It’s twenty-one hours, and Gerard’s only just tramped into his apartment. He’s just returned from the communal canteen down the road, dinner just as disgusting as the lunch served at the Ministry of Truth canteen for Outer Party members, and the exhaustion clinging to his bones is enough to deter him from setting off to queue up for the showers on his floor.

They had just passed New Years – of course there were going to be celebrations, the umpteenth anniversary of ‘the Establishment of Oceania’ and progress reports on the umpteenth Ten Year Plan, among other things. Gerard bets if he turns up the brightness and volume of his flat’s telescreen now, it’ll be spewing the similar rubbish. He isn’t normally perturbed by the propaganda – years of living under the constant blast of it has got him numbed alright – but the broadcasts are twice as vicious and annoying when it’s New Years celebrations. They make Gerard want to chop his ears off, just to rid those poor organs of the misfortune of having to endure the noise.

He almost sighs as he settles himself at the coffee table. It’s another new year, and it’s only when they announced the year did Gerard realise it’s already 2061. He’s never seen the need to keep count anyway – each day’s just the same as the last, and each year the same as the previous: wake up, go in to work to keep publishing pro-Party propaganda, then leave work only to suffer through the never-ending stream of these propaganda; and, recently, pay surreptitious visits to Frank’s during any downtime. Rinse, lather, repeat. Gerard does a quick count of the years in his head, and it dawns on him that he’s 36 now, or 37, and by the end of this year he’ll have spent nearly twenty years in the same pattern of living, mindlessly passing his days with no way of getting out of the rut, ever. The thought fills his mind with terror, and he almost shudders.

Wordlessly, he picks up his trusty journal and flips open to a blank page. As he picks up his pen, his thoughts trail back to Mikey and the rest of his family. Lately, he’s plagued with increasingly frequent visits of the dreams, dreams that always starred at least one of his family members. It’s like, for an unknown reason, the floodgates have opened, and those long-forgotten ghosts of his past are suddenly rushing back to him, all at once. Gerard loses himself in reminiscence of last night’s dream. Words, of their own accord, start to pour out of the pen held in his hands, detailing the visions he’d seen in his dreams. His father’s shadow towering over him protectively as he rides his bike the first time. His father, giving him piggyback rides when his legs got too tired to support his own weight. The feeling of his mother’s embrace when he wakes up from a nightmare, and the sugary taste of cookies and hot milk on his tongue when his mother tries to cheer him up. And his brother – little Mikey, eight years of age the last time Gerard’s seen him, and they used to fight each other for the last serving of dessert at the dinner table. But they had quickly forgiven each other, sharing the small chocolate bar in front of the fire (chocolate must have already become a rare commodity then), because they were best friends.

They were best friends. This realisation triggers something in Gerard, and he has to pinch his nose before he lets loose a sob, or a sound that’s equally suspicious and bound to attract the attention of the telescreen. He only lets go when his shoulders stop shaking, and he takes several slow, deep breaths to calm down.

When he turns his attention back to his journal, he sees a mess of scrawls, although luckily none of his tears have splashed onto the page. Nevertheless, he crosses out the whole passage. He pauses for a second, before adding the two most prominent thoughts at the front of his mind:

I miss Mikey. And I wish… I wish I can see him again, if he’s still alive somewhere out there.

---

Less than two weeks into the new year, Hate Week preparations are already going in full swing. As predicted, Gerard’s handed one assignment after the other, all related to the occasion. Right now he’s applying the colours onto a poster that’s going to be hanging in the Times Square for the duration of the week. It features three infamous faces, all of them heavily advertised as enemies of the Party in the last few days; they’ve apparently been working as espionage for Eastasia, the country they’re currently at war with. (The country they have always been at war with, a little voice at the back of his mind reminds him, but he knows that’s not true. It’s only the Party’s Records Department at work, rewriting historical facts every minute, every hour of every day. Gerard remembers that ten years ago they were allies with Eastasia and enemies of Eurasia, but he has nothing to prove this.) Of course, the faces on the poster might just be scapegoats for thought-criminals still on the run, but Gerard knows better than to question it. Instead, he’s been silently caricaturising the faces of these ‘hated enemies’, transforming them into pathetic, rat-faced creatures – which is the standard procedure, really. For a moment, Gerard considers the wild notion of adding bright red crosses over their faces, but that would suggest artistic creativity and an actual appreciation for the aesthetics… He abandons the idea after a long pause. Better safe than sorry, and he’d very much like to keep himself under the radar when Hate Week is just around the corner, thank you.

He turns in his draft when he’s done, and the Head of Department nods in approval. Not drawing those crosses was a wise decision. Gerard wanders back to his cubicle, sitting down with a plop, but the respite is short-lived. There’s already another slip of paper on his desk, signalling more work. Thankfully, the lunch bell sounds just as Gerard’s reaching for his pen. Or, not quite thankfully, seeing as Gerard’s going to have to jostle his way to the dimly-lit, crowded room and endure an hour of what barely passes as edible food, but that’s not the worst part, oh no. Gerard seems to have the worst luck today, because Johnny from the same department has spotted him and decides to sit at the same bench – Johnny, who is now relaying the rumours he’s heard about the Hate Week processions, complete with excited hand gestures.

“I heard they actually caught a couple of the Eastasian troops on the Pacific Front! They’re going to parade them during the Week, I’ll bet.”

Gerard grunts as he takes a bite of his undercooked fish, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He doesn’t really give a shit about the Week, but he’ll entertain Johnny for what it’s worth. At least it’ll take his mind off of the unappetising taste of his lunch.

“I wonder what they’ll have them wear. Probably they’ll be marched down the street still in those rags of their uniforms; they’ll be damn recognisable miles off. Wouldn’t even dream of running away, if I were them.” Johnny chuckles, and Gerard almost wants to deck him on his head just to shut him up, but he makes a noise of assent instead. For once, he actually agrees with Johnny. The one reason behind the effectiveness of the Party’s control is its ability to shape the mind-sets of their citizens into conformity, so that they all feel like they belong. And whatever lies outside of what’s considered ‘normal’, they either fear it or denounce it with all their might. It’s a culture of fear and hate amplified and all kindly feelings suppressed. It’s xenophobia, Gerard’s noted to himself on more than one occasion, but they don’t teach that word in school nowadays, of course, nor do they use it. But the fact remains: Xenophobia is somehow ingrained into every fibre of every Party member. They’re just instinctively sensitive to foreign objects – anything from wearing strange shoes to a foreign accent. Gerard is exempt, but he plays by the rules all the same, just to avoid death.

But he knows, death is already the lesser punishment. Quite ironically, to be put on public trial and forced to admit to whatever sins they ascribe you is the easiest way out. Most people, especially native Oceanian citizens, fall victim to the unspeakable horrors that go on in the Ministry of Love (paradoxically named, just like most things in Oceania). The arrested citizens are subject to inhumane tortures of varying degrees of cruelty, and they’ll force them to confess to crimes they have (or haven’t) committed. But the worst punishment there is in the whole of Oceania is Room 101. They incorporate your worst fear into the torture, breaking your mind and spirit in the process, until all that remains is another shell obedient to the Party. They’re just rumours, of course, and Gerard seriously doubts whether they can tell when you’re devoid of all your secrets – as far as he knows, they haven’t invented methods to look into human minds yet. But anything can happen in this nation, and it isn’t above the Party to go to all kinds of extremes, just to keep their people in line…

The tortures are quite possibly happening right now as Gerard listens to the mindless Party-authorised news coming out of Johnny’s mouth. In the Ministry of Love, just a few streets away from the building he’s now situated in. The thought hasn’t occurred to Gerard before, but once he acknowledges it, it’s horrifying enough to turn his blood ice-cold. It must have shown on his face, but luckily Johnny was just droning on about the Resistance and how their undercover spies have wrecked one of the bigger Big Brother posters hanging on 8th Street, and he mistakes Gerard’s expression as a responding look of horror.

“I know, right? But they’ve probably already caught them. No one’s ever evaded the Party’s security, and if they have, they won’t be on the run for long. There’s really no need to be so alarmed,” Johnny finishes his drivel with a careless chuckle. Oh, if only he knew. Gerard feels his stomach churn, forewarning of nausea, but he can’t tell whether it’s a result of the terror engulfing his mind, or just a side-effect of the half-cooked food he’s consumed.

Notes

Chapter title comes from one of my favourite quotes about hate, by none other than Frank Iero :) It goes as thus:
“No one is born with hate in their heart. Hate is something that has been taught, it is not an innate survival skill that we need. It is a form of stupidity that penetrates our minds and will eventually destroy us.”

(What do you know, I'm a crazy bitch with an obsession with quotes.)