Eden Enforced, Part 1

Dominic promised himself that he would not put up a fight or openly show fear. Instead he planned to walk to the “Ending Room” without hesitation.

It was the waiting he had to admit that was the hardest. He knew this day was coming three months ago but he had no idea the final few hours would be so difficult.

For as much as he thought he knew, he was suddenly uncertain. What was to happen next was a guessing game more than any knowledge he had acquired over the years of “working” for the Central Government.

He sat watching the two Enforcers, dressed in black with their large mustaches and wooden clubs. Where he sat was no bigger than what Dom remembered to be the size of an old-fashioned phone booth.

Dom knew there would be no last meal, besides he wasn’t hungry. The fish-odored cube of sustenance would be better used to feed someone else anyway.

Suddenly there was some sort of disturbance in the far end of the hallway. Within seconds a smallish man dressed in a heavy orange robe wearing a large white beaked mask over his face, strode by Dom’s holding place.

The ‘Grand Phoenix,’ Dom instantly recognized. He knew then his death was imminent.

Old as he was Dom was still physically fit. He had only recently experienced a slowing down of his motor skills, but then he was nearly 60 years old, and such things could be expected.

Without warning the waiting was over as one of the Enforcers stepped forward and yanked the steel cage door along its tracks. Dom waited to be invited to stand up.

However because he did not stand right away the Enforcer, joined by the other, grabbed him under the arms and lifted him roughly to his feet. Dom jerked his arms free from their heavy grasps and stepped forward on his own.

He turned in the direction that the Grand Phoenix walked. He lifted his head, sucked his stomach in and pushed his chest out as he walked the few steps to the “Ending Room.”

The “Ending Room’ was bright and sterile. It was the cleanest place he had seen in decades and it startled him, so much so that he stumbled in the doorway.

“So much for a graceful entrance”, Dom stated aloud as the Enforcers grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him up.

They guided him backwards to a large board standing on end. They forced him against what turned out to be a metal table covered with a white cloth.

From there the two Enforcers worked quickly and quietly buckling the leather strap around his waist. Dom relaxed as best he could as the pair immobilized his legs followed by his right arm and finally his left.

Once finished, the table jerked to life and started tilting backwards. Dom could feel the hum of the electric motor buried somewhere inside the tables thick pedestal.

“So this is where all that energy I’ve produced over the years went,” Dom joked, though no one laughed.

Before he knew it, a woman wearing a white surgical mask appeared by his side. She slapped his left arm where the elbow bends and produced a needle that she gracefully slipped through his paper like skin and into his blue throbbing vein.

Once again he felt the motor inside the tables single leg hum to life as it tilted forward. Within seconds Dom was upright, feet on the ground again, but with his arms held outright from his body.

Standing in front of him were the two Enforcers and the Grand Phoenix. Dom couldn’t help but to once again notice how small and unhealthy the man dressed in orange seemed.

Then the Grand Phoenix spoke, causing Dom to snicker. Not only was the man scrawny, his voice was high-pitched and weak.

An Enforcer stepped forward and struck Dom hard in the stomach with the end of his club.

The older man tried to tighten his muscles from the blow but it hurt all the same: “Really?” Dom challenged, “Is that all you got?”

The Enforcer moved forward again with his club poised to strike the old man on the side of the head. It was the Grand Phoenix who intervened in the coming beating.

Instead the Grand Phoenix held a scroll in his left hand above his head. He allowed it to unfurl, where upon the end of the parchment bounced of the surface of the hard floor.

The man in the bird mask started “You’ve been found guilty by the Central Authority of being non-productive and are hereby sentenced to death via lethal injection.”

It all sounded so official, but Dom recognized it for what it was — parsing: Saying one thing and meaning something else entirely. He had perfected the art of parsing as a writer for the Authority Publishing Bureau, having worked his way up from typesetter, to ink monkey and finally as a typist.

Still the Grand Phoenix droned on reading out the list of events of Dom’s life the Central Authority know about. The worse according to the man behind the mask was how Dom had participated in the mass “Fall Riots of 2015.”

In the distance the emergency bell rang.