Austin Aragon
TRAVESTY
Author’s Note
Writing is fun, getting paid for it is not. Or better said, it’s not easy whatsoever to make money off it, and more so it’s not really fun to turn a passion into a job. This book was rejected by numerous agents for being “too controversial in today’s subjective market.” Well I suspect the other side of that coin is that I am also a new author, but I do like to think that they only mean this current novel is too radical or touchy—not my writing! So with a dead end reached in traditional publishing, but a desire to show you, my dear reader, what I have been working on, I went to self-publishing. Will this book reach the audience I would have through traditional publishing? I don’t know. But if you want to make an aspiring author’s day, one free way you can help me reach my other potential readers is through word of mouth, and leaving a review when finished.
My final warning though, reader, is that this novel is controversial, and may very well rub you the wrong way. But would you rather read fluff, boring and unthoughtful tropes of genres you’ve read countless times before, or something that makes you think, heck, maybe even angry—I know I would. I have a philosophy: everything we do should be educational. What you read should leave you with something new to ponder, to research, to talk, and to hopefully even write about. Only this way is the cycle of literature truly completed, its future safeguarded.
I
“Is he there?” says Creon.
“Yes,” I say, peering out from behind the lawn chair at the fence line.
“I don’t see him.”
“Because you’re five.”
“So, you wanted to play!”
I raise my finger to my lips. “They’ll hear us, they’ve already started climbing over.” I turn to my side and grab the pistol. “Take this and get to the sniper’s nest.”
“Roger,” says Creon.
“It’s ‘yes, sir.’ Did you even watch the movie?”
“Yes, sir,” says Creon, his face glowing red. He runs to the swing set and climbs up the metal pole with the plastic pistol in his mouth.
“Tengo! Ten oclock!”
Creon makes gun noises while climbing.
“You can’t shoot them with the gun in your mouth! You’ll just kill yourself!”
Creon glances back at me. He tries to grab the pistol while holding the pole tightly with his thighs, but falls. I try to rush over to him before he cries.
“What’s going on!” says Dad, poking his head out from the kitchen window.
Too late. Creon’s nose is bloody and he coughs up spit. The plastic pistol broken underneath his leg.
“Nothing!” I say. “He’s fine!” Snap barks and runs over, his hair hackling. I grab and stroke his fur to try and make him quiet while I whisper at Creon to shut up.
Dad rushes over to Creon, picking him up and cradling him in his arms. “You’re almost twelve, Peter. You need to behave like an older brother and act responsible when I say watch him.”
“We were just shooting the spies crawling over the fence again,” I say.
Creon buries his face inside Dad’s shirt as he walks back to the house. Dad hands him off to Mom and turns around. “Come here.” I walk over slowly to the porch. Dad drags the lawn chair back onto the porch and sits down. “Why do you guys play violently?”
“I don’t ever hurt him.”
“You may not directly, but this type of playing is centered on killing, why?”
I sit on the edge of the porch. What does he mean? It’s fake.
“Peter, it is already dangerous enough and out there…”
“We’re just playing.”
“And it’s because of that new war movie, right?”
I look down at my dirt caked shoes.
“Right?”
“Yes.”
Dad sits up. “Hold on a sec.” He comes back with a book. “Ever heard of an obituary?”
“No.”
“It’s what people write about someone when they die.” He sits down on the edge next to me and places the book onto my lap. “These are obituaries about soldiers who died in the last war, almost a hundred years ago. Read them and tell me if war seems fun after it.”
I hear the small birds chirping—morning. Can I say they waked me when I don’t remember falling asleep: kept up all night from bad thoughts, or did I fall asleep very quickly and had bad dreams till I woke? I exhale, white mist rises into a huge puff above my face. Muscles rigid from the cold, I remain lying on the hard bench beneath my back. I always hated that the birds began singing before the sun really rose. It’s like a tease, talking about something that hasn’t happened yet, spoiling it for everyone else.
Chirp!—get the fuck up humans!
Why?
Because the sun is coming.
But it’s still dark out, lend me so more sleep, please.
Then you’ll miss it.
Some things are better that way.
I rise, aching into a sitting position. I try rubbing my numb hands together but the friction hurts them more. I grab my lighter with its ancient American flag painting on the side, flick the cap, and rotate the switch down with my thumb. Nothing happens—right, it’s broken. My ass hugs the frozen wooden beams of the bench as I look around. Eventually I find the pistol that has sunk into the dew glazed dirt by my feet. I grab it and place it inside my sweater.
The bench I am on rests atop a small hill, but high enough to see the roof tops of my old university about hundred meters away. All around the bench is beer cans, trash, and other items from parties and one night stands that have happened here since time immemorial, all covered in the morning frost and slipping away into the earth. Meters out each way are the endless green and brown and yellow vines of my hometown I never cared to learn the names of, but for some strange reason now, really wish I had. They form a natural fence around the top of the hill, which if not for a hiking path cutting in behind the bench, would create a circle. Mixed with the vine bushes are a higher wall of Fir and Maple that give a sanctuary feel to this clearing covered in trash.
I used to come here to think. The place perfect for the shade it gave during the heat. I look out at the brown shingled roofs of the college through a gap in the larger wall of trees—whether they had been cut down for this view or simply did not grow there, who knows. Sticking higher into the sky than the rest of the campus buildings and treetops is a white plastered bell tower, which always seemed out of place compared to the red brick everything on the East is built with.
I remember how if I really focused, I could make out the hands and guess the time from here. I lean forward and cup my palm around my eye, squinting to try and see the black hands on the clock.
“Yeah right, that was my kill!”
My eye is looking through a scope now. There’s a Herculean lying in the dirt. Red tracer rounds skip about it.
“Isaac!”
I drop my hand and fall back to the bench. I slap my face a few times and pull at my hair. A small brown bird lands on the ground before me. I pull out my pistol and aim. It pecks hellishly at the dirt for something.
“Bang.”
I follow the hiking path back to an avenue that connects the college to the nearby town Raleigh, and wait to flag a ride.
“Where to?” says the cabbie as I get in the back seat.
“In town, I need to go to the Law office of Mr. Reeves.”
The cabbie gives me a queer look as he drives—I keep forgetting I am hideous now. The side mirror confirms this: scars run along my fucked up face from that horrible burn. Now, why did they out of all places, leave my birthmark alone? There it is, surrounded by fresh pink skin on my chin, the birthmark that looks like a raindrop.
Next to the entrance sign that says welcome to Raleigh, is a new and bigger electric billboard that wasn’t here since my deployment. The board is trimmed with shimmering red, white, and blue stars. In the center of it is a crudely drawn portrayal of a Herculean beaten and bruised, lying on the ground with its pronged hands moving up and down over its frowning face. Its three tails usually connected to the rear of their heads severed off and limp before his knees. To the left of the Herculean are three humans: a young schoolboy, a woman in a dress suit, and a man with an engineer’s apron on, all holding flagstaffs with fluttering banners and speared on the bottom, poised in a motion of stabbing the Herculean. The flags carried by the staffs are one of the US, North Carolina, and the Party. Above the defeated Herculean it says: Which army are you in? Join the People’s Core. We saved Earth once, we’ll do it again.