Margaritte Jackson surged to her feet at the sound of the doorbell. The rats down the hall would steal her goodies just to spite her. Thumping her cane on the thin carpet held up by concrete, she hobbled to the door of her tenth-floor apartment in Chicago.
Opening it, she saw with a victorious smirk that she had won this time. Dragging the cardboard box in, and slamming the door shut, and bolting the four locks, had her breathing hard. So she took a moment, and dropped onto the couch facing the television in the corner. Flicking it on, she sneered as Fox News came on, and changed to another channel just in time to catch a commercial.
The sixty-nine year old great grandma huffed as she caught her breath. Stupid commercials.
A black screen was deliberately filled with a few words in white formal printed text.
"Unto the Gate we came."
It stood like that for thirty seconds, and Margaritte had enough time to drop her mouth, and wonder if someone had lost what passed for their mind. No way was she buying whatever they were selling; especially since she had no clue what that was. Another more understandable commercial came on extolling the local power company and its commitment to wind power
Opening the cardboard box brought her sight of a dozen stew cans, Kool Aid pre-made bottles, and a very nice birthday cake 'To Marg, on her Sixty Ninth Birthday from the Democratic Party of Chicago.' Well, wasn't that nice?
She smiled, genuinely touched for a moment. The hacks and losers of that party might just have a heart, or some class at least, enough to pretend to having a heart. Forty years ago, Margaritte had figured out that her vote meant nothing. It was all rigged. Well, she had taken up a placard, and pointed out that she could be downright annoying.
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Lawsuits, placards, graffiti, letters to the editor, and all that. She had teenage boys who would be happy to tag the mayor's car with 'cheater' in fluorescent green or simple white. The threats had been about to come down on her, when she had smiled at the Man from the Party. Or they could pay her off. She had boys who could not be bothered to vote, herself, two dead children from the dangers of gangster prevalent Chicago who would not mind voting to help their mother out. Five guaranteed votes everytime the Party needed them. They would not vote, but they would not kick up a fuss about any cheating either.
It was settled that this was worth fifty dollars a month in goods, and for the next almost four decades so it had been.
Margaritte was not healthy. Her largely untreated high blood pressure was very high that day, and when she struggled to put up the stew cans in her cabinet in the tiny little kitchen that came with the state provided one bedroom apartment, she struggled a bit too hard. Something went pop in her head, and as she laid down on the kitchen floor, she found herself ready.
What might have surprised some, but not her was that Jesus was quite understanding of her little scam. After all, He was intimately familiar with the intents of the hearts of the utterly depraved who ran Chicago. God loved His paladins, but He also enjoyed the clever sort who managed to come ahead on their tyrants.
Margaritte Jackson had heard the first note of what would become a crashing symphony, but she had not understood it, as it had not been intended to be understood. Her part of the tale as a spear carrier was done, but other spear carriers would stand.