Every Day in May (grand prize winner) ✔

May 5th

Sometimes I forget that you know so little about what happens outside the Tower.  We live less than a mile apart, yet you are like a person from a faraway land.

Pictures of loved ones are not allowed on the walls of our homes.  Did you know that?  These three requirements must be upheld: every home must have a picture of the Leader framed and placed over a shrine;  we must bow three times a day to the Leader’s image; incense must be lit in his honor within a half hour of sunrise.

This ritualistic worship extends outside of people’s private dwellings.  In the streets, there is nothing but praise for your father. 

The Leader blessed another school today—how noble! 

The Leader commissioned another state song to be composed for next month’s Freedom Festival—how wondrous! 

The Leader saved a drowning pregnant woman just as she was about to be eaten by sharks—how selfless! 

And how totally believable!  Because he’s the Leader after all—he’s invincible, incorruptible, compassionate, all knowing, divine!

No doubt, your teacher has taught you that we all regard your father in some universally positive way.  The Leader is perfect: an avatar; a living breathing god.  We would never dare defy him because we have no cause to do so.  Right?

Eight years ago, a rebel group called the Dissent did just that.  The Leader, “Father to the People,” had been systematically starving his children for many years.  He forced farmers to practice what turned out to be the least sustainable techniques you can imagine. After several seasons, the Land’s yield was far less than what was sufficient to feed its growing population.  The Regime traded rice for obedience, though what parents had to do to prove loyal enough to feed their children, most never figured out. 

The Dissent started small—skirmishing with the Regime’s patrols; stealing supplies needed for official celebrations; disrupting the distribution channels of food meant to keep Loyalists fed and pacified.  Your father called these actions petty.  The Dissenters real goal was regicide, however, as I’m sure the Leader had surmised.

He must have scoffed at this.  Didn’t they realize they were dealing with an immortal?  How could a wretched band of malcontents think they’d be able to pull off the assassination of a god?

The Riots began on an early summer evening just after sunset.  Terrified voices rose out of the darkness as people ran through the city shouting, “The Dissent—they’re burning everything!”

Sure enough, the city was ablaze, smoke billowing from its center like a volcano about to erupt.  Armed men and women wearing red Freedom Festival masks stormed the streets.  Smashing windows with rocks, they spread a swath of fiery chaos through the city, along with the message “The Dissent shall rise!” 

Citizens who once considered themselves sympathetic to the cause now battled the rebels as they attacked their stores and homes.  Many wondered why the Dissent would do such a thing.  Not only did their actions make no sense, it was in fact, inconceivable that they’d turn against their own.   Members of the Dissent wondered right along with us.

“It wasn’t me!”  Our neighbor, a man known by my family to be a Dissent organizer, cried as he held the charred body of his tiny daughter to his chest.  He took her limp hand in his own.  “Why would I do this?”

Where was the Leader while his city burned?  Beating his heroic chest, I imagine.  His troops moved in just after midnight.  It took shockingly little time for the masked instigators to be marched off to the bowels of the Tower.  While the supposed Dissenters were being apprehended, your father’s men pulled children from ruined homes and doused flames with the sweat of their bravery.  Your father himself lifted buckets.  A child or two found themselves carried to safety in his arms while a crowd watched in stunned amazement.

The next morning, out of the ashes arose our brave Leader.  He stood before a soot-covered crowd and proclaimed that the Dissent was responsible for the travesty that had occurred.  Those poor cursed souls had blood on their hands which no god, however merciful, could ever wash clean.  Our dear Leader, our very own living god, would do the work he had been appointed for.  He would purify the Land of the Dissent for the sake of his humble children.  No one need fear retribution as long as they knew in their hearts that they were Loyal.

Those of us who were not convinced by his words were chilled.  Hundreds were already dead from the fires he himself had coordinated, but this was nothing compared to the calamity he was about to set into motion.

You never knew the Riots happened, Theo, but I lived through them—through the days and weeks and years that followed.  I still bear a scar from where flames scorched a hole in my sleeve, but while this is the only scar that can be seen, it is hardly the worst.