The Secrets of America

A Dark Room

California and Texas were in one of their famous arguments again. Alfred could hear their screams though the walls, even though they were separated by several floors. And Alfred just wanted them to stop.

California let loose a scathing remark about the Texan government official's sexual abuse, to which Texas yelled back about the higher-ups in Hollywood. Alfred contemplated these events as he sat on his bed in a dark room.

His country was disgusting, littered with child rapists and sexual scandals all around. How could he be the greatest nation if his government officials were rapists?

A small, logical part of him whispered back, 'they're not all rapists', but America deemed it unacceptable that any were. Too high of a standard? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it was the standard the other nations would hold him to, and it was one he must pass.

But...he isn't. He isn't passing, not by a long shot.

The United Nations turned their back on him, calling him a driving force of inequality. But they weren't wrong, were they? Some of his citizens live like they're in the third world, and he's supposed to be the world's leader.

The argument downstairs had grown larger, encompassing nearly every state. Tears pricked at America's eyes as he listened to his country fall apart. In the blackened room, he fished for a cigarette, a habit he had only recently picked back up in a futile attempt to calm himself.

As his hands felt through the darkness for the cardboard box, he instead found a metallic object on his dresser. His handgun, of course. First placed there for protection purposes, now America considered a secondary use.

It wouldn't be an impossible step for him to take. For months now, he had been using spare parts from a deconstructed razor to carve into his flesh, some times the regular line, some times a word or insignia. After the rally in Charlottesville, he would carve a swastika into his bicep, taking heed from those who cried out, "America is Nazi!"

Suicide was the next logical step, in his mind. Though America caught the irony in saying 'its logical'- nothing he did these days was logical, it seems. The international community certainly didn't think so. His friends, his peers. Clearly he had an issue, and America intended to fix it.

Texas discharged his shotgun into the ceiling shortly before America fired his own handgun. When little Rhode Island dutifully went to report to America the damages done, all he would find is a limp, bloodied body in a dark room.