-1THE GIFTS WE TAKE

by Tenda

A story in three parts! I'd rather intended this be a play of sorts, but I'm a doctor-- not a writer-- so this is as it is.

Dedicated to Robert, wherever you are today. It's a better place, but I'm working on bringing a little of it here.

PART ONE

Ness ushers a reluctant Jeff into the blackout at the Fourside Department Store, and with gun and bat drawn the two enter and disappear and are lost, December 23rd, as a platoon of the Fresh Breeze marches by. They are imperial-- cold and tall though half are short-- and carry standard-issue semi-automatics, standard-issue to put down an Inflicted. There are reports that those beasts are amassing in the marshes, that they are gathering in the slums, that they are numbering five-hundred in the alleys and five-hundred is five one-hundreds too many: so, the Fresh Breeze marches.

An Inflicted is an unusual thing. It is half-beast, half-man, and the nature of corruption is that it is always a blend. An Inflicted shot with a .225 caliber bullet may survive as half of a man, or it may survive as half of a beast; if it is half of a beast, it must be rendered in no part a beast. There are dead bodies in the alleys because there are some that do not lose the blue tinge of the skin when shot, and there are dying bodies in the hospitals because there are those that lose the hue but can't shake the bullets quite as easily. Fresh Breeze grand marshal, Loretta Todd, has to date offered no comment on the recent militaristic motions of the movement. The Fresh Breeze still publishes non-violent billboards and flyers to the Fourside suburbs.

The platoon passes the Fourside Department Store and marches up 9th Street, past the enigmatic tourist attraction of Magnet Hill and into what the newscasters would call an 'encampment' of Inflicted. Garbage diving for food, they are caught unawares, and when the full fire of the platoon is turned onto them they are mush and no more in moments. The screams outlast the flesh, and Paula staring down an otherworldly creature of another sort six-stories up is stunned but only by the humanity and only because she does not know it is the scream of an Inflicted-- when Ness drives his baseball bat through the skull of a blue man, and he screams, Paula does not wince.

"You speak our language," she offers the Mook, "and you say you've never been here before?" The green titan's eyestalk shivers and shakes as it produces a guttural laugh from nowhere.

"We've been here after," Paula hears in her mind's eye, a smooth and familiar voice and it doesn't sound unlike her father, Paula thinks and knows that this is the intent, but seeing the Mook in front of her it's not hard to know it's just a trick. "We've been here after, but we had to move backwards to move forwards."

Paula is reminded of pretentious essays and poetry from her peers and dismisses it as nonsense. "What's the future like?" she asks and she prods, she is by and large buying time and she knows it, and she suspects the Mook knows it, but it seems an intelligent and talkative being and perfectly happy to comply.

"It's a better place, without dissent or disagreement. The postulation that function follows form advanced from the textbooks to the government, and from there it was easy. Green Mook and orange Mook are combat designated, while a blue Mook's responsibility is to serve the nation elseways--"

"Isn't it that form follows function?" Paula interjects and the Mook begins to speak back to her, it is beginning a sentence that is ended mid-way because mid-way through the sentence Ness and Jeff break down the door of the managerial office and a single psionic blast is enough to knock the Mook clear through the back pane window and down six stories to the street below. It lands among a crowd of resting Breezers, and it is no less and no more than providence. Rifles hoisted onto their shoulders, the Fresh Breeze marches on as altogether oblivious holiday shoppers march backways to the department store for last-minute requisitions.

Natalie Levy has a list which says "purchase two teddy bears" though the list really is just two pictures of her smiling nieces she carries in her wallet. She has a regular gait because she is moving with a crowd, and seen from above the entirety of Fourside can be plotted in this way as if one was tracking a regular and seasonal current-- there are shoppers moving south-southwest on 9th Street, platoons of Breezers on 4th and northside 9th, troops of Inflicted that are casing back alleys for friends unknown. They recruit as they travel slums, and back roads, and on this particular day this congregation is congregating at the department store. This is a regular portion of the evening news-- this bird's eye view depiction of zephyrs and undercurrents-- this is the migration and weather report of the Giygan War, the calendar by which a street determines the days it is a battlefield instead. The Inflicted converge on the department store and the Breezers lag behind because this is information gleaned in retrospect, and the hunter is by definition behind its prey.

A protest forms in the food court as citizens of the great metropolis of Fourside pull away hoods and ski masks to reveal blue-tinged faces. A man who was once a police officer but is now Inflicted recites crime statistics, makes only a single gesture though he speaks on a hundred topics-- a rising, with an ungloved and cerulean hand. A woman who was once a holiday shopper throws purchased presents from a bag, recites the survival chances and unchances of patients at the Fourside Memorial Hospital, joins a chorus of unassuming local citizens who once had tans or maybe pale skin but are now blue through and through. Your children will die, your parents will die, the day will end and one day your life will end and they speak, they are speaking and patrons of the food court with tears in their eyes well up true and blue and join the Inflicted in what the Inflicted call 'a recruiting drive' just as the Breezers storm the building.

Immense military force is not serendipitous or sudden, and it is not free; an army with standard-issue rifles costs a fortune more than an army that amounts to no more than standard-issue flesh. The Fresh Breeze is a government-funded organization, a mischance and misnomer and mishappening where a PTA-originated organization received a budget entirely too large for billboards and flyers and outgrew its own aspirations.

"How do you stop violence with non-violence?" queried Fresh Breeze grand marshal Loretta Todd while she was still an elementary school teacher. "How do you keep your children safe when those opposed to them are opposed, but also shooting on sight?" Immense military force is not sudden but a long-time coming, and even before the standard-issue rifles are bought an army pays a cost that is not counting or counted or summed until after the rifles are lowered for the last time.

Those left in the food court crowd who are pushed to the walls as the Breezers enter,and immediately open fire, cheer whole-heartedly as the Inflicted churn and are putrefied, purified by iron. Even as they, kneeling and bleeding and crying and dying, die, the crowd smiles.

This is not hard, I think. I think it is easier to smile than to do anything else, than to think, while anyone at all is being shot-- so long as it is not you.

It is almost midnight by the time the crowd is allowed to disperse, and Natalie Levy's throat is sore from the act of refusal to cheer, and the rest of her is sore and cold just the same as she shivers and notes her skin turning a little bit blue. A man of the crowd approaches, heavy on his cane, and thanks her for notcheering along with him and a passing touch by him on his way out is enough to bring the warmth back to Natalie Levy's skin. She is dumbfounded.

The benefactor and his cane walk onto the streets, empty-handed. It is Christmas Eve now, a cold and bitter December 24th; it's past midnight but the lights of Fourside are festive and total, so it's never dark any longer. A short trip, which is painful even for its duration because Sebastian is not of good health and walks with a cane, brings him to Jackie's Cafe, where a quick flash of his ID-- "Sebastian Fletch, M.D., Psychiatrist"-- lets him into the back room where he is to interrogate yet another victim of a strange hallucinogenic phenomenon unique to the cafe. Sebastian sits with the man on the floor and in the corner of his vision sees three kids rush into the back of the warehouse and disappear among the boxes, but thinks nothing of it. The night wears on and Sebastian Fletch is a pragmaticist, he is a man who believes the worker's duty is to work, but as the sun rises on Christmas Eve and the new day begins in earnest and not just on digital watches, Sebastian leaves the man to lie mumbling and half-unconscious in the back room.

Three kids, exhausted and weary and in a rush because in their strange travels through the warehouse a number of high-contrast people informed them it was Unchristmas Not-Eve, pass the half-unconscious man and a broken statue and wonder if the two had been there when they walked in, but it's just a fleeting thought of unobservation. The Fourside Department Store is down the street and empty, and the streets between and around and past are empty too, and three kids are free to do their last-minute shopping unimpeded. Three kids make phone calls home to parents who wish them the best on the forthcoming day of good will and kindness towards one's fellow man, and make note of gifts en route to Fourside P.O. boxes, and leave the department store in short order because it's officially a holiday now, and the holidays are a time for rest.

At the crosswalk a blinking orange hand tells three kids not to cross, and Ness wonders why this is still relevant when the streets are roadblocked off-- an homage to Onett, Ness feels, and the preparation for a parade, Paula feels. Jeff isn't daydreaming, but he's paying attention instead, and Jeff is the only one who really sees the absurdity and out-of-place nature of the squadron of Breezers who sprint-- not march-- down the street, towards Central Park, with rifles raised-- not lowered. All of a sudden, Jeff tunes out of an everyday frequency and into a real-world frequency and sure enough, he can
hear it on the wind, he can hear it over the trees, there is screaming and shouting and gunfire and the grey clouds are smoke, were always smoke. At the crosswalk, a blinking green smile informs three kids it's safe to cross but one has broken off to pursue a passing breeze and two others follow by virtue of necessity.

Central Park is a warzone, and some sense of self-preservation keeps the three away and with weapons lowered, though at the ready. The air is inconceivably muddled, and the din is absolute, and try as they might though everyone in Central Park is speaking one language, not a word can be made out. There are Inflicted-- teeming masses of long blue faces and limbs-- that sing and chant at the center, though their words are lost to screams and sobs as they are gunned down in what would be a real-life reenactment of nuclear decay if their ranks were not replenished with every halving. Loretta Todd is mounted ceremoniously above the forward ranks of Fresh Breezers, bullet-riddled and blue-hued, and there is a man wearing the ceremonial garments of grand marshal now but his words are overcome by roaring staccato murder. Sebastian Fletch is preaching from atop a literal soapbox, though no one is really listening and the act of unattentiveness is enough to drown out his speech. Those who would still be called unaligned Fourside citizens are being rallied by one Natalie Levy who, when the taking of a Breezer hostage fails, leads an unarmed assault against the Fresh Breezers in what newscasters would call 'a protest of what was erroneously deemed inhumane treatment of what are erroneously considered "human beings" among the Inflicted.'

Ness, Paula, and Jeff have dropped their weapons, and shudder just to think they ever held anything that could be called a weapon at all. The sun appears momentarily from behind the bonfire-fueled clouds, and the city of Fourside is a warzone and does not notice, and the Chosen Three of Four are privy to a special sort of perception where each and every of the momentous three can spot the ashes that blow on a wintry wind from face to unmoving face.

Ambulances and fire trucks arrive, police officers come and violence begets violence, and the last act of the Fourside Police Department before their dispersal would be the bloody dismantling of the 1996 Christmas Eve Riots.

Martial law was declared, but irrelevant, and Eagleland National aid was requested, but unheeded, and for nearly a week bodies piled up on doorsteps because the powers-that-be needed time to reorganize, needed time to rally and become military because immense military action is neither serendipitous nor sudden, and a citizen that leaves their home is more likely a potential enemy than a friend when the number of factions present exceeds two.

Natalie Levy's Fourside Citizens' Brigade pledged its protection of the Inflicted that the Fresh Breeze vowed to obliterate, and flyers went out for the both of them but as New Year's drew closer, the only army that had swelled considerably were the Inflicted and none could put a finger on this but for one Sebastian Fletch who for days pondered the immortal words of the late grand marshal Loretta Todd, "How do you stop violence with non-violence?" and was wiser for the wear but lacking an army of his own to speak his piece.

Paula Polestar huddled in the basement of the Fourside Sunrise Hotel with Ness and Jeff says only one thing on Christmas day, and they're not even her own words-- Paula Polestar says only what the Mook had said before its death, and what it said was that the only difference between this world and its own was we did not yet realize function follows form, but all things can change in time.

Jeff remarks that all Inflicted are blue-skinned but born otherwise, be it black-skin white-skin or else-skin, and that they never attacked innocents until after the change in complexion.

Ness flatly asks that Jeff not support the points made by otherworldly invaders, and before Jeff can retort Paula asks the both of them to not speak of it anymore. She prays before bed as usual, and she prays that the violence can end soon-- also as usual-- but this Christmas is the first night she makes this prayer without an addendum that the violence end peacefully, because Paula can never, ever, be the person she was before.