In a World of Plethora

Plethora woke up to a nudge from her coworker. It really hurt this time. Startled, she looked to the left to find him staring at her with wide, terrified eyes. She knew she couldn’t react because the guard was looking right at her. She fixed her eyes back on the piece of wood she was holding. When she glimpsed the guard move out of her field of vision, she looked back at her coworker, Kale, and mouthed a ‘Thank you.

She’d been writing again. Kale saved her.

She rubbed her eyes tiredly, trying to suck back the tears and agony inside her. She had to stay contained. Any sign that she wasn’t content, and she would be facing a hearing. Any more signs that she was writing, and she would be dragged to prison.

When she was younger, Plethora thought prison would be a good place. At least she would have more time alone; then, she could write in her head all she wanted. The world was so loud she had troubling hearing herself think sometimes. But then a distant cousin of hers went to prison. He was much younger than her, and he didn’t know how to shut up. He started telling all those dreams he had at night, then he started telling all those fantasy stories he made up in his funny little head. His parents tried to cover up that their son was a Creative, but word had already gone out that he was diseased, and the guards came to take him in the dead of the night.

She pleaded with her parents to visit him for months, but they always told her it was prohibited. She’d been ten at the time. Now eighteen, she knew the truth: Joshua had never been dragged to prison; he’d been killed.

People acted stupid all like the government wanted. Some of them even started to believe it. But some of them still knew the truth: they were smart; they just couldn’t show it. She was a smart one; she knew that. In fact, she was smart enough to know how to act dumb. If she’d been less smart, she’d be dead. Like Joshua.

Suppressing a sigh inside her the way she always did, Plethora went on sawing the wood.

*****

Plethora woke up again in the middle of the night. She’d trained herself to wake up when she was having a creative dream. This time, she was flying on a creature with wings, battling guards and taking them down. The creature could grow vine leaves from the ground at will. She woke up with a bittersweet smile on her face, grateful that she had another bizarre dream but melancholy because she was still trapped in that miserable reality.

She played the dream over and over and over in her head. She couldn’t write it down anywhere; it was prohibited. She couldn’t share it with anyone, or someone might find out and report her to the officials. She would die. Like Joshua. She had to keep it to herself on the hope that someday, some hero would defeat the entire system and people would be allowed to write again. Or paint. Or design. Or write music. Or sing.

Way before Plethora’s birth, The Crisis happened. It had been the climax of poetry, books, songs, sculptures: art. She wasn’t sure what happened—they never talked about it in school, or anywhere, for that matter—but something sparked and all that art led to the overthrowing of multiple world leaders at the time. She was now sure that art alone wasn’t responsible—if it was responsible at all—and that something must have happened to fuel such revolutions. But the way the government told the story, art was the culprit. Creativity. The human mind.

Since then, anyone who was labeled a Creative (with a capital C) was dragged to their death. Executed coldly in front of everyone to set an example. Painters? Singers? Authors? Poets? They were all gone. Guards infiltrated every single house and took away every copy of every book, every painting, every random piece of paper with a number or scribbles on it, every gramophone, every vinyl. The industry of paper was largely struck. Anything art related became governmentalized to serve the purposes of the government and the government alone. Anyone who made so much as a joke was put under severe surveillance. More often than not, they ended up disappearing and never seen or heard from again.

Even Plethora’s name was a secret. Her name on paper was Ply. She wasn’t sure what it meant—or if it had a meaning at all—but she liked her real name better. Plethora. What must that be like, to never be in need, to never live in fear? She often wondered if there was freedom in death, if perhaps she should get herself caught and get it over with. But one thing stopped her other than the instinct of survival: the fear of ceasing to exist.

She wasn’t sure what there was after death. No one ever came back from there to provide insight on the place. She was terrified that it wasn’t a place at all. She was terrified that perhaps she would never be able to write even then because … she wouldn’t exist anymore. She would rather keep on living her sad life, doing her sad job, until natural death visited her. She would die in her bed with a husband on her side and children and grandchildren surrounding her. She would probably say something wise—or, if she dared, something Creative—and let her soul go. She wanted to have many years of misery, as long as she could still write in her head.

Once more, she went over her dream.

To be continued …

December 12th, 2019