Rainbow Wars

Rainbow Wars Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Current day

“Wait But Boone is still alive.

“He survived. I find out a lot later.”

Lucy gets confused, “Wait but we need to go back further. How did you end up in this position? If you aren’t Cair then who are you…”

“

Fine.

I remember a few words. Thank you so much for letting me be who I am…

The words were etched in my mind. I’d read it so many times I memorized it. I’m shaking. I’m remembering now how it all began before I read my speech to a crowd in an auditorium gathered just for me.

“Thank you so much for letting me be who I am,...”

I should go back.

If you want to know why I did, I’d have to explain how I got to New Jerusalem in the first place.

PHILADELPHIA, 1 YEAR BEFORE G-Day

The streets were pale. Businesses were closed down as my father’s old truck drives through Philadelphia. That’s what happens when war breaks out. Once again America was involved in some shit they shouldn’t have been involved in and we had to pay for it.

“You know the plan?” he asks.

He doesn’t look like how he used to when he was younger. The face was stern the same but harsh. War would do that to you too. My face is the same as his. He had strong genes. The strongest kind. He pulls up to the school. His face is seriously full of trauma. He has written on him all the scars from the Phase.

“Yeah, I got it, I got it…”

“This is it, man,” he tells me.

“I fucking know, Dad,” I state.

“There he is...your brother…”

He looks across the courtyard. There are a bunch of kids walking into a building. Outside of the building, there are guys in riot gear and military-style weapons. These were the security guards of our time. They were everywhere nowadays...ever since it was confirmed that the world’s first gay country had atomic bombs.

My father gets antsy when he sees my brother. He even stands up prematurely. I grab him before he gets out of the car.

“You can’t go near him. You know you are on the list…”

“I know, I know and he’s a glorified gay....”

There was a crowd around my brother. We were twins. We were complete opposites though. Cair Queeney was the complete opposite of me. Even now he was smiling from ear to ear. His face gets stuck that way sometimes. He doesn’t even have to work for a smile as I do. And he never gets mad. Not ever.

Glorified gay. Pft.

Even back in the day when I didn’t know gay meant more than happy I knew that’s what Brian was. He was gay.

“Dad, not today.”

The crowd was here to celebrate my brother going away. He was going away to New Jerusalem, the first gay city. It just so happened that we were in the city. Cair didn’t know my father was here. He wasn’t allowed to be anywhere after a list came out naming my father an official Homophobe due to his support of Seneca Castle.

Luckily my mother was Tia Petty, a rich family who took pride in the fact that Brian had the biggest gay scandal of our town two years ago.

Let me explain.

See my world went through this phase. That’s what we all called it. The Phase. All of a sudden everyone lost their Goddamn minds and started going...well...gay.

I guess right now we are in the After phase. All this madness started with Jacob Varney. I remember the kid's name. The story went viral but not because it was a hate crime.

To explain the After phase, I’d have to explain the Phase completely. It was the first time I heard the name, Jacob Varney. Nowadays I wonder if people have that name stained in their brains as I did. This was around the time that I was hitting puberty. I was already scared. Nervous.

“Cute kid,”. My dad said back then.

I was 12 and remember sitting on my couch with my brother Cair. My father was African. I was a first-generation African on my father’s side so let’s just say they’d gotten their fair share of discrimination but even for them being gay was such a foreign concept. My parents weren’t hateful, but I remember being 12 and my father hearing about a gay kid my age getting bashed and his comment being, “Well maybe he should stop doing what he’s doing…

And that’s when my dad said, “Nasty Man.”

When did Jacob Varney go from a cute kid to a nasty man? It was as though it was his fault. Being gay was wrong in my house growing up. It was foreign. What we didn’t know back then when I was 12 was that the man who got gay-bashed wasn’t gay. He went on television and everyone expected a sad story about victimhood and homophobia.

What we got was Jacob Varney’s words, “I’m not gay. For some reason I’m can’t stop acting gay.”

The words became the sounding alarm for an unnatural phenomenon known as the Phase.

Jacob Varney wasn’t born gay. He had turned gay. A percentage of the population turned gay. Stats after the fact had the numbers around 15 percent. Not all at once. It was a slow drip.

It was devastating. Let’s just say it tore the world apart. There is no way to describe it.

Jacob Varney ended up at my school for a short period of time. We were in this really wealthy school due to my mother’s income. Jacob was a bit of a celebrity due to him kicking off the Phase. His family were huge Christians and put him through reparative therapy. Of course, I never met him. Just in passing. Little did I know one day my parents would be having us engaged to get married.

I remember him approaching me one day. He’d been staring at me forever. And he’d finally gotten the guts to approach me.

“Hey…”

“Hey…”

This was before G-Day. This was before New Jerusalem. This was before all of that. Guys had tried to talk to me before here and there but I was such a big fucking idiot. I never really fell for it. So when I feel a warm body up behind me I think it’s my ex.

“Don’t walk up on me,” I state, “ASSHOLE!”

I turn and then see him.

“Oh damn, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he tells me.

"I thought you were someone else."

“Cicily?” he asks, “Right? I know you and your twin look alike but I can always tell you apart…”

He bites his lip at that moment. HIs cute face wrinkles up a little bit with a hopeful face. I immediately shut up. Damn this guy is attractive. He’s tall. Lean. Perfect.

“You’re Jacob Varney,” I state, “The I’m-not-gay guy…”

He didn’t seem so straight now. I was pretty sure there had been a cure to the phase. So why was he still acting gay if he wasn’t?

“Yeah, that’s me…I was wondering what you were doing after school and wondering if maybe---”

“He’s busy---”

We are interrupted by Bashir---Asshole--Ballerina. He walks over and he just has that Bashir look to him. Bashir was Middle Eastern. He attended the best school in Philadelphia at the time because of his family’s money. He had bronze skin, a killer smile and the body of an angel. His personality though...it came from somewhere else.

“I’m not,” I correct him.

“I’m not trying to interrupt something if you two have something going on,” Jacob Varney.

“Like what?” Bashir asks.

Bashir gets in his face. Bashir wasn’t a jock but he hung with those guys. It was bad enough to be gay but high school had made it even worse. Usually, I was the one with the temper but when it came to defending his sexuality there wasn’t much Bashir would do.

Including pushing Jacob Varney into the bleachers.

“Fuck do you mean man?” he asks, “You trying to call us gay?”

“Of course not,” Jacob Varney states raising his hand.

He gives me another look and sort of gives up. I won’t reconnect with him until more than a year later.

As for Bashir, I had already begun to reconnect with him. We were in the closet touching places that we barely even knew.

“Someone saw us…”. I state, “I think it was my brother…”

“Relax, your brother knows your gay…”

“He was the one who snitched on me kissing another boy when I was 8,” I remember telling Jacob back then.

“You got a point, well we’ll be quiet…”

I was 14 at this time, in this closet. Years past your current day. I’m in the broom closet with Jacob Flowers. Jacob was a 6’1” freshman basketball player that had already made the varsity team . Every Freshman girl wanted to fuck him. Every last one of them. Supposedly he was saved and even wore this virginity bracelets. I hadn’t known he was into me until he walked past me that day and Bashir interrupt.

Bashir is hot for me, probably because he knows Jacob showed interest.

He grabs on my ass.

A tight squeeze.

And later that day he goes into a broom closet and I followed him. It wasn’t exactly Romeo and Juliet but it was enough.

“We can't get caught. They’ll kill us.”

His breath is warm. I’d always remember how warm it was. A warm breath. That’s all it took. I may be exaggerating but nowadays I’m not sure. It’s the Afterphase at this point. This was a time where being gay was the worst thing you could possibly do.

“Calm down. I’ll confront my brother and see if he’s starting the rumors.”

“Don’t confront anyone.”

“If this gets around we are fucked. I heard it from the guy obsessed with Jacob Varney what was his name? Gay WIlliams?”

“Ray Williams…smart ass---”

Bashir can come off homophobic at times. It bothered me. All the stories I heard about people getting beat up all the time...those bothered me too.

“Ray Williams?”

Ray Williams was the openly gay boy in school. Of course, there was Jacob but everyone thought the conversion therapy worked on him. Being gay back then was bad. It wasn’t just bad. It was the worst.

The Phase broke down homes. It destroyed families. Let’s just say gay people weren’t exactly being welcomed even while the Phase was going on.

“Give me your ID,” he states.

“Why?”

“Because knowing you---you’ll get to Ray and you’ll kill him and if they find you I don’t want them to identify you. Maybe we can pin it on Cair---finally, get rid of him.”

I laughed. My boyfriend hated my brother. It’s mostly because my brother was a bit overprotective. He found that out the hard way when my brother threatened to tell my dad about us if we didn’t break up. Of course we didn’t and of course, my brother wouldn’t stop making our lives a living hell.

Cair could be a bit stuck up but honestly, he had the best intentions.

“I can---be nice…” I state.

He laughs, “Actually---no. Fuck it. I’ll talk to Ray…you know how you get.”

I was about to argue but then he’d just play with the hairs on the back of my neck. I know what he’s referring to and I pause. He thinks I have a problem. Maybe I do. I tend to snap sometimes. I soften him up with a smile.

“Fine, you talk to him. But meet at the end of the day here...a quickie…”

“Is that all I am to you?”

“Of course not. You’re the love of my life,” I state.

He kisses me. I loved Bashir. I loved him something crazy.

In his very deep voice, he says, “Get on your knees.”

He unzipped and pulled down his pants and underwear. His cock was half hard and at least 7 inches already. I stared at it for a moment before I took the head in my mouth. It tasted strong and musky. I don't think he had showered that day. I licked it all over. Tasting him. Breathing him in. I felt it get hard in my mouth. I pulled back and looked at his throbbing hard cock. So big. So thick and veiny and so so hard. I took it back in my mouth and tried to take it deep but it was so thick. I took his hand and put it on the back of my head and he got the idea.

He pushed me down on it. I felt him entering my throat, stretching it. He pushed more. It hurt and I knew my throat would be sore the next day but I needed it. I needed his perfect black cock deep inside my whore throat. I gagged hard, saliva shooting out the corners of my mouth and some out my nose I'll I felt his pubic hair on my nostrils.

He held me there. Gagging, slobbering. There's no way the girls sitting nearby outside the door didn't hear it. He let go of my head and I backed off. Panting. Drooling. All over my chin, dripping down my shirt. I didn't think about the mess I'd make and how I'd have to walk out of there obviously having just sucked a man's cock. I only cared about the cock. I went back on it. Taking it balls deep with each thrust. Gagging each time it stretched my throat open. He held me down and I pushed my tongue out to lick his balls. The drool flowed now. He let go and pumped in and out my throat. Harder and faster. Gagging and choking and slobbering. He pulled out till just the head was in my mouth and told me to jerk it and not move. I did. Stroking his slimy wet cock until he exploded. Filling my mouth with strong tasting, thick cum. So much it leaked out the corners of my lips. He grunted as he shot the last of it and pulled out.

"Show me, baby," he said. I leaned back and opened wide and showed him my mouth full of cum. He leaned over me and spit into my mouth.

"Swallow ", and I did. There was so much of it. It took three gulps to take it down.

He zipped up, opened the door and left, not closing it behind him. There I was, on my knees covered. I got up and closed the door before anyone saw me. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was disgusting. Eyes red. My face soaked from tears and spit and cum. My shirt too. I did my best to wipe it off and wash my face but I was a mess. I left the bathroom and quickly walked out. There weren't many people there but every eye was on me, including the two young girls who were openly laughing.

Shit...shit...shit.

“Faggot!” someone yells.

Two kids come up behind me and push me. I fall to the ground. Down the hallway, I see Jacob Varney. He watches me hit the floor. It’s beyond embarrassing. A crowd forms when the F-bomb is thrown out there.

“What you just say to me?” I ask.

“Do something about it?”

Two guys. Three guys. I’m angry. Angrier than I can stand. Why would they call me that? I hadn’t done anything to them. They didn’t know me. I’m so angry that I'm shaking. He wants me to attack him. He wants to make an example of me. But why? Why am I an example?

Something is wrong.

I feel an arm grab me. It’s my brother! Thank god.

He saves me right in time and takes me to my locker. He immediately starts helping me with breathing techniques to calm down. After a while, he looks in my eyes.

“Cicily---” he states, “I know that face. What’s the problem?”

“I think people just caught me having sex with Bashir…”

My brother tries to calm me down throughout the periods. I feel like more and more people are watching me for some reason. I don’t know what it is but I feel the eyes. Being gay was probably the worst thing that you could be. I heard stories of people getting run down and killed for being gay. They almost killed Jacob for it. They almost killed Ray for it.

Those sorts of crimes were escalated after the Phase.

If they found out I was gay, I’d lose everything. Cair is looking over at me. We were both popular in school, more-so because our cousin Marcus was ridiculously rich and ran the high school.

He reaches down, “C`mon, I text Dad, I told him what was going on.”

“You fucking told Dad?”

“I was scared,” he states, “You know how he is. He scares me...I…”

He’d always been terrified of Dad. Maybe it started the first day Dad brought a gun to the house when we were four. It was our first memories. An idea of how our life would turn out.

He knew that I was the one who was sent to Conversion therapy when I was just 7. He knew how much Dad hated anything gay. It was because of our mother. The fact that our mother was having an affair. The fact that she had just let him know a few months earlier that she was moving away----with her girlfriend.

The Phase had affected our family as well.

“Cair, I’m fucked, I don’t know what to do…”

“It’s safer home than here,” he states, “People...were talking…”

I knew Cair. He was more worried about me than he was about himself. People could barely tell us apart back then.

“I’m not going to end up like Ray Williams,” I tell Cair.

Ray Williams got beat so bad that he’d lost vision in his right eye when people found out he was gay. It hadn’t stopped either. Every day he was beaten more and more to the point that he tried to commit suicide. People stopped bothering him for a little while but it started up again. People were the worst. They fucking were.

We start walking out of the school at that moment and as I make it to the front of the school I see a crowd forming outside. I’m confused about what was happening.

“Don’t…”

Cair and I turned and it was Ray Williams. He stops us from going outside. The look on his face is one that I hadn’t seen in a long time from someone. It’s a real fear. The kind of stifling fear that keeps someone paralyzed.

Why had Ray Williams stopped us? Why was Ray Williams seemingly nervous as we were approaching the door.

What was he trying to protect us from?

“What’s happening?” I ask.

My chest is beating so hard I think it’s going to explode out of my chest. Cair grabs my hand. He’s going to school to be a doctor and was the one who helped me get past my panic attacks when I was a kid.

“They are going to chase you down,” Ray Williams states, “They saw you out there earlier. People don’t like it.”

There was a time being gay didn’t mean you would be run down by your classmates. Your friends would turn on you. It was some sort of gay witch hunt. It was scary really. My heart is racing at this point. I don’t know what to do. I look over at Cair. He isn’t helping. He looks like he is about to cry. He didn’t do well with stress.

“There’s too many of them,” Cair states, “They’ll kill you…”

Ray nods, “I tried to warn you earlier but your boyfriend slowed me down. Kept wanting to talk about something…”

“You know?” I ask.

Ray shrugs, “C`mon. You and Bashir had the straights fooled but not me.”

“Bashir is in the closet. He’s waiting for me…”

“We need to get you out now if we have a chance…”

“I can go get Bashir,” Cair states, “You get out of here.”

“They’ll think you are me,” I state.

“I have my ID…” he states, “It’ll be OK…”

I think he is telling the truth. I am hoping. I don’t know my life is going to change that day. I’m running out of the school following behind Ray Williams. I don’t know the way he’s taking me out of the school. I don’t know why he’s helping me. The entire time I’m running behind him I’m wondering it. I never helped him. Not any of the times they came for him. Now they came for me and he was helping me.

Why?

“The fucking school is surrounded,” he states, breaking out into a sweat as we get to the side door, “I hope your brother is OK…”

“He has his ID...fuck…”

“What?”

“Jacob has my ID too,” I remembered he took my ID in the closet earlier.

“We can’t go back to get your ID now,” Ray Williams states, “You know what they do when they catch you? Do you have any fucking idea?”

I look up at Ray. His right eye is a glass eye. It’s not moving. They’d done that to him just because he flirted with another guy a little. He didn’t even get to kiss him. Never even got a kiss. They beat him so bad that he is probably scarred for life.

I don’t get it.

“I was there the day they beat you, I didn’t do anything,” I remembered, “Why are you helping me?”

“Because no one helped me…”

He makes it sound so simple. Because we were both gay we had to stick together. I didn’t understand back then that it was a real thing.

We run out of the door. Our feet hit the pavement and we hear a scream.

“THERE HE IS!”

We’re running. There are boys that I remember. Boys that I thought were friends with me. Mitch. Alison. Travis. People who I was friends with for years. They found out I was gay and I look back and see them coming at me, snarling bats in their hands. I hear a rock whiz past my ear as I take off. I kick off the dust from my Adidas. I throw my bookbag back at the boys following us. I count 4.

They are fast. Real fast.

That’s Ray and I make a turn. It’s a fence.

“Keep going!” Ray states.

He tries to hold them off. I manage to get to the fence. He tried his best to hold them off but he can’t. I fall to the ground.

BANG.

Hitting my head almost makes me lose consciousness. I look back and realize the person who stopped me was none other than my cousin. Marcus.

“Marcus----”

A part of me feels happy. It must be from bumping my head. How delirious I am to think that this Phase fear that had broken out over the nation wouldn’t affect my own cousin’s view on me. I look up at Marcus almost happy to see him. We’d grown up together. We were close for the most part...even if he could sometimes be a spoiled prick.

But that’s when I see him pick up a brick. He looks down at me. The look on his face says it all. He had turned on me.

My cousin Marcus Petty was about to smash me in the head with a brick.

Just because I was gay.

“Marcus don’t----” I scream, “I’m your cousin.”

Marcus isn’t himself. It must be the crowd. It’s crazy what a crowd would do. They chant. Urging him on. Two dozen people are there now. My heart is racing. There is nowhere to go. Not too far away from me, Ray Williams was bleeding out getting boots to his face. I would be him shortly.

“You’re not my cousin. You’re a faggot…”

He raises his brick. I cover my face. That’s what he’s aiming for. Marcus has this look on his face. Cair said he was always jealous of us. Most of the men on my mother’s side weren’t all that attractive. Most Petty guys were plump, heavyset and came with some serious acne issues. That was was Marcus. That wasn’t my side of the family. It must have been my dad’s strong genes.

All I knew was Marcus was always kind of shady, but I just thought it was him. I hadn’t known it was deeper than that, until now.

I hear my father’s voice in my head, “Hit back.”

That’s what he would say. He would say to hit back. I think about it. Marcus was stubby enough to get a good hit on. But there were other guys behind him. Bigger guys. Guys who would make me pay.

I don’t do it. Out of fear. I didn’t want them to make me pay.

Little did I know back then that they’d make me pay either way…

“Let me see that pretty face of yours faggot---” he tells me.

He wants to smash my face! He’s aiming for it! I circle my arms around. Tears are rolling. I felt betrayed. I felt lost. I felt like a victim. Here I was not even able to defend myself. I was completely fucking helpless.

“Wait!” a voice screams, “It’s the wrong brother. It’s the wrong brother. We found the other brother….”

I fall to the ground and watch the others leaving. Marcus still has his brick in his hand. I give him a look and get up completely. I push him. Hard. So hard he falls to the dirt, scurries up and follows behind the crowd who are headed back into the school.

I looked over at Ray. He was in bad condition.

“My brother...he’s in there with my boyfriend…”

“Go get help.”

My brother and boyfriend got beat up that day. Beaten up so bad that they were named in a lawsuit by a group calling themselves Gay Agenda along with 1000 other cases. The lawsuit was against the United States of America.

The end of the lawsuit brought about the first gay Country.

The Gay Agenda of New Jerusalem.

My brother became a hero...but it should have been me…

~

“Look at the beautiful couple,” I state.

I walk up to my brother. He has my cousin with him. Marcus and he are best friends now. It’s funny how that works. I’m 16. Two years after my boyfriend cheated on me with my brother got beat up and went viral.

It was a long time ago but here they were, still together, still holding hands. He had stolen my life. He’d transferred schools to a different school in a different city with my mother.

Then came New Jerusalem and the invitations.

Specific gays were allowed to be the first residents and of course a golden couple of victimhood…”Bashir and Cair” were given invitations.

And we all had to come out to the celebration. We all had to come to this party and pretend like we were happy for them. Happy for whatever the fuck was going on with New Jerusalem.

But I was here. With a smile on my face.

“You came?” my brother states.

“How could I miss sending you off?” I ask, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

It’s awkward. Bashir looks at Cair as though asking for permission to even make eye contact with me. Cair just sort of clears his throat. He wants me to be the one to walk away and when I don’t they just awkwardly look like they don’t know what to do.

Marcus Petty grabs my brother, “Come on cousin. The cameras are moving. Druscilla Castle has made an appearance.”

Marcus has been ignoring me for a while now as though I don’t exist. I think it’s his shame for turning on me that day like that. He’d turned on me that day but I knew he’d turn on my brother if he got the chance.

I was being pushed out to the side. Marcus gives me this disgusted look. My heart turns every time I see him. I think about the day. I think about what he did to me. I think about what he did to Cair. Cair doesn’t think about it. He lives a new life now. He became a victim for a whole movement. He became popular because of it. And now Marcus---his victimizer---celebrated him openly.

“No…” I want to spend some time with my brother.

~

The backroom leads out to a stage. We’re alone. He wants it like that. It’s the first time we’ve been around each other at all. I look at his face and notice the scar on it.

I make our drinks as we sit together in the backroom. He’s nervous. He has reason to be. A lot of people were invited. I see my mother in the crowd. I haven’t seen her in forever. I wonder if she would be opening to seeing me here. When my family split, we split. My mother and Cair went one way. I went to another.

“I’m surprised you had time for me…” I admit.

We still look the same. It’s weird because we are two completely different people. He was in a lavish lifestyle being celebrated for being openly gay and I was with people who hated his kind and everything he ever stood for. He’d left me behind really. He never called. Never really text. The most he would do is send me a picture from all the cool places he’s been. What beat the cake was his holiday with my mother and her wife.

“Family FIRST”

That was the caption.

“Family first,” he tells me, “So why’d you really come?”

“I wanted to help you celebrate your departure...this is your big moment…”

“What’s the REAL reason.”

He turns to me. He acts as he knows me. Maybe he still does. Maybe I’m the same kid who used to do spiteful things back in the day. Nowadays I tried to stay away from petty things. That helps with my temper.

“I guess a part of me wants to be around,” I state, “You have so many important people here. People, I’d never be able to meet. After you blew up…”

“After I was beat down?” he asks.

“Because they thought you were me.”

He looks at me and all of a sudden feigns insult, “You think I wanted that?”

“I never said that…”

“I had your fucking IDs. I kept telling them. It isn’t me. I just wanted to be me at that moment DO you get it? I didn’t want to be a twin. For the first time in my fucking life, I just wanted to be me. Imagine being beaten within an inch of your life in a moment that you are spending time with your----”

There is a pause at that moment. A strange pause.

“You're what?” I ask.

“Anyway,” he states, “It’s not like I wanted my video to go viral. I didn’t want the interview. I didn’t want the endorsements.”

How dreadful.

“Did you want him?”

I’d seen them out there. Him and my boyfriend Bashir. They were together now. They were a couple now. Seeing them together was painful. Seeing how they bonded on television for all those years.

“I don’t have time for this shit…” he explains, “I told you a million times that things just happened. We never meant to hurt you.”

“You were in the closet when they found you...what were you doing with him?”

“Cicily ----I---”

“What were you doing with my boyfriend, Cair?”

He seems stuck for a moment. For a second I think maybe he would finally be honest about it. The truth was that they were kissing. The truth was that they’d been having an affair for a while now. Bashir, as horrible as a person as he was had written me an apology letter admitting it while he was in the hospital. That was the kind of person Bashir was.

Cair...smiled. That’s the kind of person Cair was. He smiled when things got to him. My mother told us once just to smile until the pain goes away. One of us took that lesson to heart.

“Guess what?” He asks, “I’m leaving you my house when I’m going to New Jerusalem. And my car. I won’t need it. Everyone uses flying platforms in New Jerusalem----”

He goes on telling me all the things he’s leaving me. He’s describing it. He wants to tell me about his future but he doesn’t want to be include anything that would make me feel jealous.

“I love it...can I wear your other clothes too?”

He looks over at me, “What? I’m sorry to say that again I’m a little confused.”

“Can I wear your clothes too?”

“Of course. I’m leaving everything to you. You’re my twin brother and I love you.”

He keeps rubbing his eyes. He gets up. He staggers a little bit and sicks back down. He looks back down at the cup. The cup that I’d given him. He stares at it hard.

“I can finally be just like you. I can wear your clothes. I can date your boyfriend…”

“What---did----you---do---”

“Thank you for helping me be me. I can finally be my best Cair McQueeney. The perfect one. Surely mother will FUCKING approve. She always approved of you. I can wear your ring. The one Bashir bought you when he started making money off the pain of a generation. I can go to New Jerusalem…”

I could be him.

I could be Cair Queeney? Who better than me? I knew how he talked. I knew how he walked. All I had to do was hide him in a closet. By the time the sleeping pill wore off, I would be in New Jerusalem.

I was taking my life back.

Even if my father’s terrorist group gave me the resources to do it.

“Cair?” the voice asks.

“Yes?”

“You’re up…”

I walk out into the crowd. All of these people looking at me. Today would be the beginning of my future. I’m thinking that I'm stealing a ticket to paradise but I’m stealing a ticket to somewhere else. If I knew then what I knew now I’d take my chances in the DMV area.

What if I told you the DMV doesn’t exist 5 years from now? Most of the people at this celebration will be dead 5 years from now.

37 percent of the population will be done 5 years from now.

And it all starts today.

I open up the letter. My voice is hoarse. My hands shaking but managing to stay strong. Cair would be strong right now. I had to be like him. I had to be like Cair.

“Thank you all for being here and THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME BE ME…”

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