Please Don't Feed The Wall

Then the line began to move once again, and they resumed their journey towards the center of the maze.

This story is my submission for the monthly Symposium of the Soaring Twenties Social Club. This month's topic is “E_ection”.

---

The little doll sat on the shelf in the Freedom Center gift shop, and Matilda just had to have it.

Her parents, however, couldn't care less.

It was, after all, election time, a season where every moment had been alchemically transmuted into atomic units of political anxiety, temporal fragments of bureaucratic drama, weaved into a precious countdown leading to a spectacular fanfare of fresh, delicious freedom.

But none of that mattered to Matilda. All she wanted to do was go home and play with her dolls. And this new one that sat before her was perfect.

Tall and coiffed. Handsome. Dazzling eyes and a winning smile, wrapped in a suit and tie. It was supposed to look like anyone, a mutable effigy designed to inspire the everyman to dream of attaining some apex position in the arena of global politics.

But when Matilda picked the doll up and examined it more closely, a greater truth began to reveal itself to her. Beyond the coifed facade lay something more. A wounded child lost in the dark, crying out for help. An injured husk in search of its soul.

And Matilda knew that she was going to help him find it, no matter what the cost.

---

"Oh Matilda, not now!" her mother said, flicking her daughter's hands away from the sleeve of her blazer. Her torso, which had once been a source of unconditional maternal warmth, was now a tragic billboard of partisan gibberish, littered with political buttons and stickers - all blue, to indicate her political affiliation. On her face she wore the grin of a tyrant, and her eyes looked mad, like those of a gambler, drunk on luck, going back to the casino one more time, chasing flimsy expectations of a better tomorrow.

Matilda, ever persistent, refused to capitulate.

"Yes Mother," she said, cradling the doll like a wounded bird. "But he's so perfect - his smile is so charming, his hair is like fine wheat on a golden plain, and the public just absolutely loves him. Also, his tie is grey! Everyone else wears red and blue, but grey? I think grey is so interesting. And I already have everyone else in the set, so..."

"Matilda!" snapped her father, tugging his gaze away from the walls of televisions surrounding them. His face looked like a psychotic mudslide, a permanent neurotic crisis etched into his eyes, eyes which had spent a lifetime digesting the deceptions of the very apparatus he was once again preparing to renew his vow of fealty to. Blue stickers adorned his shirt, and atop his head he wore a blue hat with some embroidered political slogan from long ago that had since worn away, leaving a string of unreadable nonsense in its place. A pair of scratched glasses magnified his own internal madness (amplified by not having eaten for days, despite the constant promise of sandwiches announced by loudspeakers every fifteen minutes) while reflecting the insanity of their immediate surroundings: a twisting, cavernous maze of impossible topography, ignorant of any consistent direction of gravity, that twisted and turned vertically as well as horizontally through an endless interior filled with floating balloons, banners and confetti. An immeasurably long line of people stretched through the labyrinth as far as the eye could see, slowly inching their way towards the center, where their ultimate destination awaited them, that sacred place where they could flex whatever small remaining fragment of sovereignty they had left - the Voting Temple.

Matilda shrunk away after her father scolded her. She turned her attention back to the doll, while her father turned back to the televisions, oscillating his gaze between live streams of the countless, dizzying metrics of the election and a looping video montage of everything that made the country great: sunsets, baseball games, magic bullets, rapidly imploding skyscrapers, a quiet unspoken subservience to an unknown parasitic race of inter-dimensional colonialists, money printing, fireworks, hot dogs, and of course, sandwiches.

"I could really use one of those sandwiches," her father said, chewing on his lip like a rabid dog.

"I'm sure they'll be here soon, darling," Mother said, looking for any means of distraction from their hunger. Talking heads with colorful neckties popped up on a nearby screen, poking and prodding each other with a theatrical flair matched only by professional wrestlers. Mother liked the ones wearing blue ties, and every time one of them appeared she smiled and played with the buttons on her coat, nervously flicking at them like an overstimulated monkey. But when the ones wearing red ties appeared, she scrunched up her face in a look of disgust.

"Just wait until our blue party claims victory!" she chortled as she addressed the television, still fiddling with her blue buttons. "We'll smash you red party fools like sacks of rotten fruit!" Then she looked around, realizing that the line was populated by constituents of both parties. There was an exchange of dirty looks with several neighbors, but that wasn't enough to keep her mouth, perpetually in search of excitement through conflict, in check.

"And that goes for all of you too!" she said, spitting her words at the reds around her. "Blue is the color of our future, the color of freedom!!"

Matilda clutched the doll even tighter as her mother and their neighbors exchanged pleasantries. Clearly her parents had no interest in her pleas. "It's not fair," she said, gazing into the doll's eyes. "They get to pick their doll, but I have to beg and plead just to get one more for my collection."

Suddenly the line began to move. Her parents inched forwards, thrilled at the tiny scrap of progress. The ankle chains which connected them to the rest of the line tugged at her legs, nudging her away from the gift shop. Matilda began to place the doll back on the shelf.

But a moment later a series of alarms rang out, followed by the sounds of dogs and sirens and gunfire and intense physical struggle. The line froze, all eyes on the source of the chaos. Far down below, where the twisting line finally reached its destination, a crazed man had dashed out from the Voting Temple, waving his hands wildly in the air, screaming utter madness out into the dark void of the Freedom Center.

"Oh no, it's one of those types again," Mother said.

"A terrorist!" her father said.

"If only they could see the error of their ways. They want to ruin everything, with all of this talk about how the system is rigged and how we should all be free."

"Madness!" her father cried out again.

"Utter madness!" Mother affirmed, fiddling with her buttons. "And to think they could vote blue instead. What a waste."

Hard boots clattered on the ground below, followed by several sharp cracking sounds, flashes of light, and a cry of pain. The man was gone, the alarm bells ceased and calm slowly returned to the Voting Center, aided in part by an emulsified sedative misted out into the atmosphere by tiny sprinklers spread throughout the facility.

Then the line began to move again.

Matilda stepped forward, hiding a mischievous smile. Perhaps she had fallen prey to a moment of weakness, or maybe the recent distraction had inspired her to take matters into her own hands. But none of that mattered now, because the shelf in the gift shop was empty, and the doll was in her coat pocket.

---

"I'm going to call you Pendleton!" Matilda whispered, taking care not to wake up the others. "Pendleton Killborne!"

Pendleton's hair glittered as she cradled him in the darkness. His smile cast a soft glow onto Matilda's arms. It made both the tent and the temporary internment camp they were sleeping in feel more like home.

Mother lay in her cot snoring, occasionally whispering something awful about someone she knew, while father stirred in his sleep, briefly mumbling about superdelegates and swing states and how every vote mattered. Fearful of being discovered, Matilda began to tuck Pendleton into her jacket pocket, not wanting to disclose his presence nor the means of his acquisition.

"Wait!" said a small voice from below.

Matilda looked down.

It couldn't be...could it?

For a moment there was nothing but silence. Then the voice spoke again, and this time the doll's mouth moved and its eyes blinked.

"Let me be clear," he said, without breaking his smile.

Matilda nearly jumped out of her skin, and had to cover her mouth so she wouldn't shriek and wake up the whole tent. She stared at the doll, her innocent eyes wide open in amazement. Finally she summoned the courage to speak.

"Ok," she whispered, her tiny voice quivering.

"We have a lot of work to do," said the doll.

Matilda's eyes narrowed. "We do?" she asked, with a puzzled look on her face.

"And I promise that as your elected leader, I will make sure that we get this work done." Pendleton said the last part slowly, emphasizing "get" "this" "work" and "done" like drum beats in a march, physically punctuating each word with a distinct hand gesture. His eyes looked alive, like tiny pools of life poking through a plastic ivy league skull.

For a moment, Matilda just started at the doll. Then a moment later, the air raid siren screamed out, waking everyone in the tent. Matilda peered outside. Morning had arrived, and the artificial sun had been activated, casting its discordant light onto the world below. It was time to resume their place in line, the line to freedom. She shoved Pendleton into her pocket and began moving towards her spot.

As Mother and Father shuffled their way back into the line, careful not to trip over their chains, Matilda noticed something very interesting.

"Mother! Father! Your buttons, your stickers...they're red now!"

"What on earth are you talking about?" Mother asked, looking down at her blazer. Her buttons and stickers, every one of them, had changed color from blue to red! But Mother acted as if this was nothing new, and she looked shocked at Matilda's assertion. "Of course they're red! Red is the color of our future, the color of freedom! We've always voted red, isn't that right dear?"

Father grunted his approval, adjusting the red cap on his head. Matilda said nothing, but as she stepped into her place in line, she noticed that everyone she could see - the old man five spaces ahead, the woman with the curly hair eight spaces back - everyone, literally everyone, was now wearing the opposite color of what they wore yesterday.

"As if we'd ever be caught dead voting blue, Matilda!" Mother said. "How you could possibly think such a thing is beyond me. I must say, if you weren't my daughter..."

Then the line began to move once again, and they resumed their journey towards the center of the maze.

---

"Where the hell are those sandwiches?" father asked one of the guards.

The guard just shrugged, his mirrored face visor obscuring his eyes from view.

Matilda asked Mother how much longer it would be before they reached the Voting Temple. A few more days, she said. But she had said that yesterday, so Matilda wasn't sure she knew what she was talking about. How long had they been in this stupid line, she wondered. Weeks? Months? Years?

Lifetimes?

The line had wrapped itself around a corner, and Matilda and her family found themselves in a small alcove. Her parents settled into their usual routine: gazing at the nearby screens with open mouths and sweaty palms, letting the endless streams of political information dribble into their eyes, a constant barrage of stimuli that repeatedly oscillated in tone from fear to relief and back again.

Matilda wondered how anyone could make heads or tails of it all. Didn't any of these people have dolls to play with at home? Seeking refuge from the clutter, she turned away and tucked herself into a corner where neither her parents nor the cameras could see her.

"Oh Pendleton," she sighed, removing the doll from her pocket and pulling him close. "My feet hurt terribly. I so wish we could go home. This whole election thing seems so silly, and I miss my other dolls so badly - oh you'll love them and they'll love you, I just know it."

"I promise that if I'm elected, I will make it a key policy..." Pendleton began, but Matilda rolled her eyes and looked away. Trapped in a world of sound bites and catch phrases, she was desperate for fresh conversation.

"A key policy..." he continued.

A slight breeze ruffled Matilda's hair. She looked at Pendleton with a curious look on her face, wondering what else he could talk about if only she were to ask him the right question.

"A key...policy..."

"Pendleton?" Matilda asked. Her voice sounded soft and inquisitive, with a bittersweet finish, as though she knew the question she was about to ask might lead her to dark places. "Where are you from?"

"I was born and raised on a farm in the rural heartland of America. My father, a corn farmer and pastor, proudly served in..."

His answer sounded like he was reading from a script. Matilda, sharp as a tack, could see right through him. "No, Pendleton," she said. "Where are you really from?"

"In high school, I played varsity quarterback and was valedictorian of my class. After graduating..." Pendleton went on and on, adjusting the tilt of his head after each sentence. Matilda looked down at his tag, dangling from his back by a small cord. On the back of it, underneath the logo and some brand information, was a section about his story. He was reciting it word for word.

"Pendleton, that's the answer that's printed here on your tag. See?" She held up the tag so he could clearly see it. He scanned the text and blushed, like a schoolboy caught cheating on an exam. "I want to know the real answer."

"I was born and raised in on a farm in the rural..."

"No!" she cried out, looking over her shoulder to ensure she had not been heard. She pulled Pendleton right up to her face, her eyes inches away from his. "I want the truth!"

There was a silence and several moments passed where neither of them said anything. Then Pendleton once again delivered the same response. Matilda's blood began to boil. Finally she decided she had had enough. She grabbed Pendleton with one hand and the tag with the other, and pulled with all of her might. The cord snapped apart, and Matilda removed the tag, holding it up so Pendleton could see it. Then she ripped it in two.

"Now," she said, exasperated, "will you please answer my question? Where are you from? Who are you? What is your story, your real story?"

Pendleton's smile faded away like a sunset on the last day of summer. A dark coldness spread across his face. A new side of Pendleton had emerged, one that hid an unbearable pain.

"You'll probably want to sit down for this," he said.

---

Pendleton told her everything.

His childhood had been anything but ordinary, perhaps the farthest thing imaginable from a farm in the rural heartland of America.

He had grown up in a wealthy banking family. He had gone to an exclusive college, and had been a member of a secret society, both of which provided incredible advantages towards advancing in the material world. Money, power, and opportunities were always a phone call away. His life had been arranged for him in almost every way, groomed for a role inaccessible to those not born into it.

Indeed from a distance, Pendleton's life story seemed perfect.

But despite his affluent upbringing and arranged opportunities, Pendleton's life was not perfect. Given the details of his life so far, one would be forgiven for thinking so. But the truth was much, much worse. The heartless machinations of the modern state required its actors to have certain qualities to function smoothly. Qualities such as the absence of empathy, or the predisposition to do things that would keep normal people awake at night.

And so Pendleton's conditioning began early. He had been unspeakably traumatized at a young age, in a private, ritualistic fashion - so as to poison his soul and crush that radiant empathy which flows naturally from young children like water from a bubbling spring. He never specifically said what was done to him, but from the look on his face when he told her, she knew that it had taken a piece of his soul.

Once he became an adult he had entered politics, an effortless feat given his family's connections. But from there his troubles only got worse. All of it centered around blackmail. The first time it happened, he had been at a fundraiser where someone had spiked his drink. Three weeks later he woke up in his bedroom, with absolutely no memory of what had happened since that night, surrounded by photos of him doing things too horrible to describe, things that he had no recollection of doing. Next to the photos lay a typewritten note, addressed to him personally, suggesting specific positions he should adopt on several upcoming public policies, along with a firm suggestion of who the photos might be sent to if he chose not to obey.

That was just the start. The same money, power and opportunities that had once been only a phone call away had now become a series of awful traps, where escaping from one meant stepping into another. He had been compromised in the worst way, and his life became a blurred web of promises and threats, where lying to the public was just as much of an expectation as pushing the world further towards oblivion, one policy at a time. Trapped in an invisible game run by powerful shadows, one wrong move might cost him his career or his life, or perhaps even his soul, if there was anything left of it at this point.

When Pendleton had finished his story, Matilda was speechless.

"I had no idea it was like that," she whispered, shaking her head.

"You're the first person I've ever told."

"So all of these other people on the television? Are their stories like that too?”

Pendleton nodded his head in affirmation.

“And all of their promises, and all of the things they tell people? All lies?" she asked, with sadness in her eyes.

"Lies, or some gross distortion of the truth."

"And all of this?" Matilda asked, looking around the Freedom Center.

Pendleton smiled. "It's all just a big show."

Matilda sat for a moment and said nothing. She glanced over at her parents, still hypnotized by the various screens around them. They looked like small children, captivated by some cruel magician, waiting for the next trick. She felt a sense of compassion for them that she hadn’t ever known before, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but find their behavior absurd. "Do you know what's funny?" she asked, leaning in close to Pendleton with a wry smile. "I don't even know who they're really voting for!" she whispered, fighting back laughter.

Pendleton's smile returned. This was a different smile, not like the one he had shown before. Genuine. Alive. He looked up towards her, his eyes glowing with life.

"They probably don't, either!" he said, laughing.

"What a strange world this is," Matilda said, wiping tears from her eyes. "To think that a whole world could be swept under such a spell, and all because of a bunch of hired...well...please don't take offense at this..."

"After what I've told you? Not a chance."

"Actors," she said.

Pendleton nodded in agreement. "A wise man once said, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' I suppose I'm no different."

Matilda looked at Pendleton, caressing him with her eyes as if he were her own child. "No, Pendleton, you are different. You were brave enough to tell the truth, even if just to me. You could change things, I know you could."

But Pendleton just shook his head.

Then the line began to move. It was time to go. Matilda stood up, joining her parents. But when she saw them, their colorful garb had once again become blue!

Furthermore, their neighbors in line had also flipped colors...red had become blue, and blue, red! Even more puzzling...no one seemed to even notice the change. As she stared at them, trying to work out this recurring mystery, she saw dark shapes, like some faint shadowy wraiths, flickering in the dim light, surrounding them and siphoning energy from their bodies.

Then she blinked, and the vision was gone.

---

Finally they reached the Voting Temple.

It looked nothing like Matilda had imagined it to be. Barbed wire and electric fences formed a perimeter around an outer wall made from the darkest black fabric imaginable, which surrounded a tent containing the temple itself. Arrays of security cameras and dozens of uniformed personnel - each armed with tear gas, sonic pain batons, and an assortment of semi-automatic weapons - surrounded the entire facility. Mirrored visors blocked out the windows to their souls, recursively reflecting the scene around them, like brutalist disco balls of death. Tanks, helicopters and attack dogs filled out the choir, peppering the air with a bellicose ambience.

All around them stood racks of colored spotlights - some blue, some red. The colors of these light switched periodically as if on some sort of timer. When they did, so did the colors of the people in line - including her parents. As Matilda and her parents walked closer to the entrance of the temple, the pace of this oscillation seemed to increase, red becoming blue and blue becoming red, and vice versa again and again. Each time it happened, those affected seemed to momentarily convulse, as if some electrical current had been run through them.

"Matilda, you must listen to me," Pendleton said from inside of her pocket. "Inside of the temple are the voting booths. But inside of them is a wall....the hardest wall in the world. You can't see it or feel it - no one can - but it's always there. That's what your parents are really voting for - a wall in the way of human progress. A wall that eats the soul of everyone who feeds it, slowly, year after year."

A flap in the tent opened, revealing an armored door behind it, which began to slowly open. It was now their time to go in. They passed through the entrance, removing their shoes as they did, and shuffled through several scanning devices, each footstep harder than the last, the lack of calories finally catching up to them. Then an inner curtain opened, revealing a ring of curtained booths circling the center of a large hexagonal room with polished metal flooring. Armed guards flanked each booth and overhead florescent lights bathed the space with a sterile luminescence. As they crossed the threshold, a grisly odor stung Matilda's nose, some mix of burnt hair and gunpowder, and a low frequency hum, like dirty electricity, hurt her ears.

Pendleton continued. "This entire charade is designed to slow down human progress. The goal is to manipulate human attention like a pendulum - to keep it swinging between extremes, you see?"

Mother and Father were flickering constantly now, not just their buttons and hats but their clothing and skin as well - oscillating between the two opposing colors, casting a sickening glow onto everything around them. Their eyes were black like charcoal, and the vagrant spirits which Matilda had seen previously were back, pulling dark energy from their bodies.

"Matilda, please listen. We don't have much time. When one party wins the election, half of the collective consciousness is happy, and the other sad, or even worse, enraged."

"And this is what feeds the dark spirits?" Matilda asked, watching the wraiths feast upon the smoke-like emanation.

"Yes, my child. But it doesn't end there. After the election, time passes and all of the promises that were made vanish, like glowing embers from a winter fire, drifting into nothingness in the cold, dark night."

"Which makes the other side angry too..."

"Yes, Matilda."

"Then how can this trick keep working?" Matilda snapped, frustrated at those who could not see. "Surely if everyone is angry, things would have to change!"

"The public demands change! But memories fade - indeed this is the primary target of our kind: memory, that special wisdom encased in the human soul. People forget, and time passes. The people do become outraged, you see, but they don't remember. Like your parents. And so once again the pendulum swings, and people like me are put up, people who say they can deliver change or hope, or fight a war on some abstract concept. But all of us are compromised, and we will always double cross those who vote us into power."

"And so the dark spirits stay fed..."

"Yes, Matilda. And the dark spirits feed the wall. And the most nutritious food for the wall is fear."

"Time to vvvvvooooootttee...." Mother said, her voice vibrating like a quivering spring. She and father slowly hobbled towards the voting booths like animated cutouts.

"Matilda, do you hear me?" Pendleton said. His voice was loud and powerful, so much so that she could hear it inside of herself. "Don't feed the wall. Don't play its game!"

"But how?" she asked.

"Find peace. Express yourself. Write, draw, sing - anything creative - the wall hates creativity, because it has none of its own. Find a sacred space inside of yourself and push back in your own way. Live an ethical life on your terms, and fill the world with beauty, no matter how dark it gets!"

Matilda watched her parents pull back the curtains at their booths, ready to cast their vote. She had no idea who it might be for. Overhead, the video screens showed the two main candidates, but their pictures too were flickering back and forth, like some demented psychedelic zoetrope. Slowly their faces blended together and the shape of a skull began to emerge. Everything around her that bore the two political colors - her parents, the balloons, the flags and banners - were flickering so fast that they had become a meaningless blur. And beyond it all was a darkness so awful Matilda felt like it was chewing on her heart. Faster and faster it went until...

A small golf cart with two guards riding in it drove into the room, dropping off a small cooler next to one of the booths before zipping off the way it came.

The sandwiches had finally arrived.

Father dashed from his voting booth and threw open the container, unwrapped the first sandwich he could he could find and sank his teeth into it. It was like watching a great white shark feed on a harbor seal. Then he stopped chewing and began shaking, his nostrils wheezing, until a moment later he spat out a wet cloud of pebbles and dust.

"Dirt!" he cried out, scratching at his tongue. "They're filled with...dirt!"

Matilda saw her opening. She rushed into the booth where her father had been and closed the curtain behind her. She scanned the ballot at lightning speed, avoiding the section that offered the two primary candidates, and found what she was looking for. She grabbed a pen and wrote in the biggest letters she could:

"PENDLETON KILLBORNE"

Then she fed the ballot into a slot and pressed a button to scan it.

"Mmmmmaaatildaaaa, what are you doooiiing?" her flickering mother asked.

Matilda tore open the curtain and stepped out of the booth.

"This whole game is a scam from start to finish! The only person worth voting for is the only person brave enough to tell the truth about it...Pendleton Killborne!!!" Matilda reached into her pocket to grab Pendleton, ready to hold him up high, like some mythical maiden holding up a torch to shine light upon the dark world around her.

But her pocket was empty.

Terrified, she looked around, below, everywhere. But Pendleton was gone.

And then she heard the familiar sounds of boots and dogs and sirens. The guards in the room were running towards the entrance, weapons drawn. Lights flashing, voices cracking, smoke and chaos everywhere. Matilda turned to look at the entrance and saw a handsome young man, with golden blonde hair and a beautiful smile. He was running for the exit as fast as he could.

"Pendleton!" she cried, tears streaming down her face.

Pendleton yelled back at her, but she couldn't understand what he was saying. The guards were so close to him now, the dogs too, but somehow he found his way through the exit. Matilda followed.

Outside, helicopters screamed overhead, bleaching the ground with their spotlights, and snipers flocked to their perches, rifles ready. Where was Pendleton? Matilda searched for him, frantically scanning the mess around her. Then she saw him in the distance, running for who knows where, his pursuers nearly on him. Again he screamed something back to her, but the sounds of guards and dogs and helicopters and sirens overpowered everything he said. She thought she could read his lips though.

Find a sacred space inside of yourself and push back in your own way. Live an ethical life on your terms, and fill the world with beauty, no matter how dark it gets...

As the chaos surrounded her, she closed her eyes in search of her sacred space. The darkness began to consume her, but remembering Pendleton's words, she pushed back. Then she could see a faint vision, a small swirl of light. She took hold of it, nurturing it, painting a picture in her mind of ocean waves washing over tiny grains of sand sparkling in the dazzling sunlight, each one a crystal, each one a whole universe, each one a tiny speck of stardust containing infinite possibility.

In the distance, she could hear hard boots clattering on the ground, followed by several sharp cracking sounds, a flash of light, and a cry of pain.

Part of her wanted to go back, but she stayed where she was, in her sacred place, enjoying the beauty she had created as the chains around her ankles began to fade away.