Siren’s Song

We all thought the police would be the first to go. I remember my dad's phone, the soft glow as he listened to the report. Someone had leaked documents claiming that due to the high deficit spending in the U.S., there would be a restriction of emergency services. Everyone assumed the "restriction" applied to the police. President Demi Carter was attempting to do damage control, but it was too late. Protests were erupting. But in my house, I remember my dad crying in the dark. They had already cut the electricity. Lights were a luxury that only the rich could afford these days. Plumbing? Forget it. We were lucky. We had heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. Most people didn't even get that.

He was crying, and I was afraid, but when he looked at me, he was smiling. Not sad tears after all, or even angry tears. Tears of relief. He clutched my shoulders.

"You're gonna live in a better world, Erial" he said. "No more fear. No more brutality."

I only barely knew what the word "brutality" meant. I was eight.

We were informed a week later that the emergency service they were cutting was not the police after all. It was the firefighters. Since electricity was quickly becoming a thing of the past, there were fewer fires. Sending both ambulances and fire trucks to the same place was a "waste of energy" and we really only needed the ambulances to save people.

That was what the spokesperson said, anyway.

That day, my dad's tears were not tears of relief.

And when Ronald Grand led the insurrection, my dad's tears dried altogether. Terror had left his eyes dry, his mouth dry, his lips pressed together in a thin cracked line.

I was twelve. Old enough to begin that journey towards comprehension. Old enough to understand that "insurrections" weren't supposed to happen. Old enough to understand that Ronald Grand was not the patriot that the rest of the world seemed to think he was.

His first order of business was a crackdown on crime, a two strikes rule: life sentences for any two convictions in five years. Drug addicts and murderers were suddenly in the same boat.

My dad and I didn't leave the house for those first few weeks. Any news we had was drip fed to us through the glow of our phones.

Too much spending. President Grand— as he insisted on being called— would finally put an end to the rampant deficit spending that had plagued our country. Welfare, the little pockets of it that remained, anyway: gone. Any shred of monetary assistance that we could have received was gone. With it went our heating and air conditioning. They were unnecessary services that only created more risk of fires— and we no longer had a fire department.

Then, of course, the cost of maintaining medical facilities was such a huge drain. They just couldn't remain open. There were too many people injured or sick and not enough money to treat them. People

The police were all that was left. And President Grand worshipped the ground they walked on.

By the time I was sixteen we never left the house at all. Even after my dad went crazy, even after he tore up the house, even after he was frothing at the mouth, even as his body began to rot... I did not leave the house. I was alone. And the only thing worse than being black outside was being black and alone outside. At least my dad was sane enough to tell me that before the cat bite that drove him to his frothy death.

I knew that eventually the news of the smell would spread through the floors of the apartment building. The whispers of our white neighbors would reach the police. And the police wouldn't bother to ask for a cause of death. That is a job for medical professionals, and those no longer exist. their job is simple: eliminate a potential threat.

It was everything my father had feared and more. What little news I got from the outside world, whispers leaking through the cracks in the sagging walls, only solidified my dread, like curdling milk.

I had to leave. There were only two fates awaiting me: death by disease, like my father, or death by police. I could not continue to sit here waiting for one or the other to take me.

I knew I had to leave. Every bone in my body begged for me to run, every synapse in my brain screamed for me to flee. By every law of nature I should have ran.

But I didn't. Not even when the police broke down the door to my neighbor's apartment. Not when I heard the subsequent gunshots, the laughter that quickly turned to swearing, and then to screaming.

My neighbor, whoever they were, got the last laugh. They knew the police wee coming and they soaked their building with gasoline. Probably killed at least one of the cops.

It was the perfect moment to leave. And yet when I watched the flames I remembered that first decree, disbanding the firefighters.

I decided that fire was a fitting way to go. Better than disease. Better than police. A few moments of agony and then nothing. After all, there would be no doctors to save me. No firefighters to carry me from the building as they desperately tried to drown the flames. The only thing awaiting me outside this building was persecution.

It began with fire. And now I will end with fire.

My last wish was only that the entire country would burn. That fire would run rampant until the government saw its errors spelled out in ash. The fire that claimed me would claim everything.

But I'd never be around to see that vengeance. I'd have to be content with pretending, in my last, agonizing moment, that my death would have meaning.

And yet, I knew it wouldn't. In a world where death is so prevalent, it loses its potency.

Life has meaning. And we're being deprived of it. One by one.

I am just another casualty of the war on crime.