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The State of Freedom

Norm Hudson

    I murdered Delphine.
    I looked at the diary that must have slipped out of her pocket as she fell. The diary I’d picked up off the tiny floor of the apartment wondering how anyone could live there. But she hadn’t lived. She’d existed. Alone. Abandoned. Then she’d died. I’d put the diary in my pocket, hoping they wouldn’t hear the rustle of the paper and then squeezed past the curtained shower at the end of the bed. The sink, the fridge, the marble topped table and the Bentwood chair all wished they could escape the cloying confines of the apartment with me. But they were trapped. Trapped.
    Like Delphine. Like me.
    The cerise voile curtains I’d pulled back when I’d entered the apartment flashed one silent splash of colour at me, making me forget the whitewashed drop to the courtyard below. The white walls on all sides.
    Enough to drive one mad.
    But Delphine wasn’t mad. She was one of the sane ones. There weren’t many left in 2033.
    I bundled her body into the plastic bag and dragged it downstairs past the concierge’s door. I knew she wouldn’t appear. Or risk talking to me. They’d hear it all. From the chip in my shoulder. All the conversation.
    They knew I’d been here. I didn’t want them to know anything else.
    I crossed to the car parked at the kerbside, opened the boot and flung the body into it. Then I dropped into the driver’s seat and drove out of the city. When I reached the forest, I dragged her body on to the pile of wood I’d gathered previously. Then I fetched the can of petrol from the boot of the car, covered Delphine with it and set it alight. It would take a while but soon there would be no trace of anything or anyone.
    It was late in the day when I drove back to the city. The streets were deserted as they always were. Everyone was in the injection centres. Or at home.
    Now it was my turn. To go for my thirty third injection.
    I could have dropped in to any of the empty shops that had been converted to injection centres where the State Police took your details and then gave you your injection. But I was better than the rest of the bourgeoisie. I was one of the chosen ones. They would be expecting me at State Police Headquarters.
    My small, silent electric car slid past the square where in another aeon the people had fought for freedom but neither I nor it dared acknowledge it. Spy cameras could see inside cars.
    “You’ve accomplished your task?” he said, when I arrived.
    I nodded.
    “She’s dead?”
    I nodded again.
    The State Controller looked satisfied. But you could never tell. The satisfied eyes could turn venomous in a second.
    “You had no hesitation in carrying out your task?”
    It was a trap. To test my loyalty.
    I looked him steadily in the eye, the eye as empty of emotion as I felt.
    “No,” I said. “She was an enemy of the state.”
    It was the right answer. The answer that was anticipated. The answer I’d trained myself to always give when interrogated.
    The acceptable answer. The answer that would keep me alive.
    In body. Not in mind.
    “It was quick,” he said.
    There was no soupcon of sentimentality. Did he suspect something? I thought.
    “I was trained well,” I said.
    It was the right answer.
    I knew when he said, “I’ll give you your shot.”
    And it wasn’t from the lethal hypodermic.
    “Go straight home,” he said, like he always did. “I’ll call you back before your next assignment.” I always went straight home. I knew always to. Before the side effects kicked in.
    I turned on the state controlled television when I got in. It would cover the rustle of the ripped pages of Delphine’s diary.
    “We’ve all got to have it!”
    Delphine had highlighted the words in the same crimson colour of her flat’s curtains.
    “That’s why I’m in hiding. If they can’t find me, they can’t inject me,” the words on the page cried out.
    The rest of that entry was ebullient. Filled with fighting talk of freedom.
    I could see why she was their top target.
    I turned a few pages.
    “Severe cabin fever. Had to get out of the flat. Went to a café. They wouldn’t let me in without a pass so I sat on the sidewalk till I heard them calling the State Police then I got the hell out of there.”
    I turned a few more pages.
    “Tried to go to the cinema today. But they wouldn’t permit my entry.“
    I turned a few more pages.
    “Rapidly running out of food. Have had to ration what I eat. Tried to sneak into the supermarket but was snared by a super- efficient spy employed by the State Police.”
    “Pass!” he said.
    “I shrugged my shoulders but slipped out before he could get hold of me.”
    I skipped the following pages and turned to the back of the diary.
    “Have run out of food. Phoned Mum to see if she could help me. Mum said to stay away.”
    “Where are you?” she said. But I didn’t tell her.
    Then I got off the phone and cried.”
    I turned to the final page of the dog-eared diary.
    The hand writing was spidery. Weak. Woeful. And the entry.
    “On the phone too long. They’ve traced me. It’s only a matter of time before they arrive. To inject me. To kill me.”
    The last letter of the word tailed off and ran remorselessly down the page.
    That’s where I came in.
    My phone rang. It was my controller.
    “We have another assignment for you.”
    He showed me a picture. It was a girl. Young Like Delphine. She was my next target. I felt the anger and violence the injection had slipped into me arise.
    I was ready for my next victim. They had no hope.
    I pulled the unused, lethal hypodermic they’d given me to deal with Delphine from my pocket and thrust it into the controller’s thigh.
    He slipped silently to the ground. I pulled the black bag from my pocket, bundled his body into it and hauled it through the door and out of the building. No one questioned me. Bodies in black bags were a daily occurrence.
    I put the black bag into the boot and drove out of the city. When I got to the forest, I placed his body on the second pile of sticks and logs I’d already prepared, far away from where Delphine had been. I fetched the petrol from the boot of the car and covered his body equally, liberally, fraternally and set it alight. As the smoke drifted freely heavenward, I tossed Delphine’s diary on top of him along with the empty bottle of drugs Delphine had dropped when she’d done away with herself. I watched them both disintegrate down into his body all day.
    I murdered Delphine.
    Not them.
    They gave me the training.
    But I murdered her.
    Not with a hypodermic. But with apathy. With fear. With coercion.
    The state provided the confusion. The division. The control. The hate.
    But I murdered her.
    I didn’t fight.
    Fight for freedom. Freedom of choice. Freedom of movement. Freedom.
    Freedom for Delphine.
    Delphine.
    My darling daughter.

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