Inked Embers

Entry 1, September 19, 2028:

The most painful wounds dealt to the world aren’t by enormous, chainsaw wielding maniacs hellbent on watching the world burn, it’s usually a patient hand with a scalpel that tears us apart.

Nobody fears The Devil because he’s big, red and angry, it’s because he’s smarter than us. Which is why freedom wasn’t wrenched from our hands in a violent uprising, but slowly eroded with repeal after repeal, democracy melting away slow enough that nobody noticed the devastating hole left in society’s hull.

It started with the right to protest, hurled from the bill, as “it was unsafe for too many people to gather”, which was begrudgingly deemed understandable in the present ‘trying times’.

This left things conveniently quiet when freedom of speech and expression quickly followed suit, “Too much misinformation is being spread, this is for your own good!” Was the explanation, much less believable this time, but we couldn’t complain… Legally, anyway. Suffice to say that anyone bold enough to publicly call the government out lost more than a TV deal.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since it all started, since I lost her, but I hold onto her as I pass her golden legacy between my fingers. The old world is back. Soon.

Entry 2, September 24, 2028:

I remember the day she left. My mother was a brave woman, bold, an angel. An angel with such a breath-taking, glorious wingspan I’m scared I might never escape its shadow.

When we realised exactly what our High-Lords, formerly known as Politicians, were doing. A few of us tried to rise up, my mother being one of them. I was far too young to join the rally, even before it became obvious a riot was brewing, but violence is no deterrent for an angel, and when the secretively planned day came, my mother knelt to my eye level.

“Today is bigger than us both, sweetheart. This has to work.”

She placed it in my hand, then. The locket, golden, the shape of a heart, and filled all the love of a real one and more. Given to her upon my birth, it was a celebration of her instant maternal bond with me, and it was her intent for me to give it back when she returned, a celebration of freedom.

As you can guess by my writings, and the fact that I still have the locket, it didn’t work.

That was the last time I saw my mother, it was the last anyone saw of anyone who dared oppose submission, the new normal.

I’ve seen the abyss from the sparrow’s eyes, I’ve circled it from a distance for years now, but I’ve spent this time making friends, and we’re moving in.

Entry 3, October 2, 2028:

“Guns, lots of Guns” he said, referencing a movie that’s been blacklisted for so long I don’t even remember its title. But he was right, when the lid came off the crate, it looks like our little revolutions is gaining legitimacy. Like fish growing legs and walking to shore, we’re evolving. I just hope it’s quick enough.

Entry 4, October 31, 2028:

Happy Halloween. Almost too perfect that we picked today to mask up and overthrow an empire, but that’s the beauty of freedom, I suppose.

This is promising, reliable, even.

Before today, I’d never held a gun before, despite my eagerness to fight, I’ve held off picking one up since we got the shipment in. They’re heavy. Too heavy. Not so heavy as to make it difficult to hold, they’re designed efficiently enough, but the knowledge that you’re carrying a death machine sets in pretty damn quick.

But then my mother swims into my mind, and it might as well be a feather. For the first time in years, I’ve taken her locket off, it has a more fitting place now.

Fixed to the barrel of the gun, I’m carrying my mother with me today. This is the last entry in an admittedly short journal, but I had to get these down, the last days of misery.

Today, it stops. Today, the people are back in control. I don’t know if I’ll ever step out of my mother’s, but the shadow of tyranny burns tonight.

To paraphrase a great, Today is bigger than me, and it’s going to work.