Occupied Earth: The Dog that Caught the Car Chapter 14

Tobias spoke more. David’s ears did their duty, recorded the vibrations as they snared the drum within. A small number managed to be noted by his brain. Like when Tobias talked about the future, their need to find more ways to make the brax suffer from their subjugation of the Earth, until it made them consider the costs of staying greater than the shame of giving up. His nods and occasional unchallenging noises proved enough for Tobias, as he declined to ask questions or press David for input. He finished with a note on how much dimmer the light had gotten and bade David farewell.

He was left in silence, without insects or birdsong to give an indication of life. Every animal on Earth might have poofed out of existence in that moment and it would have been unnoticed by David. Legs that didn’t feel as though they belonged to him lifted his body and began the trudge back to Melissa’s house. At first his inner voice was as quiet as the landscape, but as minutes slowly passed it started to speak in a whisper. It grew louder as he continued.

I killed her.

We’ll make them regret ever coming here.

Do you think she’ll ever forget those seconds?

You showed me the way.

Without you, none of this was possible.

Each snapshot of memory made the next step heavier, left him ever hollower. The trip back was shrouded in a hazy nightmare, the sort that had roused David from sleep for a year, leaving him with the realization that waking up was worse. All his fears that had tormented him while lying in bed were real, and they would be real for the rest of his life. During that time past, he’d woken up each night, forced to confront again they were gone, and they’d taken her with them. David hadn’t cried those nights. Tears would have been a mercy, and his life was free of that as the Gobi was of water.

There would be no mercy for him now either. He didn’t merit it, he never would again. In a daze he opened the front door and walked in. It’d been left unlocked by him, and it was untouched the time in between. The stairs greeted him in the increasing dark, humble and unaware the world had changed forever. With the lethargy of a dying old man, he ascended, one heavy lift of a foot at a time. He arrived at his room and put out his hand to enter. But then he hesitated. David turned his head, and there it was.

The door that never opened. David approached it, delicate as a child not wishing to rouse sleeping parents. One hand touched it with a slight tremble. The other with aching slowness grasped for the handle. He stood there, quiet as a tableau. Then he turned the handle and padded in.

It was just as Tom left it, fine layers of dust silent evidence of the passage of time. The college pennant he’d been so proud of. A small, framed photo of his first girlfriend, who he’d carried a torch for ever since despite recognizing the necessity of the breakup. A series of lacrosse trophies were lined on top of a shelf, ones he’d earned while in high school.

His bed was still made. The comforter was decorated with chunky blocks of red and blue, interspersed with trucks, cars, planes, and other moving machines. It had been a gift for Tom at age five, and he’d refused to part with it as he grew up. The colors were faded, many of the sewn vehicles more suggestions than illustrations, and yet it stayed on top of him every night he’d spent home. The pillows were also deep blue, his favorite color. Tom often had joked he played with the Tigers because he liked the hue of their uniforms.

David sat down on the edge of the bed, the comforter under his hand as he rubbed it. It felt so good, and it hurt unbearably. He crawled up and inserted himself between the mattress and comforter. Placing his head on one of the pillows at the head of the double bed, a sneeze erupted from his nose as a mote of dust entered it. Rubbing at the itching feature, he thought, Sorry Tom.

As he lay David tried to let the calm of the place enter within. Let him be trapped in amber as this room was. May he be allowed to stay within until the world agreed to be different, worth living in.

Like Melissa had.

And with one single thought, the dam he’d constructed exploded, and all the rest came rushing in.

How dare you? Horrible, worthless child. She’s your mother, your MOTHER! Call her that, she’s not a stranger that’s been dumped on you she’s your MOTHER! 

But hadn’t she been dumped on him in a way? David had a mommy once. She’d loved him, kissed him, consoled him as needed. A fount of support for David, who’d found so much of life a frustrating struggle from a young age. So many things that came with ease to his amazing older brother were difficult for David. In his better moments he’d worshipped Tom, amazed by how cool and talented he was. At his worst he’d hide in a corner in his bedroom, crying at the unfairness of their inequity, the seed for a greater fury at his manifest weakness. Tom didn’t cry, he never was given a reason to. Not Tom the Optimistic, Tom the Handsome, Tom the Charming, Tom the High Achiever, Tom the Magnificent, the one David could never hope to best at anything.

He was humble and straightforward when it came to his talents as well, which made it harder. If he’d been an egotist, a snob who looked down on his lessers, David might have found it easier to bear when it got to him during the bad periods. At least then he could have felt justified in his self-pity, nobly bearing the burden of being forced to live with a good looking and arrogant jerk. Movies were made from this material, stories to reassure those watching that people like that got theirs in the end, and the once kicked around nobody would walk away in triumph as their reward.

But Tom wasn’t that. If Tom had known how his brother felt, he would’ve hugged his younger sibling and told him it wasn’t a competition. He expressed his feelings with the same confident ease he lived the rest of his life, and Tom loved his brother unabashedly. In the dark times it made David resent him more. It was a resentment that would quickly rebound thrice-fold as his own jealousy would further confirm how much more deserving Tom was, how small and mean David was in comparison.

He knew deep in his bones from an early age how out of bounds his feelings were, so he’d hid them and shoved them deep into his bank vault, one which began construction as early as first grade. Whenever hearing another one of his brother’s casual accomplishments became too much, he’d grow quiet and sullen, then withdraw. Sometimes Tom would look concerned, and when that happened David would stay away longer. Better his brother think him moody than get a whiff of his shame.

Now David wished he’d spent every second possible basking in his brother’s presence. Because he was gone, as was their father. His mother’s body existed down the hall, but it was an increasingly lined and weathered shell that remained. The person who’d been there to support and care for him proved to be equal in effervescence, blown away not long after David’s two other family members were ripped from him.

It had happened the day the brax came. Proclamations of prosperity and security delivered at the point of orbital lasers. Millions killed in hours, with no offer to surrender before the beams struck. Merciless death rained from the stars, all in the name of peace.

Tom had secured his slot in the officers’ program and was granted some short leave time as a reward before going to the training center run by the soon to be exterminated US government. Fred Koppel thought it an excellent idea to see his son on base before spending the day with him. David’s father had always found the time to do things like that with Tom, his superstar progeny. Then the metal boxes in the sky with advanced weaponry did their work.

David remembered the day, the hour they got confirmation of their worst premonitions. His mother had been frantic with worry. She hadn’t verbalized it in front of David in an effort to not add to his fear, but David was her child. Children know when their parents are trying to hide things. Then a neighbor knocked on the door, and there’d been tears in her eyes. A passing convoy of soldiers had stopped to tell her the base where Tom was stationed was one of the targets of searing blasts from the clouds, and there were no known survivors. They’d driven on, the last remnants of a military that no longer existed.

If old age and senility took everything else, he would never forget how Melissa reacted to the news. All visible tension drained had from her, and the calmness with which she thanked the neighbor who told her became her lone mode of being for months after. At the time David thought perhaps knowing was better than not knowing for her, even if it was confirmation of the worst. In retrospect, it was nothing of the sort. The moment she’d received the news initiated her desiccation.

The facade of calmness was maintained through the period it took to arrange a funeral, no bodies in the caskets, one draped with a flag. Heat charred floating atoms could not be buried. Then she took leave from her job, and never went back. Week by week she did less, was less. Friends stopped calling as their messages failed to be returned, and David found himself without a mother in a world which expected him to have one, in absence of a death certificate proving otherwise.

The thing that prevented David from having to root through garbage for food was the universal income card which came through the mail. Due to the invasion of their enlightened benefactors, many adults lost jobs. It was hard to justify paying people for tasks made obsolete overnight by alien tech, and it turned out erasing the national and all state governments made millions of people redundant. Little rectangles of plastic were the response, as surely a moderate amount of Brax Bucks deposited each month was more than enough compensation for making countless numbers of people useless on their own planet after the murder of their friends and neighbors.

It allowed continued existence for David and Melissa in the house, with David having spent one harrowing night bullying her into putting all recurring expenses like utilities onto the card instead of her ever slimmer savings account. It’d been the end of him calling her mother in his head.

It had been the end of many things. No buddies from school coming over, they might see her. Zero buddies to invite over in the first place, as they drifted away from an always busy David. A total cessation of further attempts to get her down for dinner at the table, like when they needed settings for three or four. Asking her to leave the house for his lacrosse games was abandoned. No more pretenses.

What a failure he was. A better person, a stronger one would have kept trying, figured out the secret series of actions to bring her back. Instead, he was a pathetic little boy, trapped by his own incompetence and spurts of uncontrolled anger.

Not a failure in everything, the arsenic laced voice in his head purred. You wanted to make those brax pay for taking away your pwecious widdle game and look what happened! Over a dozen sent to the hospital, broken bones, and someone who trusted you to protect him almost torn limb from limb. Oh, and another almost strangled to death, can’t forget that! Aren’t you proud of yourself? Such a bwigg, stwoong man you are, causing all this!

The image of Paul’s face flashed through David’s mind like a jump scare in a horror movie, its expression devoid of humanity and eyes blanked white. He felt pressure on his own neck for a moment, and it was harsh enough to make him cough. And what about the player Paul had been on top of? Had her face gone pale, were veins in her eyes cracked from the strain days later? On her hands and knees, had she discerned death’s approach?

Had Bri? As the alcohol induced poisoning shut down her body like a rusty machine, had there been a second of horrible clarity? A bubble of time to realize she’d sprung a trap, and was helpless in its grasp? Or was oblivion swift and complete, leaving her in ignorance as she drowned in her own secretions? Which was worse?

Now her body paraded its way into David’s view, flat on its back. Her black eyes dull, empty windows opened to an indifferent sky. God, there lay a person! A girl who’d hoped, dreamed, planned, felt, desired.

Desired to screw whatever boy she could lay her filthy tomato mitts on. 

Taken from a sister, a mother, a father. Other family members David didn’t know but would feel the loss regardless.

She was a taker too, greedy hands endlessly grabbing.

This could never be undone. Despite alien tech, death was for good, and David was responsible. Tobias’s words made that clear.

What she did to Alexander can never be undone either. Would you sacrifice him for your oh so refined sense of morality?

Yes. No! Where were the other options? There had to be another way!

There isn’t. Tobias showed you. Death, or more boys crying in showers.

She was a teenage girl!

And already she was a rapist.

Why was his life like this, left with no good choices? He hadn’t asked for this; he didn’t deserve this!

Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, the voice seamlessly shifting from Bri’s prosecutor to his. There were other decisions, ones made freely. Let’s examine what it looks like when little Davy is allowed to play.

Now it was Kaa’syi’s turn at the wheel of memory, and David shuddered. He clutched the blanket on top of him, but it would not save him.

Yes, you remember, don’t you? How she went to you for a simple, honest conversation. And what did you do? Is it necessary to spell it out? Why bother, when we can see it on streaming, right now?

David moaned, the recollection unspooled in all its horrible glory. Her expressions as he set out to crush her spirit into tiny pieces. Every bit of agony that was shown on her pitiable, open face as he took her faith in her culture, her family, her sister and smashed it underfoot with delighted cruelty. The abject terror he’d witnessed as he loomed over her, laughing.

But hadn’t he said things she needed to hear? Her sister was bad, she deserved to know that, and deserved to suffer for her unwillingness to stop her. Didn’t her refusal make her as bad, in a certain way?

And what of you? What was your brilliant plan to make Bri behave?

David had no response to the inquisitor’s inquiry.

That’s right. You had nothing; you are nothing. If Kaa’syi’s inability to control Bri damns her, then so does yours!

At least he’d forced her to see the truth. If David and those he knew couldn’t escape from the consequences of Bri’s assault, then neither should Kaa’syi.

Truth? Lies! That’s what you told her! It’s what you’ve been telling yourself ever since you left that shower! You tormented her with your falsehoods, made her feel like a hideous monster everyone despised. Then you told more to soothe yourself. Someone will save Alexander for me, oops all adults are cowards, so never mind. I’m a big man with a big plan to take down the evil reds who messed with my oh so important game. I’ll totally get around to saving the rape victim from the nasty arrogant alien when I got the time. Other higher priorities you see. I’m such a good person. No more lies!

The shame swaddled and subsumed him. He was despicable, he was worse than Tobias. Tobias at least knew what he was. David had given himself permission to pretend, to think the vile aliens were the problem, himself pure and clean. A righteous angel forced to guard a woman who’d given up, to defend a team sent to the slaughterhouse and save a boy from the Big Bad Red. David was wrong, he was filthy, disgusting, worthless. Kaa’syi’s kneeling, retching form hung over him, and the lash of self-recrimination whipped ever faster.

Why had he done it? Because he hated her. Why did he despise her? Because she was a brax, one of the people who’d taken everything from him. But that wasn’t it, she had nothing to do with it. Kaa’syi was an awkward teenage girl, and no more responsible for anything her people were doing to the Earth than a child in the twentieth century who refused their peas made people starve in China. Another lie, another crime to add to his list.

No, it was simple. He hated her because she was there. She’d been there, available to hurt, and in order to hurt Kaa’syi and enjoy it, he had to hate her. David was the soldier trapped in a jungle he’d grown to abhor, wiping a murdered man’s blood off his face like it was errant breakfast sauce as his grandfather gazed in horror. More shame from the image, and then it was Tom who looked at him with an expression of disappointment so deep it stabbed.

David curled under the sheets from the impact of the slash. Yet one more lie, the worst of all. It was Tom’s face he’d seen floating over Kaa’syi as he set out to punish her for the sins of her race. At the time he’d imagined approval and heard Tom’s voice egg him on. What an abomination he was, to slander his brother so.

Tom had gotten into the army with plans to oversee engineers. He was going to fix things, wanted to improve their machines and tech used to keep soldiers safe. Not once did David’s brother express any bad thoughts about his fellow human beings more intense than irritation. If he heard his little bro, the guy who he’d trained to properly hold a lacrosse stick, use Tom as an excuse to hurt an innocent? David could not bear the thought of how he’d react to that.

He was the better brother, the higher-grade son, the superior person. David should have died, not him. If Tom were the one left alive, none of this would have happened. Tom always knew what to do. Melissa wouldn’t have stopped being a mother, not if she had his support. More importantly, not in a million years would Tom have stooped to untruths and violence to soothe rage papering over feelings of helplessness.

Do you think going woe is me absolves you?

No, it didn’t, not ever. What he did to Kaa’syi could not be erased. It was an indelible mark he’d left on her, leaving her forever unable to look a human male in the eye.

There would be no reconciliation here, no repentance to wash away this stain. What could that look like? I told you a bunch of lies to make you hate yourself and cringe away from being within fifty feet of any boy. Sorry, that wasn’t cool. Oh, and I also murdered your sister! She was a rapey bitch who kinda had it coming, but I feel real bad about it. Besties? 

Laughter. Scorn. That’s all such fantasies merited. The one alien who’d wanted to listen dumped in his lap, and he’d clawed at her face. Stupid, wrong, unforgivable.

Getting bored of the poor me on parade. Moving onto the million-dollar question. It’s a killer, just like you. Knowing what you know now, would you take it back?

Yes, David would take it back. He’d turn back the hands of time and pluck himself out of that room in the library. Let the David of now replace the tormentor from the weeks past. Have him do something else in that room, anything but what he’d done. 

More useless fantasizing. He’d take it back, but he couldn’t. For Kaa’syi, her sister existed only in memory now.

But as for the rest…

Despite it all, did he truly regret his actions enough to choose differently? The part of him in dialogue with his prosecutor wanted to proclaim an instant YES, but the thought made other images and ideas ripple through his mind. The team gone down to overwhelming defeat, an object lesson in the futility of resistance against the might of the brax. Alexander forced to scurry through hallways, a rat trapped in a maze, Bri the vengeful cat batting from above. Atrocious messages pinging at him day and night, his inbox bursting with venom until she bored of him. Or worse, never did, until she found a way to carry through on her threats and forced him to give into her sexual entitlement.

Were these scenarios acceptable? If he suddenly found himself waking up a month earlier, was this envisaged situation tolerable? Which was worse: this imaginary present, or the one he lived and breathed in right now?

They were both horrible, each unspeakable in their own special way. But that wasn’t the choice David faced anymore. What’s done is done.

It was the future in question. More snapshot images clicked through, dividing in two and flying off in opposite directions. One path showed him caring for his mother and going to school, homework in hand. This happened with little variation until David turned eighteen and went to community college, and then did it again until he got a degree, leading into a job to make sure his mother was without a caretaker. He’d create a quiet life, his pattern of existence safe for him and others.

And the brax would rule undisturbed above and all around him. Taking, controlling, ensuring humans never got meaningful say over their world. Additional Bri’s every day, causing countless men and boys to feel fear as tall red horned women approached with vicious smiles and grasping fingers.

Unacceptable.

There was another way. One where David examined what he’d done and inspired, then kept going. Plenty of his fellow Tigers enjoyed bruising some tomatoes, as Tobias had pointed out during the wind down of their meeting. David could use that, use them. Tobias considered his choice made, and David could walk alongside him. Tobias was crafty and thoughtful, but he was no leader. David already had led. He’d found a way to take a sports team, turn them into a squad of combatants and spur one member to take justice into their own swift and brutal hands. What was done once was repeatable. There would be more ways to hurt their self-righteous rulers, autonomy could be seized inch by painful inch.

The cost would be more terror, more death. More Bri’s, bodies left to rot in the out of way corners they’d been shoved into. Other Kaa’syi’s, bystanders caught in the crossfire of violence as they did their best to maintain ordinary lives.

Monstrous.

But David could see no middle way. Submission, not abjection, he’d told himself that so many times. One more illusion. Over a long enough period of time, was submission not abjection by another name? Yet refusal also came with a bill attached. If it was one paid by him alone, he’d accept the price. Reality was not so generous.

It was all too big for him to handle. The universe didn’t care. It was his decision to make.

Try as he might, David was unable to force himself to a conclusion. The exertion of his flaying under his brother’s bed sheet drained him too much. All inner control and drive were gone. The circumstance left him vulnerable, too weak to hold tight the emotional bank vault he’d filled for so long. It burst.

He began to howl. Fire hot tears boiled out of his ducts. The contents of his vault were not savings, but a debt long accrued. David was now forced to balance his accounts, and there were years of compounded interest. The sounds which resulted were animalistic, unbound. Far from the mercy he’d imagined earlier, each orb of water oozing down his face tore strips from his soul.

The boy cried because he was condemned to despise himself no matter what he did. He sobbed because he deserved to hate himself, the condemnation not enough to punish someone so wicked as he. Tears flowed for his mother, left with the substandard son not good enough to fix her, one base enough to loathe her for it. Salt scorched his cheeks for the dozens of bodies he’d walked over to achieve his aims, the people left scarred, broken or dead because of him. His throat burned from the force of his voice box violations, in the same way he burned over the injustice of being caught in this trap. Then he keened because it was all he was capable of doing. Pain denied was pain merely delayed, and the tax man cometh.

The flood waters receded after an uncountable span of time, leaving soundless destruction in their wake. David was sanded down to tissue thinness, hardy as notebook paper. He slept fitfully, not having the energy to rouse and lacking the peace to slumber. The morning left him no more rested than the afternoon preceding it. Every part of his body complained of misuse, telling him in no uncertain terms of how little repair work had been accomplished. The wider world was ignorant of his ill state. As far as it was concerned, he’d gotten home, spent hours in bed, and it was time for school.

A low function autopilot took over David. He prepared for the day, details smeared into paste. The pain that clanged with every motion was a hum in the background, as relevant as the bird calls that came with dawn. He remained in this state during his walk to school and as he entered the building. Classes were spent staring straight ahead, eyes open and seeing nothing. No teacher bothered him.  

Legs leaden from abuse took him to the cafeteria door, and then the haze lifted in an instant. Everything crystalized, David’s inner world resolving into thoughts so clear they were edged. Tobias was visible from the entrance, appearing to share a table with classmates. But to David, the walls of air he kept in between himself and the nearby students were obvious and thick, able to be seen from space. In a crowd, Tobias sat alone.

David could topple those walls and share a meal with him. Share a meal, and so much more. But there was another option. In his backpack were several homework sheets he’d neglected. Bits of labor gone from being assigned to almost due. The library called, its partition forming a place of quiet and peace where he could read and write, perform his due as a student. 

A vaguely remembered lecture from a past science teacher flowed through his mind, an explanation concerning a cat trapped in a box. Until the box was opened it might as well be alive or dead, for all the difference it made to those outside. But once the contents were revealed, fate was set, and the small thing would show itself to be one or the other. David saw himself in that box, along with a twin. Two Davids, with the twist being one would soon be dead, the other left to live. One David would seat himself next to Tobias and talk. The other would be in the library soon, as fast as tired feet marched the distance. No matter which remained, an important part of either would disappear.

Both Davids closed their eyes, breathing deep. The lid of the box was removed with care. The breath completed, and one David peered out.

With a lead heavy stomach, he walked into the cafeteria.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind

-Commonly attributed to Ghandi

 Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

-Fredrick Douglas

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