of their pews, grinning.

Strutting with unearned confidence.

She feels a terrible nausea roiling in her gut when she sees all those chubby cosplaying losers bow their bald heads.

That old familiar feeling: disgust and revulsion. Not all men, but somehow… damn near all the men she’s ever known.

They bean with pride, as the pastor lays his hands on each of the men in turn.

She wants to yell. She wants to scream.

She wants to wake them up, to make them look at themselves and see how far short they are of what they could and should have been.

But the pastor is speaking and his voice is shaking the whole goddamned church.

“God bless our President for issuing this holy executive order! He deputized the right half of our nation— all male citizens can now be holy warriors, as we are called to be!”

The pastor gestures to the men at the altar. They stand grinning like sloths or apes, or ugly statues molded out of mud and clay. But each one blushing pink under the church lights. “The bright half of our nation! Now our men— our good and strong men— will help protect our women from the foreigners in our lands and indeed, our men will even help protect our women from their own sinful, feminine natures!”

Her mother’s hand has found hers.

She can feel her mother’s fear— just like her own reflected back.

She can feel it in the way they clench each other by the fingers under the pew.

She clenched her eyes shut and wishes she could go back: back to a time before an executive order deputized the wrong half of the country.

“Babe, I’ve gotta go.”

She’s holding his sleeve, trying to touch his flesh and call him back, but he’s already pulling free and the last thing she feels of him is the button on the hem of his cuff.

“No, please. Please!”

His dark, handsome face is bent with worry. “I have to. It’s not safe for me to stay here. You saw what those fucking psychos did to him. They’re getting to bold. Right outside our house? If they looked up and saw us watching the probably would have torched our building to grab me too.”

“Just stay. It’s crazy, I know the whole world is crazy. But just stay, things will get better!”

He looks at her and she sees it in his hard eyes: a truth she does not want to admit.

When he speaks, she knows he is right. “It’s not safe for you either, if I’m around. You know those fucking crackers will hate you even more than they’ll hate me, if they find out. You know what those fucking pigs will call you, for loving me.”

“I do love you though.”

“I love you too. And I don’t want to be the reason you get lynched.”

“Neither of us will be lynched— these maniacs will get what’s coming to them. The police will help us….”

Even as she began to say it, she knew the police wouldn’t help them, ever.

Not with the way things had gone.

She closes her eyes and wishes she could go back in time, back to a time before the whole country went mad, before things started accelerating.

“Honey, are you okay?”

She opens her eyes and sees her mother.

Younger, no gray in her hair.

Only a few lines in her face.

Her mother passes a smooth hand across her cheek. “You were talking in your sleep. Saying something like ‘the police will help us.’ I think you were having a nightmare. Do you want to talk about it?”

The little girl frowns.

Then she nods.

A silent moment passes.

Already the dream is beginning to fade, but she feels there is something important here, that she must address.

Something that she must fix.

It feels like the world hangs in the balance.

But she is a child and she cannot remember.

Then she says, “mom do you think it’s possible to dream the future?”

Her mother chuckles. “Well. I suppose anything is possible. Religious people, some of them, believe there that God shows some people glimpses of the future— these people are called prophets.”

“Well. Like I mean what if I dreamed that something really bad was going to happen? Could that make me a… profit?”

Her mother shakes her head, then gives her a hug.

Almost at once, the feeling— the fear— washes away.

She feels like things will be okay.

And already the dream is mostly gone.

“It was just a nightmare sweetie.”

“Well it wasn’t all bad. I think I was in love, for part of it.”

Her mother pulls her close, and sings her softly back to sleep.