Confession is Good for the Soul

  “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of (it) being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex...”

  The net “nuts” were mostly fantasizing, blowing smoke in each other's faces around feminist chatrooms, but seeds were planted, including in the high school students attending theatrical productions of the Manifesto, outside Stockholm, earlier in the 21st century.

  Then came the Plan. And I know the woman who started it here. Correction: I knew her. Sooner or later it was bound to leak to the wrong sort. And she sure picked a wrong one to mess with. Picked one she “assumed” was harmless, but it turns out he wasn’t the law-abiding milquetoast, or the White Knight she’d pegged him to be. You likely know him as “Striker,” and he thought he was a lone wolf in sheep’s clothing. But there was a handful of others in the labs, who joined him. And those who survived that melee, who lived to get out (like your father, I think) tasted not only Freedom but power. In less than a generation and a half you all have created dozens of No-Go (i.e. no women go) zones across the country. So Striker’s a hero and rightfully so. He’s also proof that no perfect plan is ever without its potentially fatal flaw.

  So about that Plan. The Good Man Plan went full speed ahead, despite the required re-formulating of the virus post lab attack. After all, what’s a few more months in the scheme of millennia? All the promises sounded so great in theory (and we were all about the latest, greatest theory): get rid of most of the men (see, the terrorism at the lab just proved how inherently violent they are). And voila...a peaceful Utopia on earth would spring up from the ashes. Or rather from hemorrhaging blood vessels and subsequent mountains of rotting corpses.

  Magically, I guess, was what they were thinking.

  Except none of them, me included, considered the unintended consequences. As in actual thought-through-to-some-logical/practical-outcomes. So the biggest kick in the pants came with the realization (too late, of course) that none of us were actually Wonder Women. We weren’t Amazons like she’d been - not to mention her island full of left-behind kin. (How was it they procreated on that island of theirs, anyway?)

  So the Off-a-Guy-Today-at-Home-or-Work plan was a “go.” Concocted at the highest levels; planted in fertile places; spread seemingly from the bottom up, by means of “grassroots organizations.” Everyone pulling together to rid the world of the (“greatest”) evil: Patriarchy. Meaning the Patriarchs, meaning potentially every “unattached” male – save for the ones that a planner was hooking up with.

  It’s safe to say, if you were sufficiently charming, or a grand enough meal-ticket, you were OK. Otherwise on the chosen day it was going to be Hasta-la-Vista-Baby Day for a whole bunch of “oppressors.”

  Most police departments’ emergency response teams, hell, entire cities, were overwhelmed on Day 1 and a couple following, so you probably never read how we did it. Which is the point of this confession after all.

  Once the right chemical was developed and perfected (and then re-concocted after the attack) it was as simple as a new weekly fashion magazine and a free subscription offer. (And keeping the stuff from contaminating anything before The Day.) Took awhile to develop a sufficient group mindset, even in those bred to lemming-hood from their daycare-days on.

  Knock ‘em Dead was where it was hidden in plain sight. Sounds exactly like a vindictive woman’s perfume, doesn’t it? We thought of it as our societal-rat poison.

  You men being the rats. We females were still - and forever, Amen - the victims of your cultural-Patriarchy. (p.s. How again did you still “control” us, all the while you pull down minimum wages if you could find work at all?)

  We happily played victim in the grievance industry charade and for so long we brainwashed ourselves. Became enchanted. Really believed men are/were the problem. So like the frightened housewives of old - on cue - we hopped up on the chair-of-State and waited. For Big Sis, the exterminatrix, to save us. And she did.

  Hats off to the second, all-girl, squad at the NIH who’d worked like dogs (bitches?) and finally re-configured the ingestible chemical that’d take you guys out and leave us unharmed and smelling like the proverbial untarnished rose.

  Ironically, towards the end of the process some White Knight contract workers provided the key insight to the second product’s increased efficacy. At least they earned a token thank-you from the Dear Leader of their day: posthumous Peace Prizes for their ultimate sacrifice. If they hadn’t accidently died serving as post-attack guinea pigs, I’m sure they’d have been at the top of that infamous first “Wanted” poster your people put out illegally, way back when, and died anyway. Right?

  Would you believe me it I told you I honestly feel sick about not being on that poster myself? I was, after all one of the handful of liaisons between the Good (Dead) Man Plan and the White House. Because I have no excuse, I’m including my likeness in this confession. I deserve no better, no mercy, and I’m way too much of a coward to do the honorable thing and end my own miserable existence.

  But back to the confession. Leading up to the Day, our hope was that that we’d reach at least our minimum-millions in the first application. But all of sudden, like some 100th monkey effect, we got a deluge of feedback to the online contact points we’d created and placed region by region in the publications carrying the poison-infused “air freshener,” “sweetener,” “herb-spice packet,” and “fragrance samples.”

  Women from all parts of the country and all demographics suddenly got creative. Ideas flooded in, especially from waitresses: they’d put it into “multiple target” foods and beverages at company cafeterias and regular restaurants. After Day 1 we called it the waitresses’ revenge. Serendipitously an earlier political propaganda plea to boost the perpetually-sagging economy by eating out more often also magnified the early effectiveness/destructiveness of the Plan.

  Instead of putting the stuff into their loser-boyfriend’s, live-in lover’s, or one-night-snoozer’s morning o.j. or oatmeal, they saved it; took it to work and spread the joy around. You’ve got some old-timers who’ll no doubt remember news reports of mass collapses. Mostly in restaurant parking lots, or at construction sites. The traffic pileups were historic that afternoon, as road crew guys ran heavy equipment off into newly cut ditches once their cup of infused roach-coach coffee went to work.

  So many deaths, so many restaurants, it was impossible to find a pattern. And with so many victims, so quickly, the conspiracy theories sprouted practically before the first body cooled down. But you can’t connect random dots: it was coffee at one place, pizza sauce at another, and draft beer at a third. From apartment buildings and university dorms, to Vegas casinos and clubs, you get the picture. No doubt you know some old-timers who survived the ugly mess.

  No connection between the government and the Plan has been admitted publicly of course, until now; no one would have dared. Only the women knew and they were closed-mouth, for once...and in the glow of their “freedom” so weren’t saying anything unless it was to scream at a clerk when their dead guys’ credit cards wouldn’t work anymore. When somebody decided they couldn’t take the guilt and started talking about “making things right” they’d inevitably confide in the wrong person; see the error of their ways.

  I always wondered how that Brown shirt network developed so quickly a century ago. Guess ours had always been there, just that I’d never crossed swords with it before, myself. And I’d always believed women were less lord-of-the-flies. Yes. Another confession: I was a fool.

  So this is my way of apologizing. For all of us who wanted to try but let their fear get to them, and for the ones like me – the worst ones. We who knew it was wrong, but went along anyway, out of fear of standing out and losing our privileged positions.

  Going against the grain means getting splinters – fatal ones in this case.

  Am I
scared of finally getting my comeuppance? Yes. But isn’t it the only fair thing? The “just” thing? So in one way (from my ergonomic rolling chair, in a mostly climate-controlled building, inside a “safe zone”) I can say I think I actually look forward to the rustle in the dark, the snapping underfoot of the missed twig, the audible ratcheting-back of a less than well-oiled hammer, then its fall. And mine.

  Time to go

  The traitor clutched her riding cape closed with one hand; led the horse out of the stable with the other, the stuffed saddlebags already securely attached behind the saddle. She’d left the creature’s winter blanket on, as the White House grooms typically did that time of year. She had no intention of running the animal to warm it up, nor cared to cause it any unneccesary suffering. For the first day at least, she reasoned, food would be scarce.

  Over the previous few weeks she’d established the nightly “habit” of riding, at night. It remained to be seen whether the ruse would work. The middle-of-the-night wanderings were to “nurture her creativity” and for her to “commune with her higher feminine self.” Sure it was all a crock, but fact was she’d purposefully started putting a better effort into the work she’d been assigned. Everyone seemed to buy that her starry escapades were the source of that improvement. Now comes the real test, she thought.

  She’d eliminated the busiest exits long ago, then repeatedly observed the quietest and intermittently guarded ones. It was in the direction of one of the latter she headed, ever so lazily. She had time. The moon was on the rise which meant more than sufficient light to find her way across the 5+ mile wide buffer separating the Fortified Capitol from what the rulers called the Uninhabitable Lands. The buffer was a so-called “Protected Zone,” free of terrorists, outlaws, or brigands of any sort. Yeah.

  She knew getting through the lackadaisically guarded gate would only be the beginning.

  The wolves on the walls

  What she didn’t know then, couldn’t know really, was that within the walls and “guarding” them was a new generation of wolves-in-sheeps’-clothing. She and her kind had assumed purges early on had completely snuffed out that kind of contrary spirit. Surviving males a generation earlier were either neutered or completely indoctrinated into harmlessness, they thought. And the latest generation had been raised Feminist after all...raised “right.”

  So they thought.

  But these young wolves were strong in ways they never let on. As intellectually strong as they were physically strong. Forming an intricate network, they passed information, shared opportunities, and stealthily built equipment that would wobble and then hopefully topple the high heels of their female-bosses.

  The guard she’d just bribed was one of them. His fellow wolves-on-the-walls had seen her over the past weeks, found out who she was, and determined to find out what she was up to. So tonight’s man had won the lottery; won the opportunity for a little glory in the chasing of her and in the elimination of her.

  The Wolf let her mosey on out the gate, secure in her belief he was no “rough man ready to do violence” for his either Compound or its bosses. Let her believe he was just another chemically lobotomized XY-simpleman, more interested in padding his purse than doing his job.

  He only let her get a decent head start because a brother-in-arms had to be summoned, to take on a temporary double wall-watching duty. With a bit of “repurposed” technology the other would also watch the Wolf’s soon-to-be receding back.

  He was fleet; knew well-trod paths along the roads, so made up the distance between them quickly, though he could have overtaken the woman at will. Instead he slowed, remained alongside, off just far enough in the trees to remain invisible. Still, there was too much moonlight for his liking.

  He saw her clearly in that light; his heart stopped – she was gently reigning in her horse, bringing it to a halt. There was still too much underbrush between them.

  The woman reached down and patted the horse’s neck then sat back up, turned her head one way, then the other, shifted in the saddle to glance behind as well. Cautious, rightfully so. He had to admire her for that.

  She started forward again and he decided to pull into the lead; take a position ahead around a blind curve he knew was coming up. If she didn’t stop again, it would perfectly suit his task.

  The Wolf, now en garde, was in his element; he breathed slowly, calming himself, and waited. He waited, at a spot with minimal intervening trees; watched her approach; tracked her in his sights by pivoting his head and already-raised-and-extended arm. She was nearly alongside.

  Ignorance is bliss, albeit short-lived

  The traitor smiled. It had gone as smoothly as planned so far, which in and of itself surprised her. Maybe there was a God and he or she was with her, on her side in this confession business. Only made sense.

  She was well outside the walls, past the bored guard who demanded next to nothing to look-the-other-way as she passed through his gate. She’d reached the normally off-limits road beyond. It was a shame, she thought, that some of the youngest males still trapped inside those walls didn’t have the Truth she was finally going to tell the ones outside. Perhaps the word would get back to them somehow. Then there’d be Hell to pay, for sure. The rulers and other hand-maidens to their evils - like she’d been - would be lucky if a rebellion merely razed the place.

  Suddenly she heard something off the road to her right. She pulled back on the reigns, slowed the walking horse to a dead stop and listened harder than she ever had needed to in her inside-the-walls life. She reached down and patted the horse’s neck whispering words of comfort to it, realizing they were as much for her as for it.

  Eyes fully accustomed to the moonlight made checking front, back, and all around, easier than she’d feared. Nothing. Just her guilty imagination. She was somehow warily confident she had “company.” Felt somewhere outside the narrow range of her senses were large predators. And in a greater variety than previous generations had known. Killers that roamed these abandoned forests and nearly deserted roads. Why wouldn’t they? Since fuel-burning cars and even horse drawn wagons and carriages had a smaller and smaller presence each year. Food and supplies were about all that came through anymore.

  She tried to push those thoughts aside.

  Ahead a sawhorse barrier sat in the middle of the road, a sign mounted on it. Horse and rider could go around easily, but any other transport would be expected to stop; remove it; then put it back after passing. In chipped lettering still dully luminescent it read, “WARNING: Leaving USAFortified Compound District of Colombia’s Protected Zone. Next nearest PZ & USAFC: Charleston, 335 miles.”

  The two, horse and novice rider, rounded it and resumed their slow pace. She realized, sadly, that their travel speed would have them nowhere near halfway to their destination by dawn. Her spirits slipped as the magnitude of this confession-quest of hers sunk in; she was growing cold through her heaviest cape and hungry though she’d eaten a substantial meal only a few hours before.

  A sudden “snap” again off in the trees to her right sent a different chill through her veins, a fear which clutched at her insides.

  She never did hear the hammer being cocked, nor the trigger being pulled, nor the shot, really, as it was fired from the rustically machined, rustically suppressed firearm.

  The Beginning of the End

  The Wolf had assumed he’d be smiling ear to ear at his accomplishment. The frigid weather, however, allowed no indulgences at the moment; instead he just continued to do what needed to be done so he and the animal could get moving again.

  He adjusted the stirrups; checked the cinch; then swung up onto the horse and gazed up at the moon. A quick calculation made him smile slightly after all. The old woman’s “confession” had been safely stowed in the canvas pack of their best rider a couple of hours earlier. Both pack and rider were, right then, on the back of an even finer specimen of winter-hardened horse. By now that team would certainly be more than halfway to the intended “outlaw.” Of
course the Wolf had looked briefly at the document from the rare leather saddlebags, now behind him. Confirmed it was identical to their purloined copy.

  He struggled though; wrestled with himself. He and the horse stood in place a long cold moment as he toyed with leaving, with becoming a full blown outlaw himself. Toyed with spurring the horse on down the road the same way the female had been headed. With no looking back.

  But a vision of the near future intruded; kept him rooted to the spot. The Compound crumbling, its rulers brought to their knees by motivated young men like himself. And maybe a few other traitor-females.

  Freeman-outlaw wrestled with Conqueror of tyrants.

  The dead woman’s confession, he reasoned, spread through the Compound with stealth could be the key, or the spark. Written by a high-ranking quisling most all the men inside – even the elderly – would recognize? Why that would light a fire. Provide motivation, which, along with the men’s confidence in the “cause” of their own freedom, would only grow as small successes grew larger and larger.

  With success would inevitably come fear in the ruling caste. From tiny sparks in their eyes, to raging infernos, every last man would finally know it was their own efforts finally ending the oppression.

  It was within reach, the Wolf was sure.

  So the images of a complete freedom, for him and his brothers, won out. He reached into his short cloak and found a treat he’d brought for himself and leaned down, offering it to the horse instead. He would eat later. He had a sudden surge of something else, something new and foreign, that drowned out the physical hunger.