No By Robin Wyatt Dunn

No.

No.

I’ve begun again. Everything you told me I wouldn’t do, I did. The colors inside the prison were musical — a symphony of color.

It was not a state prison — not in the usual sense.

Now here we are. It’s good to see you again. You’ve aged well. Putting on weight. I think you look good. It’s not what I would have expected. I’m not sure what I would have expected, but it makes sense.

Do you have any coffee? Sitting around without something to drink seems silly.

Surely you heard the rumors — all that was happening. I can confirm some of them. The government’s fallen, but the new one is much the same as the old. And it’s true Kansas has rebelled. I was there. But it was a sullen rebellion. I’m not sure that anyone cares. Not yet.

I care. Do you?

It’s not right, my coming here. There were other things I needed to do first, but they told me to come here. To see you, and your people. As though we could change anything now.

It was right what you said — do you remember? — that no one would forgive me. I took that to heart.

You’re a scapegoat now too, you see. I’m sorry for that. Still, it would be hard to find a better scapegoat. You, so gloriously isolated all these years . . . like a show-off. Pretending you knew so much.

Now you will know more.

I’ve come to kill you — you already knew that — but more than that, I’ve come to have vengeance on you and your town. We could do that — perhaps even better — without killing you. We could convert you.

I said you couldn’t be converted. I said you were stubborn enough to make it difficult. And I did want to be the one to do it.

We’re coming now. Over every state border crossing, from the East. Some from the South too. These trees will make beautiful graves for you, don’t you think? You’re fortunate in that.

I forgive you.

And I remember everything you said. Everything you did to me.

© 2015 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming during the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the intelligentsia. He holds three degrees, drinks coffee (lattes included), and thinks that being intelligent is a good thing and talking about ideas worthwhile. He is the kind of pinko egghead Joseph McCarthy wanted to flay alive and burn at the stake on the White House lawn. He knows that the McCarthys and the Pol Pots and the George W. Bushes of the world are always and forever eager and ready to slit his throat and dump him in a mass grave. This is why he has a wicked sense of humor.

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