Sarette's Reve De Mort: And Other Stories Of Not Quite Magical Realism

Even if you generally agreed with the sentiments expressed in government propaganda slogans, it still would weird you out, if they were placed on the back of your favorite cereal. You might think this is just an exaggeration, but consider the fact that when this one Journalist from Russia today reported on things US media doesn't cover about Venezuela, the idea of our country slipping into a kind of covert fascism, stamping the American constitution on the back of a bag of beans doesn't seem to far off.

But Elle lived in such a time.

This isn't a children's fantasy story, or a work of magical realism, but a very real girl living today, simply trying to make it the best she can in life. Elevators in this old building, were like escape pods from a burning building. But students that went to the nearest university, treated these as a way to get quickly back toward studying history homework from the second world war era, in their times off from school. Girls that staying home after the third world war, were used to these activist hot spots connected through thumb drive dead drops; dressed as modern day flower children in new fangled Birkenstocks, anti-war slogans becoming as common as physical disabilities; girls whom fought despite the real possibility of execution by guillotine since the invasion by the National Front, mouth to paycheck.

Elle, going by nothing else by her virtual reality handle, refused such ventures in activism, for the time being, while recovering from a shin splint injury. Instead, confined to her bed and virtual reality headset, she purchased furniture online, simply by forking the repository of the hand drawn plans, and then simply building it herself when her family was not picking her up for the beach. But by this point she had collected more plans than she could ever possibly complete, and capitalism, while decaying, was still very much alive in the streets of Chattanooga and outlying areas, littered with mom and pop computer stores steadily going out of business. She would spend her day programming, and very occassionally visited her parents to go to fast food Mexican restaurants.

But chose very specifically to avoid eating at taco bell. So she only chose establishments that were within the local area, under the idea that, that which governs closest governs best. But this was as close to conservatism, in the American sense, as she got.

Instead she would keep copies, of old War War II anthems, with some she was unsure whether they came from American or German history. There was a time, before the great wars, when the country would manufacture false national anthems, and use those as reasons for why the country was that was to be invaded, was savage. She collected them, partially out of morbid curiosity, but also as a means of collecting evidence of American war crimes in the off chance that the American political system would ever have to stand trial in Geneva.

One song of which, was noteable:

In our Fatherland, with our mothers,

Whom bake fresh pasta and green peas,

Come home to our house, stay with us,

And become our children and our brothers.

Let us govern you, lay your children on us.

She was the type to take such instruments of propaganda literally, although up until this point, she had not actually shot a militarized cop to do so. Instead she drifts from shady restaurant to shady restaurant, trying to hold herself off from the previous bits of activism she used to do, back when she was still living in Washington State. The thing about Washington, was the best part was on the West coast, if one were of any liberal slant, but go any further inland, and–unlike the United States as a whole, was generally more conservative like the South, although in more the classical Anarcho-Capitalist sense. But she was Anarcho-Communitarian, and LGBT issues, along with other social issues, were still important. Buts she never got to practice these at the fullest potential, do to a room mate that kept holding her back at every step of the way.

Now she collects posters of Cosette, from Les Miserables, and prefers theater instead of blood and soil. But she dreams and dreads of the day, that like others she'll have to go back into the field. But for now she spend hers time learning French, and finding anarcho-philosophical groups to belong to on the net. While having fantasy dreams of anarcho-syndicalist chicks in bed, as she gently bits into their soft tender neck. She fantasized of cute anarcho-goth girls, committing murder by flocks of crocks pecking rabid cops to death, and allowing the crows to hunt them down. And then the girls being caught by dream-scanners and other specialized spies. But life was not a science ficton novella either.

The guillotine had only recently been implemented, and previously it had mostly been by hanging out electric chair. Combined with the tier level of crime gradually being lowered to warrant capital punishment, the very idea of an activist chick being captured by cops, and sentenced to beheading (after the National Front took over) was an increasingly real possibility. And at times, life was not even the flow of a top class erotica novella.

But sometimes things cut that way.

Blood flowing down the pages.

To think that several months had gone by, sense her ex had spent all her money on tobacco. For a while she had had to rely on her parents money to fed the two of them, and eventually to get Elle back home; but now her mother was using this misadventure as an excuse to gradually dig her claws further into her, just like she always did. So it made it difficult to really want to engage in phone calls with her. Her parents drugged her on medication, that fixed some of her issues, but certainly not everything, especially her underlying cause of GID. And it made interacting with people, generally an isolating experience. Gone were the days of hopping into activist at the flow of a speeding train. Gone were the days of planting dead drops in alleyways profane.

Here lied an old street rat, just approaching thirty. Spending her life on the edge of society, trying to find some means to spend her time not getting bored of the way life was. It wasn't the time of grabbing a non-lethal automated bee bee gun, and knocking out cops. Plopping sheets on them, and them dumping them on the sidewalk, with a bunch of cats. (There was an old saying that there wasn't anything cops were more allergic to, than a lot of free pussy.) But she never actually thought any girl would actually shoot a cop.

Instead one of her own shot one, put a sheet over him, smashed up with layers of sheets, and took the old German propaganda anthem literally:

In our Fatherland, with our mothers,

Whom bake fresh pasta and green peas,

Come home to our house, stay with us,

And become our children and our brothers.

Let us govern you, lay your children on us.

She took off all clothes, except her underwear, and covered herself in blankets. Then snoozed on top of the man under all those sheets. Eventually they were able to gently grab her, and took her off of him. But he was in such a state, that he wasn't going back into the service anytime soon. Instead he layed in old hand made bed sheets at the local hospital. When the government found out what she did, they were furious. And wanted to make an example. Elle remembered the smell of metal, when the guillotine blade sliced through her companions neck, and how the idea of some vague approaching death did not concern her, now did it seem to concern any of the other activist, who kept up grabbing increasingly higher level munitions, and eventually Molotov cocktails, gradually losing their original mission of non-violence, instead engaging in full on war against the establishment.

Elle found these two lines most memorable:

— become our children and our brothers.

Let us govern you, lay your children on us.

She spent the last few nights between dreams, and forking different code repositories, under the defeatist idea that she'll never belong to another activist group as long as she lived. Because activist never completely represented what they claimed to be. Cosette representing some false promise from classic French literature, and nothing more.

Instead she chose to wait.

So she could move to France, and join with their underpants. And embrace in a way that ended all old national barriers. And pulsating completely through her body, like LSD.

A final trip before the real one.

Before she moved to Alsace. Here she would be free to be as Gothic as she wanted, even if she wasn't smack dab in the middle of Germany. But at least it wasn't the United States, that lost its status on the world stage. Allowing her to visit the graveyards of various French and German anarchist women, who she had researched about in high school and college. She wanted her life to be defined by a different poem, not a National anthum.

But the story of her own life.

In all its torn pages, the flow of tattered bat wings growing out of her back, while reading Edgar Allen Poe, and pages from Mary Shelly's mother's diaries n order to pass the time.

It was better than being here.

Beheaded for being an activist.

It was no longer the US she knew.