Free We Live Inside You by Jeremy Robert Johnson

… Anybody there? … You there, Jacky? Okay, well, I wish you were home. I’ve got some great news and… well, I’d rather tell you in person… Okay, so you’re really not there. I’ll just tell you. I’ve met a great lady. Her name is Rhonda and she’s been so good to me, and helped me see some things straight. The part I need to tell you about is that, um, she found a way to get some financial assistance through the city and she’s going to pay for me to go rehab out at Pinebrook and I’ve agreed to go and that’s pretty much that… Shit, bud, I really wish you were home… The thing is I’ve got to go in today, like three hours from now, and then I’m cut off from everybody for the whole first month as part of the deal. I was really hoping you’d come see me at her place. She’s at 6705 Kent on the northwest side and I’ll be there with my luggage in the next hour and I was hoping…Well, I don’t know what I was hoping. It would be good to see you, Jacky. It would be really good. I know you don’t have any reason—”
    A sharp beep cut the message off.
    “Message Two,” said the digital woman. Jackson expected to hear his father’s voice continuing. Instead it was Frank’s, slow and determined.
    “Bring a pillow and be ready for battle.”
    That was all Jackson needed to hear.
    The big night was going down in about three hours.
    Jackson pressed Delete on his answering machine, clearing out the false hope and the call to arms.
    He ran to the cache in his bathroom, where two glass containers marked “Mercabol” were waiting.
    He placed the gear reverently by his front door. He’d inject at the last minute to make sure he was cresting high tonight.
    Then he was back in his bedroom, hunched over his pillow with a pair of scissors in hand.
    His music was on blast. Fuck the neighbors.
    Jackson smiled, thinking one word.
    Tonight.

    Car engines rumbled around them, dust stirred by boots floating ethereal before headlights. There were maybe one hundred men, perhaps a few less than that. Jackson estimated their combined weight at about ten tons.
    Ten tons of muscles and gritting teeth, and each man holding a pillow.
    Each pillow a tiny Trojan horse containing: brass knucks/billy-clubs/wrenches/hammers/fist packs/etc. No guns—Frank had been explicit about that. Any idiot could wield a gun—tonight’s message would be delivered by the flesh of these men. With the help of a few handy tools.
    It would be a show of human strength. Of what the species could be, of what it had to be if it wanted to stay on top of this rock.
    Frank addressed them, his voice clear and booming and without the slightest tremor:
    “I’ll keep this short. You don’t need any propaganda to put a fire into you, because your fires are already burning. They always have been. That’s why you’ve heard the call. That’s why you’re here tonight . You see the world for what it is. A giant rock, floating in space, over-run by beasts. And you see the world for how it is—teeming with life, which means it’s also teeming with death. Destruction. Entropy. We haven’t been convinced otherwise by our strip malls and safe, tightly packaged industrial lives. Nature is not sentimental, nor does she respect intellect. The apex predators of this planet are still here because they understand the way the world works.”
    Frank’s volume increased. The words came faster. Jackson found himself swaying from left to right, stirring up more dust. He noticed Kane was doing the same. Knuckles cracked around him. Heads rolled/neck vertebrae popped from the strain of over-pumped muscles.
    “The strongest beasts crush the weak. They consume without sentiment . They conquer ! The laziest of beasts are slaughtered and those that struggle most survive ! This is the truth of our world and any opposition is founded on whimsy.
    “The people of our country have gone soft without true opposition. They compete with each other in bullshit corporate games