Will Palmer ‘21
Staff Editor
Part I of this series can be found online in Volume 72, No. 4 from September 18, 2019
The Chief of Equals scurried offstage to join the rest of the Blue Checks in their macabre ritual. As directed by Fawkes, the hooded kangaroo bailiffs dragged me and Dennis away, up a set of roughly-carved stairs into a cave set in the face of the nearby cliffside. A pair of doors fashioned from reclaimed scrap metal clanged shut behind us. The macropods snuffled ominously in the fresh darkness and continued to direct Dennis and me forward. A torch crackled and started burning, casting Fawkes’ mask in an even eerier light than usual. Dark eyes observed us from underneath.
We had walked about a hundred feet into the cave when our escorts abruptly brought us to a halt. I looked up to see a ragged, bone-festooned banner splayed above us, its colors long faded: “Welcome to Our Safe Space.” A stooped, robed man shuffled towards us from an alcove to our side, holding what appeared to be a guestbook borrowed from a Red Roof Inn.
“Please, ah, if you wouldn’t mind signing into our cooperative living space?” the receptionist queried. Dennis and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Between guffaws, Dennis managed to hack out, “You guys- hah- really- hah- got the euphemism game- hah hah- down pat, you know that?”
Fawkes and the kangaroos were not amused. The receptionist appeared to be on the brink of soiling himself, so I took pity on the man and reached for the book. He opened it to a page towards the end and held it out to me. “Do I get a pen? Or a quill or something?” I asked. The receptionist shrank back in fear. From behind me, Fawkes growled, “You shall write in blood, as all the others have.”
I spun towards him, flustered. “Alright, now, you listen to me, you grimy, Hacktivist-looking jackass. I know you guys are all into this freaky holistic crap but that is just super unsanitary. You know how Lord Byron died? Well, it wasn’t this, but it’s kind of analogous.” *
“It’s not really that analogous, honestly,” mumbled Dennis.
I sighed. “Et tu, Brutus?”
“That’s your chinchilla. My name is Dennis. You’ve known me for, like, seven years, man.”
“It’s a turn of phrase.” I pricked my finger on a pin the receptionist had produced and looked down to the guestbook.
I filled in my preferred pronouns and the required list of “subconscious biases,” but paused when I came to the next section: “List Ten Ways You Have Checked Your Privilege in the Past Day.” I looked up at the receptionist, then at Fawkes and the ’roos, then back at the receptionist. “Uh…seriously?” I pointed at the checklist, a drop of crimson slowly falling from my fingertip and spattering across the page. “I haven’t had much time to check my privilege since you did the hipster equivalent of taking us to a CIA Black Site. Only thing you missed was waterboarding us with hoppy IPAs.” No response was forthcoming. Blood dripped onto the paper. “And this part here? My entire voting history? How am I supposed to remember that? Are you saying I’m the only one here who pregamed election day?”
Dennis looked at me. “Yeah, man. I mean, I’m pretty sure you were. Well, except for Brexit.” Fawkes cocked his head approvingly. I sighed again, defeated, then scrawled “I plead the fifth” in the remaining space before handing the book over to Dennis.
“I don’t think that’s how the Fifth Amendment works,” Dennis observed.
“Jeez, why don’t you tell them about all my tweets from 2009 while you’re at it?”
“Well, there was that one that was pretty bad. You know. The whole Inuit community was pretty upset with you for a while there, if I remember correctly.”
“How was I supposed to know they held the Narwhal in such particularly high esteem?!” I responded. “I thought those things were extinct!” I paused, remembering. “But yeah, getting death threats in scrimshaw was pretty interesting. I knew those folks had a lot of words for snow, but they have even more for murder.” **
One of the kangaroos loudly defecated beneath its robes, as if to punctuate my recollections. Dennis held his bound hands up to cover his nose. “Oh, man, that is just heinous. What the hell do you feed—”
“Please don’t answer that,” I interjected.
Fawkes abruptly turned to the receptionist and spoke, rubbing the temples of the mask as if fighting a headache. “The macropods appear to have encountered a period of great gastrointestinal distress. Such as to not befoul the soy mines, I shall return them to their pastures. You may complete the registration process for our latest. . .residents.” They spun on their heel and strode up the passageway. The kangaroos hopped after, soiled robes trailing on the floor.
As Fawkes and the macropod enforcers disappeared down the hallway, the receptionist seemed to find his spine and adopted a more upright posture, much in the style of an inflatable tube person. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow and let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Man, the one with the mask really gives me the willies. Like, how do they eat?”
Dennis and I looked up from the registration book, confused. “Wait,” Dennis said, “You’re…”
“Normal-ish?” replied the receptionist. “Yeah. But only when the kangaroos aren’t around. My name is Anthony, by the way. But my lovers call me Carlos.” He took the registration book from Dennis and slid it under his vestments. “Walk with me. I’ll show you to the cooperative living space.”
A short trek led us to the “co-op”: a poorly lit cavern hacked into the stone, filled with stacks of beds and a haze of cheap incense. We passed several sorry-looking individuals who we presumed to be workers, covered in globs of soy from the mines and lugging heavy pickaxes with them.
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here briefly,” Anthony began, “I’ll go and get some uniforms for you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He swept out of the room.
I turned to Dennis. “OK, see, those directions leave us some pretty questionable wiggle room, if I’m not wrong about who that guy is.”
Dennis ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t think you’re wrong. How’d he end up all the way out here with the crazy brigade?”
“And more importantly,” I added, “How did he avoid getting canceled?”
Anthony spoke up from behind us. “Oh,” he said. “I lied. Obviously.”
To be continued…
*Sepsis. It was sepsis.
** If you would like to learn more about the Inuit community, go online and visit: itk.ca
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wtp7bq@virginia.edu