23rd of July Fireworks
By the Maenad
There are four children playing on the playground below my office window. (The same one that was the target of a drive-by shooting a few weeks ago.)
I heard the recognizable sounds of a familiar script being shouted and went to my window. No cops but
The four children down there are in two groups. One of them is on the ground being told by the other two to turn over face down and put their hands behind their back.
The two who are playing the cops walk around the others, and it’s sad to hear, because they know the cop script just as well as I do.
None of these kids are older than ten or maybe eleven.
FACE ON THE GROUND POP POP POP says one of them.
The other stands over one of the other children on the ground and mimes putting a gun to the back of the other child’s head then
Bang
BANG
BANG
BANG
Immediately, the dead boys on the ground (from appearances, three are Black and one is Hispanic) switch places without a word.
The dead boys become the cops and scream GET ON THE GROUND AND SPREAD EM and it starts over.
By the time I think to start writing this down, they have cycled through this three times. Everyone gets turns being victim and executioner. During one of their transitions, I overhear one of them saying, in a jocular tone “You gotta be prepared.” And it hits me. They are, in the way that children do, drilling. Training. Preparing for a hostile world.
Then it starts again. “GET YOUR ASS ON THE GROUND CONVICT” while the other “cop” just starts firing their pop gun. “STOP RESISTING OR I WILL BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT RIGHT NOW.”
The Maenad. (She/Hers) Transgender Goddess
Activist, Artist, Performer and Publisher, Author of Creative Nonfiction, Erotica, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Social Criticism
The Maenad writes voraciously about gender, class, sex, inequality, mental illness, and the intersection of these points. Also writes about culture, games, space, futurism, and the human condition. Always thinking of other possible worlds and how best to help this one we all inhabit.
Co-editor and founding member of Viridian Door with @AtlasBooth
Her work of trans erotic liberation, the Ishtar Cycle, is available from @lupercaliapress
Photo credit: puuikibeach via a Creative Commons license.
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