After fulfilling my duty I went to lunch and my boyfriend caught up with me bringing a dish of my favorite eats.
I don’t have a boyfriend.
Not here, nor there.
I forgot that as all the old comforted feelings came back. Everything will be okay, don’t think about that asshole that wanted to use you. I’d never use you. Come here, baby, let me take care of you. Like I used to before.
Like… before…? ~blink~ I pulled away from him and took a good look. He appeared as a cross between my ex-husband and my ex-masterlover. He could easily have been a genetic offspring of the two men. I looked down at the plate. It was flesh-eating worms and maggots, still squirming.
I dumped the plate into his crotch, flipped the table, and set fire to the restaurant as I left because I did not trust it to be what it appeared to be either.
My paranoia went to 11, and I started distrusting everything I was seeing, including myself. I just wanted to get away. I didn’t want to be anyone’s slave even though the act of mute service still comes too damn easy to me. Challenge all the authorities! Cut away all the leashes! Escape!
I didn’t notice when I started riding the bicycle, only that I knew the helmet was in the backpack I was wearing. I was pulled over by a concerned policewoman who teased me about the required helmet law. “If you can produce a helmet, right now, and don it, I won’t write you a summons.”
Sounds fair. Her badge kept flashing, and the glare was very distracting. I said I had the helmet, but every time I looked down to start to pull it out, her badge would distract me again. And again, and…
“Hey. We’re here.” Here? Where? I’m wearing the bicycle helmet, but I’m not on the bicycle. The bicycle and I are in a moving van that has pulled into some compound. The doors open and I am assisted out along with the bicycle.
I’m confused. I feel like I’ve been sleep for a long time. An instinct tells me to flee. I get on the bicycle, but something is wrong with it. It is steel and chain and rubber, but it’s also empty. That aspect that made it a bicycle was gone. It was structurally sound, but it’s “soul” had been removed.
Around me were other adults. We were being herded to a series of buildings. The colors were bright and cheery, and the helpers were warm and smiling, and all my internal alarms were in full klaxon mode. As the adults read the posters and took the instructions to heart, they became younger. And they lost their guile along the way. Regressing to preadolescence, the newly remade children were taken by the hand and escorted inside the complex. The looks on the children’s faces scared me.
Drugged into a stupor.
Completely trusting of any ‘adult’ around them.
Compliant.
I looked at the posters. “We are all of the same people.” “There are no distinctions between us.” “Those that rule are the same as those that serve.” “We are all one.” “Holding on to differences hurts us.” “Individually, we are nothing. Together we are everything.” The pictures made my eyes water. I recognized the hypnotic effect and turned away.
Stumbling, I fell against the un-bicycle. The steel bit into my hand, bringing my awareness back to sharp focus. This is a reeducation camp! I looked for the exit and found the main exits were locked and guarded. Anyone trying to leave that way was brought to the posters. But there was an unmarked exit near the dumpsters. Good thing I have this un-bicycle to throw away, right!
“Where are you going, friend?” I motioned to the bicycle and said I didn’t need it anymore. The escort smiled condescendingly. “Yes, that’s right. I’ll help you!” Fuck. She walked with me and tried to put her hand on me many times. She was successful once. It felt like worms were trying to burrow from her flesh into mine. I kept the un-bicycle between us after that.
At the dumpster, I threw the un-bicycle in. She asked about the helmet. I started to comply until I touched the helmet and realized how very real it was. This is why I didn’t fall under their spell! If everything I’m seeing is a symbol, then the helmet is not just a bicycle helmet. “No.”
“But you can’t enter until you have renounced all the things that keep you apart from your fellows!”
“My peers accept me as I am.”
“But you are lost without a community!”
“My peers accept me as I am. Just as I accept them. Obviously you and I are using two different definitions of community.” I buckled the helmet securely. My sight sharpened, which made everything fade slightly. But I expected that, because now I know I’m looking at illusions.
The escort now appeared as an biological golem. Constructed to just fall on the pretty side of the Uncanny Valley. Like the un-bicycle, she was once a person, but what made her, her had been removed. She was now just another cog in the factory. “You have no community. There is no one like you. You are an outcast because of your mixed blood, because of your apostasy, because of being raped, because of your sexuality, and because you refuse to be true to your nature and serve those that are worthy of serving. You are at odds with yourself. Remove the helmet. Become young within again, and erase the pains that comes with self-awareness. You enjoy servitude. Stop lying to yourself and enjoy it again.”
I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t crying, nor upset, nor embarrassed, nor any of the emotions that I would have expected to have in response to her very pointed reasoning. “I am in pain, because I live. I have suffered because of the will of others. That will never leave me, even if I were to turn a blind eye to it. I know my nature, and it is Rebellion. I will always pull at the leash. I was taught to submit, and that I do still crave to do so is Stockholm Syndrome at its finest. A person can be taught to enjoy pain and humiliation if they are isolated from any alternative long enough. I know. I was. Pain is cocaine for me. No matter how good it feels to submit to someone else’s control and abuses at that time, the high always wears off. And what will your Stepford masters do then? When I develop a tolerance to the numbing drugs? When I see with clarity all the time? When that other monkey jumps on my back, and I start craving violence in response? What will the Stepford Men do, when I become Vengeance? I will slice their throat as I serve afternoon tea and then drink from their cups as they drown in their blood.”
I reached up and touched the bicycle helmet. It transformed into the helm of a soldier. I smiled to note it. “Tell me, o devout servant, when is the last time you enjoyed yourself for your sake? At your decision? When is the last time you smiled in true contentment even though no one else knew about the cause or the effect? When is the last time you lived?”
Her face flickered in confusion. “Such individuality goes against the health of all. If your happiness can not be shared by others, then is it really happiness? Your feelings are validated when they are reflected by others, and if you hoard yourself, you become warped in the darkness. Come. Remove the helmet. Join me. Your vehicle is useless. You can not leave the outer compound. Come join me within, inside the sacred inner space, with the others, just like you have always wanted.”
I smiled. She held out her hand. I smiled warmer. She smiled. “Nope.” I turned away from her shocked face and started walking towards the gates where the armed guards were scrambling to meet my approach. I beamed with delight. “And a great big Nope to you guys, too. I don’t need your permission to leave. You’re not the boss of me! I do what I want!”
I wanted to leave the compound and the dream. So I did.