Jackals

You are a fool, cringing there in your chair as the door click-click-clicks open like one hundred-and-one (heartbeats in your chest and your pulse bangs into your head.) Julia. Julia.

(Miss Julia, to you sir Party sir Winston oh my god Winston--). They're going to kill you here and you think that that will be that. O'Brien. The bastard. You'll kill him you'll rip his heart out and watch it spatter onto the floor and claw out his arteries, dragging the veins with you along the white tile in a bright red pool.

Julia.

Restrained and tied down, wrists clamped to the chair and your dark hair fluttering like a fan, slightly dull as the lights tone down and you can hear someone (perhaps yourself) muttering about B. B. (Big Bastard) and you won't betray him. You'll die loving him, you'll die like Juliet. Julia-Juliet. But Juliet was a foolish whore and you are a whore but not a fool.

Pursed lips and a nasty smile as O'Brien starts on some spiel about how she should love Big Brother. Perhaps there is power to be held and perhaps not. Your engineered death by yourself is exquisitely made like vases of glass. "I love Winston," you find yourself saying, almost defiantly, "you can't take him away from me."

But this is Room 101. They can take anything away from you here.

(You don't realize this until it is too late and O'Brien has already flipped the switches and turned the machine on. Dozens and dozens of flying insects batting their insidious wings against a cage in front of you, swarming with spiders and ants and ohmygodcentipedes. Winstonwinstonwinston. You suck in another breath and he says: "They haven't been fed for days. They've been genetically engineered by the Party to devour human flesh. They're meant for you, Julia."

You shut your eyes as the cage inches closer and the dragonflies and the beetles and all those massive insects start shrieking in hoarse, unending inhuman cries. A green-bodied slug that oozes pus and snails and cottonwood borers. The latch flies open and they all pour out like a swarm from hell, until the air seems to be choking on insects, a nightmare of proportional consequences within sequences. (O'Brien drones on but you don't listen, you scream and shake the chair, fingers bleeding and splinters cracking off with insistent cries.) Insects. Winston. Insects. Winston. Winston. Insects and O'Brien Big Brother Party Anti-Sex League Propaganda (War is Peace doublethink, darling Julia. Always the doublethink.) A bee lands on your nose and you shake it off, as the mass floods the walls and ceilings and carpet and you snap somewhere, like a column tumbling to the floor in requiem.

No. A little start. No. Oh my god, no. Please, no, nononono-- take Winston. Take anyone! Kill him if you want take him shoot him shock him half to death get rid of the fucking bastard but not these things not these not me not me not me. Oh god oh god I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry. Winston. Take Winston--

(Like a sucking faucet flitting backwards and the insects return back to their cages, as if reversing the process altogether into a mindless pit a black hole. You are mostly unscathed and O'Brien continues speaking through the hole but there is nothing there to speak to anymore.)

Betrayal.

Exhaustion.

Death.

Emptiness.

(They mean nothing.)

And you are released with a bowed head and a pretty face, a sort of sardonic end to your torment. There is a single scar from a butterfly's jagged wings (you think they didn't have those awhile ago) and lightness to greet you. No hate, no resentment, love of Big Brother love of hate and hate of Goldstein. Down with thoughtcriminals. "The Party lusts for only power, Julia. Only power. Ruling for the sake of ruling -- not for any greater good, but simply to lord over others."

You don't respond. Julia?

Standing in Airstrip One next to a telescreen and hundreds of people lining up for Two Minutes Hate to scream and rave and get angry. Something broils in your veins. Something dark and something bitter, like salt and bile and you force it back done. This is the end. You're nothing now, quiet Julia with her perfect record and I am not a thoughtcriminal I am a good orthodox Party member. This is all illusions all stupidity but we eat it up like jackals. We are. They are. Everyone is.

(I'm sorry, Winston. I'm sorry.)