The Ghostwriters’ Haunt

rough draft but I thought I’d post it.  I am still editing. 
 

I walked briskly down the hallway, my brown Kate Spade sling backs echoing against the hard cool floor.  Jeez, I had paid nearly $200 for these shoes and now they just didn’t seem practical.  I wouldn’t be able run in these shoes if it came to it.  Came to what? I wasn’t  quite sure myself but I knew it was bad.

As I walked, I did my best to keep my eyes ahead of me, trying to ignore the blood pounding in my head as I made my way toward the pressroom.  It was pulsing at my temple and I was sure everyone I passed could see it.  See the blood that apparently gave me away, the mark that made me “Metamorphic“, whatever that meant. I smoothed my suit skirt down and adjusted my jacket one last time before I entered the press room of the Center for Assimilation.  I took a deep breath to center myself, then I walked in to join the crowd and potentially my doom. 

This could have been like any other day, but I found the memo on the Director‘s desk, I saw what they would be saying today and I was afraid.   I felt very much like I was walking into my own little gallows.

I’m only a Junior Psychologist here at the Center and having just graduated with a Masters in Psychology I had slim pickings for an entry level position.  Originally, the Center was meant to be a filtering ground for new patriots to ease their way into American society.  We did things like offering classes like English, History and Political Science.  My job was to teach about the American culture and to help the high status refugees adjust to living in a strange new country. 

In the beginning I felt like my purpose was to help people, but when William Richter won the Presidency the Center started to take a sinister turn.  At first it started with the suppression of certain speech in the Political Science classes.  Then it turned into the mandatory English proficiency tests that had to be passed before entrance into the US was allowed.  Gradually, I felt like I worked for a xenophobic tyrannical arm of some hostile foreign government.  Many of my refugee families were left waiting in limbo while they tried to master the English language so they could pass into the country.  At least we gave them lodgings while they waited, though those were meager at best and had gotten us on the radar of Human Rights Watch.  And I worked for these people!
 
I had thought about quitting, but as I saw the open employment slots filling with Richter supporters, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  These new employees seemed to have little regard for those different from them and I knew I might be one of the only people here that could give comfort and hope to those passing through.  Plus I had Wyvern to support.  There was no way I could support myself and a two-year old without a decent paying job and great benefits.   

My boss and I had hit it off so well that he’d offered me the job during the first interview, before I‘d even realized I was pregnant. So when the little pink line showed up a month later I felt both scared and relieved. I knew that I would be taken care of financially but I had no idea how I was going to take care of my baby by myself.  So I called Chigger to see if he wanted to move in. 

Chigger is my step brother and the closest thing I have to family.  He is a free spirited hippy type that has a Masters in some obscure field.  Incredibly smart, but really just a big kid which never went over well with his employers.  Showing up to work unshaven in your pajamas wasn’t going to get you on the fast track to tenured professorship.  So I offered him food and lodging in exchange for caring for the new baby.  He was able to play responsible fun uncle during Wyvern’s waking hours and during naps and downtime he worked on one of his many manuscripts. 

It worked out well for both of us and I felt like my little world was almost perfect.  Only almost because I was a single parent and a boy needs a father.  But Wyvern’s father still didn’t know I’d had his child and I‘d been trying to find the right way to tell him for the last 3 years.  Nevertheless, I was happy with almost.

However, now my little almost perfect life was in jeopardy.  I had seen the memo talking about the blood, talking about the anomaly of it.  I had just learned from that memo that there were others like me out there, I wasn’t alone.  I guess we’d all hid our “difference” so well from the world that we all thought we were the only ones, but that would soon be over when this conference began.   I moved toward the back corner trying to calm my racing heart.  When I had seen the memo earlier that morning my instinct told me that I should have pled sick and got out of dodge for good.  Unfortunately my boss grabbed me for a particularly distraught woman who I’d been working with for the last 3 months.  She and I had great rapport and I couldn’t leave her to be jeered at by my nasty co-workers. 

I couldn’t leave my boss either.  I knew Jay, or Dr. Malick as he was known, would not survive here without me as much as I couldn’t without him.  Like I said, it had been different in the beginning but now, in just three short years, things were becoming less and less…tolerant of things considered abnormal.  The anomalies.  Us. 

His problem was not so severe as mine for the moment, he was only a homosexual and gradually started to hide that from everyone but me.  As more people left and new ones came in he could see the meanness in their eyes as they looked at him suspiciously, so he begged me to pretend to date him and throw them off his scent.  At first I thought this was ridicules, this was America after all!  Land of the free, home of the brave.  But these days people seemed more scared than brave and from where I stood in the Center, considerably less free. I started to see what he was seeing at the top as it trickled down and took away my co-workers, replacing them with Richter drones.  People who did, said, and believed whatever our “beloved” leader did. 

So Jay and I started “dating“, it was a free meal and he and I had such an easy relationship that it wasn’t hard for me to fake lovey eyes at him when others were looking.  The heat on him died down, but it was about to come at me in a full force inferno.  As much as Jay loved and respected me, I was doubtful he’d ever be able to protect me.  Maybe I was being paranoid, maybe they’d never guess about me.  One could hope…

I sidled through the crowd and nudged next to him where he was standing at the back near the emergency exit. The room was filled with media from every station and every country imaginable.  I waited, a trickle of sweat sliding down my temple. I tucked a stray lock of my dark pageboy haircut behind my ear for the billionth time and then started chewing my lip, a nervous habit I’ve always had.“What is it?” Jay asked noticing  me chewing on my face.  I just shrugged and shook my head ever so slightly telling him now wasn’t the time.  He didn’t know my secret and I was safer with no one knowing, if I was safe at all.   However, if it came down to it, I may have to confide in him so he could protect Wyvern.

The Director of the Center walked into the room followed by a man in a non-descript blue suit who was accompanied by a tall very thin woman with deep set dark eyes.  Something about her gave me the creeps, but then again I was strung so tightly I think just about anybody who looked at me wrong would freak me out.“What’s the Secretary of the Interior doing here,” Jay whispered with a furrowed confused look playing across his dark features. 

Jay was one of those gay men that you knew was put on the earth just to taunt women.  He was beautiful, with a dark olive complexion and piercing blue eyes that danced when he smiled.  His shoulder length hair was pulled into a tight pony tail at the nape of his neck and his thin wire glasses just added to his “sexy professor” look.  Too bad he liked boys..sigh.“That guy? You are such a geek for knowing that.  What does the Secretary of Interior even do?” I whispered at him, I was doing my best to try to seem normal even if I was terrified on the inside.   I nudged at him playfully.  I did things like that occasionally in public to boost the appearance of our fake relationship.“Department of the Interior controls things like cultural preservation and natural resources.  I think the Bureau of Indian Affairs is a sub agency too.”

Visions of Indian boarding schools, cruel and forced assimilations and the Trail of Tears ran through my head.  Jeez, I was in trouble.

As the Director stepped to the Podium the crowds din fell to a whispered hush and was replaced by the snapping of cameras and popping of flashes.