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The Beautiful People

By: MSTarot



~ "Being called the first shots in the War Against Ugliness, the petition for the so-called Narcissism Bill was presented to both houses of Congress today by the President of New You Incorporated, Jeremiah Ambrose. Following an impassioned speech about the horror of school bullying, Ambrose's followers gathered on the National Mall, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, began a chant of "Make them all beautiful!" The petition was also presented to the office of the president and to all fifty-five state governors. The validity of the petition has been called into question by those opposed to the Mandatory Corrective Surgery Bill. They state that the use of the Internet to gather signatures has rendered the document a complete fraud."~

"They will never get that stupid crap to pass. It's insane to even think of something that silly becoming law," said my dad. "Bunch of freaks, the lot of them. Damn, New People, my ass!"

Sitting on the floor in the hallway, listening to my parents talk about the news, I couldn't understand everything they were talking about, but I knew it had something to do with my baby sister, Bellatrix.

"Stranger things have happened, when the majority of people wanted it," said Mom, disagreeing with his every statement as normal. 

"They're not the majority! Not by a long shot! They're just a bunch of DNA hacking, rich fuckers that think because they're Hollywood superstars they can dictate to the rest of the world!" Dad spat.

"Honey, please watch your language," Mom fussed. "I just put Ares to bed, he's such a light sleeper."

Very light, given that I was not asleep. Holding my favorite toy by its stuffed arm, I leaned my head against the door frame to listen some more. Looking past them, I saw the man on the TV and I almost laughed. I covered my mouth to keep it in. He looked a lot like a plastic doll. Except dolls don't scream.

"What if it passes?" Mom asked after a moment.

"It won't," Dad insisted.

"But if it does...you saw what it said. All children under the age of two. What will we do? How will we afford it? I mean I want Bellatrix to have the chance to have those surgeries. She's just an infant, yes, but she doesn't deserve to be mistreated by mean kids at school. She's young enough still to not remember surgery being done. Maybe we should go ahead and get her signed up? Beat the rush."

"It won't pass." Dad got to his feet quickly, and turning, saw me sitting on the floor by the door. "Ares, What are you doing up boy? It's way past your bedtime."

Before I could answer, Mom hopped up. "You woke him up with all your yelling and profanity, obviously!" Mom took my hand, pulled me to my feet, lead me down the hall and back to bed. She looked at me with a sad expression on her face. With a sigh, she brushed my hair back from my face.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Will I have to have...surgeries?" I asked, scared. I've been to the doctor before, I know how those needles they use hurt.

She shook her head, that sad look in her eyes growing. "No dear, you won't. You're too old for them to be effective anymore." She suddenly made like she wasn't sad. "You have to be under two and you're a whole big five years old!"

"So what about Bellatrix?" I asked. Most days I didn't like my baby sister and wished they would take her back to the baby hospital where they found her, but I suddenly didn't want them to hurt my little sister. Those mean doctors!

"Oh, don't cry. She's going to be fine. All they are going to do is make her beautiful. Make her perfect." Mom smiled, and wiped at my eyes with the corner of the bedsheets. "Now get to sleep young man; you have school in the morning."

Why I cried once she left, I don't know. Maybe it was the real joy I had heard in my mother's voice at the idea of my sister becoming perfect. Beautiful. Joy that one of her children was going to become one of them. One of the New People that Dad was always saying swear words about.

Maybe I cried because it wasn't going to be me.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The high school I attended was more of a piss-smelling trailer park in the parking lot of a burnt out building than a proper school, but it was all that the government school board would spend money on for us "normals" to get an education. I can't say I minded the way the school smelled or the way the books would fall apart if you touched them. It was the antique desks that pinched my ass whenever I sat down in them that I minded. That and the fact that there was not a single girl at the place that would rate above a three.

Of course they didn't rate a "normal" even on a scale of one to ten anymore. We started at negative nine, so saying there was a three at this school was actually high praise. With a bit of decent schooling and some luck she might just manage to get a job doing telemarketing.

That was the best that a "normal" three could hope for in this...New World. A job where you won't be seen.

Me? I was already being groomed as a sewer cleaner. Or maybe a toxic or radioactive waste handler. That, one was popular with the general public lately. Since the Mandatory Sterilization Bill had failed to pass anyway.

I heard it was already being presented again though. The New People would ram that bill through just like they had all the others these last thirteen years. Bill after bill made Irreversible Law. That was their word for what they were doing. Irreversible...bills, surgeries, politics, elections. Everything with them was Irreversible.

In my worn gray coverall that was the school uniform here at Hell High, I made my way down the hallway past the other "normals." All of us walked with the head down posture we were trained to use in grade school. I still remember my fifth grade principal yelling at me.

"Don't look up, you might make a New Person have to see your face!"

I think they have a bill in the works to make that a crime as well. Wouldn't surprise me. The list of crimes a "normal' can commit is getting longer and longer every year, since the election of President Ambrose.

"Get to class children!" called out one of the teachers. Mrs. Graves, her voice a rusty harp string tuned too low. She wasn't as bad as a few of my teachers, the ones that resented my whole generation as if we, the last "normal" generation of children, had somehow kept them from teaching the New People. As if that act of blasphemy was ever going to happen. A teaching position for those schools had a minimum two million in plastic surgery to correct any possible flaws in appearance that could cause mental harm to one of The Perfect. 

The Perfect. The New People. The Beautiful People. 

Not lifting my head, I looked over at Mr. Woo when he stepped into the hall. In his case it would have been three million. He was short, balding, and had scars from acne. Oh, the horror, the horror.

As I passed his class room he caught my arm.

"Mr. Achrann,I still need your essay, The Perfection of Society under the New Order. Have it on my desk before the end of the day, or it's the Time-Out-Room for you tomorrow. Understand?"

"Yes sir. I will have it for you. I'm nearly finished, I just got caught up in a side story about President Ambrose's childhood." I winced as his hand dug into the muscle, but it relaxed the moment I mentioned the name of the "Enlightened Prophet" of the New People.

"Ah, well that is quite understandable," he said, his face plastered with a smile of adoration. "His childhood makes for inspiring reading. In that case have it ready for me in the morning. Be sure though to include a section on his speeches about the years when he was degraded as a high school student. Those are by far the most inspirational words ever spoken."

"Yes, sir," I promised even as I was wanting to gag at having to read through those rants about how President Ambrose was bullied as a teen for not having the money to afford the newest generation of smart phone.

When I got to my session room, I stood next to my desk and, when the music began, said the Pledge to Never Bully that was required of all "normal" children at least once per day. By the time it was over I was my normal hoarse-throat self. A thousand word pledge, said without a pause, is dry work.

Roll-call was taken by Mrs. Harrison. Then she handed out the newest pamphlets we were to be tested on before the end of the day. I gave it a glance, then sighed. "How the World was Made Better"

Wishing I could shred this damn thing into confetti, I placed it into the plastic sleeve in my notebook. To protect it for future generations of Perfect People to look back on and study. That's what they told us at the beginning of the school year anyway. Those kids, in that not-so-distant future, would have to have something about us "normals" to study...given that by then we would all be extinct. 

Looking next to me, I smiled when I saw my friend Morgan using an invisible ink marker to write "Fuck you All!" across the face of his pamphlet before he slid it into his notebook. Those future Perfect Children would no doubt not understand what he had meant by that, but maybe some adult would. Maybe that adult would look at those words by the extinct "normal" and realize that we had truly hated them all.

Maybe.

The bell rang, and heads-down, we trudged off to class.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"I say we burn one of them alive! Hack in and post it viral style, let the whole world see one of those plastic fuckers melting!" Morgan flung his empty beer can at the trash can in the corner. It missed.

Toliver, our nominal leadership figure, shook his head. "Morg, when I said I wanted to do something in protest, I didn't mean something that would get me sent to the gas chamber!" Toliver popped open his beer. "I was thinking maybe some kind of vandalism. Maybe one of their surgical centers. That's dangerous enough to be fun and even if we get caught, it won't be a sniffing fumes punishment."

"Bullshit! They did that up in Detroit you know what happened there." Herald, threw up his hands. "If you guys want to pull something like that, I'm out. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in a re-education camp."

"You fucking cowardly cunt!" Morgan jumped to his feet.

"What do you think, Ares?" Toliver asked when he got Morg to settle down and Herald to put his knife away.

I let my eyes roam the "clubhouse" as I thought about it. An abandoned underground city cistern, it had been my home-away-from-home through most of my childhood. When I met Toliver and listened to him talk about forming a Resistance, I had offered it to him to use as a headquarters. Part of me occasionally wished I hadn't done that. It had been some much more, mine, back then. Now it sometimes seemed tainted by the presence of the others.

"He doesn't want to do anything!" Morgan said when I took a second too long to answer. "He's worried his precious sister might get her feelings hurt if she found out he was involved in anti-New People protests."

"Morg, you're invited to go fuck yourself," I said quietly. "And if you mention my sister again...I'll do it for you." 

"Bring your shit on, you punk ass." Morgan blustered, all puffed up bravado. 

I saw that Toliver was watching me to see if I was going to rise to Morgan's bull-baiting.

He needn't have bothered. For all his name-calling Herald a coward, Morg would not start a fight with me. Morgan knew for a fact that I would and could kick his ass severely. Where Bellatrix was concerned, I don't play. She was the only thing in this shit of a life that was truly worth a penny fart.

"Ares?" Toliver asked.

"Ever read about a guy named Theodore Kaczynski?" Toliver shook his head. "Died about thirty years ago. I found a old magazine that mentioned him. When I tried to look him up, every firewall on my computer went redline! I had to do a dash or I would probably be in the same camp Herald was talking about."

"Why? Who the hell was this guy...zinzky?" asked Morgan, suddenly intent on my every word. 

"He was a murderer. Used bombs to kill people he didn't like. Got away with it for years." I said with a slow smile. Then hearing a gasp, I looked over at Herald. He was looking green around the gills. "But, I'm not saying another word around this fuckin' narc. Yeah, you! Run home, your momma's calling you."

After Herald left, in a huff, Morg and Toliver gathered in closer.

** ** ** ** *** ** **

~"In one of the most disturbing acts of terrorism to happen in decades, a homemade explosive detonated harmlessly outside of the New Haven Church of the Perfect Man today. Police say they are currently investigation this heinous crime and will have the perpetrators in custody within the day."~

"Probably some mentally disturbed 'normal' reaching out for attention." said my mother with a disapproving shake of her head. Her words were mumbled behind the porcelain mask she wore even in front of her family. "I hope they throw the full weight of the law at them. The fiends! What if one of the Beautiful People had been there? What if they had been injured by those silly explosives? How tragic an injustice would that have been!"

"Uh, huh. Tragic," Dad mumbled through his thick lips. The latest round of mandatory surgeries his company now required for him to stay employed had his face puffy and swollen. I felt sorry for him.

Mom didn't. She looked at the mask he had taken off in order to eat, and shook her head again. After a second she looked away from the man she had been married to for over twenty years, placing her hand up to block the sight of him. The disgust that filled her voice when she spoke filled me with a cold rage. "Please put that back on. I really can't take anymore." Then she played the trump card. "What if Bellatrix was to video call?"

Something my sister had not done but three times since she left for school at the age of five. And mom had been the only one allowed to speak to her then. Since his surgeries Dad had been hoping he might be allowed to talk to his daughter if she called.

Dad reluctantly picked back up his mask. I saw the pain-filed wince when the plastic thing touched his skin.

"Dad...don't." I reached across and took his aged hand, wishing he wasn't wearing those damn Perfect-Skin* gloves mom required of him when in her presence. It had been years since I had felt the touch of his bare skin against mine. "Don't hurt yourself." 

He gave me one of his rare smiles, then shook his head and pressed the mask firmly into place. "I don't want to upset your mother," he said in a whisper that just carried to me.

When I looked over at my mother I saw her doing this silly peeking around her hand thing till she was sure my father had his mask in place. She sighed dramatically when he did.

"Much better. Now what was I saying?" She turned to me asking while she smiled those forty-thousand-dollar PerfectSmile* teeth at me.

That was it. A lifetime of wanting what she would never give me had left me jaded where my mother was concerned, but to see her blissfully happy that her husband had just hidden his face from her sight was the very last straw. Reaching up, I touched the pressure seals and felt my mask release. The horror that flashed across her face burned me soul deep.

I tossed the piece of plastic into the plate of food in front of her.

"You were saying how you were the most self-centered, mentally brainwashed, morally screwed up excuse for a wife and mother, that has ever lived on this sick planet...and I had just agreed with you." Getting up from the table, I ignored her screech of outrage, and my father's calling after me. When I reached my room, I grabbed a few things that I would need to last me the rest of what I hoped was a short life and headed for the front door.

Dad was there to stop me.

"Ares, please go put your mask back on and apologize to your mother for being rude." His hand went to the center of my chest to block me from going forward.

My hands shot to his face and I popped the seals on his mask and tossed the damn thing into the corner behind me. I looked at the flash of pain that crossed his no longer familiar features. Somewhere behind all that skin smoother, and corrective work, was a face that would look similar to mine. Older, but similar. I slowly shook my head.

"No Dad, I won't." My eyes began to take in every feature, old and new, impressing them forever into my memories...because I knew this was probably the last time I would ever see this man. "I love you, but no. Mom..." I had to pause and swallow down the bile. "Mom's not right in the head."

Dad looked me in the eyes and then caught my head and pulled my face towards him. I felt his lips kiss my forehead. Then he hugged me quickly. Before he turned me loose, I felt his breath right by my ear. "I know," he said softly. "I've known that she hasn't been right for years. But in a world gone mad, maybe she's not the one that's insane." He snuffled. "You're my son, and I will always love you. And to me you were more perfect, than anything in this world. Even your sister."

He turned me loose, and without a look back, walked over to the mask in the corner and put it back on. Without a word he opened the front door for me.

Shouldering my backpack, I swallowed down the tears and walked past my father. It was a long, cold walk to the cistern clubhouse. The place I would call home from now on.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

With a gout of black smoke and a fan spray of fire, the Molotov cocktail erupted onto the clear riot shields of the Grundels. The next two bottles I hurled from the roof top landed behind their shield wall and covered the fuckers in burning baking soda, fuel oil and diesel fuel.

I dove back, out the way as hundreds of rounds of .50 caliber bullets began to shred the brick on the side of the roof parapet. Running to the other side of the roof, I slowed down only to walk the wooden plank across to the next roof. Once across I pulled the board over with me and hid it quickly. When I was pulling the roof access hatch closed, I smiled, hearing the helicopter buzz the roof I had just been on. 

In and out like a ghost.

Down the stairs, out onto a fire-escape and across another roof top, I met up with Toliver. He gave me a tight smile and a nod.

Masks in place, heads down, we calmly went down the stairs and left the building. We moved to avoid the terrible confrontation taking place four streets over. After about a mile we headed to our safe point. Well one of them. Morgan was waiting there. 

"Ares, that was fucking sweet as Mary Sebastian's pussy." He held up his hand to give me a high-five. I reluctantly obliged. Though I was certainly still a part of the Resistance with him, I didn't really call Morgan a true friend anymore. That had ended when the bombs went off outside of a school for the Perfects. The asshole had taken our plan to fight back to a far more evil and deadlier place when his bomb went off and fifteen kids were cut to pieces. Children of New Men or not, that was sick.

The Grundles had been out for our blood ever since. Can't say I blame them, some of the kids were also from their families. The privileged, wannabe few.

"Morgan, go meet up with Donahue over on Syenica street. Make sure he gets the digital signal-jammers planted for tomorrows big party." Toliver smiled at the hot head. He, like me, was only willing to tolerate the man.

"I'm on it!" Morgan said grinning.

We watched the lunatic leave. At least he had the sense to wear his mask and try to look like he wasn't a psycho.

"He is going to become a problem soon." Toliver said when we saw the last of Morgan's back.

"He isn't already?" I asked, spitting.

"Well, yes, but at the moment, he is a problem that has its uses. When we can start phase three he will quickly become a liability." Toliver eased himself into the chair Morgan had been sitting in. "I'm going to have to think about what to do about him. Humph. Too many balls to keep juggling."


The Beautiful People



"Toss me a few more," I said with a shrug.

He shook his head.

"You're our main covert soldier. I need you for what you know, not what you can handle. All that crap in your head is enough for you to worry about. I didn't really like your part in today's little craps shoot, but I couldn't trust anyone else to not get caught." He shook his head and smiled. "Listen to me I sound like an old woman. Worry, worry, worry."

I smiled and leaned my back against the wall of the vandalized clothes dryers in this old laundrette.

"Not like any of us are going to get out of this alive anyway, right?" he asked, still grinning at me. His hand was rubbing at his knee where I had extracted a bullet sixteen weeks ago. "What I need from you right now is a way to make phase three go off without a hitch."

"I've been trying to think about that. The bomb is too big to just walk in carrying it. And they check any and all packages, no matter the size." I sighed. My thoughts began flipping pages in my mind to alternatives. The many illegal books on history, I had been gathering since we began our little resistance, had given me a dozen ways to try and pull off something like this. It had been done before successfully, so it could be done again. 

But then technology changes had made some of those historical ideas no long possible. Or safe.

I was about to give him a possibly workable idea and see what he thought, when I saw Morgan coming back towards us.

With someone draped over his shoulder!

"What the fuck?" I stood up straighter, and moving to the door began to scan the streets for anyone passing by. Seeing no one, I urged him to hurry. I caught only a glimpse of nearly white blonde hair and a slim featured face as he walked past me.

A very bloody face. A Perfect face.

"Would you look what I caught." He crowed. "A little mourning dove out for a stroll." He dumped the person off his shoulder like a sack of laundry. "I've always wanted to get me a piece of one of them. I get to go first in her tight...gagk!" 

THUD!

The sound of a church bell ringing could not have compared to the sound of Morgan's head as I sent him face first into the top of a metal laundry-folding table. Bolted to the floor, and too heavy to steal, I swear his face left a sizable dent.

"ARES!" Toliver shouted as he surged to his feet. 

When he moved to plant himself between the bleeding Morgan and myself, I shoved him into the dryers. Grabbing Morgan by his jacket, I dragged the stunned and dazed man into the filthy bathroom. Out of sight of the street. He was just coherent enough to try and take a swing at me, but I caught his hand and used his own momentum to direct that hand into the cast iron sink. You could hear the bones when they snapped.

"God. Damn. It. Man. Stop!" My leader grabbed my arm before I compounded the damage to Morgan's face. With all his powerful build I still pulled him off balance as I tried to throw the punch. Settling for a half kick, I saw Morgan spin, fall and crash to the floor with his elbow into the toilet. His hands full of my clothes, Toliver dragged me out of the restroom and over to where the young woman was lying on the floor, crying. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Shrugging him off, I knelt down next to the girl. Her new Person face turned up to look at me and then she shrank back in horror.

"ARES! Answer me!"

"She's my sister," I said softly.

The laundrette became deathly silent except for the moans from the bathroom and the whimpers of fear from Bellatrix. She was huddled up on herself, rocking slowly.

"She's still one of them. And she's seen us," he said after a moment. He backed away from me when I came to my feet right in his face.

"If you're suggesting what I think you are suggesting, be advised, I will kill you and every other member of our little group just to keep her from stubbing her little toe. Think about that for a second, then rephrase what you were about to say." My words were so cold, ice began to frost the windows. "What would you do if she was your sister?"

Toliver stood silent for a moment. "I would do what had to be done. It's what I would do. It's what I have already done. And it's what I would do again if I had too."

"Well, I'm not you."

He nodded slowly . "Fair enough." He took a deep breath, looked at me and slowly shook his head. "You've got me in a bad position...you know that, right? You know too much about everything, hell you've helped to set most of it up. I need to send you away, get distance between you and the Resistance, but if I do that and you are captured, you could do so much damage."

"Do what you have to do, Toliver. Whatever it is, to me, she is worth it." I said, licking my dry lips. "I can't say that I wouldn't break if they captured me, but then we have always known that could and would probably happen. Someday. So I don't see that anything has changed."

"She is the change. That girl is your Achilles heel. She is the lever by which, they can make you move mountains. I cannot allow you to stay if you have that much of a liability hanging over you like a sword of Damocles!"

There was a pain-filled moan from the bathroom. Toliver looked towards the sound and then shook his head in disgust. He looked back at me, his eyes saying volumes.

"Then we are done," I told him. Looking down at my sister, I began wishing I could turn back time and hit Morgan when we first got here. Anything to make it so Bellatrix had never been scared like this. "I'm going to take her and go. My place is no long headquarters."

He nodded. "I will move us to another city. Less risk." He glanced back towards the bathroom. "Within a week, most of what you know of the Resistance will be useless," he warned.

"Understood," I said, biting back comments I would have liked to have made. There was no point.

"Ares...good luck to you. The world's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. If it gets better." He cautioned me, holding out his hand to me.

"Same...and I know," I said, accepting the hand.

** ** ** ** ** ** 

I carried my sister in my arms, her weight no burden in the least, all the way back to the cistern. Her pale blonde hair spilled across my chest. The terrible fear in her eyes when I scooped her up still tore at me, but she had offered no resistance to me carrying her here. I probably could have carried her anywhere, done anything to her and she would have offered the same lack of response.

Like a frightened bird facing the snake, fear held her and made shivering her only possible action. That such fear was directed towards me hurt. A hurt that was bone deep. A hurt that was soul deep.

Once through the maintenance hatch I set her in the chair by my heater and got the embers stoked. While it took very little wood to heat the whole of the cistern, I normally only used it on the coldest of days. Many days of work had made sure the the smoke from the fire wasn't detectable but I still felt a sense of unease when I used it too often. Call it a forewarning, or maybe I just didn't like to get too comfortable. Every time I had let that happen in the past, I had always been bitten in the ass by this world's teeth.

"The police will find me," she said out of nowhere. "I bet they are looking for me already. And when they do..." her words died off in the face of my smile.

"Go on. Tell me just what the Grundels will do when they find me." Kneeling down by the stove, I pushed the last few pieces of my dried wood in and closed the metal door to keep the smoke out the cistern. Getting to my feet, I grabbed my kettle off the top and went to the wall tap for water. Once I had it in place on the stove again to begin boiling I turned to look at her with a smile. "Need me to help your description, Bellatrix? Lets see. I will be beaten, severely. Chained. Arrested. Tried in abstention. Dragged through the streets to Golgotha Square. Then, over a matter of four or five hours, I will be tortured to death in a number of painful, creative ways, for daring to lay a hand on one of the Perfect People. Did I miss anything? Were you wanting to add more descriptive details of the tortures? I can add those if you like, Bellatrix. I've seen them up close. Heard close friends scream as white hot irons were plunged into their stomachs to cook their entrails."

She covered her ears and turned away with a small terrified scream.

That stopped me cold. It was something I would have expected of a child of five not a woman of eighteen.

"Bellatrix?"

"Stop using my name! You're a Pariah! Pariahs shouldn't know my name..." She huddled away from me when I moved and knelt down in front of her.

"Look at me. I know you were young when they took you away for schooling but not that young. Remember me reading to you? I used to sneak into your room and read stories to you at night after Mother had gone to bed. Remember?"

"My brother did that, not you." She hid her face from me behind her hands.

"That's right, your brother. Me. Ares. Remember my name?"

She began to frantically shake her head. "No! My brother was like me. He was Perfect. He was not a filthy Pariah like you! Now let me go before the police get here and...and stick hot irons in you!"

Stunned, I leaned back from my sister. I had never really given thought to just what it was that the schools for the New People taught to the children they took from their parents. Their "normal" parents. I had always figured it was simply a much better quality schooling than what I had been given. The more I looked at her perfect skin, devoid of any scars. Smoother than the feeling of silk. The glowing white locks of her hair. The deep crystal blue of her eyes. How could I have been so very stupid, naive to have ever thought that? Of course it wasn't all math and science! 

How stupid!

"In a hole in the ground...there lived a hobbit. It was a hobbit hole and that means...?" I let the ending hang in the silence.

"Comfort," she said softly, her voice filled with confusion. "How..? NO! NO! YOU'RE A PARIAH!"

"How do you enter the Kingdom of Terabithia?" I asked her quickly.

"You swing on a rope," she said before she could think about it. Then, her eyes going wide again,she began to shake her head till I was afraid it was going to come off her neck and roll away. All the while her mouth was soundlessly mouthing the word, "No."

"You said...was. That your brother...was...Perfect. What did they tell you? That I was dead?" I asked. "Come on Bellatrix talk to me. I promise you. I really am your brother."

She sat silent for a moment then began to look at my face for some hint there of the person she had known. The half-remembered brother who would read to her.

"They said that you were dead. At school. They told me that you had died. When I asked Mother about you she said you were gone. Daddy wouldn't talk to me about you. They, the teachers at school, told me you were like us. One of the New People.

I slowly nodded. It didn't surprise me to know that my mother considered me dead. I had been dead to her from the moment my little sister was returned from her first surgery. Returned so very Perfect.

Bellatrix looked around her I think for the first time.

"You live here?" she asked. The pretty confusion on her face was sweet.

"Yes, dear sister, I do." I smiled. "It's not the high seat of Cair Paravel, but it's mine. I have everything I need."

"It's dirty."

I had to laugh at her expression. When she realized my humor was at her experience, she got this petulant frown that pursed her lips. I had to laugh even harder at that. As I did I came to realize it was possibly the first time I had laughed in year. Really laughed.

"Why?" she asked when I had control of myself again.

"Why what?"

"Why did you die?" She stopped, frowning at my smile. "I mean why did you let me think you were dead?" A slow tear rolled down those perfect cheeks.

That gave me pause.

"I didn't do it to hurt you. I...woke up. I found I was in a world I could no longer live in, and I had to make a change or die. I...couldn't live in the world, that the New People are taking over, any longer without doing something to stop them."

She frowned.

"Why would you want to stop the New People from making the world better? That doesn't make sense. We're just making the evil in the world go away."

The absolute naivety in her heart-felt words hit me like a brick to the chest. She didn't know...of course she didn't, you idiot. Grabbing a cushion from beside the chair, I settled in beside her, sitting on the floor at her feet.

"Tell me about the world. The way you have been told it is."

She frowned at my choice of words. Puzzled. After a moment she pulled her legs up under herself and began to tell me.

"Well, at first there were the Dark Times. The times before the First Ones were born. When the world was filled with nothing but the Pariah, and they fought and killed each other by the millions, because they had no New People to lead them. To show them how to live like civilized people. Then the First Ones came. But the Pariah were cruel and killed many of them. Till in the end there was only a few of the First Ones left. With painful sciences and sacrifices they used their own bodies as templates and figured out how to change the Pariah, the young ones that were not evil yet, into New People like themselves. Now...every year, more and more of the New People are born. We are slowly taking control of the world from the brutal Pariah. Making them see their true place in the way of things. Making them not fight but lie down as the lambs in the field. To accept what must be so that they can become civilized and not fight anymore. The First Ones are all gone now, except for the Martyr Ambrose. He will lead us to the Time of Harmony."

I wanted to retch.

"The Time of Harmony?" I asked, having never heard the phrase before.

"Yes!" She beamed. "When all the world will have Peace and the last of the Pariah will have laid down their foul weapons and accepted that they are what they were meant to be."

"And what are we meant to be?" I asked, gritting my teeth not wanting to snarl.

"Well, servants to the New People of course. The ones of you that have been Gentled will be able to take your rightful places as our servants. Then you will be happy, and not have to fight among yourselves anymore." She gave me the same smile and look I might have used with a autistic child who was asking about why the sky was blue. So condescending I could have strangled her.

"Gentled?" I asked. She must have missed the ominous growl to my voice.

"Yes. Gentled. You know made tame and unable to reproduce more Pariah."

Getting to my feet, I had to move away from my sister. Least I slap that beautifully Perfect face. So that is what they are planning. The world I thought I had known had just gotten much darker.

"Just how will the New People continue to grow in numbers if they Gentle all the 'normals'...Pariahs?"

"Well, by the normal way of course!" She said, then giggled as if the question was not only silly but slightly rude. "As soon as they have the New Surgeries perfected there will no longer be a need to involve the Pariah in our lives at all."

"The New Surgeries?" I asked not understanding.

"Yes. The ones to make Perfect People in the womb. They nearly have it perfected. My friend Ophelia just had her seventh child and he was born nearly Perfect. He needed only two surgeries to make him New. I can't wait till next year. I know that my children will be Perfect from birth!"

"Wait...what? Your children?"

"Well, yes." She shook her head and looked at me as if I had two heads. "I'll be breeding age in a year and I will join in helping the New People achieve our destiny."

"You're going to be married?" I felt like a steer just after the hammer had fallen.

"Oh, no! Not that silly Pariah custom." She made a retching sound like she was going to be sick. "I'll be given the Sacred Seed of the Martyr, like all New People women when they become nineteen. His Divine Grace will grow in me to become the first of my children."

Looking down into the fire of my stove, I could not believe what I was hearing. My mouth continued to ask questions even though my brain had long since become numb from the answers I had already received.

"The first? Just how many are you planning to have?" I asked.

"Well, Martyr willing, a good two dozen before I reach the age of Maturity and can no longer bear the Seed."

Two Dozen?

Shaking with a sense of rage that was soul deep, I moved away from my Beautiful sister to the side walls of the cistern. There I had wooded shelves, hacked together old pallet wood, with my books. I looked for a moment among the history books I used to help plan attacks on the New People, and then I found the one I wanted. Taking it, I moved back over to where she was and took again my seat on the floor.

"I'm going to read to you again, little sister. Like I used to read to you. I want you to pay attention closely, all right?"

"Sure!" She was almost bouncy with eagerness. "Are there hobbits in this story like the one you read me before?"

"No. No hobbits, but there are good guys and bad guys, and there is a terrible monster who tries to destroy the world."

"Okay." She snuggled into the chair. "Read please."

Opening up my copy of the Rise of the Third Reich, I began my little sisters true education about the world she was living in. As I read, I saw the frown when it began to form.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

It took far more than that one book, or that one night. For the weeks to come with books, newspapers both legal and not legal, taking her to meet with friends of mine, her New Person face hidden by a "normal's" mask, I began to get her to accept the world as it really is. Not the fantasy she had been told it was. Weeks of this reeducation blended into months together. My sister at first was fighting me every step of the way. Refusing to see the truth even when it was put before her eyes. 

And she hated me. Hated me for showing her what a dream world she had been living in till now.

Then she met another New Person like herself, while wearing her mask. Well, meet is too intimate a word, it speaks of making a connection between people. No what she did was see one of her brethren in in all their glory.

He was beating a child to death in the streets.

We were on our way back from Timothy's, a friend from my Resistance days, when a limo came through the intersection in front of us, with a full Grundel escort of flashing lights and howling sirens. It was those sirens that caused the problem. There was a boy, a "normal" with a dog on a leash standing there, waiting to cross the road. When the sirens got close the dog began to howl in pain at the noise hurting his ears. Then as the limo began to cross, the dog pulled free and ran across the street towards the green safety of the park.

The limo hit the dog and then, swerving, hit one of the escorting motorcycles of the Grundels, spilling the rider into the wet slush, tumbling him, soaking his pretty black uniform. As everything came to a halt in the street, the boy slid to his knees next to his dying dog. I saw him lift the bloody canine head, a pink tongue come out to lick his hand one last time, and then the dog was gone.

The boy began to cry.

The Grundels were there. I saw mixtures of sympathy from these stalwart men of the law. They had no doubt been boys at one time. Had dogs they had lost. They understood the boy's pain.

Not so much the New Man.

Enraged at the fact this Pariah child had made him late, for whatever he was going to go do, the New Man climbed out of his limo calling for blood. Calling for the boy to be beaten.

I'll have to give it to the Grundels, they didn't leap to do it. One and all they moved very reluctantly to surround the boy.




The Beautiful People



I caught Bellatrix's arm as she started forwards to stop them.

"Ares?"

"Hush now. This is a fight we can't win," I told her softly. "Just watch, learn, and remember."

The officer who was still dripping soaking slushy snow from his clothes, landed the first blow. Then, like men hammering copper bowls, they set to the task of beating the child. I watched, holding onto my sister's arm, my teeth gritted together. 

I could see after a moment that they were going lightly. So did the New Man.

"Give me that! You lazy cretins." Taking one of the nightstick batons, the New Man began to wale in blow after blow himself. There was one startled cry and then a silence broken only by thudding blows that continued to rain on a body that could no longer feel pain. Finally, tiring of his game, the New Man thrust the bloody baton into the stomach of one of the Grundels. "There, that's how you take care of vermin in the streets."

He straightened his clothes. Checked his appearance in the mirrored window of his limo and then stopped for only long enough to look over the hate-filled faces that filled the sides of the street. He smirked and turned to look at his driver, holding his door open.

"Driver, just run over that trash in the road and get us on our way. I'm already terribly late for my morning brunch with Capistrano. That fiend will have eaten all the sugar cakes!"

I could have thanked the Grundel that dragged the boy's broken body out the way of the limo's tires, had he not simply dumped the body into the gutter and left it there.

When I turned to look at Bellatrix she was staring a hole in my face.

"Why? Why didn't you stop that? You're supposed to be some kind of resistance fighter. That was monstrous!"

"Yes it was. But answer me this, what would you have done? Walked over there and told them to stop? A 'normal' that stands up to them is the next one in line to die. You would be laying next to the child over there, meat starting to rot in a gutter."

She pulled her hand out of mine angrily and stalked over to where the boy lay, unheeded by a public afraid to show concern lest they be next, and knelt next to him. With a sigh I walked over to stand beside her.

The face of the child was hardly recognizable as having been human, his head fractured till it no longer had the right shape. The sick taste at the back of my throat was a bitter bile. A mixture of desire to flee and a stronger desire to go do something really stupid began to build behind my eyes as I saw my sister crying. Looking up, I saw the pile of matted, bloody fur in the slush.

With anger building like a bonfire, I moved over to the dog and picked him up and carried him to lie beside his owner. Twins now, both broken and shattered by the uncaring.

I looked up when I heard a woman's scream split the air. A mother's cry of loss so anguished that no heart can bear it. Reaching down, I pulled Bellatrix up into my arms as the boy's family came running through the dirty snow to salt the ground with tears of loss.

"Come on. There's nothing we can do here," I whispered to my sister, applying pressure to her shoulders to make her move. She shook her head not, wanting to go, but I made her begin to move. I could hear sirens of approaching Grundels, coming to break up the "riot" no doubt. "We have to leave, now. You...can't be here."

She reluctantly began to stumble along beside me.

The tears of a weeping mother followed us down the street. The sound made me begin to wonder. Would my mother have cried like that for me? Would she cry for me now? Yeah right, that question I knew the answer to, but back when I had been that boy's age, would she have?

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The cold came in that night, as if the earth itself was in frigid mourning. Perhaps it did mourn the loss of that child, but how many more would join the boy in cold death from a bone-chilling night such as this? As I put the last of the dry wood in the stove, I could only hope the cold would break soon. What wood I had gathered today was going to be too wet to burn till tomorrow night at best.

Bellatrix had been quiet all afternoon. Her normal stream of questions silenced by what she had seen today. I could understand, even if it didn't affect me the same way. For her it was life altering. Me? I had seen it before, throughout my childhood, a thousand variations of mindless cruelty against anyone that wasn't Perfect. 

"Why did he do that?" she asked in the silence,startling me.

"Who? The boy?"

"No! The New Man. Why did he kill a child like that?" She hugged her elbows. I didn't think it was the cold making her tremble.

"Can't you answer that yourself? You're one of them aren't you? One of the Perfect," I said, my voice carrying everything I felt about the New Men.

She looked up at me, her eyes blazing.

"The Perfect aren't like that!" she screamed.

I shrugged. "You saw for yourself, today, that they can be."

"That was just that one! He's sick, disturbed in the brain. It must be something left over from when he was Pariah! Only the Pariah are like that!"

I shook my head and smiled at her naivety. "Pariah, New Men...we are both still human, and humans are mindless vicious brutes when frightened. The boy made him late. That New Man lashed out in fear and hatred that a mere boy had dared to do anything that affected his greatness. If a filthy child in the street could disturb his meticulously planned day, then obviously he must not be as powerful as he thought, so to make it right in his mind, he had to destroy the boy. He exerted his power to kill things. When the boy was dead, his image of his own power restored to its proper place in his universe, he left."

"Monstrous," she muttered.

"Yes," I said, my voice carrying that I clearly accepted what had happen to the boy as nothing unusual. That resignation seemed to anger my sister.

"How can you just accept this? How can you not fight?"

"Oh, I've been fighting this. I've been fighting it for half my life. You know what I've achieved? I've manged to make the New Men double their security forces. That's it. Oh and I've probably gotten a few dozen people killed that were just in the wrong place. You know what I learned? You can't fight monsters without becoming a monster yourself."

"Then maybe that is what needs to happen! Maybe you do have to become a monster to kill monsters. If that's what it takes, I would gladly be a monster."

I had to bite my lips to keep from telling her that she already had the right look for one. That would have been unforgivable and unwarranted. It was not her fault what had been done to her.

Even now her face was beautiful in its anger...and yet...

As much as I loved her it grated on me to be constantly seeing that flawless skin, unblemished complexion, total lack of any type of scars, and her hair, that when she stood under lights, was the color of new snow. I had never spent any amount of time in the presence of one of the Perfect till these last few months. There was an angelic quality about them when you first saw one, but that quickly faded to an eery kind of inhuman unease that would settle on you when you looked at one of the Beautiful People just sitting, say reading, as she had been doing more and more of. It was like looking at a marble statue in a museum...and then seeing it move.

"Why didn't you stop them? You knew what they were going to do to that boy!" she accused.

"Yes, I knew," I answered back angrily. "Everyone on that street knew! His fate was sealed the moment that dog ran into the street. Oh, yes, I could have rushed over there. I'm strong, I could have pulled off maybe one of two of the Grundels...but then what?"

"Why do you always call the police Grundels? What is a Grundel anyway?" She asked, deflecting a question she didn't have an answer for. I have found, in the time I've known here, that she was very good at doing that.

"A grundel is the skin between a guy's nut sack and his asshole." Her eyes went wide. "And the 'normals' call the police that because that's what they are. Just an inch away from being assholes!"

It began with a twitch. Then a giggle she tried to hide. Then a blushing giggle that overwhelmed her. After a moment I couldn't help but join her in laughing. When she fell over into my bed laughing I laughed all the harder. Seeing the side of her stomach peeking from under the hem of her shirt, I leaned over and tickled her. She jumped two feet.

"No!" 

I moved to tickle her again, but she grabbed up a small socket wrench that was lying on the table next to my bed and held it out towards me. "No you don't! Touch me and I'll use this...this...this whatever this is on you! I swear I will."

My eyebrow quirked. "How are you going to use it on me if you don't know what it is?"

"I'll figure it out, now...back. Back!" she threatened.

Laughing, I sat back in my chair. She stretched herself out on my bed, pulling a pillow to her chest. She continued to laugh silently.

But after a moment or so the laughter began to slowly fade, and the events of the day returned to sober the mood in the cistern. It was a few minutes after that when I first saw her shiver.

"Cold? Or scared?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"Yeah." she said softly. "Cold and scared."

Getting up, I grabbed the blanket off the back of the chair, and moving to the bed lay down next to her covering us both. I pulled her back up against my chest holding tight to her to keep the body heat trapped. After a bit she stopped shivering and snuggled back against me. My eyes quickly began to get heavy as her warmth penetrated my chest.

"Does it get much colder in here?"

"A bit. Being underground helps hold in the heat. but yeah. In late December it can be hard to keep it warm in here. Too much concrete," I told her, my words half mumbled as sleep began to take me. "Goodnight, sis."

"Goodnight."

The simple warmth and comfort of her next to me sent me into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Like almost every night of my life my eyes popped open at some point in the middle of the night. It was never any specific thing that awoke me night after night. It was simply my personal tic. Maybe some lay over from when I was a child. Some far distant half-memory maybe, but whatever it was it always woke me, wide eyes and nerves taut. I would listen to the silence of the night and slowly calm myself back into an even deeper sleep. Some nights, when I was especially exhausted, I thought it didn't happen, only to have others tell me I had awoken. Even spoken to them.

This night like the last few months, what I did was listen to the soft breathing of my sister. It would lull me back to sleep more quickly than anything else. With her next to me, I was sure it was going to very quickly do just that.

Then I noticed the tremor in her body under my hand. Reaching over my head, I turned on a single LED light that barely illuminated the two of us. Bellatrix's face was gripped in the most terrifying expression I have ever seen on another human face!

"Sis? Hey, wake up." I laid my hand on her bare arm.

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked at my face, her eyes searching for recognition. "Ares?" she asked, as if unsure of what her eyes were telling her. At my nod, she turned in my arms and buried her face against my bare chest, crying.

"Shuuu. It was just a dream. Let it pass and it will be forgotten. Just let it pass into the shadows. Don't cling to it." I held her against me, gently rocking her. My hand brushing through that too soft hair. Caressing that silk-skinned neck, rubbing the transition of shoulder to neck, and across her shoulder blades. She snuggled in against me and softly cried. "Let it go. Let if pass."

She fell silent in a bit and I thought she was asleep, but then just as my own eyes were drooping, I was snapped back awake by a question from the blue.

"What's it like to be...normal?"

Pushing sleep back, I reached over head and, pushing a button, ramped up the number of LEDS to give me a bit more light. I thought about it for a second then had to ask a question of my own to answer hers.

"How do you mean? Physically? Emotionally? Socially?"

"All of those, I guess," she answered. Her fingers began to absently move over a deeply puckered scar on my chest, just under my right nipple. "What's it like to scar? To have a mark like this stay with you forever?"

"Well, I've never really thought about it, but I guess it's like seeing the title on the spine of a book you read long ago. It brings you back to that point in time, makes you remember details. Scars are also kinda like book markers on the more traumatic parts of your life. That one there, was from when I was a teen. About a month after I left home, a guy jumped me in the park for my backpack. That's where his knife hit. It glanced off my ribs, so it didn't go deep enough to hit anything vital, but it burned like fire." 

"How horrible!" she said suddenly pulling back her hand as if afraid she was hurting me. I smiled. And caught her hand and moved it to a second scar near my belly button. A round scar, smaller than a dime.

"Bullet." I smiled at her gasp. "There is one on my back that's much uglier where it came out. I was luck it missed just about everything on its way through. A back-alley doctor did a whiskey shot surgery and I was all good." At her confused look, I laughed and then explained. "He gave me a shot of strong whiskey and went in with the scalpel. Looked around inside, put a suture or two here and there to stop the bleeding then sewed me back up."

"Didn't that hurt?" she asked, horrified.

"Incredibly. I had three guys holding me down, and I was biting on a piece of leather the whole time, crying like a newborn."

She gave my side a light punch. "Why didn't you go to a hospital? You could have died!"

"It was a bullet from a Grundel's gun. There was a detailed police report at every hospital in the area, just waiting for someone to come in with a gut shot wound. I would have not made it past the emergency room before the cuffs went on."

"What were you doing that they shot you?" she asked suddenly.

"Stealing."

"What?" she asked. "Food?"

I slowly shook my head wondering if I should let her know this. The possibility of her getting to her feet and running back to her Perfect world full of Beautiful people was there.

"Explosives. We stole about two hundred pounds of high grade explosives and then blew up the rest of the storage facility.

"What did you want that for?"

I laughed. "To blow things up with it, of course!"

"What did you want to blow up!" she reared back her tiny fist again. "I swear I'm about to hit you again."

Laughing, I got my arms under me and pushed myself up till I put my back against the wall behind the bed. I grabbed my pillow and stuffed it behind me to ward off that cold concrete. 

"Well, I was with this group of guys and we had gotten fed up with the Grundels and the New Men and we decided to do something a bit more than just think bad thoughts at them. I had a book from long ago, and it told of this guy who made bombs and used them to attack people he didn't like. So...I copied his designs, and we caused a bit of mayhem for about two years." I shrugged. "Would have kept going, but I ran out of explosives."

She just looked at me for a few minutes. "That was you? You bombed those churches, that school?"

"No!" I vehemently shook my head. "That was not me. In fact, the person that did that was the guy that grabbed you off the street that day. His name is Morgan, and before you judge him for the psychopath he really is just remember this. His mother threw him out the house at four years old. In the middle of winter."

"Why?"

"Because he was too old to undergo the surgeries." I took a deep breath remembering my first days at my school when Morgan was brought in by the Grundels. "She didn't want to have to raise children that weren't Perfect. She said it was a waste of her money, and that he should go die in the snow."

"Wasn't she arrested?" Bellatrix demanded.

"Nope. See she had already had the preliminary surgeries herself. She just couldn't afford both him and herself to be made Perfect. She chose herself."

I saw the understanding as it crossed my sister's eyes. "And any child she had after the surgeries would have been given them for no cost."

"Exactly." I nodded. Absently picking up my knife from the table by the bed. I checked the blade for rust then put it back. "Why waste the money. Just have herself altered and then she could have as many Perfect children as she wanted. Know where she got that idea?"

"The Church of the Perfect Man," she said, nodding her understanding. "I think I would have blown up a few of them myself for that reason."

"Oh, don't judge him too nice either. Morgan is an asshole. He planned to rape you, and knowing him, not just the once." I held up my hands in a silent apology. "I can't say I ever called him a friend once we got out of high school. He was just someone I knew."

"Why would he want to rape me? That doesn't make any sense. I mean surely he wouldn't want to make more of the Beautiful People. Why would he want to have sex with me, then? Any children I have will be automatically New Men." She shook her head in confusion, her lips pursed in this cute frown of hers.

"Well, rape isn't about sex; it's about power and control over those weaker that yourself. But why he would have wanted to have sex with you is a simple answer. Because it would have felt good, for him anyway." Even as I said it, and I saw the confusion grow on her face not fade, I realized that she had no knowledge about sex. None at all. "You do know that sex feels good, right?"

"It does?"

"Yeah," I was watching Bellatrix's face, seeing her thoughts like reading a page. She had never learned to hide her emotions. She would have no poker face at all. "It feels good. Hell, that might be the only reason that humans haven't gone extinct. If sex felt terrible, we would probably be nothing but fossils by now. I mean since birth hurts so much."

"Giving birth hurts?" she asked in total innocence.

What?

I pinched the bridge of my nose, shaking my head. "You're making my spleen hurt. What have they been teaching you? Yeah, birth hurts! From everything I've heard a gun shot is a love tap compared to the pain of childbirth. A fact, given that I have been shot twice now, that makes me damn glad to be male."

From the look on her face, I might have caused her less mental stress if I hit her with a club.

"Why wasn't I told this?" she asked.

I swallowed the bile that thinking about her answer brought to my throat.

"Remember how many children you said you were going to wanted to have? Knowing it would be agony would you agree to having that many? Doubtful. Look, let's just accept that you have been lied to from the get go and move on from there," I said with a shake of my head.

She slowly nodded, then fell silent. It was the sniffle that made me look up in time to see the tear that dropped from her cheek to dampen the sheet.

"Hey, don't cry. Come on don't cry."

"I wish I would just wake up and this was all a bad dream." She said hugging her arms across her breasts. "I was so happy before I learned all these things."

"Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise," I said into the uncomfortable silence.

"Who said that?" she asked.

"I just did." I smiled at the look she gave me. I did notice she had stopped crying, though. "Tomas Gray, a poet that lived a long time ago. I read some of his writings. Didn't understand all of them, but that part caught me as a very smart observation of the world."

She nodded and then a yawn threatened to split her pretty head. Rearranging my pillows, I slid back down into the bed and held open the blanket for her to get back next to me. When she had curled up next to my chest, I dialed down the light to just one LED and buried my face in her soft, sweet-scented hair.




The Beautiful People



"What's it like?" she asked in the soft darkness.

"What's, what like?" I asked back, surprised she still wanted to talk.

"Sex. You said it feels good."

How to explain something like that to someone this ignorant of the real world? I almost didn't want to answer her, knowing that I would be taking away an innocence she would never get back in this life. That kind of thing had never held any appeal to me. As I held her close though, I began to get a way of explaining it.

"It's kind of like this. Two people very close together. The warm comfort of contact with another person, a giving and sharing of touch. The touch becomes more intimate and then they grow closer together. Natural instinctive urges get into play and soon they are having sex. And yeah it feels good, so then you want to do it more and more often. With some people though, they don't want that intimate contact, they're afraid of it. They just want the pleasure. That can be good too, but it's not as fulfilling." I rubbed my cheek in her incredibly soft hair. "So then, they try to have it even more often...to get more of an effect. But then they get jaded. It becomes like an addictive drug, overwhelming them till they hate the very thing they once loved."

I closed my mouth as I realized I was beginning to ramble, my eyes growing heavier with every word.

"Sounds silly," she mumbled.

I smiled and kissed the top of her head. "I can be. Now, goodnight. No more bad dreams."

"Goodnight, Ares."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

I awoke to a soft hand caressing my chest. Fingers raking trails through the dark hair, nails lightly scraping skin. As my eyes opened, I looked down to see Bellatrix looking intently at my body.

"Curious about something?" I asked when she glanced up and saw me looking at her.

She shrugged. "I just realized I had never been this close to a man who didn't have a shirt on. I've never really paid attention to how different you are from me. All this hair, these little spots?"

"Freckles," I explained.

"Freckles?" When I nodded, she frowned. "Well, they are strange looking. Almost like those pictures of skin diseases they showed us in school. The ones we can never get. Why didn't you have them taken off?"

I smiled. "Well, that surgery cost a lot of money for something that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't one of the Beautiful People. No one else ever really even notices freckles now days. Besides they are a part of me, why would I want to get rid of a part of me?"

"To make yourself more..."

"Perfect?" I smiled and shook my head. "That hasn't been a goal of mine for decades. There are a few too many Perfect people in the world already."

She looked down away from my face. "Does that include me?"

"No. Not at all." I caught her under her chin with my finger and turned her back to look at me. I smiled, and brushed her flawless cheek with a thumb that seemed hideous in contrast. "But then you were perfect when you were born."

"I don't understand," she said, that pouty frown back. I smoothed it out with my finger, her lips super soft, like touching a rose.

"I remember the first time I saw you. You were in a clear plastic crib wrapped up in a pale-pink blanket, with a little white cap covering your hair. Dad picked me up so I could see over the metal wall and there you were. Your face all red and your nose was a little button looking thing." I tapped her nose with a finger. She smiled. "Then our dad set me down and took me to the room where Mother was. She was awake, but looked tired. A nurse came in right after us, carrying you. She gave you to Mom and then Dad took you. I reached out a hand to touch your fingers..." I fell silent as the memory burned.

"What?"

"Mom had been talking to representatives of the Church of the Perfect Man, there at the hospital. They had her already convinced to start you on the surgeries as soon as her and Dad could possibly afford it. When I went to touch you she told Dad to not let me. That I might hurt you. I found out later she meant I might Contaminate you!"

"I've heard it's a real danger." She tried to sound comforting.

"It's bullshit!" I snapped. "Church propaganda all of it. I've seen the medical reports. There is nothing that can Contaminate a infant so it can't be given the New Man surgeries. Nothing. All I wanted to do was touch your hand! It looked so tiny, your fingers look like bits of rice."

"You can touch my hand now." She smiled and took my hand in hers. Almost a yin-yang the contrast between them. Mine darkened by sun and wind and scarred like lava rock next to hers of pure, perfect unblemished skin. Like polished silver, it almost glowed. "See."

Unsure of what to do with this piece of fragile porcelain, I laid her hand hand on my chest and held it against my heart. She smiled and laid her head next to our joined hands. 

"I can hear your heart beating."

Taking a slow, deep breath my nose filled with her sweet scent, all toasted almonds and vanilla. That peculiar mixture of musk, pheromones, and altered sweat glands that marked the scent of one of the Beautiful People. In my mind I knew that it was something that a group of gray-haired scientists had spent a decade working on to bring about, but my body wasn't listening to my mind. It was beginning to respond to having a woman so close to me. I told it to knock it off, that this was my sister, but it didn't want to listen to me.

I shifted a bit as I felt myself begin to harden.

"Are you alright?" she asked, looking up at me. Her face was just inches from mine, her eyes so crystalline blue.

"Yeah."

She went to lay her head back down but stopped. She sat up a little and moved a hand to the blanket and lifted it off where I was beginning to tent my sweat pants. "Why are you doing that?" she asked, looking back at me.

How do you answer that?

"Ares?"

"It's been a long time since I had a woman in my arms, this close. My body is wanting to respond to that. Just ignore it. I'm trying to." I about jumped out my skin when her hand suddenly cupped my cock and gave it a squeeze. "Hey, don't do that."

"What? Did I hurt you? Is it always that hard?" she asked.

"When I'm hard yeah it's always that hard. No, you didn't hurt me, but sisters don't generally touch their brothers' cocks." I explained.

"Why?" she asked.

Sweet Jesus-a-living. Body of a goddess, mental capacity of a Mensa candidate. Absorbs knowledge like a sponge and has the common sense knowledge of a rock. Someone save me or at least shoot me please. Sooner, rather than later if that's not too much to ask.

"When close relations have sex, it's called incest and is generally frowned upon by society. So a sister doesn't generally touch her brother or a brother his sister." I hoped that would help her to understand, and we could get away from this topic as it was not helping me not think about sex at all. I was now almost painfully hard.

"But you've been touching me all night." she said, clearly still confused.

"No, I have not...well I guess I have, but not in that way! I mean touching an intimate way." The pouty frown came back. I sighed. "Think of it like this. If you wouldn't want to have sex with someone, you shouldn't touch them on their sexual organs."

"Oh, okay." She nodded, finally getting it.

Settling back into my pillow, my eyes popped open when her hand went down my belly under the edge of my sweats, and her soft fingers wrapped around me like a silk glove. "Bellatrix!"

"But I want to have sex with you," she said, as her hand gave my cock a squeeze. "My goodness, you get so very hard. Does this feel good for you?"

"Yes, it does. Now stop that, please."

I moved my hand down and caught her wrist. Her fingers tightened. She looked up at me with those Beautiful eyes, her hand still firmly wrapped around me. "Why would you want to stop something that feels good? You said it had been along time since you had been with a woman this close. Why not take advantage of the one you're with who wants to give you pleasure?"

"Take advantage. Good word for it. That's just what it feels like I'm doing here. You don't really know what you're doing." I said, looking at her.

"Yes, I do." Her thumb moved to the head of my cock and rubbed across the slit. "I'm not a child, Ares. I told you, I want to have sex with you. I don't care about what silly rules Pariah society has." She crinkled her nose. "Or New Men rules either. They're all stupid. I'm a woman and I desire the man I'm with, is that not enough? I... I just don't know what to do because no one has ever told me."

I could have argued with her logic. That satin-fingered hand tightening and loosening on my cock though was getting the better of me. I closed my eyes, just enjoying the pleasure of it, and I knew I was lost, but then...when have I ever been anything but lost in this world. When I opened my eyes and saw that too lovely face, in all its perfection I knew there was no way I could ever say no to her. It was as if the goddess Artemis had come down from Mount Olympus to walk among the mortals once more. To temp them with her beauty and then destroy them for wanting to take her virgin innocence.

Who was I to tell such a goddess no, even if I'm destroyed for it? 

"Come here." I turned her wrist loose and let my hand run up her arm to cross her shoulder, to the back of her neck. As my fingers moved into her silky hair, I urged her upwards.With a frown she moved towards my face.

Cupping her body to me, I brought my lips to hers. A soft touch that startled her at first then, as the kiss lingered, she began to kiss me back. Hesitantly at first, then with a growing passion.

"Like this?' she asked, the words breathless. "Am I doing this right?"

I smiled. "My lovely sister, there is almost no doing it wrong. It's simply a kiss. From the first one on we are all masters of kissing."

"That was my first."

"I know." I kissed her again, as I let my hands roam a bit on her back. When I slid my hand under the back of her shirt and up along her spine, she tensed, expecting a tickling but then gave a soft moan as her nerves caught fire under the gentle caress.

Then her lips moved from my mouth to my chin, then followed my jawline, placing small kisses there that set me afire. I moved my hand down her spine now, over the edge of her pants and, to her surprise, caught a handful of her ass and pulled her closer to me. I buried my face in the soft skin under her ear and began to kiss, nibble, suck and lick at the warm flesh. Moving as high up as into the edge of her hairline and as far down as the collar of her shirt, I listened to the sounds coming from her. My pleasure at the taste of her was heightened by knowing that I was the first person to ever make her give up such sweet, sensual sounds to the gods of pleasure.

Aroused, she moved to hover over my face looking down at me with a hunger in those crystalline blue pools. Her breath was a soft pant, her face flush. She licked at her lips, tasting me upon them.

"This is sex?" she asked softly.

I smiled. "No. This is just the appetizer. Sex is the main course and feels a hundred times this good."

She swallowed, then grinned. "For something that feels a hundred times this good, I think I would rape me too."

I laughed. 

"That's called masturbation. I'll teach you about that later."

Using my hand on the back of her neck to guide her, I rolled her onto her back and kissed her again. Then it was me kissing a chin, a neck, a collar bone. The taste of her, that toasted almond and vanilla musk was growing stronger. I had to have more, a far more intimate taste. She flinched when my hand went under her shirt but then as I pushed it up she got the idea of what I was after and moved to help me take her shirt off. Pale skin, and endless field of it rising to two perfectly symmetrical peaks. Topped by nipples a startling light blue, almost an exact match for her eyes. I leaned in and placed a single kiss upon her right nipple. Then a lick, flooding my mouth with the taste of her skin. As I took that sharp point into my mouth I noticed, the odd color not withstanding, that there was nothing different about her than any other woman. She moaned in relish at being suckled upon. When I moved to her left nipple, she filled her hands with my hair and pulled my mouth closer.

"Oh, that feels incredible." she said, as I licked all around that light azure circle. "I didn't know my breasts could feel like that."

I smiled thinking about all that she didn't know that I was about to show her.

Leaving her wet, shiny nipples, I let my mouth explore down her belly. Placing kiss after kiss till I crossed her belly button, and my chin touched the waistband of her pants. Unhooking the snap I slid them down off her hips, leaving only the thinnest of cloth covering what I was now beyond hungry for. As I placed a kiss on that forbidden valley through her panties, I knew I had discovered the source of that unique sent of hers. I caught the lacy top in my fingers and pulled her panties down revealing a soft patch of brilliant white hair and a rush of scent that came to my nose. It ignited a lust so strong nothing could extinguish it now. I buried my face between her nether lips and drove my tongue as far in as I could.

"ARES! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" she clawed at my head as if to stop me, and then there was a moan so deep, I thought her throat could not have made it. "Oh, that feels good. Oh!"

Leaving no part of her untouched by my tongue, I moved from every point of pleasure I knew of and could find, and as she began to buck her hips towards my mouth, I had an instinctive movement to drive my tongue deeper. When her legs opened wider I caught both outer lips with my fingers and opened her to my devouring. Then I saw it. The proof of her virginity gave me a second's pause but I was too driven by my own desire now to stop for long. I licked a tongue into her, brushing that sacred barrier which caused her to give that incredibly deep moan again. Her fingers dug into my hair, the nails scratching my scalp. 

I let my tongue tease that small opening, as curious about it as trying to give her pleasure, but I could tell that it did, so I kept at the touching and probing against her hymen. I was relishing the ability to give her such raw, animalistic pleasure. Painful levels of sound came from her to echo around the small cistern, bouncing off the concrete walls then echoing back again.

"Oh, stop! Oh, you've got to stop. Oh, I can't take any more! Oh, Ares, oh my brother please. Please. I can't stand any more!" Her thighs game together, trapping my head, by that very action making it impossible for me to stop or pull away. Then Bellatrix turned loose of my hair and caught up great handfuls of the blanket and tried to rip it to shreds. "YES!"

She shook and her thighs tightened to a soft pressure that was enjoyable but suffocating at the same time. Then, after a second ear-spitting scream, her muscles relaxed, and she slipped back into the pillows, limp and panting. When I looked up at her, she was looking at me, her eyes wide, her face flush, her lips shiny as she almost obsessively licked at them. I smiled when her eyes closed and a tremor shook her thighs.

Moving up beside her, I turned her till I lay spooned up behind her, then lifted her thigh a little. Reaching between us, I moved the head of my cock till I had it nestled between the puffy outer lips. The wetness was almost an hindrance as I moved forward, just a bit.

"Brother?" she looked over at me when I came into contact with her hymen.

I softly kissed the side of her neck. Moving my hand around her hip, I let my fingers come to rest on the mound above her clit. The tips just touched the skin above that little bud of nerves.

"This will probably hurt a little when I push in, but I'll try to be gentle with you. "I began to softly rub a circle above her clit and her eyes closed. The soft moan from her became a gasp of pain as I pushed through and into her, my cock stretched her hymen down to allow its passage. I wondered as I went deeper if it would break or simply stretch more. Her hand went to my waist, and when she pushed against me, I stopped. I continued the small circle above her clit and she slowly relaxed again. "I'm sorry it hurts. It won't after this first time."

"It didn't really hurt. It didn't feel good, but it wasn't too painful. Now it just feels weird. You're really inside me? Wow!" She startled as I laughed and she felt it through the length of me inside her. "Okay, that was just an odd feeling."

"Really? How about this?" I pulled back about an inch and pushed forward again.

"OH, MY!"

"Good?" I asked softly as I leaned in to kiss her neck.

"Ah, yea...and at the same time, I don't know." I felt her hand move past mine, and then the tips of her fingers were touching my cock as I moved a little deeper into her. "You really are inside me! Oh, my...okay that felt good."

Smiling, I let my finger touch her clit again as I pulled back and pushed into her. A slow even thrusting began to build, the more I rubbed. I was watching my sister's Beautiful face, that Perfect skin. Her rose bud lips had parted, and she was moaning mindlessly now. Sucking air with every breath, every thrust of me. I was making the goddess mortal, giving pleasure to the Perfect woman in my arms. 

I was fucking one of the Beautiful People.

That thought flashed through my mind, and just as quickly, I sent it away. I was not. I was making love to my sister, a thought that was equally disturbing, but not as likely to anger that part of me that despised the New Men. The last thing I wanted right now was to be angry. To let that anger fuel any sort of aggression in me. I wanted this to be the most gentle first time my sister could possibly have. To be loved, caressed, touched, devoured and then taken with care, to levels of pleasure she would remember forever.

I wanted that, but my own needs were getting the upper hand, and I wanted to feel her surrounding the whole of me. Moving, I caught her thigh and opened her legs wide. She looked up at me, panting, as I placed myself back into her and then leaned my weight down onto her. Bellatrix opened her arms and welcomed me into her embrace. Holding me tight as I sank so very deep into her now. I heard a slight whimper.

"I'm sorry, but I'm getting so close. I've got to cum."

"Shushh, it wasn't even a pain worth mentioning." She caressed my face, brushing hair back out my eyes. "You feel wonderful in me. Oh, yes!" she gasped as I thrust into her harder than I had before. "Don't worry about me now, you've brought me more pleasure than I have ever known. Do what feels good to you, and I will enjoy it for no reason other than that."

Thus urged, my lust needed no spur. Pulling back till I was nearly out, I began a slow, deep, rocking rhythm that took the breath from me it felt so good. Moans, whimpers, cried of pleasure and a soft moan that might have been pain met every one of these thrusts, driving me like a whip to a horse.

"Oh, Ares. Oh, my god. My beloved brother. Yes. Take what you need and make me yours. I am yours and I want this never to end." My sister's words a soft whisper in my ear as she held me tight. I turned my head, placing soft kisses on her neck just under her ear, but had not the air to do more. As I felt myself building towards that end, I knew that I needed to pull out of her, we were using no type of protection but I could not make myself do it. I wanted this to happen. In some part of my brain I knew that I was never going to turn her loose, and that no matter what she was going to be mine forever. Why not a sealing of that bond? Why not the completion of this act as it was meant to be?

Then all arbitrary thoughts left as the building pressure released into a pleasure pulse so ecstatic that it pulled sharp gasps of air from my lungs. I strained to make it last for even a second more, to hold that moment in suspension even as my body fought to bring it to completion.




The Beautiful People



"I love you."

Those three worlds could make mountains move and fleets sail, so trying to keep myself from orgasming, when they were whispered into my ear by my beautiful sister, was impossible. 

As I tipped over into pure bliss, she held me close, her fingers digging at my back. I heard her own cries of pleasure, and then we both fell silent to gasping pants for air as the last shivers of pleasure gave way to shivers of cold as the frigid air of the room began to caress naked, sweat-dampened bodies. Sliding out of her, I lay down next to her and covered us both in the blanket. She snuggled in next to me and buried her hands against my chest, no doubt feeling the hard thunder of my heart as it slowly quieted.

"I love you," she said again quietly.

"And I love you."

"Even though I'm one of them? One of the Beautiful people?" She asked, looking up at my "normal" face.

"You were always beautiful, my dearest sister." I placed a gentle kiss on her lips. "And you always will be."

"But I'm like them, like those Monsters." She laid her head on my chest listening to my heart. "I wish I was was like you."

I brushed my fingers through her slightly damp hair. After a few moments I looked down and saw that she was sleeping, her head pillowed on my chest. So beautiful, so perfect, so infinitely untouchable by someone like me, yet I had done just that. I had taken something so innocent and done something primitive, primal, animalistic to it. Had I done something so carnal as to be forbidden by every society in history, and all to make her less so? Less Perfect?

As good as it had felt, at that moment, I hated myself for what I had done...mostly because I knew that I would do it again. Without a doubt that I was going to do it again and again.

"But you are like me." I said in a soft whisper. "Because I'm also a monster."

As I listened to her breathing, soft sleepy sounds, I knew something else I was going to do. To protect this woman next to me...I was going to show the world just how much of a Monster I could be.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Her Perfect face hidden behind a "normal's" mask, my sister leaned her back against my chest and I held her in my arms as I watched my former leader, Toliver, being dragged by his heels into Golgotha Square. Stripped to bare skin, his whole body was a soaked mess of ragged, bloody-flesh from the gravel he had been dragged through. 

The Grundles picked him up and carried him to the raised stone platform. The white stone steps, long stained brown with the blood of hundreds, if not thousands, caught at the broken feet of my old friend, and he cried out.

The Grundles, ignored his pain, dragged him onto the raised platform and pushed him to his knees. The large ,iron caldron full of coals stood nearby with the buried ends of the irons already white hot within the coal bed.

His New man face shining, the magistrate stepped up to the microphone. He opened a black leather-bound folder. His silk on silk voice was thunderously loud, echoing off the surrounding buildings for miles around.

"The criminal Pariah, Jackson Toliver, shall now be executed for crimes again the New State, in accordance with New State law. His crimes include terrorism, murder, and the kidnapping of True Citizens. His guilt is incontrovertible. His trial was swift. Now let his punishment be a warning to all. Brutal actions shall be meet with brutal consequences. Executioner, do your duty."

Bellatrix turned her head to look up at me when the black-shrouded man moved forward towards the kettle of hot irons. "Now?"

"Now." I said simply.

Nodding, she lifted her hand to her throat and pushed the button on her hidden mic. Her single codeword signal...was a soft whisper.

"Zeus."

Like the very thunderbolts of the bespoken god, a terrible rumble shook the whole of the square. Before the sound faded, every Grundle in the square had fallen, many with no heads. Their blood splattered across his horrified face, the magistrate stumbled back from Toliver only to fall screaming as two more rumbles sounded within seconds of each other, and his knee caps disappeared into bright sprays of blood and shattered bone.

Moving through the stunned gathering, poor people whose lives had become so jaded that only violent death could make then feel anything, my sister and I approached the platform. Sensing something about us, they began to part in front of us, getting out of the way of anyone that moved with focus in a time of no focus. As my feet mounted the blood-soaked, life-stained steps, I imagined I heard deep cheering in my mind. Adulation from all the innocents that had been dragged up these very steps.

As I went to Toliver, my sister stood over the writhing magistrate looking down at him with curiousity. Kneeling down, I freed the restraints from my friend's torture-broken hands. My old leader looked up at the blank mask in front of him.

"Thank you my brother, but you shouldn't have done this. This risk for one person does not justify the possible compromise of the whole." He hacked up a gob of bloody spit.

As I looked over the bloody mess of his skin, I felt a sympathetic shiver at the pain he must be in. Lifting my hand to his head, I gently brushed his hair back from his eyes. Then I took my mask off so that he could see my face. "Forgive me, but I don't believe that. Never have and never will."

"Ares?"

Catching him under his arms I helped him into the waiting hands of my fellow Freedom Fighters. They had swarmed the stage behind Bellatrix and myself, guns held plain to see. As Toliver was passed from hand to hand and taken away, the sounds of agony he made tore at me. Grabbing an iron by its handle, I moved to where my sister stood watch over the New Man. 

The magistrate was crying, clawing at the stones under foot to try and pull himself away from this horror, this disruption in his, Perfect life. The trail of blood he was leaving was immense and growing by the second. 

"Going somewhere, Magistrate? I thought you wanted to see an execution?" I held the glowing iron rod before his face. He flinched back from the white hot point. "Hold him."

My men swarmed in on him, holding him down. Ignoring his screaming, I stood my booted foot on his thigh and applied the hot iron to the ragged holes where the .50 caliber rounds from the two sniper rifles had all but amputated his lower legs. The hideous shriek when the metal touched him was no pleasure to me, but I could hear the shrieks of joy from all the souls in hell that he had killed with these very irons. I got a second iron and cauterized the other leg.

Again his screams, and the cries of vengeful joy from the dead.

I grabbed a third iron and knelt down next to his head.

"Listen to me." I grabbed his head and silenced his weeping by putting the white hot iron near his face. He shook in fear. "I want you to deliver a message. To your Martyr Ambrose. Tell him that the time of all New Men is about to be end. That the Lord of War has come and that the Resistance has truly just begun. Tell him that."

"We'll kill you! We'll kill all of you! You can't stop us! We are Perfect! We are the Beautiful People, the Masters of All!" He shouted at me from a throat screamed horse. He tried to spit at me. "I'll remember your face, Pariah. Your death will be the slowest in the history of man! You and your Pariah whore!"

He jerked his chin towards my sister.

Bellatrix moved forward and knelt down on the New Man's chest. Sensuously she leaned towards him and slipped off her mask revealing her Perfect features to his astonished eyes. When his face began to show anger she flashed that chillingly Perfect smile.

"Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die..." My sister leaned down and licked a bright point of blood off his cheek. She closed her eyes, savoring the coppery taste, then ice blue eyes flashed open, filled with hate."Whore? Bring your worst, and I'll fuck them all!"

Coming quickly to her feet, Bellatrix caught the iron in my hand. With a shriek of rage she buried it through the magistrate's groin and bent the tip against the stone underneath. Leaving him to scream in pain, she got to her feet and calmly walked away. As she moved among our followers they all reached out to lightly touch her shoulder, a thing I had seen them do more and more often of late. As always, I felt a pang of jealousy at their touching someone that I loved so fiercely. But then, they loved her just as much as I did.

She was their pale Angel of Death.

I looked at the faces of my men as they turned to look at me. The near worship from a few was frighting, but I didn't let it show.

To them, I was their God of War.

Getting to my feet, I looked out over the stunned faces of the crowd. I moved over to where the mic had fallen and set it to right, with a thunderous clatter as it was still turned on. I was about to tell them to disperse when I thought better of it.

"Can you hear the bells?" I asked, my voice almost painfully loud. "Can you hear them? I can. I can hear them clearly. You know who else can hear them just as clearly, but he won't listen to them? President Ambrose."

The members of the crowd looked from side to side to see if their nearside neighbors understood what I was talking about.

"The bells of Revolution are ringing. The bells of Revolution have been ringing for years, but you have all been too asleep to hear them. Even now you can't hear them? I can hear them, I hear them clearly. My men hear them, my sister hears them. Jackson Toliver heard them, even before I did, and for that he was nearly executed here today!" 

I lifted my head, my "normal" features plain to see.

"We have heard the bells of Freedom ringing and we, the Resistance, have gotten up from our bed. We've had to answer the wolves of President Ambrose that are at our door. The people of the Resistance have and will continue to be bitten for doing such, but that is the price of hearing the bells of Freedom. They only ring for innocent blood shed for the freedom of others. Can any of you hear the bells? Can you? Who among you can hear the bells!"

From among the crowd came a cry of "I can!"

I pointed towards that voice. "Then you, my brother, I shall stand shoulder to shoulder with and we will listen to them ring in the cold, clear air. I will do such with any man, woman or child that can hear them! That can hear the bells ring because the have let their blood fall to see another person live free. Free of the madness that is the New Men! Free of the insanity that is the Perfect people! Free to not have to enslave yourself to them so that your children can be Perfect. YOU FOOLS! Your children were already perfect! They didn't need to be surgically altered by morally corrupted, medical lunatics, to some standard of beautiful embraced by the rich! By the powerful! BY THE INSANE! Your children were perfect and you gave them to those deranged people because they said they could make them...better...more Beautiful. WHY?"

The square was silent as a tomb as my voice came back to me in muted echoes.

"When you looked upon the face of your newborn child was there ever a more beautiful sight? How could you ever think that a surgeon's knife could improve up that?" I shook my head. Then demanded. "CAN YOU NOT HEAR THE BELLS?"

"I CAN!" came back the cry from a hundred throats.

"If you can hear them and still not answer their call then you are no better than the Grundles we shot here today!" I pointed to one of the dead police officers near my feet. "These were not bad men, they simply wanted their children to be...not perfect, they were already...but rather what President Ambrose told them that had to be. Ripped from their parents' arms, their bodies mutilated by his surgeon's scalpels and drugs. Told lies in their schools, brain washed in their churches of the Perfect Man. Taught to hate the very parents that loved their children enough to make such a terrible sacrifice for them! That is the fate of your children! To be taught to hate you! Is that what you want?"

"NO!" Came back the cry from almost every person gathered within the sound of my voice.

"THEN WHO AMONG YOU CAN HEAR THE BELLS AND WILL ANSWER THEIR CALL?"

"I CAN! I WILL!"

As their impassioned vow reached out I looked up at the light pole mounted cameras overseeing the whole of this square. One swiveled to get a better closeup of my face. I didn't hide from it, but stood square on. The days of hiding were over.

"President Ambrose, can you hear the bells? Can you? THE BELLS OF ST. SEPULCHERE'S ARE TOLLING FOR YOU, AND MAY THE LORD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL!"

As I walked off the platform to join my sister I whispered "For I will have none upon you for what you did to her."

Bringing my lover in under my arm to protect her, we hurried from the scene as the sirens began to get closer. As we left, I thought about the coming storm my actions and declaration had just set into motion. It was going to be a long fight ahead, but I would not quit so long as Bellatrix was at my side. For like me, she could hear the bells. 

But unlike me...she heard them Perfectly.

*****

I would like to thank patientlee, not just for her editing but for the challenge that brought this story about. She offered up a challenge, to several writers, to turn up the radio, and write a story based on the next song we heard. I got "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson. As weird and twisted as this story was I hope it was enjoyable. Again, thank you pl.