Bone-Picked Dystopian Non-Fiction

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Only when he slept, though. She studied the patterns of his breath to recognize the precise drop into REM. She knew when to crouch low across flagstone and when to freeze on the staccato interruption of his snoring. She felt the dark with fingertip intuition. Read, like brail, the correct pane to crack open.

Through the exposed slit of an open window, she tosses yellow folded notes to a teacher once known. Then she returns to slip, unnoticed, beneath her marital covers.

ACCESS DENIED.

That’s as far as you get ‘cause I got hard beef with the judges. Despite the work I’ve put in, I can’t gain fair entry into any writing contests. I suspect bias.

I suspect the judges haven’t been too amused with my prompt responses, also. What do they expect? I’m a scientist, not a damn poet. My words are measured objectively, and in absolutes.

I prepared for this last-little window competition. Scoured the “-topians”. Analyzed books about burning books, books about a great exodus, books about books banned in masses. Each book stamped as grey, speculative fiction. Dictionaries go so far as to define the genre as “imagined”.

Imagined?

Fiction?

I’m perplexed.

Based on my research dystopian literature addresses visions of a society in cataclysmic disarrangement. I look around. Seems accurate, at least in [insert state]. Characteristically, the protagonist writhes and bucks under oppressive injustices. By observation, I can’t help but draw a personal parallel:

Some behemoth platform suspects interference from a nondescript, unsuspecting citizen and blockades all points of access with excessive force. Any attempt at proving rightful entry is dismissed, and said citizen is silenced.

Oh, and this happens amidst a global pandemic where the educational system shuts down and children are murdered inside classrooms.

That's reality.

Explain, again, why my dystopian tale has to be tortured into fiction for a vocal contest? I have no voice. I'm a educator in [insert state].

If vocal media wants a lasting window into an anti-utopian setting, they should ask teachers to share stories about the post-pandemic classroom. They won't. They've yet to prompt us. Instead, we're being challenged to pitch a big proverbial tent of hard, erect unitarian fabrication. Ironic. Seems kinda...metadystopic; doesn't it, judges?

So here’s a quickie about what happens when some technocratic pity party bans the use of diphthongs, or monophthongs, or whatever the the sound of air sliding, unobstructed, through open throat, tongue and teeth is called.

Words becomes too harsh, cluttered with the collision of consonants. Lyrics prove intolerable and humans repel spoken cacophonies. Without vowels to meter and measure sound, music crumbles and the grinding drone of technology replaces cadence and rhythm.

Nipped under the thin veil of a yet-to-come future, no one predicts what happens next--the complete and absolute collapse of language. Spoiler alert: It's as the genre defines. Catastropic.

As for a glimpse behind the last window, a woman really does crawl under the circular breath of moonlight. Letters really are scrawled and tossed to an outside world in secret. This woman teaches in [insert state]. She studied language hard to compose notes to a colleague. They collided, once. It's complicated.

I made no tease of vocal contests in my condensed anti-established narrative (sort of) though I still have hot beef with the judges. If they’d prompt fair, perhaps the yellow scripted notes to a teacher unknown could be delivered in memoir position. Because the judges won’t, the only ending I have to offer is a flaccid one.

But if you lasted this long, I happened to procure some goody-goody. The first reader to make contact wins. The path to connect is clearly revealed if you simply follow my diction.