Buried Alive

“Mr. DiLosa, you are charged with…” the detective started, but the man handcuffed and chained to a stainless steel table in the middle of the otherwise empty, brightly lit room interrupted.

 

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a criminal; I haven’t done anything wrong.”

 

“Your victim would disag…” the detective wanted to continue, but again was interrupted.

 

“My ‘victim,’ as you put it, is alive and well.”

 

“You buried her alive!” the detective cried leaping from her chair, leaning across the length of the table so that her face was now only a couple inches from Douglas Dilosa’s face. They stayed like this, staring each other down for a few seconds. It seemed they were both searching for the right thing to say, but failed to think of anything. They broke eye contact; Douglas Dilosa sank back into his chair, and the detective walked to the corner of the small interrogation room, giving the other chair a kick. The chair fell over and slid a few feet on the linoleum floor.

 

Angela Lee was one of the growing number of detectives at the precinct working for the new, experimental crime prevention unit. On her first day, seeing her name on the door followed by the letters D.I.[1], S.I.D.[2] made her smile with pride. She had made quite a few sacrifices to have this little office at the end of the hallway on the twelfth floor of the steel and glass building. As a first generation immigrant of East Asian descent, she had to fight many battles to prove her worth. She believed in the ideals of the New United States of America and its All New Constitution. The nation didn’t just have a facelift, but was completely reborn. The old adage, “All men are created equal” was now to be a reality and not just a slogan, or an empty promise. Angela Lee was one of many millions that packed their bags with a renewed faith in the resurrected American Dream. She put herself through the Academy, and rose quickly through the ranks due to her disciple, obedience and hard work. Now, at the age of 28 she seemed to have it made.

 

The government spared no expense in an effort to show how committed they were to the cause of making the country a safer place for all. Tackling crime in its obvious, visible forms had already been achieved decades before. Robbery, homicide, theft and the like only existed in legal history books. There was one more step, however, before the citizens of the nation could feel completely safe: eradicating thought crimes.

 

It has been established beyond any doubt by psychologists, anthropologist, and other experts that women were still in danger of violence committed against them. Despite the advances of medicine and education, as well as changes in laws and societal conditioning, most men remained violent, predatory beasts. Although contact sports, as well as competitive games and activities had been outlawed years ago, advances in thought and dream-reading technology have clearly shown that men still harbored certain bestial passions that led them to undesirable thoughts that in turn may lead to violent actions.

 

Violence didn’t have to be physical, of course. After all, this was the 22^nd century, and not the stone ages. But violence was intolerable in any form - even in the form of thoughts. Laws have been passed, proper punishments decided upon, and a new type of police force set up to enforce these laws.

 

In earlier times, brutal, destructive passions were not only encouraged, but looked upon with reverence. People, in their ignorance, applied wide, foggy, fuzzy terms like “heroism,” “sacrifice,” or “love” to life situations that were nothing short of imprisonment, enslavement and the exploitation of women. It was thought that some women actually desired to be a part of such arrangements, when in fact their free will and agency have been severely hindered, and their rights trampled on.

 

Society at large has accepted the notion of thought crimes, but there were a few exceptions. Small groups of people left the sprawling mega-cities sometime during the late 21^st century. They’d set themselves up on privately owned land, and maintain a sort of self-sustaining life. The government tried to outlaw and eradicate them, but due to the fear of bad publicity, they decided it was best to defame them, and to let them die off and disappear once and for all.

 

Some individuals from such groups found work in the city. They had skills that no longer were taught anywhere: carpentry, sculpture, painting, or music. None of these occupations were considered worthwhile, serious, or desirable in a world where efficiency and productivity were the only virtues. There was of course art, but it was created by machines: sleek, mass-produced items, abstract pictures or music drawn, composed, and performed by unfeeling, but precise machine hands and minds. The heart, this glorified pump, whose biological function could now easily be reproduced or replaced by a mechanical pump, had no part to play on this brand new stage, in this brand new age of civilization. As a curiosity, “savage art” was kept in some homes, and even government buildings. Museums didn’t exist anymore, as it had been decided that society should keep its collective eyes on the ever brighter future instead of the dusty, barbaric past.

 

Douglas Dilosa, Caucasian male, aged 35, belonged to one such savage colony. He was occasionally hired to come to the city and to entertain guests at parties with recitation accompanied by guitar music or conga rhythms. He made conga drums himself in his tiny workshop which wasn’t more than a hut and also served as his home. He made his own clothes, too. The designs were based on images he had seen as a child in one of his grandfather’s old books entitled, Minstrels of the Middle Ages.

 

Douglas Dilosa was a dark minstrel: he rode an old black motorcycle, and his “costume” which really was his everyday attire was made of black leather and white linen. He was a remnant of bygone days, a wild mixture of many things that had no place in the modern world any more. He smelled of earth, of wildflowers, of sweat, and had an aura of untamed passions, and danger about him. Words for these things, for these illegitimate feelings were struck from dictionaries long ago, but the city dwellers’ blood still stirred when the sound and cadence of poetry touched them, and whipped the calm waters of their passions to a raging, stormy sea. Their muscles still twitched, and their hips still swayed when Douglas Dilosa’s fingers danced on the tight skin of one of his conga drums, or plucked the strings of his guitar making his audience shed a few secret tears.

 

When it first happened to Angela, she was baffled. True, since her teenage years she sometimes wondered what it must be like to feel so much as to resort to violence against self or others, but in her mind, this all was an aberration, of course. Her parents didn’t work hard and saved money for her to pursue her dream in the All New World so that she could foolishly waste it playing around with such nonsense as feelings. She, like millions of others, was in pursuit of a “good life,” which was a foggy idea about a comfortable, conflict-free existence. She spent most of her time and life in the city, so she never saw the violent beauty of a waterfall, nor heard the mating calls of stags, or stood motionless in a forest surrounded by life in all its stages all at once: young shoots hurrying toward the light, trees flowering, blooming, decaying, dying, dead. If one wanted to maintain normalcy, it was best not to look too far back or too far ahead.

 

Her life was sterile, convenient; she had money to buy services at the ready. She had desires, but they were also easily satisfied with the aid of technology. The deep longings, the dark, primordial moaning and cries that she sometimes heard as an echo in her mind were glitches to be ignored, or to be quickly drowned out by the latest gadgets that could directly stimulate the brain’s pleasure center, or implant fake memories of pleasant holidays, relationships, or an entirely artificial, enhanced childhood, and personal history. The past could always be altered, modified, upgraded, or erased.

 

Yet, sitting in her self-driving car on the way to work in the mornings, or going home after work, or going out with friends on the weekends, her mind drifted away sometimes following the tired, red eyes of tailgate lights, or bent with the streetlamps under the weight of the night, of loneliness, of meaninglessness. Sometimes she had the feeling that all the well-lit roads in the city really lead nowhere, but went round and round like the plastic horses of a merry-go-round. At times she drove around the outskirts of town looking at the power lines whose sagging and rising silhouette was like the heartbeat of the city against the sky. It reminded her of the hospital room where both her parents died: first her mother then, a year later, her father. Both had a weak heart, and sometimes the memory of the ECG[3] monitor intruded on Angela’s mind. However, looking at the power lines also had a hypnotic, soothing effect on her. She didn’t want to think or feel anything; she just wanted to be lulled to sleep by the rhythm the lines measured out as if they were monitoring the heart beat of the entire city. 

 

She first saw Douglas play at a friend’s birthday party. At the time, she was fresh out of college, and the All New American Dream was proving a bit more difficult to realize than she had hoped. She had no friends in her new city; her work at the Force at the time was not as glamorous as it was now. She was a rookie, a loner, and she felt that despite all the rhetoric and new slogans about inclusivity, she still didn’t belong in this All New World. She has never seen or heard anything like Douglas. His face, his style and his entire demeanor were shocking and repulsive to her at first. She felt ashamed for him. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to feel ashamed or bothered at all by the mocking, derisive looks and comments. He walked into the crowded room, and people hurried to distance themselves from him lest they might catch some nasty disease or bug that this man was bound to carry.

 

Douglas carried a guitar on his back and a conga drum under his arm. The host of the party said a few words to introduce his “special guest” and then quickly joined her friends in a safe distance from this wild man. Douglas removed the guitar from his back, looked at the people standing around him, circling him, engulfing him. His face showed no emotion, but behind his eyes there was a wildfire, a volcano erupting, shooting sparks and hot lava into the air. He started to speak and occasionally he’d play a chord or pluck a few notes on the guitar.

 

…Sitting here on the edge of reason

My toes are touching the void

All the roads I’ve taken

Every step and every turn

Choices and fate combined

Gave birth to this moment

Carved out of eternity

 

I am a dying star exploding

Unseen, unobserved in a

Vast ocean of space

A flickering candle in

The dark, dancing its last

Steps in a quiet room where

You have gone to sleep

 

Starlight was the master

That carved my eyes

So I may revel in its splendor

Your words are the tools

That sculpt and shape my soul

Adorning it with jewels…

 

Some more notes on the guitar, and then he’d continue:

 

…Dew trembles

On pink blossoms

Promises of love

Lies of lust

Tremble on your lips, and

Rain down on me like stardust…

 

You’re a white rose

Shivering, pulling

Fragile petals

Close about you like

A cape, like a thin

Satin robe to cover

A bare, naked heart

That flutters like a

Weightless feather

Oh, let me embrace

Your gentle warmth

And guard your light

Let me be the hands

That bend around your

Candle in the night…

 

He’d then start playing his conga drum and there were no more words just rhythm and movement. He’d go faster and faster for a while, then he’d slow down, his chest rising fast, the sweat dripping from his forehead. He’d then close his eyes, and it seemed he was entirely somewhere else and he invited his audience to follow him, to follow the sound of his drum to that other place where they could be wild and free. Most of the guests giggled, frowned or snapped a few pictures and were now back to chatting and drinking.

 

All this time, Angela stood in a dark corner sipping on a dark green drink the name of which she didn’t know. It made her head swim, and she couldn’t take her eyes off this wild man in the middle of the room. Douglas’ words and music were arms and hands about her, comforting, coaxing, nudging, leading her, showing her things that seemed like a dream but were much more lucid. Angela followed, giving herself over to this new sensation. At first, she had an awkward smile on her face, and tried not to move, or sway with the rhythm of the drum. Then, she let go, closed her eyes, and there, behind the veil of her lids she started dancing, running, flying above the city she wanted so much to call home. She looked down, and saw that the city was an immense red mushroom emitting fumes and gases that poisoned the air about it. She saw cars that looked like hard-shelled insects crawling along on the surface of the mushroom-city gobbling up tiny insects that stood on two legs, and didn’t didn't even realize that they were being eaten alive.

 

When the music stopped, Angela opened her eyes and was grateful for the darkness that still covered her. Douglas has finished, the crowd now ignored him completely, and as he started for the exit, Angela followed him. This was 18 months before. Since then, they became regular visitors to that other realm where they could soar, leap, and fly free. However, after a brief and exciting meeting of two completely different worlds, a choice had to be made: how to bring the magical creature, this centaur of their love into the real world of the 22^nd century. While Douglas’ creativity was given a new impetus, Angela struggled to maintain a professional demeanor at work. At meetings she’d scribble notes like

 

…the freight train

of my mind

whistles and screeches

as wagons of thought

roll by slowly

clickety-clank

clickety-clank…

 

Now, some Muse

Impatient to get her

Message through

A faulty wire

Dictates to a

Reluctant scribe

Resistance is futile

I’m an empty vessel

A stiff-necked mule

In your hands, Love,

I’m a witless tool…

 

Douglas asked her to join him in his hut, but there was no way Angela could ever have faced her parents with plans about this new “career move.” She withdrew more and more, and eventually ceased contact with Douglas altogether. 

"Whatever has gotten into me? What nonsense! What impossible fantasies!" she'd admonish herself as she lay awake at night back in her city apartment. Douglas sensed the inevitable end, but his mind was not trained to think in terms of practicalities, and his proud heart was not able to accept the idea of being discarded in such a way. To him, things of the heart were no game. To him, they were life itself. 

 

I threw the door open

standing on the curb

yelling, “come on in!”

while you looked at me

with suspicious eyes

and frowns

“strange,” you’d mutter

and turn away

when all I had was

pieces of a broken mirror

you saw yourself in…

 

After countless messages like this that received no response of any kind from Angela, Douglas stopped writing, performing, and in a way living. He’d roam the streets of the city, or he’d hang out in front of the building where Angela worked hoping to catch sight of her. That’s how he was picked up by the police. In a latest attempt to make the city safer, love, attachment, and any other expression of passion were branded as crimes on the grounds that they are too violent and aggressive. Gadgets were designed to interpret body posture, gait, muscle tension, and other telltale signs that could give away such hidden “violence.” Cameras were the compound eye of the city, this large spider, and drones filled the skies like a dark cloud of humming locusts scanning everyone in the streets, in the offices and even in their homes.

 

Douglas Dilosa was apprehended, arrested and booked based on the result of drone scans that detected a high level of “hidden resentment” in him. Once in holding, he was subjected to other, more sophisticated tests that were designed to uncover the nature and possible target of his potentially violent tendencies. It was established that he was actively battling the memory of a person - whose identity could not be established - which was already an act of violence. The worst, however, was that he had a recurring dream in which he was seen shoveling dirt over a human figure that was visibly moving, and showed signs of life. “Dream Screening,” as it was called, was quite advanced, and could be used in courts as evidence against a person accused of thought crimes.

 

Detective Lee tossed the reports on the table for Douglas to see.

 

“This is your so called ‘love’: nothing by barbarous violence, and cruel, bestial destruction. Your words, and fancy letters, were a trap, a bait you’d hoped your innocent victim would fall for, ” she said with bitterness in her voice.

 

Douglas didn’t say anything for a while, and seemed to be writhing in pain he tried hard not to show.

 

“You are a wound that won’t heal; you’re an oozing hole in my chest. You think I’m dangerous, but you’re the real criminal: you’re an amnesiac killer that sheds old memories like a snake sheds its old skin. You are a permanent stain in a coffee mug I can’t drink from any more, but haven't the heart to throw away,” he finally said.

 

“I saw it: you tried to murder me every night in your dream!” Angela hissed.

 

“I tried to bury your memory, but it is indestructible. It is a perennial flower that grows back no matter how many times its petals are crushed,” Douglas muttered weakly.

 

“Enough of your hyperboles and metaphors; you broke the law,” Detective Lee snapped.

 

“Do what you will then,” Douglass said feebly.

 

“In the name of fairness, you will be subjected to artificially induced dreams in which you will experience what you tried to do to me. You will learn what it’s like to be buried alive nightly for six months - that’s how long you’ve been doing it to me. Your memory will be erased, and you will be given a chance at a new life - a second chance if you will, that the state graciously grants to the likes of you.  Traces of passion and all that nonsense you have been poisoning the people with for so long will be chemically suppressed. Thanks to science, you will be tamed, and free of the disease of your old, outdated dreams, and you will join the rest of your fellows as a peaceful, productive member of society.”

Douglas seemed not to hear what was being said to him. Behind his closed eyes, he lowered himself into a cool pond. He started swimming, taking a few strong strokes. Then he turned back toward the shore, and saw a beautiful woman sitting on a blanket under a giant tree. A guitar and a picnic basket lay next to her; she was holding a book in one hand, with the other she smoothed her straight, black hair that was ruffled by a breeze. She looked up, waved at him and smiled.

 

Then, a giant eraser moved across the sky leaving a wide, blank streak in its wake. It removed the clouds, the birds and the sun. It kept moving and erasing the top of the giant tree, the leaves, the branches, and the trunk. Douglass wanted to scream, but couldn’t. He wanted to wave to the girl to signal to her somehow to run; he wanted to swim back to shore, grab hold of her, and run, run, and disappear in the dense forest surrounding the pond. But the forest was being erased too with an ever increasing speed. 

The rocky shore of the pond was gone; the next swoop of the eraser made half Douglas' body disappear. He could still see her, but she was now standing, and instead of the book she had a shovel in her hand. Suddenly, everything disappeared, and the world went black. Douglass could only hear the sound of his own heavy breathing. He wanted to move but couldn’t.  

 

Then, there was the sound of earth being thrown on a wooden box.

---

[1] Detective Inspector

[2] Special Investigations Division

[3] Electrocardiogram: a machine that monitors heart rate and rhythm.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Your writing is very intelligent & I would guess that might be why this one's not getting many reviews. I've been told that readers don't understand my use of complex words/writing & that's why they don't comment. Now I know how they might feel, reading this & feeling it's a few notches above my typical comprehension level. I've read a number of dystopian stories/books lately & you take it to a nicely unexpected place -- thought-control. Great job of intermingling poetry & prose, as well as keeping this overall storyline conversational & approachable, despite your heavy-duty treatment of various aspects of the idea-fest (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[Laz K.]

Thanks for reading and commenting - you made my day with your words!

[Coyote Poetry]

The story was amazing. I don't know how I missed this one. The story had the feel of realness and I liked the characters and the story line. Running to death or seeking death. All of shall know. Thank you my friend for sharing the outstanding story.
Coyote

[emmajoy]

Why so many views but not even half a review! Yes, there is a great block of words to read, perhaps time and effort is limited but in those or any other thoughts, people have lost the chance to read a very fine and unusual story.

The wording is first class, the characters interesting, unusual in this or that way. The dialogue holds the hand and guides thought along very nicely. To actually guide another reader into this post would not only distort it but also delve too deeply which would be a pity.. it is a mystery, keep it that way. The meaning and moral of the story is up to each reader, BUT deserves reading.

[Laz K.]

Thanks a million for reading, and "hearing," the story, and for reviewing.