Author's note: I'm trying to stretch the story to ten chapters or more because, frankly, it's ridiculous that all my stories haven't reached the double digits yet. Though that The Lexicon: Plot Snorkacks collection might… one day.
Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.
1985
My world shakes. Missile explosions chase one another in my head, creating myriad of colors that I haven't seen in a long time. I take a minute to enjoy the view, but my world shakes once again, this time as a force that pushes me onto my stomach. Someone is slapping my back hard enough to flatten my ribs into pancakes.
I cough and taste the blood that has been flying out of my mouth, landing a respectful distance away. Better jump, I want to say, red embellishments are coming your way, decorating stained and dusty shoes. The same force spins me around so that I'm staring at the sky and its Big Brothers. The waiter from the Chestnut Tree sits me up and shuffles around and I sit there, perfectly like a statue, trying to regain feeling in my face and trying to remember just… what… happened…
"Drunken fight with an Outer Party member," the waiter says, "you aren't held accountable."
How reassuring. With whom?
"3571 Parsons." Oh. I haven't seen Parsons since my last job but it's pretty easy to recall him: tubby man with fair hair and a frog-like face, the son of a whale trying to masquerade as a human being. I run a tongue over my teeth, taking inventory. I can't put weight on the toes of my right foot and my head still aches but my muscles are sore, satisfyingly so.
Parsons is only a few steps away, he's soaked from water, sweat, and blood, and he looks nervous. He's sitting cross-legged looking sheepish; I take the moment to analyze the damage I've done to him. Half of his hair is gone, swollen eyes, busted lip, he's cradling his left arm to his side but other than that he looks fine. His rolls of fat that cradle his body like a bracer and a shield seems to finally found a self-utilizing role. I don't help him up. He's much fatter than I last remembered. He doesn't recognize me.
"Comrade." He says as he stands, his body spilling out of his blue overalls. His grey shirt acts like a bag that's straining and about to burst at the seams.
I make a pitiful attempt to hide behind the waiter and fail. I'm trying to remember what started the fight, as far as I know, he jumped me, howling in rage. Then I shoved him back and grabbed a handful of his skin right below his eye, pushed and pulled. Then I see the ground, the sky, the clouds, Parson's angry red face, his mouth spitting into my eyes, all in that order. Parsons probably just finished his exercise quota for the year.
He licks his lips, nervous, and says, "Allow me to walk you to the Victory Mansion entrance." His sweaty hands suddenly gripped my sides and I'm crushed in a warm embrace and lost in a sea of scents that define a man as a man who hasn't washed because he was unable to fit into a tub. His hands palm my scalp and he shudders down a sob and his rolls of fat undulate close to my body.
I don't know what prompts him and a list pops into my head as to why people would think that by telling me their problems, I can suck away their troubles: the effect of the perfect stranger, my overall non-aggressive attitude, Parson's apologetic mannerisms, the fact that I'm there, the fact that he needs to relieve his inner conflicts. This is borderline pre-Vaporized actions but it isn't yet. Most Party members will never be friendly, but Parsons' drunk and that's what's separating him from me. I'm always partly sober, ever since the regression. He tells me his life story, most of which I already know about, all of it which revolves around his family. Parsons dominates the entire conversation. He talks of his beloved children, the little fanatics, proudly, demons of his blood. He drifts to his wife, claiming that he could've never suspected Mrs. Parsons of crimethink but thanks to his son and daughter, he won't be suffering under the care of a traitor anymore.
I swallow the urge to tell him that Mrs. Parsons purposely ruined her own plumbing just to get me into the house to distract her children. It's like pulling an innocent bystander from the sidewalk to your front to block two bullets intended for you.
"Women are all very devious, Comrade. I would've never guessed. When I first met her, she was so beautiful and enchanting, I should've known right from the start." Parsons sighs, his nostrils flutter like laundry hanging from the line. "As the years went by, her beauty only grew and grew until only my two young ones could see through her."
As far as I can recall, Mrs. Parsons was a skeleton dipped in Friday's lunch gruel. The grey variety.
We part ways.
Parsons is the classic case of doublethink: he doesn't love his wife but years of companionship have made him close to that woman, which obviously cannot happen.
Of course Mrs. Parsons was the devious traitor, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Goldstein. Of course Parsons' children will be model citizens when they grow up, extolling the virtues of the Party. Of course, within five years, Parsons' children will turn in their morbidly obese father for crimethink of some sort.
We part ways.
I head off to the direction of a monstrous Prole woman as solid as a Norman pillar hanging laundry, whipping half-cleaned diapers into the wind. Her arms are an angry red and thick as launchers and she's whipping the life out of those decrepit cloths that probably have already gone through five babies a day. She whips to the tempo of the tune that I've heard so many times around London.
It was only an 'opless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams-
And then she sees me and she stops.
I don't know where she could've recognized me, I saw her through a window back in the Pre-Vaporized days, singing the exact same song. Perhaps a spy for them? I wouldn't have believed it until I realized that old, tepid, antique shop owners could suddenly pull a gun to the back of your neck. They'll shoot me in the back I don't care they'll shoot me in the back I don't care they'll shoot me in the back I don't care down with Big…
In my Pre-Vaporized days, I almost fell in love with her due to what she symbolized.
Wait, wait, she symbolized something?
She's a mountain of mass and muscles due to labor, her shoulders remind me of horizons. Brown bits from the diapers fly off and land onto her body and into her mouth when she sang. Her voice is different from the telescreens which displays itself as a cracked and braying man. The telescreens' voice are so covered that perhaps the only thing one can tell by listening is that its impersonal and it belongs to a man. If there was a perfect word I can find to describe the voice, it would be 'yellow'. But the Prole's voice is guttural; vibrating in a way that you know your chest could feel if she sang just a bit louder.
I used to sing small tunes with my mother, clapping my hands to the lullaby There was a little Dutch boy that went into a store. He bought a pound of sausages and laid them on the floor. It's a pity that Party members aren't allowed to sing since songs are designed to keep a mind entertained and occupied.
She's still staring with beady little eyes; I can tell how coarse her skin of her arms is from my distance. She reminds me a swollen, over ripened fruit, the ones that taste off when you bite into them. She slowly lifts a finger to her lips shhhhhh.
What is that suppose to mean? Big Brother or Goldstein? Comrade or Traitor? The Prole woman whips out the diaper again, pegs them on the line, and kneels back to the washer at her feet and the cycle repeats- whip, peg, washer, whip, peg, washer, and the entire time she's singing.
I have no idea what is going on and on some cases, I've learned to accept the facts that were given to me at face value… but then came those times at night where the room was suffocating and I didn't know what exactly was the reason why I couldn't sleep but I knew that it must be big because this was the nth night since Room 101 and the feeling were so bad. I slipped the blanket over my face so the telescreen wouldn't see and covered my eyes with my hands and begged… begged my body for some decent rest because there was no way that anyone could function after experiencing this torture. Then I had the dream of my mother getting eaten by rats and my insomnia never bothered me again.
I want to scream I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.
That's when my regression started as well as my beginning incredulity with Julia's case.
Julia, I hazard a guess, was also a symbol but in her case, she represented the ideal women, youthful, supple, fertile, yes, definitely fertile, still fertile, despite all the woes she's probably have been experiencing with pregnancy. After Vaporization, I tried to finish that business I still had with her, feeling a vague sense of disgust whenever she looks at me, I could feel her disgust at me. Julia had been a reminder of the Pre-Vaporized days of crimethink. After the dream, Julia morphed into Sex-obsessed; I think it's a disease. These days, I always associate Julia with the image of Julia bouncing on O'Brien with her eyes closed.
Once, during her third trimester of her first pregnancy, she happily waved me over on the other side of the square where she was sitting on the corner of some rubble, I would think that her joy came from either medicine associated with the doctors of a Carrier or Pregnancy hormonal moods. I was careful not to sit so that our thighs were touching, in case it brought up memories of intimacy and became the harbinger of another round of angry-sex. Julia was in her third trimester; she was polishing off the last of her cigarette and she said, "Winston. The epitome of vices is in my hand. They aren't vices, however, because Symes told me that vices are near crimethink and their very definition means to go against rules. But since vices are freely given and expected to be used, they can't be vices!" She slurred and jolted through that speech in a train wreck and then extinguished her cigarette on my overalls.
Smith you idiot, get away from her.
I got up slowly and backed away from her until there were at least five people between me and her, making sure that any spies or watchers or cameras or Big Brother clouds could see my actions at her obvious crimethink; I'd say that all of this is due to the Carrier's medicines. But when all her inhibitions are rendered moot, is this what she thinks about?
Julia will be going to go back to Room 101. Julia will be disappearing again. Julia might be a spy for one of them, trying to gauge my reactions to that statement. And I completely failed because I didn't report her. What if she wasn't a spy? What if she was?
They sye that you can always forget;
They twist my 'eartstrings yet!
I'm walking past the Prole woman as collected as I'll ever be. I'm at peace with myself and I'm flaunting my peaceful demeanor in her face. Proles aren't truly human, she'll know that, and I'm so much better than her I can make up better, nonsensical songs than the Party for her to sing. As I walk closer, I can feel my organs rattling in my rib cages.
…She wasn't singing the tune right, the lyrics are mixed up. I stop as she pins up another diaper on the line; her back is to me and I could clearly see her skin flaking off in angry bits of red at her nape. She's flaunting her knowing-ness into my own face with her behind clearly pointed in my direction.
Multiple voices are echoing in my head.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
I pick at my ear with my fingers and realize that the distant roar was a few streets over. The noise is a crowd people, shouts, yells, stamping feet and a chant that was too much to decipher. The Prole woman is still concentrated in her work, humming a repeating motive, unconcerned. The roars grow louder and she hums louder. I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.
I force myself to forget about the Prole woman.
"Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"
They can't indict me for being curious. I see other Party members running to the scene from the Victory Mansions, expressions in various states of minds. Sweat is dripping onto the roads; I'm already out of breath, wheezing like someone beyond my age. I recognize people in the running Party group: Julia… Parsons… All of us run to the Chestnut Tree Café.
The mob is a sea of Prole heads and dispersed hands and fire, chanting. This mob was unlike any previous because of its sheer power and its longevity. Most mobs were usually brawls that dispersed within seconds. This one is self-fueling. It roars with a ferocity that's crazed and more Party members join the Proles.
This never happened before.
The mob circles around its center. The Party members are being drawn in, like bees to a flower as it blooms outward, and then shrink back, then back out, and over and over, spinning slowly and you can imagine invisible tentacles coming out to snatch their prey dressed in blue overalls. Julia is sucked in; arm first, then leg, then her swollen stomach. The shouts get louder as more Party member joined them. Party members don't associate with Proles; it's an unspoken rule. But here… You can't tell them apart; they mix together into an incoherent mess.
I stick close to the walls of the Café on its top step and watch the ritual progress. I'm the only one that does. I look deeper into the crowd, people lash out at one another with one arm over their face and another clawing and ripping, their bodies lean back and lunged and pushed. People stab one another with abandon, in, out, in, out: up, down, up, down. Prodigious amounts of blood flies freely in the air. The mob shudders in a way that I know it has experienced transcendental bliss.
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
And at the pinnacle of chaos, I look up just in time to see a black shadow descend on the crowd.
My last thought before the missile landed is: Big Brother isn't happy anymore.
