08-17-2018, 08:41 PM
Somewhere in Kerlile
Camino Arreola had decided that bucket lists were silly. Their opposite, however, was well justified. Arreola had three things in his life he definitely never wanted to do: get shot, eat a spider and visit Kerlile. At least, he thought, he hadn't eaten any spiders yet. That he knew of.
They had arrived in Kerlile a week ago, and immediately been split into five groups that Arreola thought corresponded to perceived strength. Due to his wound, he was in a group of distinctly weak looking men. His group was bundled into the back of a van and driven across the country, to a place that looked distinctly how Arreola had always imagined a labour camp would look.
From what he'd managed to overhear, and after his group were placed with another group, the Kerlians had taken Usera and almost everyone was dead or imprisoned. Rumours ranged from imminent peace to a complete Kerlian takeover of Lauchenoiria. The Usera group said that all the women had been taken first, and their group of men had been left without any food for three days.
From his own experiences, Arreola believed every word. He wondered where all the women were, and if they were going through better, worse or just about the same. He thought about all the people he'd known in Usera. The thought that most of them were now dead hadn't quite hit him, although that could be down to his constant exhaustion.
The Kerlians provided the prisoners with just enough food to enable them to work, but little enough that Arreola felt constantly hungry. Some Kerlian mathematician had probably spent her whole career trying to calculate that exact amount. Arreola fantasised about tracking her down. After a nap and a good meal.
When Arreola had first arrived in Kerlile, he had tried refusing to obey the Kerlians, along with the majority of the others. The Kerlians had convinced most of them that this course of action was not smart. Arreola did not allow himself to think of the events of the start of this week. If he did, he would start shaking uncontrollably, and then the Kerlians would punish him.
He could feel his spirit breaking inside him, and tried to hold out against it, but the rumours he heard didn't help. The Kerlians had conquered all of Lauchenoiria, they had been abandoned by the rest of the IDU, the Kerlians had filed all their names on a list of dead people so they'd never be released. He knew that it was just as likely to be Kerlian propaganda designed to remove all their hope than anything true.
It still chipped away at all his hope slowly but surely. He didn't know how much longer it would be before he was broken completely.
Sophiehill, Kerlile
The town of Sophiehill in Kerlile was about three miles to the west of the Gates of Hell. It was the closest town to the restricted region, and its inhabitants were generally much more aware of the dangers of disobedience than the rest of the population.
Cathy Wilson lived in Sophiehill with her husband Marcus and their three children, Katie, Maggie and Arthur. She worked as a teacher in the local boys' junior school, where young boys were taught about their role in Kerlian society. She knew deep down that her job was to teach propaganda to kids who would never have a chance at a decent life. She would push this thought out of her head and continue.
Her husband worked in the local factory, along with almost all of the men in the town. He worked long hours and she rarely had the chance to see him. Men were generally required to work seven days a week in Kerlile, unlike the women who had four or five-day weeks. Her son was still in her school, and her chest would tighten whenever she thought of him growing up. She would push that thought out as well.
For most Kerlians, the war in Lauchenoiria was just the latest mission to bring feminism to the misogynist outer world shown on the news. For the residents of Sophiehill, it was much more of an annoyance.
The prisoner convoys would pass through the town at all hours on their way to the restricted region. Sometimes, it would only be the engines that disturbed their peace, but often someone inside would be screaming and yelling out various threats. Cathy's thoughts on this were mostly along the lines of: can't they gag the prisoners, or I wish someone would teach the Lauchenoirians that Kerlile isn't in the WA.
One Saturday, she was walking with her kids towards the river a mile or so out of town, where Arthur wouldn't have to worry so much about accidentally making eye contact with someone. They were walking along a footpath, and had almost come upon the rarely-used road to the restricted region, when one of the convoys came along. She made the kids stop a safe distance away.
"Look, mum!" called Maggie, pointing at the back of one of the vans. The door was hanging open. Suddenly, a woman jumped out of the van and rolled along the ground a little. She then stood up and started to run. The entire convoy ground to a halt.
"Come on, let's go home," Cathy urged the kids. "Don't watch it."
The kids didn't listen. Their eyes were glued to the chase. The woman, her hands still bound, ran back west, as the Kerlian guards continued their chase.
"Why don't they just shoot her?" remarked Katie, who was thirteen and had already been through enough of the Kerlian school system to accept such things. Cathy suddenly felt an intense shame at the way she'd raised her kids.
"Come on, get away!" nine-year-old Maggie urged, but quietly. Arthur, six, grabbed his mother's hand.
The guards had almost reached the woman, who had begun to move in a visibly desperate manner. Suddenly, the woman tripped and fell onto the road. The guards walked up and surrounded her. She rolled over and appeared to plead with them. One of the guards lifted up her weapon and pointed it at the woman's head. Cathy covered Arthur and Maggie's eyes, but Maggie shrugged her hand off. Cathy turned her head away as the shot rang out. A flock of birds flew away, startled, leaving only silence.
"Come on. No river today," Cathy said, herding her children back the way they came.
A few days later, she pushed away the thought, as she had done with so many things before.
Kerlian Prison, south of Grapevale
Leonie Bennett had never failed a test before. She was extremely proud of herself for failing this one.
"You should have paid more attention!" Helena informed her over dinner, savouring an apple she'd been given. Leonie kept her focus off the fruit. "I was really happy with my mark on the essay."
Leonie's essay on "Suggestions for countering misogynist propaganda about Kerlile" had consisted of the words "here's a suggestion: the Kerlian government could stop making every bad thing said about them true". One of the guards had ripped up the page in front of her and informed her she was no longer invited to "˜film club' sessions. She didn't care.
"You really have turned into a little Kerlian zombie drone," Leonie said to Helena, echoing her warning from when they first joined the film club.
"Have not," Helena insisted, "I have decided for myself that they have a point, after seeing both sides of the argument, from what I learned in Lauchenoiria and what I learned here."
"Keep telling yourself that, traitor," one of the other prisoners who had refused to join the film club said as she passed.
"You are the traitor, to your gender!" Helena called after her. The woman, who looked about 20, rolled her eyes but didn't respond.
Myriam came bounding over and sat next to Helena.
"They said my essay was especially good and that they would pass on one of my suggestions to the Ministry of Information," beamed Myriam to Helena and Leonie. Leonie lifted up her food and walked over to the table the woman had sat at, leaving Myriam and Helena to praise Kerlian propaganda to their hearts' content.
"Fed up of sitting at the zombie drone table?" the woman remarked.
"You have good hearing," Leonie said.
"It's a very apt description. Caroline," she said, holding out her hand.
"Leonie," Leonie said, shaking it.
"You from Usera? I was taken prisoner during the battle in Nuevo Baeza, but you look too young. No offence."
"I'm from Buttercity, but I was taken in Usera, yeah. And I'm eighteen, not a kid."
"Close enough that your parents are probably terrified out of their minds right about now thinking about what became of their little girl."
Leonie looked down at the mention of her parents and tried to bite back tears. Caroline softened her voice.
"Hey, I'm sorry. This is a bad situation, I get through them by switching off my emotions and forgetting they exist. I shouldn't assume others have."
"I'm fine, I just..."
"Wish you'd never got involved in all this? Yeah, I get that. My twenty-first birthday was yesterday, at least I think, and this is not how I envisioned spending it."
"Happy birthday," Leonie said.
"Birthday anyway, nothing much to be happy about in here."
Leonie opened her mouth to respond when one of the guards cleared her throat to demand the attention of the prisoners. Both Leonie and Caroline turned towards her.
"All members of the film club will return to their cells immediately. All other persons will remain here until their name is called."
"You better go," Caroline said.
"I got kicked out," Leonie replied.
"Really?" Caroline looked impressed. "And they didn't send you off to some labour camp for whatever you did?"
"Not yet anyway."
"Brave kid," Caroline remarked.
"Elena Ibáñez!" the guard called. A tall woman who had been sitting alone in a corner stood and walked over to the guard with her arms folded. As she passed Caroline and Leonie, she winked at the pair.
About half an hour later, the guard returned.
"Leonie Bennett!"
"Good luck with... whatever happens," Caroline said.
"Thanks," Leonie said, suddenly much more nervous than she had been when she wrote the "˜essay'.
She was handcuffed once more, and led down a series of corridors she hadn't been through before. The prison was much larger than she had initially thought. She wondered where she was being taken. Eventually, she was told to enter a room. The handcuffs were removed, and the door locked behind her.
It was dark inside the room, and Leonie's first thought was that the Kerlians were going to leave her here to die alone in the dark. But then, all of a sudden, a light was switched on. Leonie blinked in the brightness. The room was about two square metres and contained nothing but a single chair.
"Please take a seat, Ms Bennett," a voice came from somewhere. Leonie nervously did as she was instructed.
"Welcome to phase two."
Camino Arreola had decided that bucket lists were silly. Their opposite, however, was well justified. Arreola had three things in his life he definitely never wanted to do: get shot, eat a spider and visit Kerlile. At least, he thought, he hadn't eaten any spiders yet. That he knew of.
They had arrived in Kerlile a week ago, and immediately been split into five groups that Arreola thought corresponded to perceived strength. Due to his wound, he was in a group of distinctly weak looking men. His group was bundled into the back of a van and driven across the country, to a place that looked distinctly how Arreola had always imagined a labour camp would look.
From what he'd managed to overhear, and after his group were placed with another group, the Kerlians had taken Usera and almost everyone was dead or imprisoned. Rumours ranged from imminent peace to a complete Kerlian takeover of Lauchenoiria. The Usera group said that all the women had been taken first, and their group of men had been left without any food for three days.
From his own experiences, Arreola believed every word. He wondered where all the women were, and if they were going through better, worse or just about the same. He thought about all the people he'd known in Usera. The thought that most of them were now dead hadn't quite hit him, although that could be down to his constant exhaustion.
The Kerlians provided the prisoners with just enough food to enable them to work, but little enough that Arreola felt constantly hungry. Some Kerlian mathematician had probably spent her whole career trying to calculate that exact amount. Arreola fantasised about tracking her down. After a nap and a good meal.
When Arreola had first arrived in Kerlile, he had tried refusing to obey the Kerlians, along with the majority of the others. The Kerlians had convinced most of them that this course of action was not smart. Arreola did not allow himself to think of the events of the start of this week. If he did, he would start shaking uncontrollably, and then the Kerlians would punish him.
He could feel his spirit breaking inside him, and tried to hold out against it, but the rumours he heard didn't help. The Kerlians had conquered all of Lauchenoiria, they had been abandoned by the rest of the IDU, the Kerlians had filed all their names on a list of dead people so they'd never be released. He knew that it was just as likely to be Kerlian propaganda designed to remove all their hope than anything true.
It still chipped away at all his hope slowly but surely. He didn't know how much longer it would be before he was broken completely.
Sophiehill, Kerlile
The town of Sophiehill in Kerlile was about three miles to the west of the Gates of Hell. It was the closest town to the restricted region, and its inhabitants were generally much more aware of the dangers of disobedience than the rest of the population.
Cathy Wilson lived in Sophiehill with her husband Marcus and their three children, Katie, Maggie and Arthur. She worked as a teacher in the local boys' junior school, where young boys were taught about their role in Kerlian society. She knew deep down that her job was to teach propaganda to kids who would never have a chance at a decent life. She would push this thought out of her head and continue.
Her husband worked in the local factory, along with almost all of the men in the town. He worked long hours and she rarely had the chance to see him. Men were generally required to work seven days a week in Kerlile, unlike the women who had four or five-day weeks. Her son was still in her school, and her chest would tighten whenever she thought of him growing up. She would push that thought out as well.
For most Kerlians, the war in Lauchenoiria was just the latest mission to bring feminism to the misogynist outer world shown on the news. For the residents of Sophiehill, it was much more of an annoyance.
The prisoner convoys would pass through the town at all hours on their way to the restricted region. Sometimes, it would only be the engines that disturbed their peace, but often someone inside would be screaming and yelling out various threats. Cathy's thoughts on this were mostly along the lines of: can't they gag the prisoners, or I wish someone would teach the Lauchenoirians that Kerlile isn't in the WA.
One Saturday, she was walking with her kids towards the river a mile or so out of town, where Arthur wouldn't have to worry so much about accidentally making eye contact with someone. They were walking along a footpath, and had almost come upon the rarely-used road to the restricted region, when one of the convoys came along. She made the kids stop a safe distance away.
"Look, mum!" called Maggie, pointing at the back of one of the vans. The door was hanging open. Suddenly, a woman jumped out of the van and rolled along the ground a little. She then stood up and started to run. The entire convoy ground to a halt.
"Come on, let's go home," Cathy urged the kids. "Don't watch it."
The kids didn't listen. Their eyes were glued to the chase. The woman, her hands still bound, ran back west, as the Kerlian guards continued their chase.
"Why don't they just shoot her?" remarked Katie, who was thirteen and had already been through enough of the Kerlian school system to accept such things. Cathy suddenly felt an intense shame at the way she'd raised her kids.
"Come on, get away!" nine-year-old Maggie urged, but quietly. Arthur, six, grabbed his mother's hand.
The guards had almost reached the woman, who had begun to move in a visibly desperate manner. Suddenly, the woman tripped and fell onto the road. The guards walked up and surrounded her. She rolled over and appeared to plead with them. One of the guards lifted up her weapon and pointed it at the woman's head. Cathy covered Arthur and Maggie's eyes, but Maggie shrugged her hand off. Cathy turned her head away as the shot rang out. A flock of birds flew away, startled, leaving only silence.
"Come on. No river today," Cathy said, herding her children back the way they came.
A few days later, she pushed away the thought, as she had done with so many things before.
Kerlian Prison, south of Grapevale
Leonie Bennett had never failed a test before. She was extremely proud of herself for failing this one.
"You should have paid more attention!" Helena informed her over dinner, savouring an apple she'd been given. Leonie kept her focus off the fruit. "I was really happy with my mark on the essay."
Leonie's essay on "Suggestions for countering misogynist propaganda about Kerlile" had consisted of the words "here's a suggestion: the Kerlian government could stop making every bad thing said about them true". One of the guards had ripped up the page in front of her and informed her she was no longer invited to "˜film club' sessions. She didn't care.
"You really have turned into a little Kerlian zombie drone," Leonie said to Helena, echoing her warning from when they first joined the film club.
"Have not," Helena insisted, "I have decided for myself that they have a point, after seeing both sides of the argument, from what I learned in Lauchenoiria and what I learned here."
"Keep telling yourself that, traitor," one of the other prisoners who had refused to join the film club said as she passed.
"You are the traitor, to your gender!" Helena called after her. The woman, who looked about 20, rolled her eyes but didn't respond.
Myriam came bounding over and sat next to Helena.
"They said my essay was especially good and that they would pass on one of my suggestions to the Ministry of Information," beamed Myriam to Helena and Leonie. Leonie lifted up her food and walked over to the table the woman had sat at, leaving Myriam and Helena to praise Kerlian propaganda to their hearts' content.
"Fed up of sitting at the zombie drone table?" the woman remarked.
"You have good hearing," Leonie said.
"It's a very apt description. Caroline," she said, holding out her hand.
"Leonie," Leonie said, shaking it.
"You from Usera? I was taken prisoner during the battle in Nuevo Baeza, but you look too young. No offence."
"I'm from Buttercity, but I was taken in Usera, yeah. And I'm eighteen, not a kid."
"Close enough that your parents are probably terrified out of their minds right about now thinking about what became of their little girl."
Leonie looked down at the mention of her parents and tried to bite back tears. Caroline softened her voice.
"Hey, I'm sorry. This is a bad situation, I get through them by switching off my emotions and forgetting they exist. I shouldn't assume others have."
"I'm fine, I just..."
"Wish you'd never got involved in all this? Yeah, I get that. My twenty-first birthday was yesterday, at least I think, and this is not how I envisioned spending it."
"Happy birthday," Leonie said.
"Birthday anyway, nothing much to be happy about in here."
Leonie opened her mouth to respond when one of the guards cleared her throat to demand the attention of the prisoners. Both Leonie and Caroline turned towards her.
"All members of the film club will return to their cells immediately. All other persons will remain here until their name is called."
"You better go," Caroline said.
"I got kicked out," Leonie replied.
"Really?" Caroline looked impressed. "And they didn't send you off to some labour camp for whatever you did?"
"Not yet anyway."
"Brave kid," Caroline remarked.
"Elena Ibáñez!" the guard called. A tall woman who had been sitting alone in a corner stood and walked over to the guard with her arms folded. As she passed Caroline and Leonie, she winked at the pair.
About half an hour later, the guard returned.
"Leonie Bennett!"
"Good luck with... whatever happens," Caroline said.
"Thanks," Leonie said, suddenly much more nervous than she had been when she wrote the "˜essay'.
She was handcuffed once more, and led down a series of corridors she hadn't been through before. The prison was much larger than she had initially thought. She wondered where she was being taken. Eventually, she was told to enter a room. The handcuffs were removed, and the door locked behind her.
It was dark inside the room, and Leonie's first thought was that the Kerlians were going to leave her here to die alone in the dark. But then, all of a sudden, a light was switched on. Leonie blinked in the brightness. The room was about two square metres and contained nothing but a single chair.
"Please take a seat, Ms Bennett," a voice came from somewhere. Leonie nervously did as she was instructed.
"Welcome to phase two."
LIDUN President 2024 | she/her | Puppets: Kerlile, Glanainn, Yesteria, Zongongia, Zargothrax