Joseph’s bare feet left red liquid footprints on the cool, debris-covered cement. His feet were torn, destroyed from months without proper shoes. He blinked a few times, hoping to adjust his tired eyes to the dim light in the tunnel. The action held no success, and he briefly wondered if his eyes had finally begun to give out on him.
“Let’s keep it moving, Rayn,” one of the guards following close behind shouted in Joseph’s ear. He jabbed something hard into Joseph’s back, though it was hardly felt. Joseph had long since lost feeling in most of his body.
The guard prodded him again, with more force. Joseph stumbled forward, but a guard behind him caught the back of his shirt and pulled him back to his feet. The clothes given to Joseph were perhaps the cleanest things he had worn in a year. They were discolored and threadbare, but had that fresh feeling about them. Great care had been taken to see that while Joseph was the very image of suffering, he looked better off than the remaining civilian population.
Joseph tightened his grip on the long metal pole in his hand; his wrist shackled to it by a thick chain. It was a burden in the days before his body turned completely numb, it had chaffed the very skin from his manacled wrist. Now that burden was his only means of support.
“We don’t have all day,” a guard yelled into Joseph’s ear. He grabbed Joseph’s free arm and started dragging him down the tunnel.
Another guard knocked him on the head with the end of his gun. “Watch it, Davis, they want him strong.” His voice was barely more than a whisper in Joseph’s ears.
The guard let Joseph’s arm go, but not without a quick push forward. Joseph gritted his teeth and kept walking. It seemed that the more numb his body became, the more he felt every little shift in his emotions, and the more he had to fight to restrain them. Any small lapse in his reserve would be the signature on the warrant for his death.
At the end of the cement tunnel, a crowd roared.
The noise met Joseph’s ears as an annoying buzzing and for once he was thankful for his damaged hearing. Though, no amount of deafness would help him forget what had happened and what was waiting for him at the end of the tunnel.
Joseph recalled his days of teaching ancient history at the university. He imagined himself walking into a den of lions, or a deadly gladiatorial arena; hundreds of civilians would be cheering on his death.
At the end of the tunnel, Joseph stepped from the cool cement to the parched, grey grass of an old football field. The crowded stands shouted louder at the sight of him, though it was still only a ringing in his ears. Some spectators dared to throw their last possessions, their last bits of food and clothing and shelter, at Joseph. He was a criminal in their eyes; punishment ranked higher than survival.
Ignoring the muted insults that echoed from the crowd, Joseph walked straight ahead to the stage that had been set in the center of the field. It was a rickety, makeshift thing that trembled under Joseph’s weight as he ascended the few steps attached to it. Splintered boards and rusted sheets of metal had been thrown together to make this stage. It was an important event in the eyes of the remaining public, important enough to waste the few remaining building materials.
A tight-faced woman awaited him on the stage. Miss Mary Lane, hard-hitting reporter of the news, desperate to seek the truth for you. It was the phrase everyone associated with the woman who dominated the TV screen Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights at ten and two. She was the one they sent to destroy all that remained of Joseph’s sorry life.
Her mouth moved as she said something, but Joseph had no hope of hearing her over the ringing in his ears caused by the crowd. Ms. Lane sighed and said something to a short, squirrely man holding what appeared to be a box of wires and batteries.
He scurried over to Joseph and shoved a small pea-shaped object into each of his ears. The sound of the crowd, once just a ringing in his head, exploded into a chaos of insults and incoherent screaming in his ears.
Joseph snapped his head up, looking at the crowded stands for the first time. The crumbling stadium was packed with people. All there to watch him be condemned to death. That was all they wanted, after all. A scapegoat. Someone to blame this tragedy on.
“Mister Rayn,” Ms. Lane greeted, holding a slender hand to Joseph. He shook it lightly with his free hand, careful to leave her hand free of blood and dirt. Being anything less than a gentleman would ruin the plan.
Ms. Lane turned to the spectators and lifted her microphone to her ruby-red lips, “Mister Joseph Rayn, ladies and gentlemen.” She spoke calmly, barely noticing the chaotic crowd she addressed. Joseph was impressed with her serenity, given the state of things. In her tone, in her posture, and even in her clothes she showed no sign of being even slightly affected by the war.
She turned back to Joseph and gestured for him to sit in a chair at the center of the stage as she sat in her own. “Mister Rayn. Joseph,” she said, still speaking into the microphone. “You are aware of the ruined state of our world, correct?”
The same man who brought the hearing aids clipped a small microphone to the limp collar of Joseph’s shirt and hooked a battery pack on his belt.
“Yes,” Joseph said. “I’m aware.” His voice was rough and his throat burned with each syllable that passed his cracked lips.
“And what caused this ruined state, Joseph?” Ms. Lane asked. Where they sat, Joseph was a whole head taller than her, but she talked to him as if he was lower than the ground.
Joseph took a deep breath, keeping his eyes focused on Ms. Lane instead of the crowd. He knew what to say, he was familiar with speaking in front of crowds, but there was something more difficult when your own life was on the line. “I believe what was World War Three has caused this, Miss Lane,” Joseph stated.
The crowd erupted into an uproar of insults, rotten produce splattered the field. Ms. Lane raised a hand to calm them, waiting for the stadium to quiet before turning back to Joseph.
“No, Joseph,” she said. “It is you that has caused this; you and your band of rebels.”
The crowd cheered. Ms. Lane lifted her hand in the air.
Joseph scratched his scraggly chin with his unshackled hand. There had been no opportunity to shave, not for months. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that makes much sense.”
Ms. Lane raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. Joseph loathed her for taking time to worry about her immaculate image. She was even clothed in a clean, un-torn pantsuit; her hair styled just right.
“How is that, Joseph?” she asked.
“It’s logic, Ms. Lane,” he said. ‘If my ‘band of rebels’ and I had started this war, then why would we have gone to such lengths to stop it?” He felt guilty for his claim of ownership over the group. He hadn’t been but a supporting player. What could a history professor do in a war? Nothing but be secreted away and prepared to defend the cause if something went awry. It had let him survive, but it hardly let him feel qualified to defend the group now.
Ms. Lane stood and walked away from Joseph, covering the length of the stage. “Maybe, Joseph, maybe it was regret? Fear of being destroyed? An attempt to cover up the atrocity you caused/” She spun to face him again. “Yes, a cover-up. That’s it, right Joseph? To save your pathetic lives, you pretended to be heroes, saviors?”
“You’re an intelligent woman, Ms. Lane,” Joseph said. “You know that is a ridiculous assumption.”
“Let’s hear an explanation, then,” she said. “Convince us to believe that you have not caused the utter destruction of the world as we knew it.”
Joseph turned his eyes to the crowd. Every person had gone silent, each focused on him, ready for him to stumble over an expected lie, ready for the firing squad waiting outside the stadium to end his treacherous life.
He stood from his chair and took a step forward to the edge of the stage, the metal pole gripped tightly in his numb hand. “You’ve seen this war. I’ve seen this war. We have all seen this war. We’ve seen… We’ve been men and women, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons fighting for our lives, for a tomorrow that we never thought would come.”
Joseph loosened his grip on the metal pole, only to tighten his fingers around it again. “Look at each other. Look at the brokenness, the desperation, the pain in each of us. One group of people didn’t cause this. One group of people, one small band of ‘rebels’ didn’t cause this. This is bigger than that. Because of this war, because of what we have all done to this world, we have all seen things we were never meant to see. We have experienced things we were never meant to even know about. One small group of people couldn’t do that.”
He took a few steps toward Ms. Lane and stopped again, looking out to the crowd. “We are all to blame, we are all responsible.”
“Avoiding the question, I see, Joseph?” Ms. Lane asked.
Her voice boomed over the sound system.
“You aren’t doing yourself any favors by lying, Joseph,” she said.
“This ‘band of rebels’ you are so quick to blame is very well the only reason that you’re all not cowering in the dark somewhere. These ‘rebels’… You ought to be thankful that they’re the ones who died instead of you,” Joseph said. “War isn’t started by civilians, but by governments.” He looked toward Ms. Lane, to the line of guards at the back of the stage, and to the camera that would broadcast this event to similar stadiums all over the world.
“Joseph, Joseph, Joseph,” Ms. Lane said, clucking her tongue. “Have you forgotten your own allies? Tell us, how many rebels weren’t involved in some sort of government institution?”
Joseph’s knuckles burned as he strangled the pole with his hand; the first real feeling in his body for a long time.
“Kevin Long, he was a senator wasn’t he?” Ms. Lane asked. “And Glen Porter, a supreme court judge. Harriet Kline was even in the president’s cabinet. There were many, many others too. Weren’t there, Joseph?”
“A war started in our own land would not have spread to the lengths this did,” Joseph said. “Even considering allied assistance from outside countries, it would not have led to fighting in every corner of the world.”
Ms. Lane smiled and shook her head. “Joseph, again you’re forgetting your own—”
“Miss Lane, I’m aware of the membership of my own group,” Joseph interrupted. “I know we had Russians and French and Spanish, but only due to the spread of the war throughout the world.”
Ms. Lane looked at Joseph for a minute, staring intently at him. “You have attempted to justify the membership of your band of rebels, and you have tossed blame where it is not deserved. Now, could you refresh our memories as to how you rebels ‘stopped’ this war?” she asked, a smile creeping onto her red lips.
Joseph stared at her, his mouth set in a thin line. He had prepared for this, of course he had, but there was a reason he was on trial. No one was prepared to believe what Joseph was about to try to explain.
“It was magic,” he said at last. “No mere weapon could have ended that war. Everyone can see that, everyone saw the destruction. Everyone saw their loved ones killed, their homes destroyed, their world obliterated.”
Ms. Lane chuckled, “Magic, what an absurd claim.” The crowd laughed with her until she raised her hand to silence them again. “Joseph, you can’t really expect us to believe that you rebels wielded some sort of fairy tale magic.”
“It was magic,” Joseph repeated. “It is absurd, as you said yourself Miss Lane. Just absurd enough to be the means to an end.”
Ms. Lane shook her head. “I can’t imagine you even believe yourself,” she said. “You’re talking like a crazy person. Or, like someone who has something to hide.”
“Something to hide?” Joseph asked, taking a step forward. “If anyone has something to hide, I believe it is you and your government, Miss Lane.”
She narrowed her eyes, her red lips set in a line. “It seems like a great coincidence that this ‘magic’ suddenly decided to surface at the same time you and your rebels managed to gain an advantage in this war. Why discover the ‘magic’ now?”
“This is far from the beginning of magic in our world,” Joseph said. “It has been here for centuries upon centuries of time, but its existence has meant nothing to the world until now. These ‘rebels’ that you are so quick to blame managed to master it in a way that could open endless possibilities to our world. And without it… without it our broken world may never see healing. If we deny it, if we deny the sacrifice these ‘rebels’ have made for our lives, if we deny the opportunities it can give, well… It means nothing if we don’t accept it.”
Ms. Lane crossed the stage and stood at Joseph’s elbow, her eyes focused on his face. “Joseph,” she said. “The rebels did not control any sort of magic. They used highly-developed nuclear weaponry, the plans for which were stolen from top government labs around the world. Isn’t that right, Joseph? It was a power so large, so strong, and almost ‘magical’? It was a power that would have destroyed us all, if they had not been stopped first.”
Joseph’s fist tightened around the pole, his knuckles burning. “You can charge them with starting this war. You can blame them for the destruction. But you can never take credit for their deaths!” He pushed Ms. Lane away, knocking her in the face with the metal pole. It was an accident, the impact of metal to her perfectly designed face, but a pleasant one. She screamed as she fell backwards, her microphone clattered against the stage and broke. The sound system buzzed with dead air.
There was a sharp intake of breath from the crowd, and building noise as they discussed the tumble of their leader.
“They died saving the world, not by your hands,” Joseph muttered, his voice just carrying over the sound of the crowd thanks to the microphone on his collar.
“If that’s true,” Ms. Lane said, nearly shouting so that her voice would be heard by the crowd. She pushed herself up from the ground and dusted specs of dirt from her pants. The squirrely tech man handed her a new microphone as she strode back to Joseph’s side. “If that’s true, then why aren’t you dead with them?” she asked. “Why didn’t you die to save us, Joseph?”
Joseph gritted his teeth and stared down at the stage. Only a handful of ‘rebels’ had survived the war, Joseph included. They didn’t want him for his fighting skills, which were nonexistent. They wanted him for his intelligence, his lecturing expertise. Still, he had never felt more guilty for living.
“Why are you still here, Joseph?” Ms. Lane asked. “Tell us the truth, Joseph. The world deserves to know!” She turned to face the crowd, her arms raised in the air. The spectators cheered with her. It met Joseph’s ears softer than before, the hearing aids mustn’t have been very well engineered.
“I’m telling the truth,” Joseph said, working to keep his voice calm. There was a tingling sensation in his fingers and his toes, creeping up his arms and legs.
“Tell us the truth, Joseph!” Ms. Lane shouted, the crowd chanting along with her.
“I’m telling the truth!” Joseph screamed. His throat was on fire, the tingling in his arms and legs spread through his body and intensified. He held his eyes closed tight, afraid he had spontaneously combusted right there on the stage.
“Prove it to us, then!” Ms. Lane shouted, egging on the crowd.
Joseph’s eyes flew open. A burst of light surrounded him, blocking out Ms. Lane, the guards, and the packed stadium from his vision. For a brief moment, Joseph was left to wonder if he was going out the way most of the rebels had.
He felt the manacle shatter from around his wrist and let the pole fall from his hand. It thudded on the makeshift stage. Joseph rubbed his hand on his now-bare wrist, the skin pale and new. He lifted a foot to feel the smooth, unharmed sole beneath.
The light faded back to normal daylight over the bright green football field. The crowd was silent for a moment before bursting into a roar of applause and cheering.
Joseph smiled, standing taller than he had in weeks.
“Now!” Ms. Lane’s muted voice shouted behind him, followed by the tell-tale shot of an army-issued weapon.
Joseph stumbled forward as the first shot ripped through his back, tumbling from the stage completely as shot two and three made impact.
The crowd roared, but Joseph only heard the pounding of his own heart in his chest. The shots had missed his heart, but they were good shots. Joseph clutched his chest, his blood spilling through his fingertips and staining the fresh green grass.
He coughed and watched his blood splatter across the grass through blurred vision. He turned his head slightly, the crowded stands in his sight. People were shouting and throwing things, some in the first few rows were attempting to climb down to the field.
Joseph coughed, clutching at his chest again. These people, this government… The government had made its decision. It had made the decision before Joseph had even set foot in that cement tunnel. They weren’t going to let him walk out alive; he was a criminal in their eyes. But they had wanted to convince the people that he was an enemy, that he and the rebels were the ones to blame.
To someone, Joseph knew he had made his truth clear. He knew he convinced someone that the rebels were not the enemy. There would be a new band of rebels, a new group of people who would utilize this discovery of magic to change the world. There had to be. If no one took up the torch from Joseph’s fall, if no one tried to control the magic then hundreds of rebel lives, Joseph’s life, the war, the beginning of this magic… Well, it would all mean nothing.
) 
Gender:
Points: 370
Reviews: 541