The coastline of the Boorbunk Bay shared a direct border with United States of America and so extradition for the redeemed prisoners was very direct. The Boorbunk bay was at the tail end of the entire Dexter Islands and was surrounded by a powerfully built barricade to prevent the rest of the world from having a glimpse at it from even in the highest of towers and to prevent those within to see the daylight outside of it. The latter was rather unnecessary because each ward of the prisoners was heavily fenced already with huge tall walls. Looking at the entire structure from above, each ward was like a single different world on its own, demarcated and entirely sequestered by the walls. Each one with about a hundred prisoners, dealing with themselves and locked within with no noise or pandemonium in the outside world.
But there was and the seven People states were completely tearing apart. They were called the People states because they contained the ordinary hoi polloi; mere masses. The last state termed as The Sovereign State was Reckdette.
Dexter used to be a different place with internal peace filled with beautiful people and places. All the problem they had then was with foreign powers since they blatantly shunned all forms of external relations; from foreign exchange to immigration of other people into their country but putting it in a more approving way, President Dale Gaughan, the then president of Dexter Islands would say, ‘The Dexter Islands would not condone any form of dependence from any other country! We will remain a single people, a sovereign state! And nothing is going to change that!’, the people of the country would then cheer. The only nation that had managed to become allies with her was the United States. It seemed right in their eyes and so it remained like that, there were no immigrants in the country and no foreign products in the country. Whatever products that were consumed by the people were manufactured within the country. It seemed like the right thing to do as the economy grew really high and they didn’t have foreign ties that would take the glory, no debts to other countries and no country was benefitting from the abundant natural resources that the island had been blessed with.
The only downside to it was that the nation constantly got involved in wars and battles with invading countries surrounding them. None of the attempted invasion was ever accomplished as the nation had enough manpower in the military. There was even once a released statistic that stated that one out of four male adult Dexterrans was in the military.
Nevertheless, everything changed twenty-five years ago and the internal peace of the nation was ruined leading to an imbroglio that the nation was still facing. A terrorist group had broken out that had been identified as The Order Of The Quppis. The military of the nation which seemed so invincible to have tackled other nations and stopped them from taking over their nation could not handle this team. They were all out, killing, destroying, bombing and almost every day on the TV news, there was always one or two video clips that had the disclaimer: What you are about to watch contains disturbing scenes.
Reckdette seemed to be the only seemingly untouchable place across the nation because they had a higher concentration of security operatives keeping the lives of the president, ministers, top government officers, past and present, politicians, wealthy individuals and celebrities safe from the hands of the enemy or maybe because the terrorists weren’t looking that way, yet. The latter became the more likely suggestion following the death of the former president while giving a speech at the Reckdette Hall of Fame a decade ago during a remembrance programme for the victims of the terrorist attack. Not only was the president killed, ninety people lost their lives that day in the middle of Reckdette where the entire military power was concentrated. The men who had conducted the assassination were never found despite the instant locking of state boundaries and search of every single home throughout the one thousand square kilometres of the state. No trace was found and that incidence had made the media announce that no state was safe at all. Other media units, however had stated that the incidence was a one-off. However, it would be a two-off when Chuck Hawthorne was killed in the same arena, on the same podium while giving his speech.
It seemed the terrorist group had just come to show them what the rest of the country was facing. On an average, the probability of dying was more than that of living in states like Tifftam, Redtwuft, Kebstarek Gollogher, Baskers, Hustarbull or Yolyarkshire.
The map of Dexter looked like a dinosaur with no legs. Its protruding mouth represented Baskers, it was where the boundary of Dexter Islands and it was surrounded directly by water which exposed it to heavy floods and cyclones. The state was pretty small and had the lowest population of people and so rather than building lots of houses, it was filled with a lot of farms as farming was the main basis of their living. However, all the people of the settlement were peasants living in small cottages and bungalows, quiet people, religious in all their doings. The few times when The Order Of The Quppis invaded them, they really never killed anyone, they just abducted as many people as possible, mostly children. They would go from house to house and then let the parents scream as they silently went off with their children, smashing the heads of anyone who tries to struggle with them, it was fatal and other times, not.
The slender neck was where Reckdette lay. It was the smallest state in the country and it was quite populous. It looked like a single estate with extravagant mansions, luxurious penthouses, hotels and skyscrapers lying everywhere. It was presumptively the only state that had completely tarred smooth roads throughout it. The beauty of the place was something that a normal citizen of the country might never see till he died. One time in the past, a local newspaper The Testimony managed to get pictures of certain places in the state and then placed them in contrast with the poor conditions of homes and environment in other states and then titled it, ‘How the powerful turn their eyes away from the masses’. What happened after then? There was a large outcry from the people for a change and the newspaper was fined by the government for hate speech which led to another outrage among the people. THE PEOPLE HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH! MAKE THINGS RIGHT! They shouted endlessly but the walls of Reckdettean mansions and statehouses were completely soundproof.
Down from the neck to the middle of the entire abdomen lay the largest state of the country and the capital, Tifftam. Ironically, it happened to be the poverty capital of the country too. About eighty-five percent of the population were said to be worth below a thousand Dexter Dollars which was approximately ten U.S Dollars. All they were in the street were shacks, set of dilapidated buildings and the same kind of people with the same kind of clothes, smelling the same way, those that smelt different were using the same heavy pungent perfume that all the little kiosks and shops around the street sold, all walking the same way along the streets, hurrying wildly, Get-out-of-my-way kind of thing, everyone mumbling something to themselves, sweating, fatigued and annoyed; all struggling through each day. There were only about eight elementary schools and a lot of children did not go to school. When people thought of Tifftam, what came to their minds was a really dark place that the sun did not exist in, that was filled with hopeless and ruthless and grey people, people who were killed day after day and didn’t have any food to eat or house to sleep. In real sense, that was what it was. A bleak town with no hope; no silver lining in its cloud.
Then the rest of the abdomen (its belly) comprised of three states: Redtwuft, Kebstarek and Yolyarkshire which all used to be one single state until they got stratified. The single state, Dairione used to be the former capital and the seat of the president. But now it isn’t either, neither is the present capital the present seat of the president. However, it was still as if they were one people, and the borders created and the fact that they had different governments was only a formality. Most people in the region still mentioned that they were from the state of Dairione and more preferably, they had mentioned that they were from the state of Western Dairione which meant Yolyarkshire, the state of central Dairione was Redtwuft while the eastern part was Kebstarek.
Gollogher was the slender tail. Yet another place with no good news to be heard and nothing to laugh about, except of course for The Humour Sect. A place with no painted houses, hundreds of bistros and neighbourhoods of ancient chimneyed family-houses with lead-darkened walls. Above all, the people of Gollogher were known mainly for their radical ways of communicating their problems to their deaf and mute government; the violent protests, the rallies, the ever-loud and unbreaking voices of the people in accordance, the local activists who usually stood up for different causes and most of the time got themselves in jail and got accused for ‘hate speech’. An incidence that will cause more protests. It was not as if the protests made any difference, the government never seemed to know that they were people who existed, whose voices mattered more than any other person. So, they were left to their problems, left to hope that each day wasn’t their last, pray to God and hope He hears them.
In between the Gollogher and the last state, Hustarbull was the largest part of the country; a forest. The Singalort Forest had been said to be the second largest and densest rainforest in the world after A****n, it remained unexplored.
Hustarbull which was the final region at the tail end of Dexter. It was like a little village with Catholic churches and monasteries everywhere feet were set. It wasn’t really hit by the Order Of The Quppis, only seldom explosions that usually claimed a lot of lives and destroyed a lot of properties. Everyone here was religious and quite less unsophisticated than the rest of the people, everly believing in the Bible Verses: One thousand shall fall on my left, a thousand on my right but it will not come near to you, you will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked… The minister would read out every Sunday and the others would proclaim with their eyes closed, with enthusiasm, in fervent prayer with all the amount of faith they could muster. The monks and the nuns will remain kneeling in their synagogues, clinging on to their rosaries and their crosses looking up with shaking, humble eyes to the image of Holy Mary and his son, Jesus Christ praying silently for the nation, for their state for long hours.
Just behind the villages in Hustarbull was The Boorbunk Bay and the only part of it visible to the outside world was the large barricade that surrounded it on all sides. Zooming out on the large island and the totality could be seen from the clouds, a large sea wrapping its land all around.
The most expensive painting in the whole of Dexter was called The Red Balloon, titled after the day when the biggest war Dexter ever experienced – The Invardi War – came to an end. Everyone had set out from their hidings and each family lifted up red balloons in the air to celebrate a happy ending. But the irony of the Red Balloon painting was to show the present day in Dexter. Rather than depicting bright red balloons floating together in the blue sky, it showed a great load of debris that the nation had become. Grey, black amounts of waste. It was only accessible in the Reckdettean museum. Naming such gloomy, pestilent picture The Red Balloon was to show contrast. But even then all the luminaries that resided in Reckdettean didn’t get the idea, they didn’t even really care about the idea. They just wanted the painting up for auction so they could boast to their other wealthy contemporaries, that on their mansion’s wall hung the most expensive painting that the nation ever had.
No matter what the nation faced, the government remained in utter comfort watching them impassively. Their tears didn’t count, their cries didn’t, their blood didn’t either and not even the ugly videos that they watched in their pavilions about how the terrorists laid them out like cattle and did terrible things to them; cutting off their heads and placing them on different platters like they were souvenirs or goods for auction and sometimes the terrorists released videos of how they peeled off the skin of the people like vegetable and let their skinless bodies bleed until it was dry and empty. Yet, nothing seemed to count. They all at one point or the other in their lives wished they could climb up the ladder and change the lives of their fellows, change the system of their deranged state, city or country or even better still, leave the entire system alone, leaving the country but unfortunately, there was little or no chance for them to do either.
So, with all the masses in the People States left stranded in darkness, they were left to protect themselves, struggle for the most time of their lives, learn to cope with the fear of death, create hope and happiness for themselves, cling together and keep each other warm, tell their families and friends with all the light they could see: WE WILL SEE ANOTHER DAY.
He was seeing it again and this time with enough clarity which was only a plus to the nightmare. It was as if he was standing in a distance watching his helpless twelve-year old self. The man were circling around him in the centre of the road, with guns in hand, only one had an hammer in hand. Everything had rushed him all at once as he was sleeping now, like a spear in his head.He was shaking, struggling to come out of it but his eyes were still close. He was vibrating and so was the metal he was lying on with his teeth out, groaning mildly, willing to burst out.The men circling, the cold touch of the man on his head, the inky-black of the hammer’s head brimming in the moonlight. Everything rushed in at once yet again another really merciless pierce. His hands were clinging hard on his wrapper and he was shaking even more, the ever-increasing sound of the steel bed said it all.The man had put off his mask… gave him the scariest smile he had ever been hit with in his life…positione
The Voyant. He was Barry YATES.He didn’t struggle and there was no change in his expression. He looked the same way: morose, terrified, mute. They surrounded him on every side and since he didn’t struggle, there was no need to move him roughly. They led him out of that room and into another, the place where the exercise of the day was going to be finalised.Dale shut his eyes as he could hear the multiple blasts echoing into his ears. About a hundred bullets had been wasted on the elderly man. As he opened his eyes, tears burst out and he couldn’t hold it. The next time they came here, they weren’t going to find this skull anymore, they were going to find another. Michael rushed up to Dale and hugged him.‘Happy birthday’, he said smiling.‘You ain’t no bud no more, so you should stop crying. You are twenty-one today’, Pierson said and hugged him.Barry was also there too smiling at him. He had just escaped by a hair’s breadth. In this case, it was a matter of surnames. If only the m
The Humour Sect had been formed seven years earlier, when they were all still younger. Dale was still fifteen, Pierson was eighteen, Tristan was twenty, Michael was twenty-two and Barry was twenty-three and the tale of them meeting could only be a matter of destiny. Fate.Michael had started the performances in a tavern along Crawdown during the nights, singing the most popular rock songs in a different, more eccentric way that entertained the customers. He was only seventeen and he had just left high school. It was his first job and he had dabbled into it not as a hobby but as a result of necessity, for survival, to be able to breathe above the murky waters of poverty that his family suffered from. He earned twenty-five Dexter groats per night and some other nights when there were more people, they dropped more money and he earned a peak of fifty Dexter dollars. His childhood friend, Barry who was working menially at a soap factory left and soon joined Michael in the business.Barry
His hair was wet, just like the rest of his shivering, sweltering body even in the coldest of weathers. He didn’t know what else to do, he was running mad. He shouted loud again and hit the bars hard.‘Prisoner Number 32. If you make any noise again! you will be taken to the hole!’, the man from the loudspeaker shouted but Barry wasn’t going to listen. Michael! Michael! He wailed in sorrow.Barry didn’t want to imagine that it was real. It mustn’t be, it mustn’t be, his mind roared. This guy whom he had laughed with, ran to school with, shared shoes with, shared clothes with, shared a room with, suffered with. He screamed again, thunderously and he kept hitting the metal bars until his knuckles started to bleed.His eyes had turned to a sponge dispensing water all over his face. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it out of this, ever. No! No! Not Michael! And then he yelled again, tears blowing out of his eyes, he wasn’t going to stop.Michael had done nothing wrong his whole life! T
ALL THE TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS HAVE DECIDED TO GO UNDERGROUND TO DISCUSS THE INSECURITY THAT IS GETTING MORE PREVALENT THROUGHOUT DEXTER ISLANDS, Barry read on the front page of the newspaper. He shook his head sadly and dropped the newspaper. Just beneath the headline, there was a picture of the president and the governors of the different states, including Gollogher’s governor looking all original and sober about the problem of the nation.Most of the other inmates had a copy of the newspaper too. ‘You can’t tell the minds of people’, Dale said, shaking his head as he read the headline.‘There are somethings you only get to find out when you get in here. There are secrets that only people who’re here can get to know, the most guarded secrets of Dexter Island is here lying with us. All our leaders who appear all empathic with us and appear to want the best of us are the leaders of the terrorists. It’s only when we get here that we see everyone who have giving those heroic speeches
The Quppis’ ground was a whole kingdom of its own, spanning a hundred kilometres in the centre of cliffs and tall, impassable mountain and dense, endless plantations making it well safeguarded. Out in the Meadow Hills – the exterior surroundings of their barracks – were thousands of rangers moving around, so that no one would come close to discovering where the Quppis’ domain was.The whole land area included two parts: The Spheres and The Circus divided completely by a tall, great wall known as the Partition. The Spheres contained eight giant spherical geodesic domes that housed different phalanxes of their army. Behind them was a glassy dark tower with a pointed peak, no one lived there but Sawer himself. About thirty kilometres from there was The Partition and after that was The Circus was a concoction of funny-looking buildings, countless numbers of them in different shapes and heights. There was an onion-shaped building, a pyramidal-shaped monument, a plank house with a doll as i
Night descended as it always did on Dexter, retiring people to their beds after the labour of the day and down in Boorbunk what signified the coming of the night was the utter darkness that they were hit with as the inmates lay now on their creaky metal beds that was not entirely their size. Snores could be heard everywhere but even if everyone was going to sleep not Pierson, not Tristan, not Dale.Pierson was sitting on his bed with a locket in his hand, attached to a chain. He had that locket in his possession since…a long time ago. He didn’t know how long he had worn that necklace as a bracelet on his wrist. It was since his life had started, since light had come to it, about fifteen years ago. He opened the locket and brought out the pictures it contained. Through the dark, he managed to see the faces of the people on it. There was Michael’s face on the first picture, Barry was next and then the rest of them had followed, in the order in which they had met.All through his life, h
The next morning set them up to another horrible day ahead, horrible by default. The men called all of them out and counted them, looking pleased and satisfied with the grave looks on the faces of the prisoners. The daily count put them at eighty-four, thanks to the elimination. The new internees seemed to be getting on well.‘Tristan Klyce?’, one of the wardens called with a diffident face. ‘Follow me’Tristan sighed, ready to cope with another morose face of Samantha and have to repeat the words he had said the last time in a more explicit way.He reached the calling room and there were other prisoners in there, resting their head against the soundproof walls listening to the wobbly, comely voices of their loved ones through the telephones. He was led to Samantha in the last booth line where she always was. Only that this time, he wasn’t going to cope with only the face of Samantha, there was another face, another severely cute face, a smaller face.‘Oh My God!’, Tristan’s mouth ope