The Last Wound
July 6, 2026 Leave a comment
Nighthawk Diner was almost empty by the time I walked in. My thoughts were rambling and looking for a place to land.
“Coffee, Roy?”
“Yeah, fill ‘er up. And a slice of your apple pie.” I shoved an empty cup across the counter toward Max.
The sound of gun shots came from the alley behind the diner. Then several more. I got up from the counter.
Max poured the coffee. “Roy, it’s almost The Fourth of July.” I sat down.
A couple at the end of the counter were setting off their own fireworks. She made it clear that she had changed her mind about him.
I sat with my coffee half-listening and half-mulling. Did she learn something that made her realize that she would never change him?
Whatever the reason, the woman got up, huffed out, and hailed a cab. The guy looked over at me and threw up his hands. I half-nodded half-smiled and returned to my coffee. It was late. I was tired and way past understanding anything.
There was another loud crack in the alley. I let it go. Max brought the pie.
“Say Roy, did you ever catch whoever vandalized the jewelry store a few doors down?”
“The smash and grab? Yeah, a couple of guys stole some expensive watches and fenced them to buy drugs. They’re locked up now.”
Max wiped his hands with the towel that hung from his waist. “They vandalize others so they can vandalize themselves. Makes no sense.”
“It makes the same sense as losing a finger or an eye playing with fireworks.”
As I was saying this, a fire engine with sirens blaring and lights flashing drove past the window. An ambulance and a squad car followed.
“I guess I better have a look.” I paid for the coffee and the apple pie, grabbed my hat and headed for the door.
“Say hi to Laci for me, Roy.”
“Will do, Max.”
Outside, I expected the sulfurous, rotten egg-like odor given off by fireworks. But the heavy acrid smell of a fire filled the air. I could see fire trucks at Center City College campus. That’s where I headed chewing on some Black Jack gum my best girl had put in my coat pocket.
~~~
I cleared the police barricade tape with my ID and walked toward the Larks Faculty Admin Building. A fireman stood in a fifth-floor window. He radioed below to the fire chief I walked up to. The fire was out, he said, and there was a body on the floor.
“Roy, the elevator is shut off. You’ll need to walk up.”
That was the corpulent sergeant Fullman. Beads of sweat rolled down his face. He wasn’t about to walk up the five flights of stairs. So, I had to.
The climb to the fifth floor wasn’t easy. The handkerchief covering my nose and mouth didn’t keep out the sharp-tasting smoke and I was already tired from being up the past 30 hours. My heart was thumping like a freight train passing through a small town at night.
The sign on the fifth-floor office read:
Arthur J. Talbot
Professor
School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies
Inside, a fireman stood poking through a large pile of charred books. He was making sure that there were no more embers.
The shelves had been emptied. Books had been thrown into a pile next to the desk and set on fire. Everything had been doused with water. There was no vanilla-like smell of old books. There was a damp burnt wood smell.
A man’s body lay face down on the floor. I put on some nitrile gloves, knelt down, and lifted his shoulder to look at his face. The anniversary photo on the desk confirmed the dead man to be Professor Talbot.
He didn’t appear to have any wounds, but the large book he was holding – Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin – had large gashes in the cover. Was he holding the book to protect himself?
Before I got up, I noticed something under the desk. I stuck my arm under and pulled out a wooden replica of a tall ship. The engraved brass label read USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides” 1797. A third of the ship had burnt away. I handed it to the fireman.
I searched the pockets of his tweed jacket, his waistcoat, and his pants. His wallet, his wedding band and his watch had not been taken. It wasn’t robbery. It was someone with a grudge making a deadly point.
The fireman pointed to the waste basket. “The fire started there.”
“How did it spread to the books.”
“Accelerant was used in the bin and on the books. Someone lit some paper, threw it in the bin and then dumped the blaze on the books.”
I stood back trying to imagine the scene and then went to the open window. I stuck my head out and yelled down to sergeant Fullman “Send up forensics.” The outside air didn’t clear my head. There was a pungent taste in my mouth. I tossed my gum out the window.
Ten minutes later, two white-coveralled techs with masks make it to the fifth floor. One of them starts taking pictures. The other examines the professor’s skull.
“I see no injuries. He might have been overcome trying to put out the fire and died of smoke inhalation.”
I left the techs to their work. I had to go back outside. My stomach didn’t know what to do with the taste in my mouth.
“Roy, what did you find out?” Sargent Fullman asked from his bench perch. I told him that it looked like a homicide. “Crime never sleeps, Roy. Not even on a holiday.”
“You better go home, Sarge. Mrs. Sarge will be worried about you in this heat.”
I stood there blowing my nose and looking around at the crowd that had gathered behind the police tape. Some of the onlookers were holding protest signs. One very anxious woman stood out. It was the woman in the photo.
I pulled her out from the line and brought her to a quiet spot.
“Ma’am, I’m Detective Winder. Are you Mrs. Talbot?”
“Yes, detective. I’m Alice Talbot. Is my husband OK?”
“I’m afraid, Mrs. Talbot, that your husband has passed. I’m looking into what happened.”
This news had her crumble into my arms and then she pulled back. The smell of smoke on my clothes had her wondering horrible things. I told her that her husband’s books had been burnt but that he was untouched by the fire.
She looked over at the protestors. I figured they were adding more pain to an already painful night for Mrs. Talbot.
“Mrs. Talbot, do you have someone you can stay with tonight?”
“My daughter.”
“I would like to talk to you again, tomorrow. Is that OK?”
“Yes, detective.”
“Just one question tonight. Why was your husband here on campus so late at night before a holiday?”
“He was to give the Fourth of July speech . . . at the bandshell in Larks Park . . . before the fireworks. He told me that he wanted to make sure it was his best. He said it would likely be his last.”
“Why did he think it would be his last speech?”
“Some students filed complaints against him. They thought his teaching was biased or not biased enough. I don’t know.” She looked over again at the protestors.
I had an officer wait with Mrs. Talbot until her daughter arrived.
I went home, put my clothes in a dry cleaner’s bag, put my gum on the dresser, took a shower, and then slipped into bed next to my best girl.
~~~
I woke up two hours later when I heard the TV. Laci had the news on.
“Fifty-nine-year-old Professor Arthur J. Talbot, a professor at Center City College, was found dead in his office. There are reports that his books had been destroyed in the fire.
“One colleague described Professor Talbot as the pillar of the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies. Professor Talbot authored several books about philosophy, ethics, and religious studies.
“He is most well-known for his books Minds Made Up: Ideology as Identity and Zero-Sum Culture and The Leveling of Society.
“He is survived by his wife Alice, two children and seven grandchildren.”
I turned the TV off when Laci reminded me that it was the Fourth. I had hoped to spend it with her on the patio with some ice-cold lemonade and a couple of steaks on the grill. But murder has a way of deciding for others.
I called Mrs. Talbot and her daughter answered. I told her that I needed to spend a few minutes with Mrs. Talbot.
“Come right over. The family will be here soon. It’s 208 Larks Avenue, a brownstone across from Larks Park.”
It was the start of one of those searing and sultry days of summer. The package of Black Jack gum in my coat pocket was getting soft, too soft. I wanted to shed my suit coat, loosen my tie, and open my collar. But I had to look like business. I hoped the Talbot place had AC.
When I arrived, Mrs. Talbot’s daughter opened the door.
I addressed mother and daughter. “I am sorry for your loss. I am curious. Is there anyone who would want to hurt your husband, your father?”
Mrs. Talbot wiped her eyes. “I can’t think of anyone directly. But there are students who don’t like what he taught, don’t like what he wrote. The department chair received student complaints about his teaching style, his course content, and his courses on ethics and religion. He was penalized in his annual performance review for a bias toward Christianity.”
Mrs. Talbot wiped her eyes again. “I saw the protestors last night again. I saw them at his last talk on campus. I see them outside our house with signs.”
“Has a protestor ever harmed you or your husband.”
“Not directly. But we don’t feel safe in our home or leaving our home. Now they’ve had their way with him.” She couldn’t continue and laid her head on her daughter’s shoulder.
I asked the daughter if she knew of anyone specifically who had filed a complaint.
“I think my father said her name is Madison with a ‘y’ . . . Madisyn Sawyer. She lives directly across from us on the other side of the park.” She walked over to the window. “Right there.” She pointed to a four-story apartment building.
Before I left, I told them that there would be an autopsy to determine the cause of death. I would let them know what I find out.
“Detective,” Mrs. Talbot lifted her head, “Arthur was to give the Fourth of July speech today over at the bandshell across the street. He showed me the third draft of the speech. He went to the college last night to finish it – something about wanting to make sure of a Latin phrase from Virgil’s Aeneid.”
“Do you know what phrase he was thinking about?”
“Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. It translates as ‘do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.’”
“Ma’am, I wish I could have heard him deliver that speech.”
As I opened the door, a couple was just about to enter.
“Who are you?” asked the man.
“I’m Detective Winder. And you?”
“I’m her son Matthew and this is my wife, Mandy. Any information on my father’s death?”
I told him that I was there to find out who might want to harm his father. I asked him and he said that he knew of no one. I told them there will be an autopsy to determine the cause of death and that I would be in touch when I had more.
Walking down the sidewalk, I noticed someone standing with his bike across the street. He was watching the Talbot house. I decided to walk across the park to question Madison with a ‘y’. When he saw me coming in his direction, he got on his bike a rode away.
~~~
I make my way over and up to Madisyn Sawyer’s fourth-floor studio apartment. I knock. A short round woman with fuchsia-streaked pixie hair and an assortment of piercings and tattoos answered. I identify myself.
“The police! Are you here to arrest me?”
“Do I need to?”
“Isn’t that what police do, detective? Arrest people and find them guilty?”
“I’ll let you know. Ms. Sawyer. I’m looking into the events of last night and the death of Professor Talbot.”
“Come in.”
“Ms. Sawyer, I understand that you filed a complaint against professor Talbot. Is that correct?”
“Yes, detective. I had issues with his Introduction to Ethics and Issues in Death and Dying class. He had us reading Thomas Aquinas and asking us about the “highest good.”
“Is that a problem?”
“There are other perspectives, detective.”
“Were you aware that Professor Talbot was at his office last night?”
“Yeah. I was down on the third floor working on my Master’s thesis. I wanted to finish some research before the holiday. Professor Talbot came down to talk about my research for my dissertation. Then he went back up to the fifth floor, I think.”
“What time was that?”
“Around eight eight-thirty, I think. Before I went home, I went up to ask him about some research I came across. But he wasn’t there.”
“Was anyone else around the fifth floor then?”
No. But there was someone coming up the stairs as I was going down. “
“Describe him.”
“He looked like a high-schooler. He had black hair. He was skinny. Wore jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt and sneakers.”
“Anything else?”
“He was carrying a bicycle tire pump.”
I look around the studio apartment. Two bikes and two backpacks leaned against the wall. Outside the small open kitchen area there was a table with two chairs. On the table was a lit oil candle. On the wall was a TV the size of a billboard. The room filled out with a well-used arm hair holding a cat that couldn’t be bothered and a futon with protest signs leaning against it. Books were scattered around in piles. I scan some of the titles.
“These titles . . .? You don’t agree with what Professor Talbot teaches?”
“Is that a crime?”
“Only if it’s not by the book.”
I notice a photo on the refrigerator door.
“Who is this?” I was looking at a photo of a smiling Ms. Sawyer and a severe-looking dark-haired guy.
“That’s Hadrien Marie. We share the apartment.”
“Does he attend the college?”
“Oh no. He owns a vape shop on third street. He’s there now.”
I give her my card and ask her to call me if she hears anything about last night.
I came away with the impression that Ms. Sawyer’s prerogative was not used to change her mind, as they used to say of women. It was her prerogative to impose change on other people’s minds. She came across as a protest.
~~~
I grab another stick of Black Jack gum from my pocket and walk over to the college to ask about CCTV of last night.
The building superintendent tells me that there are cameras on the exterior of the building, the first-floor entrance, and hallway cameras. I ask to see the exterior footage from last night starting at nine-o’clock.
Just after nine, I see the man that Ms. Sawyer described entering the building.
I ask for the footage of the first-floor camera starting at nine. I see the black-hooded young man with jeans and the bicycle pump entering the building and heading up the stairs. I ask for the footage of the third-floor camera. It shows the hooded man heading up the stairs and Ms. Sawyer going down the stairs.
The fifth-floor footage shows the hooded man reaching the top of the stairs. He enters the professor’s office. He’s in there for three minutes and leaves.
The first-floor video shows him leaving the building minutes later. The exterior video shows him getting on his bike and riding off.
I need to find this young man. I capture a screen shot of him on the first floor. The image of him was a bit blurry but there was enough to show people. There was enough to show me that this guy looked a lot like the same guy watching the Talbot house. I walk back to the Talbot house.
~~~
Matthew opens the door. “Anything yet, detective?”
“I want to show your mother a picture.”
Mrs. Talbot is seating on the couch surrounded by her grandchildren. I have her look at the screen image.
“No. I don’t know him.” She handed the picture to her son.
“Has anyone noticed a young guy standing across the street watching your house?”
“What?” Matthew went over to the street window and looked out. “He’s there right now, detective.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“I . . . well . . . that might be the kid that used to vandalize our house when we were at church. That was years ago. Matthew looked at the photo again. “Yeah, that could be him.”
Mrs. Talbot came to the window. “There was a boy in our neighborhood who seemed to hate us. We’d come home from church and find the top of our tulips cut off. We’d find our garbage cans knocked over. We’d find dead animals in out mail box. We’d find our car tires flat. He’d ride by on his bike yelling all kinds of nasty things. In my day we called kids like that juvenile delinquents.”
“Mom, they’re called young offenders today, as if a change of designation was social progress. And, that kid was Brandon . . . Brandon Brix. I had a few run ins with him.”
I go out the door to speak with the young man. But he gets on his bike and rides off.
I leave the Talbots and walk to the station. I need to find out more about Brandon Brix.
Brandon, according to the police blotter, had committed a couple of misdemeanors at the age of twelve. He had been charged with defacing school property with spray paint and with petty theft of tools taken from several garages. He was sentenced to six months in juvenile detention and then placed on parole for a year. Brandon is now eighteen. He lives on Shore Oaks drive with his mother. That’s where I headed next.
I drive up to the Brix house and see a bicycle laying on the grass. I knock. A fiftyish woman with heavy bags under eyes answers.
“Mrs. Brix?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m detective Winder. I need to speak to Brandon.”
“Oh no. Don’t tell me he’s back to his old ways.”
“That’s what I’m here to find out, ma’am.”
“Brandon! Come down here!”
The young man I had seen across the street and in the screen-capture came down the stairs. He looked scared.
“Brandon, I’m detective Winder. I am investigating what happened to Professor Talbot last night. Cameras have you at the college last night. Cameras have you going into Professor’s Talbot’s office. Can you explain?”
“Oh, Brandon, you didn’t, did you?”
“No ma. I was there to apologize to Professor Talbot. I finally worked up the courage to face him. I watched him go to the college last night. I waited till there wasn’t anyone around. I just wanted to talk to him. I had messed with him and his family when I was a kid.”
“Detective, I divorced my no-good husband when Brandon was ten. He had a lot of anger over that. That’s what’s at the root of his troubles.”
“So, Brandon, you were there to apologize to the Professor?
“Yes sir. But the Professor wasn’t in his office. I didn’t want to walk around to find him. I didn’t belong there in the first place. So, I wrote him a note and left it on his desk. I wanted to take responsibility for the way I acted toward him and his family.”
“Ma’am, sounds like Brandon figured out what was at the root of his troubles. It was his bad behavior.”
“Brandon, that is a noble of you,” his mother hugged him.
“You saw no fire?”
“No sir. I heard about what happened to Professor Talbot on TV. I went over to their house hoping for a time to speak with Mrs. Talbot alone. But people were coming and going.”
“Why were your carrying a bicycle pump, Brandon?”
“I didn’t want it stolen. I used to steal things when I was a kid so I knew what could happen.”
I asked Brandon to come to the station to make a statement. I needed to establish a timeline, talk to the medical examiner, talk to forensics, and review the videos from the administration building. If Brandon didn’t start the fire, then who did?
~~~
I met with the medical examiner and the deceased.
“Roy, toxic fumes, not flames, were the primary cause of death. There are no major burn injuries or grievous external wounds, no blunt force trauma found that could be attributed as the direct cause of death. “
“Note the swelling around the faces and eyes. And there is soot and smoke particles inside his nasal passages. He inhaled large quantities of smoke which may have caused a fatal heart attack. I’ll know more later.
“You know Roy, he could have left the room to breathe in clean air. But he must have stayed inside trying to put out the fire destroying his books. He also could have used the fire extinguisher in the hall, but maybe he didn’t want that powder on his books. Maybe he thought he could put out the fire.”
Mike in forensics had more to report.
“Roy, the fire started in the garbage bin next to the desk. It was started with an accelerant – liquid paraffin. Liquid paraffin is used in lamps and candles. The building administrator said that no candles or lamps or anything flammable is allowed in the building. And no smoking and vaping is allowed within a hundred feet of entrances and exits. Someone brought in the liquid paraffin and lit it up.”
I asked Mike for pictures of the scene. I was hoping to find Brandon’s note to Professor Talbot.
“Roy, whatever paper was on the desk must have been pushed into the garbage bin. Here are pics of the charred scraps that had floated up from the fire and landed in the room.”
All but one document had been typewritten. The one handwritten scrap had “Mr. Talbot.” The rest of the note had burned off.
The videos were next. I start with the fifth-floor video at eight last night.
I see Professor Talbot walking down the stairs with a paper in his hands. I follow him to the third floor. He stops to talk to Ms. Sawyer. He hands her a paper. She looks it over and looks rather unhappy.
The Professor goes back to the fifth floor but he doesn’t go to his office. He goes to an office several doors down. He stays there for an hour. I call the college and ask about the office. I learn that it is Professor Cline’s office. He’s a close friend of Professor Talbot.
I call Professor Cline and ask about that meeting. He says that Professor Talbot wanted to go over his speech with him. He confirmed the time.
I watch the fifth-floor video and see Brandon go into Talbot’s office for three minutes and then leave. Professor Talbot was still down the hall.
Minutes later, Ms. Sawyer reaches the fifth floor and looks into Professor Talbot’s office. Then she walks halfway down the hall and then walks back to his office and goes in. She’s in the office for six minutes and then heads down the stairs.
Fifteen minutes later, Professor Talbot leaves Professor Cline’s office. Professor Clines heads down the stairs with his briefcase. Professor Talbot goes to the men’s room. He leaves the men’s room after a few minutes and returns to his office. He does not come out. He is not seen again. I see smoke. The automated sprinkler system must have gone off.
Ms. Sawyer was the last to enter the office. Or, was she? Old buildings like the Larks building have fire escapes. Was the office window opened by the fire department or had it been opened by someone using the fire escape to vandalize the office and start the fire?
Before I go to review the building’s exterior camera video, I call the fire department. The chief asks around and says that every fireman up on the fifth floor thought that the victim had opened the window.
I watch the video from building’s main entrance exterior camera. I see Brandon unchaining his bike and then riding off. Ten minutes later I see Ms. Sawyer with her backpack doing the same. The fire started after she left the Professor’s office. Was she in on it?
I rewind the exterior night footage video and then advance it slowly.
A figure appears on the far left. It looks like a black-hooded man with a backpack. He’s about the same height as Brandon but Brandon didn’t have a backpack when he left the building. The figure comes near the building. I switch to the building’s corner camera video to view the fire escape. Only the outside railing of the fire escape is visible in the video, but I can see movement on the fire escape each time the figure passes a lit window.
I check the main entrance video and the internal videos again. I don’t see the black-hooded man. He must have gone up the fire escape.
I watch and watch. I can’t see the fifth-floor window but smoke begins pouring out at that level. Minutes later I see the hooded figure walk away from the fire escape. The figure tosses something into a garbage can by the sidewalk. He gets on a bike and rides away.
I send Mike of forensics to check out the trash can on the campus. He calls after twenty minutes and tells me that he found a fire starter and a bottle of liquid paraffin. I tell him to grab the finger prints from both and to finger print the fire escape near the fifth-floor and the window. Our suspect has left his mark.
The campus has plenty of people walking around with backpacks. There were two at Ms. Sawyers place. And there was an oil candle.
An hour later I get the results. The finger prints match Hadrian Marie, the owner of a vape shop on third street. He had previously been arrested for criminal damage to property – fire damage to a church. He was more severe than he looked.
I get a probable cause warrant from the DA to search the studio apartment. I take Mike and two officers with me. The fireworks over at Larks Park were about to begin.
~~~
Back at the station, I put Ms. Sawyer in one interview room and Mr. Marie in another.
Mike calls me and says he’s pretty sure that one of the backpacks has liquid paraffin spilled on the bottom. And he found a black-hooded sweatshirt that smells like smoke in the hamper. He’s on his way back to the station with the items to analyze them.
I interview Ms. Sawyer first. I want to know if she was involved.
“Why am I here, detective? Why is Hadrian here?”
“Ms. Sawyer, video from last night has Professor Talbot handing you some papers and you looking very unhappy. What was that about?”
“I asked Professor Talbot to review my Master’s thesis. He said that before I narrowed my focus and framed my argument, I needed to broaden my perspective. He said I needed a more thorough review of existing literature to identify gaps in my thesis. He said that I needed to consider not only what I agreed with but also what I disagreed with. He handed me some resources to critically review.”
“Did this upset you?”
“Well, yeah. I was frustrated. I mean, I’d already spent a lot of time on the thesis and thought I had nailed it.”
“Ms. Sawyer, after you left the admin building last night, did you go straight home?”
“Yes.”
“Was Hadrian home when you arrived?”
“No. He came home later. He had to close the Vape shop. Why?
“Sit tight.” I leave the room and go talk to Mike.
“Roy, on the bottom of both backpacks there are drops of liquid paraffin. It’s the same liquid paraffin used in the candle. The fire investigator says It’s the same liquid paraffin that was used as an accelerant.”
“Thanks Mike.”
I head to Interview Room 2 to question the wild-eyed Mr. Marie.
I enter and find him standing in the corner with his arms crossed and a mean mug.
“Why are we here? And shouldn’t you be out watching your glorious American fireworks?”
“Mr. Marie, I am detective Winder. Have a seat.”
“Now, Mr. Marie, where were you last night between 9 PM and 10:30?”
“At my shop. Till ten. Then I went home.”
“Mr. Marie, we searched your apartment and found things that tie you to the fire and the death of Professor Talbot.’
“What?! How can that be. I was at my shop. I was at home.”
“We found traces of liquid paraffin in your backpack. It’s the same liquid paraffin that is used for the candle in your apartment. It’s the same liquid paraffin that accelerated the fire in the professor’s office.”
Mike walks in and hands me the finger print results.
“It appears, Mr. Marie, that you’ve left a trail of finger prints on the fifth-floor fire escape and on the office window and on the office trash can and on the fire starter and bottle of liquid paraffin found in the trash can adjacent to the admin building. It appears that you’ve crossed a bridge and burned it behind you.”
“What are you taking about?”
“I saw the plaque on the wall of your apartment.” I look at my notes. “It says . . .
“You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. Obama, right?”
“Madisyn called me, Mr. Dick, and told me what the old guy said about her paper. She tells me everything that guy says. She told me that students complained about his teaching style and course content. They complained about his courses on ethics and religion, his Christian bias. He never includes teaching about decolonizing and anti-racism. He never includes the things that really matter!
“The “greater good!” Hah! He knows nothing about the “greater good” when there is so much injustice and so much inequality in the world!
“So yeah, I came in the window. Yeah, I threw the books on the floor. Yeah, I lit the fire. It was a statement. A statement against his old tired way of thinking. He’s stuck in the past. He needed a wakeup call.”
“Mr. Marie, did you strike Mr. Talbot?
“He came at me as I was going out the window. I only had the fire starter to protect myself. So, I swung it at him.”
Mr. Marie, did you strike Mr. Talbot?
“I struck the book he put up to his face. He was alive when I went out the window.”
“Professor Talbot perished from the fire. And now Mrs. Talbot, her children, her grandchildren and his many students must suffer the injustice and inequality of your act.”
At this point, I read Mr. Marie his rights.
“Detective, Madisyn has nothing to do with this. I waited by the window until Madisyn left the building. I didn’t want her involved.”
“We’ll see about that. Hadrian Marie, you willfully started a fire to intimidate Mr. Talbot. You are being charged with arson and the involuntary manslaughter of Mr. Talbot. Your unconstrained habits and convention will be remanded into custody. You will be encumbered by it is.”
“I want a lawyer.”
I returned to Interview Room 1 and Ms. Sawyer.
“Ms. Sawyer, video from last night has you going up to the fifth-floor, looking into Professor Talbot’s office, then walking halfway down the hall, and then walking back to his office. You are in there for six minutes.”
I show her the video.
“It looks to me that you checked Professor Talbot’s office to see if he was in there. He wasn’t. Then you hear his voice. You walk down the hallway and hear him talking with Professor Cline. Then, you go back to Professor Talbot’s office. What were you doing in there?”
“I was . . .I was writing a note about the research I found.”
“Did you see another handwritten note on the desk?
“Yeah. I looked like something a kid wrote to Professor Talbot.”
“Ms. Sawyer, we found your finger prints on the books piled on the floor. We also found your finger prints on the window you opened for Hadrian. And, we also found drops of liquid paraffin in your backpack – both backpacks found at your apartment.”
“It was supposed to be a statement, detective.”
“You mean you were showing him a different perspective when you tossed his books into a pile on the floor, opened the window for Hadrian, handed him the liquid paraffin and then left. You will be charged with murder, even if his death was not intended.”
“The last wound the professor suffered, Ms. Sawyer, was fatal. He was trying to put out the fire consuming his books. His fifty-nine-year-old heart gave out. He died of smoke inhalation and heart failure.”
At this point, I read Ms. Sawyer her rights.
~~~
Back at my desk, I make a note to call Mrs. Talbot in the morning. I’ll tell her about Mr. Marie and Ms. Madison with a ‘y’, and about Brandon Brix. I put it in my pocket with the pack of Black Jack gum.
I call my best girl.
“Roy, the fireworks are over.”
“Laci, I wrapped the case. I’ve been crisscrossing the campus all day long. My dogs are killing me and I’m beat. Listen, darling, tomorrow I’ll make sure there are lots of fireworks and then we’ll grill some steaks and watch The Thin Man.
“You never change, Roy.”
“That’s why you love me. See you soon.”
~~
©J.A. Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2026, All Rights Reserved
Cindy Wity 
The Fowler’s Snare Chronicles
November 3, 2024 Leave a comment
There is no way back but there is a way through.
The day that brothers Bryce and Blake returned to campus after a fencing tournament they were immediately escorted to the IU auditorium where the first session of the Ex Novo Institute in Basic Life Process had already started. It seemed to them that the whole student body was in attendance. They stood at the back of the balcony with the others who came in late.
Up front, a large screen projected a woman’s face. Her owlish eyes darted back and forth behind the circular frames of her glasses. The small, and yet imposing woman, had cropped black hair and was dressed in something like a military uniform. She was speaking from a podium off to the left of the screen.
“There will no longer be any recognition of the past. Clear your mind of all that came before. You are students of today. Your mindset is today. Your thoughts are today’s thoughts. When you complete the Basic Life Process course, you will become stewards of the New Way Forward and not of the dug-up past.”
Bryce and Blake gave each other a puzzled look.
“You will no longer be weighed down with the obligations of tradition and faith. Tradition and faith brought you guilt and prejudice and racism and greed and violence. You are to rid yourself of such baggage. Your motivations and direction will come from Central Screen. Central Screen will be your personal Event Horizon.”
A logo appeared on the large screen. Beneath the words “Central Screen” was what looked like graph paper curved into a cone pointing down. At the edge of the taper was “Event Horizon”. The cone’s tip was labeled “Singularity.”
“You will be given a new set of values from Central Screen. All that is good will come from Central Screen. There is no such thing as a morality that stands outside human society. Morality is subordinated to the General Will as shown on Central Screen.
“You will no longer have to worry about what is good and the right thing to. You won’t need religion. The Central Screen software will make particular ethical perceptions clearer by demonstrating how they exemplify more general rules based in scientific certainty. The software will provide a systematic accounting of reality that our intuitive moral perceptions and judgements can only hint at.”
When the first session had concluded, a student approached the speaker, Director Argans. She scanned the student’s face with her CenSoid App. “Yes, Alistair?”
“Director Argans, I am currently in the humanities doctoral program here at IU. My doctoral thesis is on Dante, Botticelli, and the Florentine Renaissance. I rushed back from Italy for this required course. Am I to understand, what you’re saying is, that the independent study of the humanities, the study of all languages and literatures, the arts, history, and philosophy is no more? Everything is to be found on Central Screen?
“Alistair, as you will learn on Day Three, anything that holds a bellicose inspiration from the past is a danger to the organization of peace. You will learn what unites us as world citizens. You want to live free from oppressive and pugnacious attachments to the past, don’t you Alistair? To see what can be, unburdened by what has been.
“It was pope Francis, Alistair, who said “a conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.” He also said that it was a “suicidal attitude because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.
“And, wasn’t it Rousseau who said that people in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence, however, is corrupted by the evils of society? We are in the process of creating a new society using simple rational principles provided through Central Screen.”
“Well, Miss Argans, I never thought of art as bellicose or of being in a dogmatic box.”
“Alistair, you will after session three. Humanities stirs the emotions and emotions cloud reason. You will be given a new set of “realistic” or “rational” values to work with. In our workshops you will learn a new way forward with Central Screen AI. What will it profit you, Alistair, if you gained that doctorate and lose yourself with a suicidal attitude in the process?”
Another student broke in and Alistair wasn’t able to ask another question. He walked away stunned by what he had heard.
~~~~
“That was ten years ago this month.”
Comet got up from his chair and looked out the attic window of the Victorian house on Jefferson St. in Martinsville, Indiana. Seeing no threat, he sat back down and faced Scribe who was typing.
“That Ex Novo session was ten years ago this month. Make sure to note the dates in this chronicle. And listen, sis,” Comet emphasized, “no real names go into this eyewitness account. If these chronicles get into the wrong hands we’d be done for and so would mother and father and Grace downstairs. We are recording the diabolical acts of the Save Democracy party as Comet and Scribe. Let’s call this next chronicle Surface.”
“Surface?” asked Scribe.
“The Save Democracy party wants nothing to do with the past. Many in our world read and study history to know how to proceed. Practical wisdom is case based. But the Party studies the future, rewrites the past and proceeds with abstract theoretical reasoning or surface knowledge.
The party leadership operates like a ship’s captain heading out to sea and who ignores the traditional knowledge passed down through generations used by navigators to read the stars, winds, and currents.
“The Save Democracy party leadership ignores the guidance of the vast ocean underneath and the vast night sky above, the enduring connection to the space and time we all travel in. It ignores charts and says “I know my way around. I know where I want to go. I know the way forward just by looking at the surface” and “I know how to use a rudder.”
“The ship will move and be tossed about because the ocean surface is never still. Wind-driven waves and currents will steer the boat this way and that. It may take on water and go all Titanic. If not, it will end up lost at sea without a way back to port. Scribe, we have escaped. But most have been forced into steerage aboard the Surface ship of fools!”
“Got it, said Scribe. “I think.” She inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter. “Did you finish what happened during that first Ex Novo Institute?”
“Ah, no. After the first session I came up and questioned Miss Argans about my law classes and finishing them up. She told me the same thing she said to the guy in front of me. When I left her, I noticed that I was being followed. I went to the second session – we all had to. It was the same lecture as the day before: tear it all down and start over. That time many of the students were clapping. Maybe out of fear or maybe because the words resonated with what they had been taught over the years.
“During the third session I saw the same people who had been following me. They were removing people from the auditorium. I snuck out. I went into hiding. We’ve been hiding ever since.”
Comet got up and took another look out the attic window. He remembered the day he saw the Rooms for Rent sign in the front yard. The widow Grace was happy to have them around to help keep things up and to keep her company. She also needed the money. The socialist economy had created hyperinflation. She let them rent two rooms.
Comet and Scribe arrived together. Their parents, who didn’t want either of them to grow up in the Save Democracy system, thought it best if they stayed out of sight together.
The house was a good location for Comet, a former astronomy student at IU. He spent many nights at IU’s Goethe Link Observatory just eleven miles north of Martinsville. He felt safe there in the middle of the night.
~~~~~
The street was quiet. What Comet thought unsettling was the Save Democracy party headquarters in the Morgan County Courthouse a few blocks away and the massive 5G tower standing next to it monitoring all digital communications and transactions.
“So, you were going to tell me what happened before all this Ex Novo business.” Scribe put another sheet of paper in the portable Smith-Corona typewriter.
Seeing no threat on the street Comet began pacing to give his account. “Let’s call this next chronicle The Surface Comes to Power.” Scribe began typing.
“Four years before the first Ex Novo days, a November election was held. But the man elected was not allowed into the White House. The Save Democracy party and a few others in the House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that the man was an “insurrectionist” and therefore disqualified under Section 3 of 14th Amendment “insurrection” clause. With Secret Service agents counting the electoral votes, together they refused to certify the election on January 6, 2025.
“The Counting and Certification of Electoral Votes in Washington, DC, had been designated a National Special Security Event by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The military received an amended directive allowing for their direct involvement in civilian law enforcement operations under emergency conditions, including situations where there is an imminent threat. The military was used by the Save Democracy to facilitate a coup, a coup set in motion four years before on January sixth. An “insurrection” setup scenario had been initiated by the Save Democracy party in concert with the FBI, “deep state” actors, and later with a show trial.
“Right after the election, the twenty-fifth amendment was used to depose the current feeble-minded president. He was replaced by a puppet, the feeble-minded Vice president. The elected Vice President was given an office but no access to the White House or policy.
“The Save Democracy party, over time, having taken control of both the house and senate with the votes of non-citizens, absentee votes counted after the election, and massive voter fraud, then removed the conservative members of the Supreme court with expulsions based on made-up ethics violations.
“The court was then reconstituted to hold fifteen members of the Save Democracy party. All challenges to the constitutionality of such sweeping changes failed because the plaintiffs were told they had no standing. No subsequent challenges were brought before the court after the Save Democracy party Speaker of the House tore up the U.S. Constitution during a State of the Union speech.
“It was then declared that the electoral college would be abolished and all future elections would have the oversight of the new Elections Council.
“Using the military “under emergency conditions” to keep the peace, Save Democracy members were quickly installed throughout state and local governments and the courts where there hadn’t been support for the Save Democracy party. The newly installed were given a mandate to defend One People, One Equality, One Equity, the motto of the Save Democracy party. The ensuing reign of terror went well beyond the atrocities of the French Revolution.”
Scribe stopped typing. “French Revolution? I don’t know what that is. Will the readers know?”
Comet sat down and faced her. “You were only six years old when the Save Democracy party took over the country. The party didn’t want anyone to learn history as it would expose them and their ways. You weren’t given a chance to learn history. I’ll explain the French Revolution later. You are an autodidact. You’ve learned a lot on your own already. I better go on. Have you got everything so far?”
“Yeah, go a little slower. I’m not used to typing on this thing” Scribe added another sheet of paper to the typewriter.
“OK. The Save Democracy party members immediately enacted permanent martial law. The Party media said that martial law had been imposed because of the civil unrest due to “perverse and macabre” political foes – those who didn’t accept what had happened to their country. Martial law allowed the Save Democracy party members to keep in check “extremist elements”, to control the drug trade for profit, and to exploit terrorism for its own ends.
“The operation of new penal codes was entrusted, not to legal authorities, but to local oversight committees. They hunted down those thought to be a threat to the community. Anyone could be accused of being disloyal to the Save Democracy party even based on hearsay. Anyone – father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, and child – could be imprisoned, tortured or executed for allegedly being critical of the Save Democracy party. Many were arrested on fabricated charges just to keep people living in fear of the local Save Democracy party.
“A favorite form of torture in many towns was the “Underneath pit.” An arrestee was thrown into a ten-foot-deep hole in the ground. The hole was exposed to the elements. The width of the pit was barely bigger than the person thrown in. He or she would not be able to bend or change their position. The hole was the prisoner’s latrine. After many days the person would become a sliver of flesh with only the feeling of anger keeping them alive. These tortures are still going on today.
“With the new power they had been given, local Save Democracy party members kept up the perpetual and brutal oppression of citizens. They loved to dehumanize. For them it was a game. They found new ways of doing so and posted them on Central Screen. Limitless coercion and terror were essential to the Save Democracy party’s New Way Forward.
“Random terror was meant to convey the constant and unyielding force of the Party’s control over humanity. It emphasized a future devoid of freedom and individuality. The end product was to create mindless and unfeeling oxen for the party.
“Out of fear of being sent home and losing benefits – a threat made on Party media – fifteen million illegal migrants voted for Party candidates every election.
“Once the Save Democracy party had full control, it was decided that vast numbers of the population had to be culled, as the welfare system, hospitals, schools, and prisons were overwhelmed. Some in the party just wanted to lower the population numbers out of climate concerns. So, a gain-of-function virus was released from a bioweapons lab in California. Millions of people suffered and died from the higher levels of spike protein in the One Health self-amplifying mRNA vaccine.
“The Committee of Public Singularity was established out of fear of a viral outbreak of past knowledge. The Committee created the Ex Novo-Institute in Basic Life Process to deal with the Underneath, a mindset that had been banned as extremist.
“The idea behind the institute was to make a clean sweep of human nature. At the compulsory meetings people were told that the Save Democracy party was building from scratch a new ideal society on the concepts of humanitarianism, social science, and collectivism using Central Screen programming. The analog past was to be replaced with a digital future controlled by Central Screen AI.
“What I learned during the Ex Novo sessions was that voiding the past and human attachments were required by the New Way Forward. Old thoughts, old habits, old culture, and old customs had to be destroyed. No one was to experience any connection with family, friends, children or about anything, past or present. They were to die to all that. All of life was to come from the Party’s Central Screen. All of life was to come from the Surface.”
~~~~
“You staying with me, Scribe?”
“Yeah. This stuff you’re telling me is nasty. I don’t like thinking about it.” Scribe shivered.
“Yeah, it is. That’s why we are making a record of it. People need to know what happened. Right now, the Save Democracy party is erasing anything connected to the past. Let’s keep going.”
Once again, Comet got up and looked out the window. The neighborhood was quiet.
During the first days at the house, Grace talked about Martinsville. The first settlers, she said, arrived in Morgan County in 1822. Large numbers of Quakers migrated here from the south because of their opposition to slavery.
She also said Martinsville was nicknamed the City of Mineral Water. Oil workers discovered the foul-smelling mineral water while drilling. Mineral water was thought to have healing properties. It was used in the Martinsville Sanitarium which operated as a health resort until about 1957. But now, she said, the Sanitarium was being used by the Party for optogenetic experiments on citizens.
That’s what her last renters, neuroscience students, told her. The Party is controlling subjects with the presence of light to alter cell behavior with regard to reward, motivation, fear, and sensory processing.
Seeing nothing on the street that concerned him, Comet continued dictating while pacing.
“In tandem with the Ex Novo-Institute, there was an even more invasive program: ReCognify Conditioning. The Save Democracy party, along with the social programmers of the World Economic Forum, claimed that human nature is no different to that of a programmable machine.
“Transhumanist scientists began implanting vast numbers of the population with synthetic memories using brain chips to create a new ideal human. The ReCognify program had been initially tested on criminals. According to one unauthorized release of Party documents, customized AI-generated content converted visual information into codes delivered directly to the brain and stored in DNA and RNA, forever altering the subject.
“Prisoners were implanted with synthetic memories of their crimes – but from the perspective of their victim or victims. The embedded artificial memories prompted reactions like remorse, empathy, and understanding.
“The ReCognify program then began to be used on the general population to wipe away past memories and to make people docile and pliable to the Party’s party authority. The Ex Novo Institute was the means to bring in those subjects the Party thought would be troublemakers. But not everyone would submit to ReCognify and the “forced forgetting” process.”
“Hold it,” said Scribe. “The ink is beginning to wear thin. I need another ribbon. I wonder if . . .”
“We’ll ask Grace if she has more,” Comet said. “C’mon. We need a break.”
~~~~
“We know that the son of God has come and given us understanding so that we know the truth. And we are in the truth, in his son Jesus the Messiah. This is the true God; this is the life of the age to come.”
Father Denny stopped reciting 1 John from memory when the barn door creaked opened. Everyone drew quiet. Bryce and Blake and their wives appeared at the door. Father Denny waved them in. The couples greeted him and six others of the Underneath community.
The group met to support each other in a barn on a southern Indiana farm. They had been living on the farm, hiding from the Save Democracy for the past ten years. The refuge was Father Denny’s idea.
Anglican priest Father Mason Denny, a gaunt bewhiskered marathoner, left his Indy parish and moved to the sweeping 80-acre working farm to help his friend Tom and his wife Sally. The Binghams were in their seventies and working the farm had become too much for them. They had no idea what happened to their children. They hoped the Save Democracy party hadn’t taken them.
Seeing the possibilities and after much prayer, Father Denny knew that he had to create a refuge to help those of the Underneath escape the “fowler’s snare,” as he called the Save Democracy party’s operations. A portion of the farm land was already being used as a short-term RV campsite. Using all of his retirement funds, he converted the campsite into a mobile home park and began rescuing students.
When the Ex Novo Institute staff began pulling students out of the audience for the ReCognify program, Father Denny brought several students to the farm. The students knew Father Denny and trusted him. He had been a chaplain on campus, providing spiritual services in the Beck chapel on the IU campus. This was before the Save Democracy party banned all such meetings as subversive.
The rescued students lived in the mobile homes and worked the farm. From their organic garden they harvested green onions, Italian greens, tomatoes, asparagus, spinach, strawberries, green beans, heirloom tomatoes, summer squash, blackberries, melons, and herbs. From the field, they gathered sweet corn.
They grew an array of flowers – zinnias, gladiolus, dahlias, and sunflowers – and tended goats, rabbits, and chickens.
Every Saturday they held a farmer’s market to sell produce, goat cheese, pastured eggs, and pies and to barter with locals for butter, flour, meat, and diesel fuel.
Father Denny found a way to sustain the Underneath, a mindset that had been banned. But it had come at a personal cost.
~~~~
Comet and Scribe sat at the farmhouse kitchen table with Tom, Sally, Father Denny, and Skippy, Tom and Sally’s three-legged Airedale.
Comet and Scribe had recently found their way to the refuge. Grace, the woman they were staying with, gave them directions to the farm after local Party authorities came around one day looking for them. One of her neighbors, who had received a ReCognify implant, had given them away.
Comet asked Scribe to read the transcript of what Grace related about her husband.
“Bill was a mechanic in a manufacturing company. He told me that every day in the lunch room there were news reports on the TV saying that inflation was transitory and that the economy was doing great and that wages rose again for the fourteenth quarter in the row. Bill began posting his pay stubs on his tool box to show that it wasn’t true. His foreman came along and told him to take it down or face dismissal. Bill didn’t take it down and he was dismissed. The Party wouldn’t allow him to work again.”
Comet described how he and Scribe were recording what took place the last fifteen years. He explained his use of “Surface” to describe the operation of the Save Democracy party.” Father Denny agreed with his analogy.
Comet and Scribe were eager to hear Father Denny’s story. They said they would record the story and use false names and places.
“Scribe, you don’t have to keep lugging that portable typewriter around.” Tom offered. “We can hide it under a floorboard in the other room. No one will find it there.”
Scribe nodded and smiled in relief.
“Are we ready Scribe?” Father Denny asked.
“Ready, sir,” Scribe replied. Father Denny began.
“During my twentieth year as rector of an Indy church, I lost my wife Ellen to the effects of the mandated vaccine. Despite my protestations and my own refusal to take the mRNA vaccine, she thought it a Christian thing to do to obey the authorities, especially as the Party had mandated “No vaccine. No church gathering.”
“After Ellen’s passing, I came to realize that the authorities had more in mind than a vaccine mandate. I was faced with a choice.
“You see. Churches not obeying Save Democracy party directives were closed. The churches with what I call “cultural Christians” – those that obeyed mandates and focused on . . .” he paused and looked over at Comet, “. . . Surface issues pushed by Central Screen Apps, issues such as social justice, equity, race, gender, sexuality, and creation care – remained open.
The Party knew that the fate of its project of atheistic secularization was tied to the religious feelings people had. The Party saw that it couldn’t convert the religious with ideology. But it could use religion to further its ideology and fill the void of absence of spirituality.
“I saw that the spiritual way of life was to be replaced with the Surface way of life. Religious symbols were to be replaced with secular symbols. The church and the gospel were being replaced with Assemblies of the General Will and the “well done” of social credit scores. The Party worked to fill the ideological and spiritual absence of religion.
“As a way to reorient churches, ministers were forced to sign a social contract acknowledging that Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains and that all people should unite with the General Will of the people to bring about the common good of the New Way Forward.
“The General Will, as dictated by the Central Screen app, meant the total subordination of citizens. All rights, all property and all religion would be subject to the General Will. Freedom would be associated with obedience. As such, the General Will directive provided Party members a defense for oppressing and destroying those who did not obey including those of the Underneath.
“The deeper-than-surface Christianity that I call the “Underneath” was an ideological, political and spiritual problem for the Save Democracy party. The “error correction” of “the science” didn’t work on the Underneath. Its underlying history, tradition, and transcendent gospel had to be rooted out and destroyed.
“The Save Democracy party understood that those like myself and those here on the farm and elsewhere – disciples of Jesus – are not directed by Central Screen. We are directed by the Lord of heaven and earth. We don’t compromise and hold back a reserve of ourselves to maintain the status quo and avoid trouble. We speak to the fiction and lies around us and that has brought suffering.
“The cultural Christians of Central Screen desire the good feelings of social justice activism but none of the adversity attached to proclaiming the gospel message. They portray themselves as being and doing right with social justice standards. Jesus quoted Isaiah to the Pharisees and legal experts when a dispute arose about a manmade imperative:
‘These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
and taking up the latest fads.’
“Compromised, they live within the lie. They perpetuate and legitimize the ideological fiction of the Party. They become oppressed and the oppressor, persecuting critics of Central Screen activism.
“The party also knew that it couldn’t convert those of the Underneath with what they called the “Reformation” – the ideological work of scientific atheism through the Ex Novo Institute. They saw those of the Underneath as tenacious holdouts.
“Ex Novo programming was meant to show that The General Will is the purpose of life. Faith in The General Will was to become an inner conviction. Then, they assumed, all illusions about heaven and the afterlife and the kingdom of God fade away and disappear. The Surface was to be one’s spiritual refuge.
“When the vestry came to me one day and said “we need to show pronoun hospitality” I told them that I would retire. I could see that many in the congregation did not believe the lies of Central Screen, but they felt, as Vaclav Havel wrote in his essay The Power of the Powerless, that they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who did.
“Havel went on to say that “They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
“Seeing this mindset in the congregation, I told the vestry I would leave and go on the road and see the country. I ended up here on Tom and Sally’s farm in southern Indiana. I expected my son to join me here at the farm when he returned from his doctoral research trip to Italy. But that didn’t happen.
“I lost contact with him son after he returned to the states. I was frantic and looked for him all over campus. Those I asked said that the last time they saw Alistair was at the end of the first session of the Ex Novo Institute. They said he was asking questions.”
“I was there. I was behind him in line,” Comet jumped in.
Father Denny felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “I know Alistair. I knew that he would question things and exercise his point of view. But I also knew that the Save Democracy party accepted no challengers. So, I imagine the worst and pray for his safe return.”
Father Denny sighed heavily. “That was ten years ago and I haven’t heard a word about my son since.”
~~~~
The rescue from the third Ex Novo Institute session that December day happened quickly. The students were not able to inform their families. Telling them their whereabouts would put their families at serious risk. When the students didn’t sign in for the next Ex Novo Institute session, their families would be contacted and would be forced to take Truth Test Serum to tell the Party’s enforcement squad where they were. Having no knowledge of where the students were, they would be released. Father Denny later found a way to tell them that “they were safe and not to worry.”
Refugees Erin and Joseph were fourth-year neuroscience students. Jeremy studied computer science. Quinn had been a biotechnology major and worked part time at the Ray Bradbury Center at the IU Indy campus. Steven and Melanie were pre-med students.
Bryce was working on a Masters in epidemiology when he met Bryn, who was studying Environmental Health. Blake was working on his master’s degree in Business Analytics when he met Alice who was studying Business Admin Medicine. Father Mason Denny married the two couples in a ceremony held on the farm.
Mobile homes housed the former students. Each couple had a mobile home. Erin, Quinn, and Melanie shared a mobile home, as did Joseph, Jeremy and Steven. Father Mason Denny had a room in the farmhouse. Comet and Scribe had rooms in the farmhouse.
The members of the Underneath brought with them as many books as they could when they escaped Ex Novo and ReCognify. Father Denny brought his library to the farm. No other books would be available.
The Save Democracy party had dictated that books and education created inequality and unhappiness and were therefore banned. Libraries no longer contained books. Libraries were converted into ReCognify centers. The outside world had been cut off from knowledge that wasn’t Central Screen provided.
There were no electronics – phones, computers, TVs, radios, GPS devices – and no Central Screen app on the farm grounds. This was done to secure the location. Father Denny told the group that “The farm isn’t off the grid. We are hiding in the open and keep a low profile.”
Isolated from their families, members of the Underneath farm refuge supported each other. Weekdays were filled with farm work. At night the group ate together and then gathered in the barn or at the fire pit behind a thicket. They read texts out loud and recited memorized scripture. Each had committed entire Scripture texts to memory.
Father Denny had told them that “memorization is a means to internalize information of sacred nature, a transmutation of the metaphysical into flesh and blood and marrow.” It was also, he said, a means to create a memory palace – a mental sanctuary of information tied to farm scenes so that they can recall what was memorized. This, he said, would sustain them if captured by the Party.
On Sundays, the farm’s Underneath community came together for a liturgical service. They sang, prayed, and recited scripture. Father Denny administered to the group and administered the Eucharist.
Comet and Scribe set all this down under the heading “Rescue, Refuge, and New Reality.”
~~~~
The nights of the Underneath community were filled with readings and recitations, music and drama.
One night, Alice read Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. Over several nights, Father Denny read Vaclav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless. Other nights he read Father Brown stories. Over several nights, Jeremy read Robinson Caruso and Comet read Treasure Island. Quinn recited the poem ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold.
Alister talked about his trip to Italy, and about the Italian Renaissance, Dante, and Botticelli.
Sally played the piano, Melanie played the flute, Jeremy the guitar, and Father Denny played some of his Big Band LPs for dancing.
One night they acted out Hamlet. Bryce and Blake played Hamlet and Laertes and fenced during the last Act. The brothers had, at one time, been in the U.S. Olympic fencing team.
One fire-pit night Alice quipped that women make the best archeologists because they are good at digging up the past. And Bryn said the smarted person in the Bible was Abraham: “He knew a Lot.”
One night they came together to listen to Quinn read Fahrenheit 451.
When Quinn finished reading the first chapter, Jeremy said “Read the part again, the part where fire chief Captain Beatty explains to Montag about how books had lost their value.”
Quinn turned back a few pages and read.
“Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ’bright’, did most of the reciting and answering while others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and torture after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?’
“Wow!” Said Jeremy. “That’s what the Party was pushing during Ex Novo. Exactly that!”
Father Denny added, “Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once said that “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.””
Comet and Scribe took notes.
~~~~
Comet brought his refractor telescope with him to the farm. One late night the group headed outside to explore the night sky. The area around the farm had little light pollution, so the evening sky sparkled with illumination.
The moon was full that night and the entire earth-facing surface was clear to see. Comet pointed the telescope at the lunar surface. Everyone took a turn viewing.
Scribe, waiting her turn, caught sight of something coming from the road. The moonlight-etched figure walked and weaved toward them like one of the disoriented ReCognits. The figure stumbled down, got up and tried to wave but fell down again and stayed down.
The group moved closer. Bryce turned the man over and lifted the soiled hair from his face.
“It’s Alister! he shouted. “Help me get him up.”
~~~~
Alister opened one eye and saw his father sitting in a chair. He was asleep.
“Dad,” Alister whispered.
Father Denny jolted up from the chair. “I just had a dream that you came home.”
“I had the same dream,” Alister replied. “I guess we’re on the same wavelength.”
Father Denny felt Alister’s head. “You have a fever. Here, drink this water.” He propped up Alister and helped him drink. “How do you feel?”
“I feel weak. I have a headache and a stiff neck. I ache all over.”
“Can you talk about what happened?’
“Maybe later today.” With that Alister closed his eyes and fell asleep.
That evening Sally came downstairs and told father Denny that Alister was awake and his fever was down. Father Denny, Tom, Comet and Scribe went up to see Alister. He was sitting up in bed with Skippy on his lap. He smiled when they entered the room
Father Denny, seeing that Alister’s face was no longer pale, put the back of his hand on his forehead. “You’ve cooled down, thank God.”
“I’m ready to tell you what happened.” Alister took a long drink of water. The four took their place around the bed.
“After that first Ex Novo Institute session, I went up to Director Argans to ask about continuing my doctoral program. I won’t go into all she said right now, but I left with the understanding that the Party had put the kibosh on everything pertaining to cultural memory and intellectual diversity. Everything was to be the General Will of the people.
“When I left the auditorium, I went to my room and packed. I was going to come here. But then two Save Democracy party goons came in and took me to their headquarters on campus. There, over many days I was subjected to constant Central Screen videos. I was deprived of food and sleep. People I knew came in and tried to coax me into signing my allegiance to the Party. I wouldn’t.
“They must have seen that they needed to break me even more so I was placed in solitary confinement. They put a sign above the cell. It read “The Divine Comedy.”
“I don’t know how long I was in there. What sustained me was my faith in God and what I had learned.
“Sometime, after a lifetime in that cell, I was brought outside. The fresh air in my lungs revived me. But then they dropped me into a deep hole in the ground. They said that if I wanted to be part of the Underneath that I would be put underneath.
“The hole was so tight that I could not move side to side or up and down. And it was so deep that I could not climb out. I was left there, day and night, in all kinds of weather and with bugs. I was in there maybe twenty days. Then one night I felt a rope on my face. I looked up and saw no one.
“I pulled on the rope and it was secure. I tried to climb it but I was too weak. But then a voice said “Hold on.” So, I did.
“I was pulled out to the surface and onto the ground. When I looked, there was no one around. No one.”
The group looked at each other.
“I found my way here.”
~~~~
When Alister had fully regained his strength, the Underneath community held a Eucharistic service in thanksgiving for his rescue and homecoming.
The first reading, Jeremiah 51:45-48, was read by Bryce:
“Get out of this place while you can,
this place torched by God’s raging anger.
Don’t lose hope. Don’t ever give up
when the rumors pour in hot and heavy.
One year it’s this, the next year it’s that—
rumors of violence, rumors of war.
Trust me, the time is coming
when I’ll put the no-gods of Babylon in their place.
I’ll show up the whole country as a sickening fraud,
with dead bodies strewn all over the place.
Heaven and earth, angels and people,
will throw a victory party over Babylon
When the avenging armies from the north
descend on her.” God’s Decree!”
Alister read from Psalm 124: 6-8:
“Oh, blessed be God!
He didn’t go off and leave us.
He didn’t abandon us defenseless,
helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.
We’ve flown free from their fangs,
free of their traps, free as a bird.
Their grip is broken;
we’re free as a bird in flight.
God’s strong name is our help,
the same God who made heaven and earth.”
Blake read the epistle, 2 Corinthians 6:16-18:
“Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:
“I’ll live in them, move into them;
I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.
Father Denny read the gospel, Luke 21:11-19:
“Jesus went on, “Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.
“But before any of this happens, they’ll arrest you, hunt you down, and drag you to court and jail. It will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, everyone at your throat because you carry my name. You’ll end up on the witness stand, called to testify. Make up your mind right now not to worry about it. I’ll give you the words and wisdom that will reduce all your accusers to stammers and stutters.
“You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul—even the hairs of your head!—is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.””
Using the Jeremiah text, Father Denny spoke on “Come out of her, my people! The world, Babylon, would have you come out as its own creation but we have come out as sons and daughters of the Father.”
He then read Revelation 18:4-5:
“Get out, my people, as fast as you can,
so you don’t get mixed up in her sins,
so you don’t get caught in her doom.
Her sins stink to high Heaven;
God has remembered every evil she’s done.
Give her back what she’s given,
double what she’s doubled in her works,
double the recipe in the cup she mixed;
Bring her flaunting and wild ways
to torment and tears.
Because she gloated, “I’m queen over all,
and no widow, never a tear on my face,”
In one day, disasters will crush her—
death, heartbreak, and famine—
Then she’ll be burned by fire, because God,
the Strong God who judges her,
has had enough.
The Eucharistic Feast followed.
~~~~
On the following Saturday, at 9 AM, two tables were set up along the roadside. They were covered with fresh produce, flowers, eggs, goat cheese, and a cooler with rabbit and chicken meat. Local people began to come along and exchange goods.
Bryce thought that everything was going well that beautiful August morning. But then he noticed something and whispered to Blake, “Don’t look. I think that’s Director Argans getting out of that car on the right. She has white pointy hair now.”
Blake, conversing with customers, saw her approach the table. When the farm stand customers saw a uniform, they got in their cars and drove off.
“Where is your sign?” It was Director Argans.
“I’m sorry ma’am. What sign?” Blake looked puzzled.
“The “People of The General Will Unite” sign!” She crossed her arms and waited for an answer.
“Ma’am, here is our sign.” Blake grabbed the grease board from the table, erased “THANK YOU FOR COMING OUT,” and wrote something on it. He read it out loud: “We are compliant and obedient and there is no need to worry about us.”
Director Argans looked it over, huffed, and then her black eye brows shot up above the frames of her round glasses and her jaw dropped. She was looking between Bryce and Blake. Alister had come up to the table. Director Argens grabbed an apple from the basket on the table and headed back to her car.
Bryce breathed a sigh of relief. He looked over at Blake and said “Good one! She doesn’t know who we are compliant and obedient to.” And together, they said “There is no need to worry about us!”
~~~~
Comet and Scribe created a circular letter to send to other Underneath communities in hiding.
It began . . . “These chronicles have been written with eyewitness accounts so that you may know the history and extent of evil in the land. There are many other evil acts of the “Save Democracy” party which are not recorded here.
“These Fowler’s Snare chronicles have been written so that you may share in our faithful witness:
We have escaped like a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped.
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.”
©Lena Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2024, All Rights Reserved
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Filed under 2024 Current Events, 2024 Election, Christianity, Short Story, short story, social commentary Tagged with apocalypse, Bible, Christianity, faith, FICTION, Indiana, Short Story, tyranny, writing