Chapter Two
What before had sounded like the dull roar of a distant rumbling, was now like a mechanical bee hive, swarming and clanking, as scores of thousands of feet stamped against the main avenue in the direction of the line of police officers who stood staunch, ardent and menacing at the other end, protecting the town hall. The people, with their faces painted as the dolorous clowns their government had made them out to be, chanted slanderous rhymes and thrust stabbing signs into the air as if there were an imaginary bloated belly of some corporate pig floating overhead and hidden neath its prickly chest, waiting to spill upon the mass was a treasure trove of sweet assailing apologies and admissions of guilt.
The affair was almost carnival-like with the smiles on their faces as grand and as piercing as the jagged edges of their demining verses. They hurled abusive rhetoric but with cynical downplay, keeping the language clean enough for the children who now walked along beside their mothers and fathers, hand in hand, those who hoped that tonight would bring about a new day, that in the future, their children would be able to look back and be proud that they were not just a part of change, they were the change.
“It’s not about free bus fare” they all chanted as if that meant something,
Surrounding the families on all sides were cameras that were poised on the tops of shoulders, on the tops of parked vans and in the hands of the people themselves; capturing this incredible moment and sharing it with friends and family, those who couldn’t or hadn’t yet decided to make it, on all sides of the city, at each rounded end of the globe.
The Teacher stood at the entrance to his building, allowing the swarm of people to flood around him as if he was a stone, sticking out from the side of a canal as around him the river continued to flow. The sound was magnetic; marching feet, chanting voices and placards knocking against one another as they pierced the stifling, heavy air of opulent refuse; that which they had carried on their shoulders for so long and of which, had a taste that they had learned to disguise.
Just ahead, and not far from the door of his apartment building, a line of riot police stood with their shields erected before them. They had not yet taken an offensive strategy. Their truncheons were gripped firm and extended in their hands like a virile young man’s penis, but they were yet to beat them against their towering shields.
They were restrained.
The Teacher stepped off the pavement and filed into the flux of people. Most looked ordinary, just your average guy or girl, a next door neighbor or someone’s mum or dad. Looking behind him, he could see nothing but an endless swarm of shouting and smiling faces, families holding hands and lovers, drawn to one another’s embrace.
Cameras zipped through the crowd and when spotted, men and women and children alike, they either knelt down or jumped in the air to affix their face on the entire of the screen and they cheered and they waved the small national flags in their hands and they made love heart symbols out of their curling hands. And at home, watching from hundreds of cameras and thousands of angles and seeing, the tens of thousands of people marching along the streets under an amber light on a balmy summer evening, the people sitting on their sofas all shivered with delight, wanting to be inside that crowd, wanting to be walking towards somewhere too.
Reporters smiled as they asked, “What are you marching for?”
And the people smiled as they said, “It’s not about free bus fare.”
And the reporters, many of whom were not from here, they looked confused and they asked again. “But what then? What are you marching for?”
“It’s not about free bus fare” was all they could say and they continued marching, smiling and dancing and singing and holding hands, unsure as to what they were doing here, but so thankful that they were.
The Teacher, though, he was getting restless. And as the cameras spied through the crowd, he quickly covered his face, tying a black bandana high enough so that only the faintest inkling of his eyes could be seen beneath the pull of his black hood.
His heart was beating rapid as if his chest were being fired upon by a hundred million riflemen, one millisecond after the other. His stomach was starting to get heavy too. He could feel adrenaline running through his whole body and while he walked calmly amidst the group of smiling, marching people who were not destroying anything, he felt sick, as if he might keel over at any second and expulse not only his dinner but with it, his courage and his defiance and his duty.
Looking around he could see, in spicks and specks, others like him, themselves garbed in black attire with their faces girded in black bandanas or black gas masks. The Teacher noticed this, a small group of radicals, and he cursed himself for not having stolen one from one of the science labs. The police were bound to use tear gas. Why the hell didn’t he think of that?
The passage of people slowly came to a halt by a barrier near the foot of the town hall. There was only a mild tension that at the sight of the heavily armed police officers and their patrolling horses, marching nervously back and forth at the sight of this seemingly endless wave of people washing up on their twelve man shore. I say mild because the officers, at the sight of the smiling families, were themselves overcome by the air of togetherness and joy, they themselves smiling behind their armored helmets, probably wishing, like the people watching on their televisions at home, that they too could be a part of it, that they could be from within the heart of sodality, looking out.
The marching stopped, unable and unwilling to press any further. While the people canted and cheered, The Teacher and others like him, they circled around impatiently like sediment within a blocked sink.
They couldn’t settle.
He couldn’t settle.
He and they all knew what was coming next.
“Fascist pigs” shouted The Teacher.
Instantly, the expressions on the police turned from one of revelry to that of wretchedness. A stone was thrown from somewhere within the crowd, from a distance behind where The Teacher stood. Nobody heard it or saw it, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there. It cut through the now skittish air as mothers and fathers fought to drag their children away from the town hall while riot police drew their grimaces like weapons and beat their truncheons against their towering shields. It flew over everyone’s heads like a bird or a missile and it crashed like a heavy falling rock, onto the top of a reporter’s head, a pretty girl with her hair tied up to keep her fringe from spoiling the view from her lens.
Someone screamed and then panic set in. The riot police stormed forwards, brave horses breaking through the face of the wave and sending person on top of person, regardless of age or gender; horses don’t discriminate.
“Anarchy” shouted The Teacher. “Fuck the police” he screamed, and others joined him as if a light had been switched and all of a sudden, all that could be seen were young men and women, all adorned in black clothing with either black bandanas or black gas masks covering their warring expressions.
“Get the kids out” shouted a woman, probably to her husband.
There was a flurry of people running from all sides of the avenue. Some surged forwards, driven by a pent rage and courage by the wall of others before them, like the police behind their shields, pushing against the backs of the people before them, screaming, like pack animals, broken from their shackled cages. Some surged back, desperate to be on their sofas with control between their stubby fingers and a sure opinion about what went wrong.
And some, especially the children, the spilled from the sides of the avenue, up onto the affluent steps of the neighboring apartments and office buildings and banks but outside of a mere nook and cranny, fit enough for a small child or an angular drunk, there was nowhere to take refuge; not from the storming police and their swinging fists, nor from the black clad youth, blindly hurling bottles and stones, oblivious and careless as to on the heads and huddling backs of whom they landed.
“Fuck the police” shouted The Teacher. “Fuck the government. Fuck the banks. Fuck the insti
tution. Fuck demoNOcracy. Fuck capitalism.”
“No, fuck you” shouted a family, running in the opposite direction.
It didn’t matter if they didn’t believe. Tearing off the bandage would never be a comfortable process. It had to be done quickly and with vigor. Some would scream and shout sure, it was only natural. By they would, in time, see that it was only way to get things done. And they may curse him now, but soon enough, when they are living the spoils of his endeavor, they will understand and they will say it was worth it, to be changed.
“Anarchy” The Teacher shouted, and around him, so did the masked expressions of others.
A group of black clad youth, they turned their attention away from the police and at the line of shopping windows and banking institutions, their glass doors insulting with their decorated colored binds.
“Smash the windows” shouted one black clad youth and the others agreed.
The Teacher was amongst them, running at the glass doors and kicking willfully with his black combat boots, his steel capped ends cracking the glass at first before a line of black clad youth carrying a torn out street sign, rammed forwards, smashing into the glass doors and shattering them entirely.
The Teacher was the first inside, running ahead of the pack and kicking and beating against the ATMs with whatever he could find and use for a bashing instrument. It was only a couple of seconds before the bank was filled entirely with black clad youth ramming poles and stabbing knives into the machines, and when one machine did open, and that horrendous devilish shackle called money spilled out, they filled their pockets and even stuffed their mouths with whatever they could and as quickly as they had swarmed inside, they spilled back out into the chaos, onwards to their next target.
On the street, police clashed with black clad youths as fretful mothers and fathers fought desperate to get their children to safety, while in the midst of the confusion, several young idealists imitated sex and affection on the avenue, pretending to coddle and cuddle, hoping, if not expecting, to be snapped by photographers and become a meme or a t-shirt or the cover of an album or a documentary. And on their sofas, people with opinions cupped their mouths in disbelief and could not look away, turning only to sip on their soft drink and pick from their bucket of popcorn.
The Teacher wanted to set fire to everything, like nature did, when things grew out of control. Burn it all down, enrich the ground and start from scratch. But he had no matches and nobody had brought accelerant to this march, at least not that he knew of anyway.
He joined the other black clad youth out on the street where, still far from the reach of rioting police and stampeding horses, they were kicking in the windows of an upmarket boutique. By the time The Teacher arrived, the front window had already smashed. It sounded like the rusted chains of subservience, falling to the floor, echoing freedom and prosperity; the kind that glimmers in your heart and your eyes, not the one that jingles in your pocket. And by the time he was ready to enter, the entrance was flooded with black clad youth escaping with fine jewels and floral stamped garments, next season’s trend. By the time he got in there, there was nothing left. There was nothing for him to break and there was nothing for him to steal.
His cell phone was buzzing in his pocket, but he ignored it, as, like a toddler, well past the realm of exhaustion, he was thirsted by the primal thrill of breaking stuff. And when he stepped out onto the street, he saw the first canisters fall. And in a second, a cloud of choking smoke whipped up into the air and the sounds of taunts and jeering were replaced quickly with panting and screaming as the tens of thousands of people left the main avenue vacant in seconds.
The police had taken a vile rhythm now. Their truncheons beat not only against their shaking and towering shields but also against the backs of black clad youth, cowering from the stinging tear gas, striking their backs and their necks and their crooked, covered faces.
And now that the sea of colored and common people had vanished, now that it was only the black clad youth who were visible, now that The Teacher was very much the nail that was standing out, he thought it best to quickly get the fuck inside.
The smoke was stinging his eyes but he held his breath and he ran, knowing he was only meters from his apartment building and safety. The earth seemed to shake and shatter as a magnificent horse galloped towards him, carrying an abusing officer, cursing of what he would do when he got hold of The Teacher, holding a net in his hands and ready to throw it over the young man as he ran for his life, the road taking him nowhere, making a mockery of his plight and his escape as he fought for every heaving step.
“I got you now” shouted the riot cop. “Little bitch.”
The Teacher winced as he felt the horses’ breath against his neck but before the officer could throw his net, The Teacher darted left and ran up a set of stairs and buzzed on the intercom shouting, “It’s me, it’s me, let me in, let me in.”
And he gripped at the bars and he pulled off his hood and just as the officer dismounted his horse, clenching his demoted fist, the boor buzzed and opened and The Teacher ran inside, swinging it shut behind him and taking the stairs, running as fast as he could, so fast that the automated light, it lit up only after he was gone, like a ghostly reminiscence, showing not the man, but merely where the man had been.
The Teacher ran.
He ran so fast that he flew.
He flew, just like the rock that hit that girl. And it was only a minute or two, a minute or two that felt like a mere second, before he was on the top floor, nervously shoving the wrong key into his front door, over and over, unable to stop his hand from shaking. It was hard to tell if he was scared or thrilled.
The door swung open and he entered, slamming it behind him. He rushed to the window and looked out, seeing the chaos still unfolding, some many scores of floors below him. He was so high up that he could no longer hear the taunting and jeering. He could no longer hear the crying and shouting and he could no longer hear the stampeding of horses hooves. He could only hear, after his racing breath began to settle, the light sound of whimpering, as if someone was crying, neath a woolen gag.
“Mummy?” said The Teacher, his voice unsure, worry starting to settle in. “Daddy, are you there?”
The Teacher tip toed through the house. The whimpering was louder now as if many mouths were crying neath woolen gags.
“Mummy? Daddy? Eunice? Where is everyone?”
“Shhh” whispered a voice, from behind the whimpering.
“Who is that? Who are you?”
“Anarchy” whispered the voice. “Anarchy, anarchy, anarchy.”
But there wasn’t just one voice, there were many. And through the muffled whimpering of mouths crying neath woolen gags, came the maniacal whispering of scores of different voices, hissing as they whispered, over and over again. “Anarchy, anarchy, anarchy.”
“Who are you?” screamed The Teacher.
What he felt now, it was most certainly fear, and not thrill.
A light flickered on and at first he was blinded, covering his hands to his eyes to wash away the sting. Then, when his sight settled, he saw his family, his mother and his father, his sister and his two brothers, even Eunice and the nanny, all of them, he saw them all hogtied and circled together on the floor, their hands and legs bound and their mouths stuffed with woolen socks as they whimpered lightly, looking left and right neath their blindfolds, as if they were gently swaying to some calming song stuck in their minds.
Around him stood maybe thirty people, their faces all covered, their clothes all black.
“Anarchy,” said one of the people, a young girl’s voice, a familiar voice.
She moved towards The Teacher, whose legs were trickling with urine, and she leaned into his ear. “I hope this is what you meant,” she said.
“I know you. I know that voice” said The Teacher.
“Anarchy” she whispered, running a shiny knife under his throat so that the tip almost cut through the bottom of his jaw. “We
are your children,” she said. “We are only doing what you have asked us to do. We are only trying to appease you, to get your attention. And dear Teacher, we hope that you grade us well, as we deserve.”
“What the fuck?” shouted The Teacher.
There was a muffled scream, it sounded less like trepidation and more like criticism.
“Are you ready?” asked a man’s voice, as if he were standing in front of the class, holding his diorama.
“Alexander, that’s you,” said The Teacher, unveiling one of the knife-wielding terrorists, encircling his bound and gagged family, in his living room.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s start. Kill the girl.”
The Teacher screamed. So did The Mother and The Father and The Brothers too. The Sister, her eyes widened for a second, but that might have been just a muscle reflex, from the blow she received to her temple.
She died, though, immediately.
“Anarchy” all of the masked insurgents shouted.