The Silent Day

[Meatslopper]

The Silent Day

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The chronometer ticked. The sun trickled in and an alarm played. They exist for no one but me. I can hear it faintly, so faintly, the echoes of normal life.  Of a rough and tumble technician, who wrote fondly of the Empire who’s joys were as simple as grilling steak and coming up with every terrible pun he could think of to make his daughter laugh, his wife always groaned. There was nothing more in this world he cared for than his family.  Of a Wife who’s dreams saw her riding the stars again. A merchant who’d settled down, weary of travel, who wanted someone to bring her to earth. Yet she still dreamily talked about the planets she’d seen, the places she’d visited but most of all, of her old man, a step father who showed her around ships, always defending her against those who called her different, called her strange. Of a daughter who’d barely turned eighteen, who wrote a prize winning story about a monarch retaking his stolen land. Who was overjoyed at being taken to a festival with her crush, it practically overflowed onto the page in an unfinished sequel, ending right on the precipice where the monarch teetered back from the edge for his love.

It wouldn’t be finished.

They were never coming home.

None of them were.

I sit in the armchair her Father used to complain about and listen to the crackle of the answer machine. I pretend for a moment I’m the daughter, inches away from her future, from the love of her life, or the Mother who’d seen distant stars I could never visit. I say their deaths were all for order, for stability, for the Empire, but I look outside and I just see a dead city. Is that the type of order we bring? I tell myself everytime I close my eyes that they were rebels and traitors but every time it rings hollow. What had these people done to the Empire? They couldn’t all be traitors? Or maybe I try to lie, try to tell myself they're out there ‘mining’. Really I’m just begging for sleep. Begging to avoid the nightmares of a dead Orsus. 

An Orsus where the Empire decided slaves weren’t good enough. That this war wasn’t good enough. That this was a war on life itself… Only for it to then turn around and say, for us to turn around and say, “Never enough,” to people who give their everything… I click a locket, open and closed, open and closed, open and closed. It depicts a happy family. A family that did not rebel. They accepted the Imperial Order. They’d have lived with it. Found purpose like I did. My hand clamps tighter and tighter.  I thought I’d let it go. The part of me that cares, that cared for all these little insignificant lives. These people whose names should mean nothing, who never earned anything from me. But I find it’s still there.

No matter how hard I try to drown it all out. And this time there is no excuse left for me to give. Is this the limit of my commitment, of my dedication? 

The floor shakes with me as something catastrophic erupts in the distance. It is in these moments my thoughts die, as sand bursts through the window, the brush of the sand bites into my cheek. There is nothing left but to slam it shut with telekinetic power. I’m told not to move. Told it was radioactive. The pill to save me from it lingers between my fingertips. A guilty part of me says not to take it. I throw it back, but it does not settle, my stomach churns and it comes right back up onto the bathroom floor, but I’m persistent and a second time only it goes down. I see myself in the mirror, as I wash my face clean but it’s hard to tell if I managed through a mirror so broken, so slick with innocent blood. I’m trying, I’m trying to tell myself that this is right. I’m trying to tell myself that these sacrifices are worth it. That every inch taken is the cost I must endure. But in every single word, I lie. I lie and I lie hoping one day it will become the truth I believe, I want so desperately to believe it… but it just isn’t, it just isn’t anymore. There is no galaxy in which this becomes fine or ok, or an acceptable sacrifice for us to make!

I can’t count those I’ve killed. But I counted how many once roamed these streets. Those numbers are just too high to forget. I am weak for these thoughts I-I know it. Weak to not accept it. Weak not to accept that at the first signs of trouble, of reasonable resistance, this, this was their answer, genocide. 

But I guess it’s all just fine, just fine, because at the end of it all, we get to say it was all for the Empire right? 

What a joke…

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