Dystopyum (The D-ot Hexalogy Book 1) Read online

  Chapter Three

  The Dark Cloud

  W

  ell, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Martha asked, with a contented smile. Martha and Salom were in the kitchen, cleaning up after a small LERN get-together. The last of their friends had left a little while ago.

  “You would never know that they were all in LERN,” Salom said. “So many wonderful people, and they must all hide.” She paused, while looking up thoughtfully, “Why is it the way it is?” She wore a light beige dress tonight, and instead of her usual hooded outfits, Salom had adorned herself with a headscarf that almost matched.

  Martha knew what Salom meant. Why do we have to hide such a simple, wonderful thing as love? Martha asked herself silently. She gave a heavy sigh.

  Salom changed the subject. “Hais is still complaining that he doesn’t have a son yet,” she said. It was not the first time she had mentioned it, for it had been weighing on her mind.

  Martha was sorry for Salom. She knew Salom felt guilty for not giving Hais a son, and had been trying for the last four years. Martha had wanted to avoid it, but dove in anyway asking, “Well, how often do you two ‘do it’?”

  Salom lowered her eyes and bashfully grinned. “A lot.”

  “Well, if you have sex so often, why aren’t you getting pregnant?” Martha asked, wondering if she should see a doctor.

  Salom fidgeted. “He doesn’t usually do it that way.” Salom looked

  down again, with a wry grin now, peeking up shyly at Martha. Martha became embarrassed, and shaking her head, said, “Males, they

  are all keesh, aren’t they?” Then they both looked at each other and

  started giggling, shaking their heads together.

  The laughter lowered to silence. Not uncomfortable — comfortable. Martha was thinking, the time is right. Griswolt’s working late tonight, everyone has left, and the children are downstairs in Jan’s

  bedroom. Martha’s expression became serious. She looked at Salom.

  “Rebecca’s going to be four years old shortly, like Jan. You know we

  need to start.”

  Salom’s gut tightened. She instinctively stalled. “Start what?” Her

  instant change of body position to something more — tense betrayed her

  false question.

  Martha put down her towel, looking straight at Salom, deadpan, and

  said, “You know exactly what. We can’t avoid it, we can’t run from it —

  we’ve no choice but to prepare for it.”

  Salom lowered her eyes from Martha’s gaze. “Love rehabilitation

  school,” she said with resignation — head dropping, and posture going

  with it. Because there were no males around now, Salom had taken her

  headscarf off. Martha could not help but notice the deep scar from an old

  gash that marred Salom’s smallish dark gray crest.

  Martha became anxious just looking at Salom’s weathered face. My

  God, she is slumping so much she’s going to curl into the letter “Ac”, she

  thought. I had better keep this rolling. “We’ve got to start practicing for

  it, Salom. And we also we have to tell the children, sooner or later,” she

  said. You have to pass! Martha looked at Salom directly, forcing Salom to

  return her gaze. “Have you talked to Rebecca?” Martha asked, knowing

  the answer as she asked it.

  “No — I haven’t had the time,” Salom responded, trying to brush it

  off. She was now looking down at the scuffed pair of black shoes she was

  wearing tonight.

  “Maybe we should try, now,” Martha suggested. “We could bring the

  children upstairs, and see how they respond, together.” Martha straightened up. She liked the idea of finally confronting this. “Maybe it will be

  better if they are together.”

  “How can you expect them to understand that they will be made to

  hate us?” Salom blurted out, now crying.

  She can’t lose it like this. Salom, please, get a hold of yourself! She’ll

  never make it! Martha’s mind raced with ideas of how to handle Salom. “We need to do this, Salom! We must confront it, be ready, or — we

  — will — fail!” You will fail — and you might take me with you. Just then the children appeared. The raised voices had drawn them.

  Jan was wearing his new yeta costume. He was looking at his mother

  through the big mouth of the head mask.

  “I don’t hate you Mama,” Rebecca said.

  Martha took charge. “Jan, sweetie, come over here with Rebecca.” They came over to Martha’s side of the table.

  She continued, “You know we love you both, right?”

  They children shook their heads affirmatively.

  “Well, do you remember that I said we had to go away to a special

  school when you become five years old?” Martha asked.

  They both shook their heads, “No.”

  Martha sighed, and looked at Salom, who was paying rapt attention.

  Martha looked back at the children. “Jan, do you remember when I told

  you about the bad police that hate the word ‘love’?”

  Jan gravely nodded his head, “Yes”.

  “And do you remember what they will do if they hear the word

  ‘love’?”

  Jan thought a second, and with a flash of inspiration said, “They will

  take us away forever to jail.”

  “Very good, Jan.” Martha said. “But really, they will kill us both.” Salom was shocked. “Martha!”

  Martha gave Salom a sharp look, and said, “Neither of them even

  remembered about the school. This is real, and I need to get their

  attention. We need them to remember, so that we are all prepared.” Jan’s stomach started to ache. He pulled his head mask off and said,

  “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  Salom butted in, and said, “I agree, Martha. Let’s stop this. It was

  such a nice evening.”

  Martha would not be dissuaded. “The fact is that this is going to

  happen, and we all need to practice for it. She turned to Jan. “Jan, the bad

  police want to make sure I don’t love you. They want to make sure that

  you don’t love me. If we can get them to believe that, then everything will

  be OK, OK?”

  “OKaaaaayyeeeeee, Jan said, stomping one foot. He looked at her

  quizzically and responded, “You want me to pretend that I don’t love

  you?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Martha was relieved that he understood part of it, at

  least. “I just want to warn you, so that you are ready. When you are ready

  to turn five next year, we will have to pretend that we don’t love each

  other.”

  “Like a game?” Jan asked.

  Rebecca was standing there, turning her head back and forth between

  the two of them, trying to follow.

  “Yes, Jan. Like a game.” Martha paused. “We will have to pretend to

  fight.”

  Jan did not like that. He did not want to hear anymore. “I don’t want

  to fight with you!” He ran out of the kitchen, angry, and into the living

  room.

  Martha started to feel like she was sinking. She looked at Jan running,

  then Rebecca, and then her eyes landed on Salom. Poor, weak Salom.

  Nobody was ready. Nobody’s going to be ready. They are going to torture

  us, kill our love, and nobody is going to be ready. She looked at Salom

  again. She shook her head in defeat. Is Salom going to make it, or not?

  It’s up to me to get her ready — and what about Jan? My sweet baby Jan.

  She had a flash in her mind’s eye of Jan strapped to the torture chair, />
  receiving extreme jolts of electricity, and she just as quickly chased the flash away. She found herself crying aloud, to no one in particular, repeatedly slapping her hand on the kitchen table, “No! No, no, no, no, no! I can’t take it. I just can’t. Nobody’s going to be ready.” Now Martha

  broke down sobbing.

  Jan heard this, and came back from the living room. He and Rebecca

  instinctively came over to Martha, and stroked her arms, telling her that

  she would be OK.

  But it wasn’t going to be OK, and she knew it.

  Salom decided to help out, in her own dramatic way. “Listen, I’ve had

  enough of this!” she said resolutely. “There’s no way out of it. In one

  year, the NOV is going to take us for four weeks, whether we like it or

  not. They are going to make us hate each other so much that the love is

  gone — gone! Wiped from our minds.” Salom rapped her short stubby

  fingerclaws on the table for emphasis. “It always happens. We’ve seen it

  time and time again.” She was staring at Rebecca the whole time. Now

  Rebecca was looking down.

  Martha felt a surge of inspiration. She looked up at Salom, then down

  at Jan. He startled her with the look he was returning. So deep for a child

  of your age, she thought, as she looked into his questioning eyes. “Not for

  those who prepare!” she exhorted.

  Jan was holding Martha’s hand tightly now, and looking up at her as

  if to say, Tell me this isn’t true, it’s not true, is it?

  Martha had the feeling that they had confronted it enough, and said,

  “I think the children have had their fill for now. This burden won’t go

  away until we get through it. There’s no sense in obsessing about it,

  especially if we haven’t practiced yet.” She looked at Salom, who

  returned her gaze, understanding.

  “Practicing hate! I can’t believe I need to do this”, Salom said. “Rebecca, let’s go home. I’m tired and we have a baby coming over early

  tomorrow morning.” She looked at Martha and said, “Those people down

  at the processing plant in Havenworth are idiots. They make you so

  nervous, you forget things.”

  Martha knew what was coming. Salom lost another job. Hais has got

  to be angry.

  Salom continued, “So they fired me just because I dropped something and it broke. I’m just going to babysit for now, and Jena down the street is dropping her baby off tomorrow morning.”

  Martha hesitated, but decided, why not? “It would be great if Jan could stay at your house instead of daycare. The more he’s there, the more sores he gets.”

  Salom was delighted, and broke into a big, toothy smile, (which could be kind of scary sometimes.) “Oh I was hoping you would ask! Hais and I could sure use the money.”

  Martha was glad that her decision picked Salom up so much. It will also help keep that bastard off your back. “It’s settled then, I’ll drop Jan off tomorrow morning.”

  Salom rose, and got Rebecca ready to go. They said their goodbyes, and parted ways for the evening. Griswolt was still late at work. A little later Jan had gone to bed. The evening was hers. This was a good time to study the writings, and to prepare her letter as well. Martha went into the bedroom, reached her hand behind the heavy painting of the NOV Temple on the bedroom wall, and pulled out a big envelope. She went to her small desk in the bedroom corner and had a seat. She opened the envelope, which was filled with various pages and scraps of scriptures and devotions to love. Martha pulled out her favorite ones, and read them. These writings had survived for centuries, and were very rare. Martha’s mother handed most of them down to her. She had scribed copies for LERN, but kept the originals. There were twenty-three in all, some just scraps a few inches long. Then she opened a desk drawer, retrieved a blank page of the familiar white metallic paper, and began to write.

  LERN advised all mothers preparing for love-deprogramming school to write a letter to themselves before going there. LERN members had to stay away upon the mother’s return home, for fear of the spies that would randomly stake out such homes hoping to capture them. The letter was meant to be read upon the mother’s return from the school. It existed to remind herself of who she was before the love-deprogramming took place. She was to include loving pictures of her and her child stored along with the letter. She had scenes of normal activities, like eating together, or sitting outside, or playing. Martha had taken pictures with Salom and Rebecca for this purpose as well. There were quite a few photographs of them hugging and kissing. It took her about an hour to write the letter. It was difficult, but had to be done.

  Afterwards, Martha stored everything away back behind the painting. She then went back to her desk chair, sat down, and meditated. She meditated on love. She meditated on thanking the source of love, and feeling it grow. She was an outlaw love-lover, plain and simple. She loved it, but knew she was supposed to give it up a few months before the school started. After she was done, Martha went to bed. Her work in the mines started early in the morning.

  Jan went to Rebecca’s house the next morning, and almost every day from then on when his parents were at work. There were good days and bad. The bad days were typically when Salom’s husband Hais was home. Hais was usually drinking tuba, and it made his breath stink. He would reliably pick on Salom, or insult Rebecca. There was almost never a day that Hais and Salom did not fight. Hais treated Rebecca much better when he took her alone to hognot matches. He would much rather have had a son to bring.

  About six months had passed…

  Jan was spending yet another day at Salom’s house. It was laid out differently from Jan’s house, having a living room/kitchen combination. A light beige coat of paint on the walls had black-and-brown-stenciled forms of various animal shapes along the upper part of the walls as they joined the ceiling that used to be white.

  “Salom! Where’s my rawhide hat?” Hais hollered from downstairs.

  “How should I know? I don’t wear it!” Salom yelled back from the kitchen upstairs.

  Here we go again, thought Jan, looking at Rebecca.

  Rebecca pretended not to notice. She was practicing knitting, and she was becoming quite skilled at it, for being only four and a half years old now. “They always yell,” she said. “It’s no big deal. I think that’s just how grown-ups talk. You want to go to my room?”

  “No, that’s OK,” Jan replied. He was working on a puzzle on the living room floor beside Rebecca. Rebecca was sitting in a little chair her size, knitting, just like her mama did. She appeared to be quite pleased with herself.

  Hais came upstairs, huffing and puffing. He was wearing his usual attire for hitting the bars. He liked tan suede, and if his color choice varied at all, it went to brown. He usually kept his work helmet on long past working hours, but liked to wear hats in any case. His crest was short and wide, like his body. Aletians prided themselves on their tall crests, and so he was not considered particularly fetching. Alcohol helped, (for the object of his attraction.) He was not faithful in the least, but Salom was afraid to confront him when he came home covered in some other female’s scent. This was because he was typically also awash with the stench of alcohol, and that meant a beating if she did not handle it perfectly.

  He was still looking for his rawhide hat. The suede hat needed cleaned. “It’s got to be here somewhere. I just know you did something with it! You’re always hiding my stuff — you don’t know how important it is!”

  “I saw it last week in the shed,” said Salom. Why don’t you look out there?”

  Hais got angrier. “I’ve been in and out of the shed all week, you idiot! Don’t you think I would have seen it?”

  Salom got up, and went outside to check. In a minute, she was back with the hat. “Here you go smartass!” she said. He was
not drunk yet, but she knew he would have a comeback. Salom looked at Jan, “By the way Jan, your mom is home now.”

  Hais was far from beaten. “You think you’re so smart. How are you gonna think your way out of love-deprogramming school? It’s only five months from now!” He had an evil smile on his face. He knew that would knock her down a peg or two.

  “I’ll be ready,” Salom said with phony confidence. “Martha and I are preparing.”

  “Oh yeah? How are you gonna prepare for RSE?” he shot back.

  Random Sublethal Electrocution, otherwise known as RSE, was the Nation of Vengeance’s torture method of choice.

  “Oh shut up!” Salom screamed, covering her ears.

  He had her now. No time to let up for a true ela. “You know that everyone that goes to jail now has to wear an RSE collar no matter what the crime?” His nostrils flared as he projected another twisted smile.

  Jan and Rebecca were still within vision and earshot of the argument. Jan was paying rapt attention, while Rebecca still pretended not to notice.

  “Yep, that’s right,” Hais continued. “Now every regular prisoner gets at least one random shock every week, no matter what they are in jail for.” He paused, embracing the idea. “I think it’s great! Half the ones in prison are love-lovers waiting for their trials anyway. They need to have their brains fried.”

  “Why do you hate them so much?” asked Salom, tauntingly.

  “I hate them because they’re weak! They spread lies and laziness! I hate love! It is a stupid superstition, and the Temple of the NOV is right!” Hais continued with his rant, “Love is like a magic trick, it’s fake and empty! There’s nothing there, and these idiots spread it to their kids!”

  Salom shot back, “You talk about the Temple? Hah! The only time you go is for the child-burnings!”

  Hais retorted, “The Temple is right about love! They hate it, and so do I, just like any decent citizen!”

  “Well now,” Salom thought aloud, “How can you get so angry at something that doesn’t exist?”