They said that God wanted him to be president, that he was a gift to America from Jesus, and they began to worship him. As he achieved his political zenith, he declared it to be a crime to openly criticize him. It was considered blasphemous to even speak his name in any negative sense.
As a blogger, I thought I would be safe. But then some of my more outspoken fellow bloggers began to mysteriously disappear. Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. They simply vanished from the face of the Earth.
I knew that if I wanted to avoid that same fate, I would have to be careful. I didn’t want to be labeled a heretic, which is punishable by imprisonment and possibly death. But I still needed to speak my mind on my blog. I would just need to camouflage my messaging in such a way as to avoid detection by the ever present thought patrol who searched the blogosphere for any blogger who dared to stand up to him.
A week later I was arrested for a critical post I wrote. I’m now in jail awaiting trial.
(200 words)
Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Kristian. Kristian’s rules:
- Completed piece must be in multiples of 50 words – maximum of 250 words. Anything is acceptable – poetry, story, anecdote.
- There will be a photo and a random phrase that I will take from the current book I am reading – you can use either or both
- Please pingback and tag 50 word Thursday, so I can do a summary.
The random phrase Kristian chose was: Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. It was taken from “Outback Heroes” by Evan McHugh.
Here is the picture that was included in the prompt:I couldn’t figure out a way to fit this into the story, so just imagine that this is the alley the narrator lived next to before he was hauled off to jail.
I also managed to fit in three daily prompt words into this dystopian tale: Word of the Day Challenge (zenith), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (heretic), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (camouflage).