To Live and Die With Dignity

I heard the fighting outside: the screaming, stumbling and the leaves crackling as bodies fell, betraying their location outside my home.

Our quadrant has been flagged as “problematic”. Someone must have said something the government didn’t like. They figure if one person is bold enough to say something out loud in the public square of social media, the idea must already be widespread. Neighbors talk to neighbors . . . so they shut your whole neighborhood off. They treat ideas like the viruses that frequently shut down the world nowadays. I’d already been kicked off social media, and this morning my phone was shut off. No way to defend yourself or speak up after being “canceled”. Who knows what was even said?

All I knew was nothing worked when I woke up, and people were fighting outside my place. No one knows what happens in quadrants that are shut down, except the government, but there were rumors of people being captured for use as human test subjects in viral research, and of murder and rape for ‘fun’. I once saw an image of human bodies strewn across a highway, gunned down so no one could escape via car. Needless to say, the image couldn’t be found on the internet the next day.

It’s so obvious to anyone outside that I live here in the apartment complex next to the forest, in a one bedroom with massive plantation-style windows that would be easy for anyone to break into. I rolled my eyes thinking of the day I chose the bottom floor unit. Of course the bottom floor.

The sound of someone staggering just outside my window dropped my heart to my knees in cold horror. I backed away from the window. Nowhere to hide. I didn’t have much time.

How did I wake up like this? Why did this happen? No one had foreseen this when the first virus spread across the world. We thought it would all be over soon and life would resume. I even met my boyfriend Max during quarantine. We spent almost every day together: surfing in the clear blue water, riding down rusty red mountains or exploring empty beaches together. He gave me a heart-shaped locket on the top of a sunrise hike and asked me to be his girlfriend.

But after the 2nd shut down, people started acting more erratically. The governments of the world started controlling ideas and quelling any dissent. Even when the TV showed rioting and cities burning, we didn’t think to learn martial arts or to get a gun. I’d never had a gun, but when they revoked our ability to get one and told us it was, “for our safety”, I started to miss the option. Especially when rape and theft were skyrocketing. It all seemed so surreal. I guess we couldn’t have gotten those things anyway once we wanted them - everything was closed.

A weapon would be so handy right now. I tried to steady my breath as I leaned my back into the wall. I needed a plan, even a primitive one.

A wave of nostalgia for the not-so-long-ago better times swept over me as I accidentally brushed my heart-shaped locket out of habit. Where was Max during all this? I hadn’t seen him since he kissed me goodnight yesterday and drove home so he could get up early for work. I stopped and the sounds outside of people struggling and fighting grew quieter as I lightly touched my necklace again.

I should find Max.

The image of a little sparrow with a broken wing we tried to save two weeks ago flitted across my mind. It was scared of us, no matter how we tried to take care of it. Fluttering in lopsided circles it kept silently fighting for the outdoors. Unfortunately, the wing was not salvageable. Max held me as my body wracked with sobs of sadness. Its innocent little eyes just took in the room and occasionally looked at me from the open box we had put it in. It didn’t even know it was destined to die. When we placed it back in nature, finally free, that little bird was immediately happier. It relaxed, broken wing and all, chirping in the sunlight as we walked away. Even though the reality was, death would come for it soon.

The freedom to live and die with dignity was worth fighting for.

I got choked up just thinking about that little bird. Well we all die, don’t we? So living and dying spectacularly is the only option. This pathetic existence hiding in my room wasn’t me. Like the sparrow at least I could have my dignity. Maybe I could die well with the man that I loved. Or…he lived in another quadrant, maybe we could survive.

I gasped as something hit my door abruptly. A weapon right now would be so handy. I knew where Max lived - a 40 minute walk through the woods. I shuddered thinking of people strewn across the road in between our two houses as the government tried to exterminate us. If I could walk through the mountains to him, I could make it to safety.

Well then. This wouldn’t get easier. I knew Max would be wondering where I was and had probably heard the news that we had been condemned. I’d have to get to him before he tried to break into the quadrant looking for me. I threw on some running clothes, pulled back my hair and put on my 80’s style retro sunglasses. I grabbed the machete he had given me for the tall grasses, and the biggest kitchen knife I could find.

I stepped up to my front door, and smiled, heart racing.

To live and die with dignity.

I turned the door handle.