Burns

         I can remember a time when I was proud of my heritage. The stories. The Carpenter's Son. The Cherry Tree. All of my stories, all of my life, gone, the very moment we lost favor with the world. I watched our fields be plowed down, our past-times get erased, be replaced. Rewritten. All because the world ain't smitten with the way we've been skippin'. I had wanted to be a poet. Now, all I can do is churn out rhymes.
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         As of this moment, the organized gatherings of this land are to be erased, to free it's people's from the false ideals of the gods they have ordained. Any formation of cult worshippers or secret groups will be treated as treason, and be punished by death...
         The fact that the entire airport was silent made the TV surprisingly easy to hear. Too bad most people still needed to see the subtitles. Chinese gibberish filled the place. The very last thing I wanted to hear was bearing down on my head like the Fourth of July. I needed to get away. Slumping into the bar, I got my headphones out. The bartender was looking out at the mounted set with the rest of the crowd, but he couldn't help but notice movement when I shuffled onto a barstool under his nose.
         "Top me off, friend. It's going to be a long life."
         I could hear the sound of gunfire on the news. Some local militia probably decided to try to kick them out again. Apparently, what worked in 1776 didn't work half as well 240 years later. Then again, it wasn't against England either. Screams told me that my inner monologue had struck gold. It looks like the young chaps in Ruby Creek Ridge, Idaho wouldn't be uprising again anytime soon.
The barman dropped my drink off with a glare; like it was my damn fault he couldn't watch our once proud nation tumble under the tyranny of an entire fucking continent. As I took a long draft, I thought to myself he should be glad for the distraction. Then I noticed he was Chinese.
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         This invasion is bullshit, and everyone knows it. But everyone just takes this occupation lying down, practically begging for our rights to be trampled on. "Their gods are false." They believe in them too, like it or not. Deep down inside them, I know those Union bastards think that something is driving them. They just use a different word for it.
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         Investigation requires the ability to see through people's bullshit. My father taught that to me. He was a cop, Senior Detective, and he made sure anyone who saw him knew it. He got a lot of respect in the community, for all the good it did him.
            He was never comfortable with the fact that I didn't follow in his footsteps. I was an Insurance Investigator, basically the equivalent of the National Guard to him. My job was almost a bigger disappointment than a P.I. Still, I was good at it, because he taught me everything about observation. He never once displayed any affection for me since I chose my career, but I don't care. I survived because I was willing to adapt. He may have been a better person because he knew where he stood, but he didn't know when to lay low and dodge a hit. He should have used his observation to know to get the hell out of that town. The invasion pretty much decked him; he was assumed to be one of these rag-tag revolutionary groups, and it killed him. He died two years ago. Shot in the back. Pride doesn't get you anywhere except face down in a mass grave.
            Headphones help when you need to get away. Hearing the damn language was all it took to hit me sometimes. Of course most music nowadays sucked. I might get even more nuts from it.
            Some blonde is sneaking glances at me from a couple seats away. She thinks I don't see. She's wrong. Most people would think she was interested, but she isn't. She just sees some down-on-his-luck mysterious guy in a bar. Maybe she thinks I'll have some money to spend. Not enough jobs anymore. I wonder who she was, if she was a college student, if she was an intern.
            I finish my bottle, and set it down with a thud. I nod to the bartender as I leave, but he sneers at me. Happiness left the world, long before democracy died. The bartender would probably have thrown me out soon anyway. I wasn't your typical drinker. When I drank, I sat right in the middle of the bar, not in a corner. It threw people off. I'm not socially wrecked by this invasion. No, I just need a drink now and then to remember to look the other way.
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"There are certain things a man has a god-given right to have."
It's funny, I understand the kid far better now than I ever did before or since, even when he pulled the trigger. Of course, you might not understand, since you never net him. Still...  These Missionaries they dispatched... a more appropriate term for them would be religious mercenaries.
Those traitors are almost as hard to imagine as China getting the best of us from an ocean away. This life is fucked up. No, this world is fucked up. Whoever said that death has to be the end of Life? Death is relative.
       
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         I started to the hotel in a taxicab. The drive itself made me think of the Devil's Towers. I don't even live in the Apple, but somehow my thoughts seemed omniscient, and I saw rubble from that day as though I had been there. I suppose it was because I was in a cab that day too. So had Daniel. Danny, I wondered how he was taking it. Ex-military types were almost universally pissed at the power shift. Even from the back of the taxi-cab, I could see people throwing flags out the window, and some being hung out of apartments. Somehow, patriotism persevered. Then again, it wasn't patriotism that got people killed. Arrogant display did.
         Of course, arrogance was a factor on both sides of the fight. Chinese graffiti adorned almost every building I looked at as the taxi wove its way through the streets of New York. God only knew what the stuff said, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was slander. Chinese really get a kick out of kicking us while were down. I reach for a cigarette, but stop. I'm supposed to be quitting the stuff. I guess old habits die-hard.
         Danny. D-Franc. He had been a good friend of mine through high school, and though my other compatriots and companions had departed gradually from my life, Daniel Franco somehow had remained. After aspiring to be a doctor, until his med-school application was rejected (from both Allopathic and Osteopathic schools), he decided to become an actor. He bounced from place to place, and we had individually stumbled upon one another completely by accident on three separate occasions in three different cities. He joked that I was stalking him. By the second time I met him, approximately 6 years ago, he had forgotten his actor pursuits, claiming he didn't want to cry in front of a camera, and became a fireman instead. "At least when I die, it won't be from a celebrity bitching-out emo suicide. It'll be in a fire. That's the way real men die." Somewhere in there, he'd joined the Navy, but left because of "all the hypocrisy, plus I didn't make the cut for SEAL."
         The very last time I had seen him, he'd looked like shit. It must have been just after the Collapse. He looked at me, and said. "Frankie, if there's one thing you've gotta do right now, it is to watch your own. Whole world's gone to hell, don't let any Americans turn on us." Then he stumbled out of the bar. I paid the tab and ran out after him, but he was gone, and my flight out was in about 3 hours, so I just headed to the airport. I flew to LA, and passed out from jet lag.
         He'd given me an address at the bar, come to think of it. I pulled out my Palm Pilot, and scrolled through the names. "Head for 180 Everest Way."
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Democracy was never perfect. Nor was capitalism. Those ideas were not what embodied America. The American spirit was the sense of unity, the sense of connection everyone had with each other. Racism wasn't gone, but the cultures were there, exposed. We learned... I learned that people's heritage didn't have a thing to do with what kind of person they were. That was decided by their choices; by the way they lived their life. I say that these bastards killed the American spirit, not because we don't elect leaders, not because the free market is slowly disappearing, but because I can't see one god damned chink and not hate them, with every fiber of my being, just for being a chink.

         My America is dead.
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         The driver dropped me off at the building, and I went up a few stories. The numbers only went up to 389. Imagine my surprise. I entered the main foyer again, looking for someone to ask. I saw a bent old man behind a wooden desk. He'd have to do.
         "Excuse me, sir?" I tried to hide the alcohol in my breath. I don't really know how successful I was.
         He started, as though he had awoken from a deep sleep, though he had watched my approach the whole time. "Who are you, what do you want?"
         "I was wondering if you have a tenet by the name of Daniel Franco. He's a fireman." I suggested when the man started to look at me funny. One of his eyes was lazy, I thought, until I saw. It was a glass eye.
         The man laughed. "You mean Danny Flame? He ain't here anymore. Bastard took the whole top floor with him. Why?" The man suddenly got a suspicious look in his eye, probably from the startled reaction I was displaying.
         It wasn't a shock, upon reflection. It was more of a feeling that... some web had settled on me after trailing behind me as I ran. A sudden stop.
         "Danny's left?"
         The man grew more annoyed. "No, he went Kamikaze. Boom-boom!  Of course, now the "York Yankees" worship him. That's why the soldiers haven't moved out of New York yet. Freaking gang's making everyone's life miserable."
         I shook my head. This couldn't be happening. "No, Danny wouldn't kill himself, and if he did, he definitely wouldn't harm anyone. You must be thinking of someone else."
         "No, I'm not thinking of someone else. You're just in denial. What was he, an old friend? Let me guess. You tracked him down to help him through his issues, only to find out he fried himself, along with a whole fucking floor of Union soldiers, I might add. Left a damn note, at the desk. Fucker made the wife promise to hold it for..." The man paused.
"You go by the name of Frankie Hold?"
         I nodded mechanically, unable to put attention into the action.
         He slid a manila envelope across the table. It was worn, creases all over, the color faded to a darker yellow that reminded me of vomit. I don't remember opening it, all I know is that I was reading. The experiences of my life held no bond to me, it was as though the past three years were just some sort of strange pause. One moment I was sitting at my house watching the news, then I was reading the last words of a friend three years dead.
         
I walked to my hotel that night.
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-Daniel Franco