Prelude to a Civil War

“Remember the folly of Rabbi Loew! The strong arms and brutal dullness of the golem you have stitched together will not defend you forever. The beast will always turn against its master- when your Morningstar's cold, dead fingers are wrapped about your throat, you will choke on your commands and dictums, and no paternal authority will save you from your wayward children.”

         The passion in the street preacher's eyes suddenly died down, and he began to run dirty fingers through his long, grey beard, lost in thought. Something in the way he curled his mouth and twitched his nose hinted that perhaps he was lost in mind as well. Or in space.

         I sighed and spat my wad of gum over my shoulder. The sky was as grey as the pavement; if you squinted, you couldn't tell which way was up. The preacher sat at the mouth of a narrow alley. With the way the tall buildings and signs cast their shadows within, it was oddly darker than the hour would suggest, like a slice of midnight or a corridor into an urban dungeon, the preacher its warden of sorts.

         The day was July 16th, 2058, the morning when we heard the news that the troops were coming home.

         I walked out of school before the end of first period because I couldn't stand the excited chattering of the other students; the teachers were no better. Everybody was ecstatic; fond memories of every brother and sister and distant cousin fighting on the front were exchanged alongside eager homecoming plans. It's not that I wasn't happy for them, but... I couldn't really share in their enthusiasm. I had already lost Monty. Mom said that was a terrible thing to say, that we should be thankful to God that our boy made it back alive when recorded casualties were just beginning to rival the death tolls of World Wars I and II. But he was as dead as a rabid dog, his days numbered like the last ounces of water in a canteen.

         The preacher piped up again, so certain and confidently poised that I wondered for a moment whether I had merely imagined the long break in his sermon: “You built him mighty to steal his power for your own, but you tried to shackle him as best you could. He is bound to your will, for you have exterminated every last trace of his own.”

         Monty was declared MIA after his unit left him in a bunker in no man's land for three weeks. When he finally made it back to allied territory, his “speech and manners were incoherent and disturbing”, according to the report. He was shipped to a military psychiatric camp for a week, where he recovered somewhat but was declared unfit to fight for his flag in his fragile state. The army was kind enough to find him a plane back home and give special instructions to the air marshal to make sure he didn't get lost or do something regrettable.

         It's hard to describe the sensation of knowing that an evil robot is wearing your older brother's skin. But that's exactly was he was to me; the war had crushed every sentiment and trait I had admired in him, and transformed the remains into an unrecognizable creature.

         He always wore a frustrated look, a mix of rage and tension and dread that almost palpably singed the skin when he stared at you with eyes like smoldering coals. He rarely ate, and when he did he usually threw up soon afterwards. His body was always shrinking even as his presence in the household grew more stifling and filled up our every waking moment.

         He seemed to try to be polite, even compassionate, but his torment permeated the house and began to twist the rest of us up in torturous knots. We were very careful not to provoke him when he was present, and our caution evolved into a paranoiac epidemic. Eventually, we all spoke in whispers, when we spoke at all, and started to avoid each other. Long periods of silence and solitude were punctated by violent outbursts over trivial things: Dad broke a chair when he found a dirty glass left on his desk; Emily disappeared for a week when Mom mentioned that it might be time for a haircut; I took out my fear and frustration on my friends at school, who grew afraid of me and started avoiding me as well. I was alone at home and at school, living with a bunch of suspicious strangers.

         Monty grew more erratic as the days grew longer and hotter. He spent most of the day and night in his room, sleeping and crying. Occasionally he wandered out of the house and didn't come back for days, returning with torn and dirty clothes and bedecked with unfamiliar leaves and debris from distant parts of the county.

         In short, life after his return became unbearable. Our once cozy home decayed into a hellhouse of anxiety and emotional torture. So needless to say, I was skeptical when I heard they were bringing the boys back home.

         Just imagine, thousands of young men and women raised on brutality and blind obedience. Thousands of shambling, groaning, shrieking zombies, alienated from their families, without friends or lovers or children or jobs or dreams or anything to give them a sense of purpose. Exposed to unfathomable death and atrocity, forced to bear a monumental emotional and moral burden, how couldn't they crack under the weight of postwar memories when all their will was sapped by the boot camp artificers who mashed them up into clay and molded them anew into assembly-line soldiers?

         And what's worse, all these sick, fragile people know is how to kill. An army of lost and confused soldiers, descending upon their homeland like locusts, soulless eyes unblinking as they burn the society down to the foundations, murder their fellow citizens, in a bloody coup to establish their lunatic maniocracy. If the Russian soldiers gave us Red October after World War I, and the Arabs gave us the turn-of-the-century conflicts after the attempted Soviet occupation, and each African dictator was once a proud general leading his army of toddlers with guns against some unjust rule, then what could be in store for us when our minions return?, I wondered.

         I did not realize I had sat down while I was pondering the coming crisis until I felt rough, bony hands grip my shoulders and shake me. The preacher did not say a word, but pressed his hands against the sides of my head and stared into my eyes. Then he reached into what might have been a pocket, or perhaps just a hole in his ratty old bathrobe, and pulled out a crumpled and worn photograph which he shoved in my face.

         It was the smiling face of a handsome young man in uniform. His smile was a mix of a boyish, eager smirk and the proud grin of a staunch patriot. He reminded me of Monty. The old Monty.

         I struggled not to choke on my words as I croaked out, “I'm sure you were very proud of him.”

         A small, quivering smile lit his lips, and the old preacher seemed to stare through me for a second, as if at a distant memory. His eyes glistened, and as tears began to trickle down the lines of his face, he snapped out of his reverie and began to transform. The blood rushed to his face; his brow furrowed deep; his lips curled back to reveal broken yellow teeth; and his eyes glowed once more with the fire of prophecy. Grimly inspired words dripped out of his mouth, steadily rising in force and fury in a crescendo of terrible portent:

         “The litanies of obedience wear thin beneath the ravages of atrocity. Madness is the rot of the leash; when he no longer knows himself, he will forget his place, and when he no longer knows his master, he will forget his chains. Like a rusty machine, here one spring will snap with tension, there a hapless creature will get caught in a gear, a pipe will clog, a joint will squeak, and on and on and the entropy will build and on and on and a strange, sinister new fire will bellow forth from the vents and smoke and soot and on and on and you will cough and sweat and frantically try to fix the machine but the entropy will build and you will desperately try to cool the temper of the machine but the flames will rise and the rage will build and build and you will pray and you will run but the streams of smoke and blanket of soot will creep on and on and as you huddle with your friends and lovers and children and pets in your secret places and shiver with dread- then it will explode and the roof will come crashing down and the thousand piercing eyes in the sky will fall upon you and that is Madness. And so the putrid kiss of your corrupted offspring will spread the disease and you too will rot in the brain and in the soul.”