by Miles Rost

“Radioactive”

A clear idyllic day was brought to the city. The loveliness of the sky’s vibrant blue hue shone down upon the people. The sun pounded on the concrete jungle of the city. It even shined down on one conspicuous man who walked down the street towards the center of the city.

He was walking with a purpose, yet still slowly. He looked to be about middle age, wearing a dark suit, red tie, and covered in a brown trenchcoat. He wore a scowl on his face like that of someone who just sucked on 15 lemons. Each step he took weighed heavy on the slowly decaying sidewalk, like he was forcing himself to keep moving even though he didn’t want to.

He walked to a place they called “The Four Walls”. These were the four buildings in downtown where four major interests lay. On the northwest corner was the local school district’s headquarters, in a 15 story gray stone building. Across the street to the east was “The Morton Building”, a hodgepodge of left and right wing social interest groups and lobbying firms. On the south side of the street were two tall buildings: The one south of the school district building was the Charles Building, where the grain exchange was located. And, on the other corner was the headquarters of “Laughsalot”, a major web corporation that had hundreds of millions of users.

He took a moment to survey the buildings, and reached under his trenchcoat. He pulled out a sledgehammer, and with a mighty yell, he swung it hard against the closest building to him, which was the Morton Building. He slammed it repeatedly and screamed out loud something unintelligible. After about 10 swings or so, he stalked across the street and slammed the sledgehammer into the school district’s headquarters. Grunting and breathing hard, he hammered the rocky faceplate of the building. With what was like a bloodcurdling scream, he smashed one of the windows on the corner of the building. He proceeded to repeat this with the grain exchange and Laughsalot’s respected building.

By this time, he attracted a large ground of bystanders who just watched as he proceeded to let loose a littany of curse words and angry feelings. He ran to the middle of the street with his sledgehammer, and knelt in the middle of the intersection. He took some seconds to breathe and he looked to be meditating a slight bit, with his knee bent and his hands on the end of the sledgehammer.

He suddenly stood up and dropped the sledgehammer. He reached his hand back behind his trenchcoat and pulled out a long stick with cloth at the end. He unfurled the cloth on the stick, and proceeded to wave a giant Gadsden flag in the middle of the intersection. As he did this, he screamed to the people around him. They couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Just as he was making a second revolution around the intersection, a car blasted through the intersection and clipped him. He went tumbling on the side of the car and slammed into the pavement. The car sped away in a wail of screaming tires, and the man was left behind. A small group of people quickly ran over to the man, and tried to help him. One man looked over him, trying to stabilize the man’s neck.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

The dying man looked up at him and slowly smiled.

“Welcome….to the new age,” the man replied, raspy and with the sound of fluid building up in his lungs, “Fight against…idiots…”

“What?”

“Don’t….let them….take your freedom to disagree…”

The man then coughed, and the life bled away from him.