2084

A Chapter by Trissy

The whole world is America.

In the year 2084 the rest of the world doesn’t exist. They all dropped their cultural badges just to grab an empty lanyard trying to be like us…stupid motherfuck-ups. I knew just how weak they all were when the Vietnamese started celebrating Thanksgiving! That’s a hoot because the nuns didn’t land on their land to eat turkey and dressing with the Indians! That blows my mind almost as much as we blew up their country… dumbasses! You know I actually used to like meeting one of them Ahoy Matey types so I could spark a conversation about where he was from, giving him a few nods, a couple of chuckles while I slip his wallet, cellphone, car keys, stick of gum, receipt from Captain D’s out of his pocket and into mine…Happy-Not-So-Lucky Suckers! Now they all blend in with us, trying to take from me, but I ain’t got s**t either. They should have blown up this shithole before they let the planet go to it. It’s all America; land of the pathetic, home of the slave.

“The Truth” our daily news webcast is shown every day at 9am. The weather…thunderstorms. Sports… the Saints lost, again. The economy…still fucked up. The local news…a 2 month old baby left in an abandoned building had been grated to death by the rabies saturated canines roaming wild, Religion... Ebenezer Baptist had been broken into for the third time this week. By the way, its Tuesday. I guess a man will rob God, if that man was a CHEM. Yea, so you see why we don’t focus on the rest of the world’s problems, we’ve got too much of our own s**t going on. It would be embarrassing, but who gives a f**k?

The looting, murders, rapes, the smell of trash, filth, and decay, and the fact that there were more people on the streets than in homes, more children in the morgue than in schools finally led the government to the root of all this contagious evil… drugs. It was for the love of the nightly flight to destination: Unreality that made men become dogs; scrounging and fighting for the next hit. Women became no more than meat for the pound that could provide the most money or drugs that day, then on to the next. The sell of p***y was more common than the sale of pencils in August. Seeing pregnant prostitutes was typical, but seeing children was rare. Before CHEMotherapy, 5 out of Ten babies were miscarried because drugs were the only things that mothers consumed, and other times they would be beaten by their temporary benefactor until they, themselves, barely survived. 3 out of the remaining Five babies that made it to the third trimester were either stillborn or died within days from withdrawal complications. The last 2 of the two that stabilized after a few days…taken. I guess the state government thought it would be better to take the child immediately than to find it later dead on the streets. With statistics like that, a few mothers thought that maybe they could love their child more than their habit, maybe looking into it’s eyes would humanize it and finally some warm fuzzy instincts would kick-in. so they chose to give birth outside the hospital. What's fucked up is that those same mothers wouldn’t even realize that they had gone for a quick hit and binged for days just to return and find their starved, cold, motionless bundle of joy.

Me, I just go to work, come home and sleep like the rest of the 10.3 million people that live here in this government-forsaken city. Oh, yeah and I look after my girl, Rita. She’s about to have our kid any day now; you can’t tell because she’s so thin and wears these baggy clothes to hide it. Can’t say I'm excited…or nervous…or scared. To be honest, I don’t feel much of anything anymore. Not since they started all of us on CHEMotherapy. It’s been mandatory for every resident since I was 13. I had been strung out on meth for 2 years by then after realizing I was on my own to steal my own food and clothes. And don’t gasp, because there is nothing extraordinary about my story, hell I can’t even call it mine, it can be told 10,299,999 more times. I guess that’s why something had to be done.

I met Rita for the first time in spring of 6^th grade. It was ironic because I hadn’t been to school since the first day, that was so my crackhead mother didn’t want me to see her giving blowjobs and bending over for a hit from Tom, Dick, and sometimes Harriet. I’d convinced my goons to join me for some antics at school, Mr. Scott was teaching math so he gave this bullshit probability problem saying, “if you picked a sock from a drawer, what is the probability of picking an orange sock?” Rita was the first one to raise her hand, I scowlded at her instantly until I heard her angelic voice say “well Mr. Scott, since there are 16 socks in all and 4 of them are orange that would be 4/16 change or a 25% chance of picking an orange sock,” Before that f****t Mr. Scott could say the same generic “good job, correct.” I stood up and said. “Nah, the answer is 100%! All you have to do is turn on the f*****g lights and pick up an orange sock!” the class roared with laughter, maybe because I was out of line, using profanity, or talking s**t to the teacher. I guess they thought I was being funny, but I was dead serious. “It’s always something you can do to make sure that the probability is 100%!” Mr. Scott was turning red, and finally lashed back with the comment, “let’s talk about the probability of you getting out of the 6^th grade.” I stood up with all the confidence in the world at the idea of beating the system in 6^th grade. “100% because If I Quit, I didn’t fail!” Being sure to make pupil to pupil contact with him, I flipped the desk over and walked towards him stopping only to ensure that he understood me. But before walking out the class I brushed Rita’s desk and winked at her to ensure she knew the animosity wasn’t with her. She gave me a smirk back, relieved. So you know what I did next, I went to the corner store and stole a pack of orange socks, selling the rest to the Ahoy Matey’s I put on a pair as I sat on the corner filling my veins with Crack Cocaine. Looking at my pumpkin flavored feet I vowed to prove that I didn’t need to learn probability, because I’d make every event in my life 100%, not leaving anything up to chance.