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             Ericha Zann, an enigmatic girl of fourteen, awoke to another murky morning before the sun could refuse to shine. In the dusty northern corner of the unremarkable coastal city of Skrunuppolt, she found herself for the sixth consecutive day without her parents. Whether or not theirs was a voluntary spiriting away remained a mystery, nevertheless, Ericha reinforced her faith in the familial, desperately clinging to the optimistic hope that they would return for her soon.

         While she knew her parents to always be survivors of life’s hurdles, what worried her most was the unknown virus currently spreading across the country. Numbers of actual cases varied due to a lack of information, leading many to declare it nothing more than a hoax, or some over-exaggerated flu. As the months passed and the pandemic remained, the population’s opinions settled into willful indifference. Even to a newly minted teenager like Ericha, this was a truly terrifying thing to become aware of. What if her parents had contracted the virus? What if they had collapsed somewhere and that’s why they never came back? What if they’re hooked up to machines in some overcrowded hospital ward, unable to move or speak? What if they were ignored on the streets and never brought to the hospitals in the first place? What if they were to die? How would she even find out if they did die? What if she was the one to spread it to them? It was this particular thought that plagued her most frequently; the guilt, whether real or imagined, began welling up in her chest. She could hear her own heart racing through the vibrations of its incessant beating. Her lungs felt constricted, unable to take in even half of its normal capacity, while her skin felt as if it was freezing over and simultaneously melting off.  

         During these panics, she found it hard to breathe the plastic air inside her tent.  She unzipped the flap and hung her head outside, desperately trying to calm herself with deep, slow breaths. As she steadied herself, her mind quickly flashed over the thoughts of how much worse she might fair during the colder months to come. “The hotter a summer, the colder a winter,” she remembered her dad quipping once. His words, often a source of observational honesty and strength for Ericha, now served as a grim reminder of future struggles. The only positive she could look forward to was having school back in session; a place to spend her days, with food to eat, a library to read, and the surest possibilities to carve out a chance from which to one day escape altogether.

         Muscle memory dressed her, took the needed amount of bites from rationed food, and gathered her belongings; the most cherished of which being her weathered cello. The wood was slightly faded, with only a few scratches thanks to her militant obsession for its safety and care, even going so far as to disregard her own when necessary. Having scavenged together several shoelaces, she used them to tie and make handles around the large instrument to better carry it through her daily trials.

         With a mask across her mouth and nose, the bag slung over her shoulder, and the cello hoisted onto her back, she climbed out of her tent to greet the austere hospitality that was The Pig-Pen; one of the many tent towns that had recently appeared across the destabilized city. Located in the parking lot behind a dilapidated church, it was filled by several dozen tents of varying sizes, which could barely afford room enough between them to walk. Every window facing into the lot were either boarded up, or covered with the thickest of curtains, giving off an abandoned air. About midway in, along the shelter’s wall, a steep metal staircase rose to a platform mounted to the second floor. Opposite the stairs, at the end of the platform, a peculiar looking door, with an even more peculiar camera hanging above, stood glowering down upon the denizens below.

         Ericha’s tent was situated in the innermost corner of the lot, pressed up against the walls of the shelter. From there, she trudged down the narrow paths in between the tents as quietly as possible, keeping her eyes on the ground ahead. While she held no ill will towards any of her neighbors, she also held no desire to interact with them; she had figured out long ago that this world was hungry and that it would devour her with little provocation. As she passed through the middle section of the lot, she held her breath; worried she might disturb any of the families situated around this area, who were easily excitable to blind confrontation. Ahead, at the street entrance, heard long before they were ever seen, three oddly paired men were gathered around a perpetually dancing flame to bicker and bark their opinions on the state of their worlds.

         “Well, kiss that goodbye. We can all kiss that goodbye,” she heard one of them say.

         “I don’t give up that easy, my friend. I will not give up basic rights we are born into this world with. We need change,” replied another.

         “Real change,” the first voice corrected.

         “Real change – actual fucking change. For the better – actual fucking change for the better,” the second voice brayed back.

         Feeling a flood of anxiety at the thought of having to converse with them, she quickened her pace, not slowing up until she was well down the sidewalk, nearly a block away. None of the men ever even noticed her.

         The odd trio was sporadically fixed to their places around the make-shift fire-pit, shared between their small tents. The trashcan, which housed an already questionably large fire, lacked several segments; rust-eaten holes dotted across, belching out flames at random. The three were too intoxicated by their own words to pay any thought to where those flames could possibly spread.

         “We need a leader,” proclaimed Skip. Out of the three, he looked the closest to death; a gangly skeleton wrapped in a crusty, pale veil of skin. 

         “We don’t need no leader – we need the people to open their fucking eyes, that’s what we need,” replied Floyd, the shortest and rosiest looking of the three. If ever a human was born the personification of a bagpipe, it was this man.

         “Amen, brother.”

         “More of us than there are of them.”

         “True, true…”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

         “We the people need to show some fucking courage.”

         “Have some fucking balls!”

         “Grow some fucking balls, and take back our country!”

         Hoss, who’d been more interested in the flies that gladly danced into the fire, snapped into the conversation, “Yeah, we need a revolution!”

         Floyd was quick to disagree, “Gonna need something bigger than that.”

         Hoss wasn’t the type to fully listen to a conversation as he was having it. “A revolution – change for the better. A revolution, ya know?” His pleasant, assembly line features were often used as an excuse by Floyd and Skip to patronize his opinions, thinking him as daft as he was, in their opinions, pretty.

         “And how many revolutions and wars for freedom have there been, huh? We’re gonna need something stronger otherwise it’ll only happen again, and again, and again, and again.”

         “What about a revolution to end all revolutions and wars?” Skip asked.

         “You don’t think it’s been done? They all start like that – a cause for freedom – a rally for peace! All at the expense of some poor suckers. We’re the fucking suckers – we suck up all their bullshit, eat it up like fresh-made breakfast, and it warps our fucking minds, man. We gotta wake the fuck up.”

         Hoss quickly found himself annoyed, “So what do you say we need to do then?”

         “Don’t fucking ask me, I’m not a fucking leader.”

         “You said we didn’t need a leader,” Skip reminded.

         “Well, I can tell y’all are looking for one – and I ain’t one.”

         “We need a revolution…” Hoss mumbled.

         “We need a revolutionary,” Skip corrected.

         “That’s a dead breed there,” said Floyd, “Won’t just find any of them lying around. Sure, there’s a dime a dozen plenty who claim that title, but none of them actually hold the true spirit of it. None of them are willing to do the grim business needs doing for every single one of us to find some kind of peace and happiness. Or at least some better opportunities. Everyone wants to protest these days, but that shit don’t get the real work done. Anger is what will get the work done. Violence will get the work done. We the people need to start working it.”

         “True, very true…,” said Skip.

         “We’ll just have to wait for one,” said Hoss.

         “That’ll be a fucking while, I bet,” Floyd replied.

         “A long fucking while.” Skip corrected.

         “A long, long, long fucking while.” Floyd added.

         “Have to pass the time then.”

         Skip seemed distraught at the idea. “I wish I had some weed. I could pass the time with some weed, or at least enjoy it more, I guess.”

         Floyd shook his head, “I always preferred something stronger – mushrooms – natural, powerful and completely fucking enlightening. If every poor fucker in this rat-hole city ate mushrooms – Oh! We’d all wake the fuck up then!”

         “Some H would take the time out of waiting – good four-eight-sixteen hours gone in a flash, hallelujah,” Skip crooned.

         Hoss removed a small bottle of whiskey from his pocket, “Still have my poison.”

         “Give me a swig,” Floyd demanded.

         “Get your own.”

         “Where’s your sense of compassion and friendship?”

         “Fuck you.”

         Skip tried his chances, “What about me? I can have a swig, yea?”

         “Fuck you too.”

         “Son of a bitch” – he swiped for the booze – “give me that bottle!”

         “I got first on it!” Floyd continued demanding as he jumped into the fray.

         “Fuck off, both you!”

         The three of them fell into a pile of flailing limbs; punching, kicking, swiping, biting. They all desperately tried to wrestle the whiskey into their possession, leading it to cycle from grasp to grasp. When ownership was claimed, it was then immediately lost. Floyd was the first to expend his energy and collapse to the ground, breathing heavily, too tired to keep going.

         Skip, also finding himself lacking the energy to keep fighting, decided on a different tactic, pleading, “Hoss, buddy, man – it’s me. Please. Please, can I have a swig of your whiskey, man, I am absolutely dry here – absolutely dying of thirst. Please.” Hoss considered for a moment, before releasing the bottle to Skip, who immediately snatched it up, taking several large gulps.

         Floyd quickly changed his tune as well, “Buddy, Hoss, Dude – me too, yea? PLEASE?” Without a second thought, Hoss took the bottle from Skip and chugged the remaining whiskey. Floyd was livid, “Motherfucking piece of shit! I’ll kill you!” And with that, the energy to continue their farcical tumble was found again.

***