This One’s For You

Burton stared out of the single window of his one-room shack in between bites of chicken and rice. His rations were getting low, but it would be another four days until he could pick up his share of food: one pound of rice, beans and meat, one gallon of milk, and a block of cheese. This meal was the last of his chicken. He kicked himself for not planning better, but at least he could make cheesy rice. He laughed thinking about that dish. It was the only thing his mom knew how to cook, so naturally, it was the meal he ate most often growing up.

He hated it as a kid. Hate is not a strong enough word. Despised. Loathed, really. Not just the taste of it, but the fact that he had to eat cheesy rice while other kids, one-percenters, ate things like pork and potatoes or pizza or root beer floats. He had never tasted those things or anything like it. No 99-percenters had.

You were born either a one-percenter or a 99-percenter and whatever status you were born with is the status you died with. The one-percenters made sure of that. They controlled food production and consumption, produced and distributed medication, and created and enforced the laws. They made it illegal to voice dissent towards the government. And a gathering of any more than two non-related 99-percenters could result in prison time. In short, one-percenters controlled everything. And they knew that the only way to keep their power was to render everyone else powerless.

Burton’s eyes drifted from his plate to the window. The sun was setting, streaking the light blue sky with shades of purple, pink, and yellow. He hadn’t realized it, but in watching the transition from day to night, he started to smile. Less at the sky and more at the thought of his Chloe.

Chloe was the type of person who saw the beauty in everything. A puddle on the sidewalk was an invitation to play. A stranger at the park was just a friend waiting to be made. A summer storm was a reason to nap in the middle of the day. But the thing she loved most in the entire world was the sunset. She would always sit next to the window during dinner so that she could watch the colors change as the moon rose in the sky. Burton would watch Chloe as she watched the sun fade from view. All Burton wanted was one more minute of watching Chloe, of seeing the world through her eyes, of feeling something other than this blinding rage that infiltrated his every thought.

He hadn’t felt anything other than hatred, especially towards the one-percenters, in a long time. They were the reason he had to watch his daughter die. When she first got sick, she had just turned seven. Burton wrote letters every week begging the Medical board to grant Chloe treatment, but only ever received rejections. He entered every monthly lottery—the ones where a single 99-percenter would be selected to receive any one thing reserved for one-percenters—trying to win a doctor visit on Chloe’s behalf, but they never called his name. He had been trying to save her life for nearly a year and a half and was running out of both time and options. Burton, the guy whose name is synonymous with ‘living by the book’, finally gave in and went to the town’s local smuggler hoping he could get his hands on some medication. Burton paid the man in rations, since it wasn’t like Chloe was eating much these days anyways, and was handed a slice of chocolate cake and a vial of poison. No explanation necessary.

Chloe had actually brought this up. Once. She made her father promise that if she was going to die, he let her go this way. They could take her life, but they couldn’t take her power. Burton admired his daughter, hoping he could one day be as strong as her.

Burton waited until nightfall to make his way home from the smuggler’s house. Chloe was asleep on the bed when he arrived so he tip-toed to the kitchen and infused the cake with the contents from the vial. He thought about waking her, but decided to watch her sleep instead. He held her, listening to her breaths as they grew more ragged and shallow, waking her just before sunrise. He carried Chloe and the slice of cake out to the front porch.

She shoveled the cake into her mouth, trying desperately not to vomit. Just the sight of food made her sick. But she wanted to savor this. She knew this slice of cake was special, in more ways than one, and if this was her last meal, she was not going to ruin it by throwing up. Chloe finished her food, Burton pulled her in to his chest, and watched her as she watched the sun rise over the trees. He wanted to remember how her eyes sparkled in the morning light. Even in this moment, her eyes were full of hope: hope for life without pain or constant wanting.

They sat there, silent, together, thinking about what comes next until Chloe’s eyelids got too heavy to open again. Burton felt the last of her air escape her body and couldn’t control the tears that streamed down his cheeks. He took in a deep breath, scooped his not-yet nine year old daughter’s limp body into his arms, carried her into the forest, and buried her in the forest next to her mother.

That was three months ago.

Burton finished the rest of his dinner, placed his dishes in the sink, and went to change out of his work uniform and into a black jumpsuit. At 9pm, his shack went dark, as did the living quarters of the rest of the 99-percenters. Right on schedule.

Burton crept out of the back door and disappeared into the grove of trees. He was light on his feet, but decisive with every step, careful to make as little noise as possible. He arrived at a clearing a few yards from the center of the forest. He bent down next to a sheet of wood—that would go undetected if you weren’t looking for it—knocked twice, paused, knocked once more, and then whistled a complicated hum that would be recognizable to those on the inside. He could hear the sound of bolts turning and metal clinking, then the door opened towards him. He greeted the woman who opened the cellar door and climbed in behind her, locking the door before descending the ladder.

There were 12 rows of 10 chairs, each one taken, so Burton stood at the back of the room, between a woman he’s never seen before and a man he called a friend. Shirley stood looking out at the crowd. She couldn’t believe that the 99-ers faction had grown its membership to over 100 people. It had never been this large before. Shirley smiled, knowing her mother, the founder of the 99-ers, must be smiling down on her. This could work. The coup on the Citadel could really work.

“Good evening, 99-ers.”

“Evening, President.”

“For our first timers, welcome. For those of you who have been here before, thank you for your continued loyalty to this faction. Leads, report your status please.”

“Wendy reporting. We’ve been tracking the Citadel’s schedule. The one-percenters arrive by 9am, let out for lunch from noon to 1pm, and everyone goes home at about 5 pm. We noticed that the highest offices don’t leave for lunch, though. It is brought to them. The front of the building is guarded by security who never leave their post. As for the back of the building, security walks by on the hour every hour. It takes them about 15 minutes to complete their patrol. This will be out best point of entrance.”

“Mitchell reporting. We’ve been smuggling scraps of fabric and have sewn nearly 200 one-percenter emblems. We will had these out at the end of the meeting. Before the coup, sew these onto your jumpsuits as this will be our cover into the Citadel.”

“Burton reporting. All of the factory floor leads are onboard. We developed a kill code that we will enter into the computer system at the same time to shut down production across all of the factories. The Citadel will have to respond to the shutdown, leaving the building less protected. We should enter at 12:30. It would minimize the number of casualties, but give us the best shot at getting who we want.”

The leaders. The top one percent of the one-percenters. The ones charged with protecting the status quo. They were their targets.

Some of the 99-ers did not think it was enough to capture the leaders and hold them until they granted their demands. Some were calling for death. Burton himself wasn’t a violent man. He didn’t even like smooshing bugs. Just the thought of the seeing human blood made his stomach turn. But the more he thought about this uprising, the more he thought about Chloe and everything the one-percenters have taken from him, and the more he wanted to destroy them, and take the only thing he could from them that truly mattered. Life.

“Leads. Can we successfully accomplish this coup tomorrow?”

The leads looked nervously to one another, but nodded. They were as ready as they were going to be. Waiting wasn’t going to change anything except make them more anxious and prone to mistakes. Tomorrow gave them the best chance of success.

“That settles it. Everyone, go home and sew on your patches. Meet at the tree line behind the Citadel’s back gates at noon. Factory leads, enter the code and shut everything down. When the siren blares, directing security to the factories, we will take the Citadel.”

Shirley clapped twice, the 99-ers erupted in three “Oh-rahs” and the meeting adjourned. The 99-ers left the cellar one-by-one, each member grabbing a patch on their way out. Burton went to leave, reached out to take the next patch on the stack, but someone grabbed his wrist before he took it.

“This one’s for you.”

Burton took the patch from Mitchell. Beneath the one-percenter symbol, along the edge of the patch, was a single word stitched with red thread. He ran his thumb over the word. Chloe. He raised his eye’s to meet Mitchell’s. Behind their bright blue color was a darkness that only the unluckiest of parents could recognize in another. The deep despair that comes with outliving a child, and in their case, being forced to watch them die as every beg and plead for helps goes ignored or denied. Theirs was a sorrow that consumed every part of them, gnawing away at them from the inside-out until they were nothing but a shadow of who they use to be. It was only the memories of the children taken from them far too soon that kept them alive, kept them moving forward, kept them fighting.

“For Chloe.”

“For Josephine.”

They shook hands before Burton ascended the cellar ladder. As he walked through the forest back to his tiny shack, emblem in hand, he felt strange. For the first time since Chloe’s death, he felt something other than anger or despair. He didn’t have a word to describe it, but he felt like he had a reason to live and something to live for.

Hope. He had hope.

Hope wasn’t something 99-percenters often felt or rather, often acknowledged. He and all the other 99-percenters were taught that survival was everything and hope was the thing that would surely get them killed. But what they didn’t realize was that hope wasn’t just a threat to them. As they and the one-percenters would soon find out, hope had the power to dismantle the entire system they’ve all been living in. Hope could change everything.