LUCKY W0RLD

JENGA, FICTION

Jenga
I am leafing through my old journals, day three hundred and sixty of three hundred and sixty
five, year 2101
Reading them aloud to not quite any audience
Just the wall and the blank screens that
Normally entertained me:
“The news came through the paper, day ten of three hundred and sixty five, year 2100.”
“No more eggs to be supplied anywhere, all will be destroyed or hatched upon creation.’”
“It didn’t seem like it mattered.”
“My boyfriend felt otherwise.”
“‘This is going to be the beginning of the end’ he would say.”
“I always found that to be a presumptuous statement.”
“They were just eggs.”
“Apparently, there had been too many egging’s, that was why.”
“It was sort of the joke of the world for a while.”
“Apparently, there had been an egging of servers resulting in multi-million-dollar damage.”
“And the servers did everything, so that was a big deal.”
“At first the only change was that we couldn’t have eggs for breakfast.”
“That didn’t matter so much, because the server was still running.”
“That was the only thing preventing us from having ‘jobs’ as they used to call them.”
“It meant I could continue watching my shows.”
“It wasn’t too different from when all the chickens became infectious again.”
“We couldn’t have eggs then either.”
“But then chicken became more expensive, and we didn’t eat too much of that either.”
“My boyfriend was intent on his previous point.”
“‘I told you! This is the beginning of the end’ he would say.”
“But he didn’t do too much about it anyway.”
*
And now I sit and wonder
whether I could have done anything about it
I am wearing floral print
which is the latest thing to have been banned
they say it is too ‘gender ambiguous’
“can you believe that?”
I mutter to nobody quite at all
I continue to read aloud, suffering through the sentences
I learned to read from turning subtitles on, and these journals were voice-typed:
“The news came through the paper, day 20 of three hundred sixty five, year 2100.”
“We are no longer allowed to eat meat of any kind.”
“They are killing all the animals.”
“They say we can sustain just as well off of corn.”
“And who are we to say we can’t.”
“We don’t really know the difference aside from flavor and texture.”
*
I sit and read and wonder about
it all
how did we get here?
one ban led to another
and another and another
To the point where
none of it meant anything at all
“I remember when we had a democracy and explanations
for everything and why those things happened”
I speak to the air
somehow this is the most free I have felt
my words are ungoverned in this moment
my clothing is not allowed yet I sport it
I am able to trace the patterns of life
and restriction and value
*
My boyfriend comes in
sporting a clear mug, because they were afraid we would
create molotov cocktails and
carry them in our drinking containers
or so they say.
he sports flip-flops despite it being cold out because
they banned closed-toed shoes out of fear of stealing and smuggling weapons in
all his other apparel is compliant as well
“Nice shirt” he is jeering at me
I disregard the comment almost entirely and turn my eyes to the ceiling
I then look around
“Do you remember when we used to have windows” I say
“what happened to them?”
Banned like everything else I suppose but
His mechanical answer responds better
“Windows were banned due to fear of surveillance through them via drones and other portable
and remote technologies with image processing features”
They’ve really chiseled that into our brains
ironic they claim it is for privacy when every room is
required to have a camera to
remind us to comply with the rules
I don’t believe they actually check them
so I wear a floral print and test the leadership
he approaches me gently
padding over like a cat
like my pet cat Rico from way back when
pets were still allowed for us to have
he sits meekly at my side and leans over
he kisses me gently, slowly at first
I wonder why it is that the only thing we can do nowadays
is have sex and pretend we’re not mad about the world
I never even feel like it, in reality, because everything going on is so
depressing
He begins to press himself onto me, groping, searching for
some meaning in this mundane and ever-shrinking world
our physical senses are now all we have left
all of our possessions may leave us in a day, we never know what they will say
I suppose that is why we grasp onto physical pleasure
it is all we have left for certain
He kisses me harder now as though my saliva opens his throat and allows him to breathe
I feel bad and so I oblige with him
creating the passion competition
I know that makes him feel better
our clothes are being scattered around the room
I know we will pick up our discards in a few hours and
pretend that we didn’t think that would happen
until it does again
and again and again
as though we have better things to do
I go through the motions
as I always do for him
I am going through my motions
he is going through his
we are pretending like this makes a difference
in the world
in the happiness in our lives
in just about anything at all
I try not to look at the camera in the corner of our room
I try not to wonder who is watching the camera feed
it could be anyone
how would we know?
I hear helicopters approaching as I am
interlocked with my boyfriend as vines wrap around trees
or so they say, I haven’t seen that in a while
I wonder who they’re after
who did what this time
that they waste our precious resources on
excavating a rat from the masses of maggots
the helicopter seems to drift overhead and
go silent once more
we let our breaths shrink into our lungs
temporarily
mechatronic clanking sounds from above us and a loud sound
begins to be repetitively made above us
now that I think of it
I don’t think I know how many people live above us
I wonder who it is getting nabbed this time
I let my eyes roll back in my head as I expose my neck
I close my ears and pretend we are laying in a field of grass
like they do in the movies
the sawing gets so loud it is unavoidable
a piece of our ceiling falls out
a metal body with long spindling legs and
camera eyes descends slowly while filming us
it doesn’t truly phase us
as everything we ever do is recorded
cameras in the toilets
in the shower
in the nooks of our bed
in our glasses
in the corners of our rooms
in our mirrors
there is no way to escape it
and now we are facing the ultimate consequence
the long metal arms reach out to try to pincer us
I know how this goes
I have heard about it
first they inject you with some
poison that sedates you just so that
you go quietly and they can take anything they want from you
I see the needle coming at me now
it is the most shining thing I have seen in a very
long time
carefully weaving its way
through the air with the end target of
my temple
where it is headed now
I normally would oppose
and my boyfriend is screaming and has squirmed out of our position
but the needle has not come for him
Is it because I wore floral today?
Is it because we have been having too much sex?
Is it because I journaled and looked back on it?
Is it because they think I might be a revolutionary?
it doesn’t truly matter
I rise, pull on my garments methodically
Buttoning the buttons
Zipping the zippers
Velcroing the Velcro
and I walk towards that needle
perhaps they will take me to the woods they claim there are
or the tundra where I sleep in a cave and feast on nothing
or the jungle where a snake will kill me
or maybe I will just be killed
and everything may cease
or there may be a god and I meet him
but I doubt it
I feel the cold hard metal shaft penetrate my temple and for a moment
I am in living in the in-between world of life and death
Everything is flashing and turning bright colors
I am becoming one with the machine
And then it all slowly begins to fade,
And I heard silence, for the first time