They Outlawed Love So We Do It In The Dark
An Unpleasant (But Not Unforeseen) Ending For The Cherophobic
“They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones.”
– Part I, Chapter VIII, 1984
There are only three weeks until Hate Week. Even if Gerard isn’t silently counting down the days with dread, it’s pretty hard to miss the bombastic announcements on every telescreen he comes across. Curiously, everybody’s suddenly extra keen on counting the dates, yet at any other time of the year nobody would be able to tell you the exact date and month.
With Hate Week imminent on the horizons, Gerard’s shifts are getting increasingly overtime. Every day he goes to bed with his entire body and mind submerged in fatigue, and the rest that sleep is supposed to provide evades him. When he wakes up he’s just as tired as the day before. It is no surprise that he falls asleep on his train ride out of the city after work. He has weird drifts of dreams, glimpses of the Hate Week banners he’s seen whizzing by outside morphing into the indistinct blurs of the faces of the enemies on the posters; then the face of Big Brother surfaces, rising above the murky waters of his mind, only to be pulled back down to give way to the faces of those he loves: his mom, his dad, Mikey… and finally, Frank. He jerks awake when the train pulls to a stop. He’s in the prole neighbourhood – Frank’s neighbourhood – and he gets off, hurried and stumbling. In his half-asleep, half-awake haze, he doesn’t notice the small woman that is clad in grey overalls walk right behind him, following the echoes of his footsteps.
“Oh, Gee, you look like hell.” That was the first thing Frank had said as soon as Gerard stepped inside the apartment. “Yeah, Hate Week’s coming up, y’know?” It’s as nonchalant an answer as Gerard can make, but of course the tad bit of desperation that crept into his voice didn’t escape Frank’s notice. Anyway, the circles under his eyes are already a dead giveaway, and that’s how they end up spending the afternoon cuddling on Frank’s bed, doing nothing.
It’s the most relief Gerard has had within the last three months.
It’s only when he’s climbed into bed does he notice the teddy bear propped up on Frank’s bedside table. It wasn’t there the last time he’d been around. “Who’s this little guy?” He asks as he grabs the bear off of the table.
“Oh! Just something Jamia made for me. It’s a late Christmas gift, I guess. She’d only just gathered enough scraps from, y’know, around. I love it all the same; teddies have vanished from stores for decades.”
Gerard nods. The only time he’s come across a stuffed toy was when he was a toddler, and even then his parents couldn’t afford it. It had already started to become obsolete; they were a decade into the Party’s rule. He remembers spending a lot of time with his nose pressed against the display of that shop, just staring at the bear, until one day it disappeared – either someone had bought it, or it was destroyed, for being a ‘bourgeois’ item. And now, they only hold value in the eyes of the proletarian masses. To the current generations of Party members, born and raised on state propaganda, stuffed toys are considered unnecessary.
Gerard cradles Frank’s bear in his palms as he studies its appearance. The stretch of fabric sewn together to act as its skin has the strangest pattern – there are alternating stripes of red and white, and to one side, a little rectangular patch of blue dotted with rows of little white, five-pointed stars. “That’s a nice pattern. Very peculiar,” Gerard remarks absently, and he hears Frank make a vague noise in agreement. “You know, I never knew why they’re called ‘teddy bears’,” he adds, wondering out loud.
“Oh man, you’ve never heard of the story behind the bears? You know, ‘Teddy’s Bear’?” Frank asks, and his eyes widen in shock when Gerard shakes his head. Frank launches, with absolute delight, into the tale of President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, one of the many presidents of America, and the bear he hunted. He re-enacts it all with the bear, and Gerard listens with interest, laughing when Frank imitates various characters with funny voices. He doesn’t question how Frank knows. Proles tend to remember and pass down through generations trivial things like that.
Yet, neither Gerard nor Frank knows the details of this America country – granted, Frank is a prole and as a rule doesn’t have access to compulsory education, but even Gerard doesn’t know much about America. All he knows is that it was one of the countries that had existed before the revolutions, and afterwards it was swallowed up by the land mass that is now called Oceania. That, and the people living in America also spoke English (or Oldspeak, as the Party likes to call it). But it mustn’t have been an important country if the textbooks couldn’t even be bothered to describe it in more than three sentences, so Gerard brushes it aside.
Gerard takes another look at the bear, and he gets an idea, an urge to draw again, but he doesn’t have his journal with him. He ends up digging out a Party-issued notepad, courtesy of the Minitrue1 offices, from his briefcase. He doodles the scene just as Frank’s described earlier: President Theodore with his weird one-eyed glasses called a ‘monocle’, his impressive moustache and the weird hat, and the bear chained to a tree. Except, Gerard’s never seen a living, breathing bear for himself (most Oceanian citizens live their entire lives without seeing an animal, save for vermins such as stray cats, sewer rats and all kinds of insects found in the attic), so the bear he draws is a hybrid of the teddy bear, and a picture he’s seen of a grizzly bear, in his elementary textbook. The result is a harmless-looking bear, cutesy and out of place next to the president’s hunting rifle, and Frank laughs at it as Gerard makes a face.
“Seriously though, that’s a pretty good drawing. I’m not an expert when it comes to art – far from it, in fact,” Frank sticks his tongue out, “But it’s got style. It’s like, a cartoon, but not exactly? And you’ve definitely got skills.”
“Well, they didn’t hire me to work in the Illustration Department for nothing, if I do say so myself.”
“Such a narcissist.” Frank rolls his eyes just as Gerard retorts with a “you love me anyway”.
“Yeah, yeah,” Frank dismisses with another eye-roll. “But I was thinking, would you mind drawing, well, me? Like, um, a portrait, or something…” Frank trails off with a blush, embarrassed. “I mean, you don’t have to do it. It’s just a random idea, but – yeah, you know what? Never mind.”
“No actually I’d love to. I actually draw a lot when I’m alone in my flat too – I got a whole book of doodles, I could bring it over after the Week.” Gerard’s getting increasingly excited just talking about it – he’s never shared his personal art with anyone before, it’s just too dangerous to do so – but he stops himself, aware that he might sound just too self-absorbed. “Yeah, anyway, about your portrait, I’ll do what I can. Just, be warned, okay? ‘Cause I’ve never really drawn in a realistic style before.”
“Hang on, if you’re in the Illustration Department – you designed those banners hanging out on the streets, didn’t you?”
“Well, some of them. I’m only one person in the whole department,” Gerard says, trying to downplay it, but Frank isn’t convinced.
“Dude, are you kidding? Those posters are amazingly realistic. Boring and predictable as hell, sure –”
“Hey!”
“— but don’t try to tell me you can’t draw, because I’ve seen you. Just, bring whatever you need next time you come over and I’ll pose for you, okay? I’ll even take my clothes off if you want,” Frank adds, wagging his eyebrows, and Gerard laughs. “No but seriously, why are being so modest all of a sudden? I’d love to have your drawing hang on my wall. It’ll totally be a token of love.” Frank says this earnestly, with imploring eyes – batting his eyelashes, even. It’s a face nobody can say no to, much less someone who’s in love with that bastard – someone like Gerard.
“Fine, fine, I’ll do it.” (Frank crows triumphantly.) “But after Hate Week, yeah? I’m pretty much up to my neck in work at the moment.” Gerard sighs with as much self-pity as he can muster, and Frank makes a sympathetic noise. “I’d rather stay home during the Week, too, if that makes you feel better,” Frank offers, and Gerard makes an embarrassing noise that sounds suspiciously like a wail, but he’s past the point of caring.
Frank also offers to give Gerard a massage before he goes, and he makes Gerard promise to stay alive and sane until the Week is over. “Nah, don’t worry. It’s only a few more weeks, I’ll survive,” Gerard assures.
“I’ll hold you to it,” Frank says with a smile.
The kiss they share just before Gerard leaves is prolonged, as if they’re trying to compensate for the coming weeks they have to live without the presence of each other. It’s a kiss that leaves them both breathless, but the smile Frank gives him as Gerard’s leaving is completely blinding. He steals another kiss and hurries out the door, and it takes him three tries before he can wipe his own smile off his face.
Despite promising himself to hurry home before the clocks strike twenty hours, Gerard can’t help but enter a bar when he comes across one. It’s inconspicuous enough on the outside, and he really can do with half a pint of beer to warm himself up. Not that spending time with Frank hadn’t already taken away some of the exhaustion and stress on his mind, but a little alcohol never hurts. His mind’s still stuck on Frank though, so he doesn’t notice that the waitress bringing him his drink is the same small woman from the train, still clad in those grey overalls. But that is what makes it fatal. After he’d downed the entire glass, he leaves a crinkled-up ten-dollar note on the table, but when he tries to stand up, he can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel his arms.
Just as he starts to panic, everything goes black.
– Part I, Chapter VIII, 1984
There are only three weeks until Hate Week. Even if Gerard isn’t silently counting down the days with dread, it’s pretty hard to miss the bombastic announcements on every telescreen he comes across. Curiously, everybody’s suddenly extra keen on counting the dates, yet at any other time of the year nobody would be able to tell you the exact date and month.
With Hate Week imminent on the horizons, Gerard’s shifts are getting increasingly overtime. Every day he goes to bed with his entire body and mind submerged in fatigue, and the rest that sleep is supposed to provide evades him. When he wakes up he’s just as tired as the day before. It is no surprise that he falls asleep on his train ride out of the city after work. He has weird drifts of dreams, glimpses of the Hate Week banners he’s seen whizzing by outside morphing into the indistinct blurs of the faces of the enemies on the posters; then the face of Big Brother surfaces, rising above the murky waters of his mind, only to be pulled back down to give way to the faces of those he loves: his mom, his dad, Mikey… and finally, Frank. He jerks awake when the train pulls to a stop. He’s in the prole neighbourhood – Frank’s neighbourhood – and he gets off, hurried and stumbling. In his half-asleep, half-awake haze, he doesn’t notice the small woman that is clad in grey overalls walk right behind him, following the echoes of his footsteps.
“Oh, Gee, you look like hell.” That was the first thing Frank had said as soon as Gerard stepped inside the apartment. “Yeah, Hate Week’s coming up, y’know?” It’s as nonchalant an answer as Gerard can make, but of course the tad bit of desperation that crept into his voice didn’t escape Frank’s notice. Anyway, the circles under his eyes are already a dead giveaway, and that’s how they end up spending the afternoon cuddling on Frank’s bed, doing nothing.
It’s the most relief Gerard has had within the last three months.
It’s only when he’s climbed into bed does he notice the teddy bear propped up on Frank’s bedside table. It wasn’t there the last time he’d been around. “Who’s this little guy?” He asks as he grabs the bear off of the table.
“Oh! Just something Jamia made for me. It’s a late Christmas gift, I guess. She’d only just gathered enough scraps from, y’know, around. I love it all the same; teddies have vanished from stores for decades.”
Gerard nods. The only time he’s come across a stuffed toy was when he was a toddler, and even then his parents couldn’t afford it. It had already started to become obsolete; they were a decade into the Party’s rule. He remembers spending a lot of time with his nose pressed against the display of that shop, just staring at the bear, until one day it disappeared – either someone had bought it, or it was destroyed, for being a ‘bourgeois’ item. And now, they only hold value in the eyes of the proletarian masses. To the current generations of Party members, born and raised on state propaganda, stuffed toys are considered unnecessary.
Gerard cradles Frank’s bear in his palms as he studies its appearance. The stretch of fabric sewn together to act as its skin has the strangest pattern – there are alternating stripes of red and white, and to one side, a little rectangular patch of blue dotted with rows of little white, five-pointed stars. “That’s a nice pattern. Very peculiar,” Gerard remarks absently, and he hears Frank make a vague noise in agreement. “You know, I never knew why they’re called ‘teddy bears’,” he adds, wondering out loud.
“Oh man, you’ve never heard of the story behind the bears? You know, ‘Teddy’s Bear’?” Frank asks, and his eyes widen in shock when Gerard shakes his head. Frank launches, with absolute delight, into the tale of President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, one of the many presidents of America, and the bear he hunted. He re-enacts it all with the bear, and Gerard listens with interest, laughing when Frank imitates various characters with funny voices. He doesn’t question how Frank knows. Proles tend to remember and pass down through generations trivial things like that.
Yet, neither Gerard nor Frank knows the details of this America country – granted, Frank is a prole and as a rule doesn’t have access to compulsory education, but even Gerard doesn’t know much about America. All he knows is that it was one of the countries that had existed before the revolutions, and afterwards it was swallowed up by the land mass that is now called Oceania. That, and the people living in America also spoke English (or Oldspeak, as the Party likes to call it). But it mustn’t have been an important country if the textbooks couldn’t even be bothered to describe it in more than three sentences, so Gerard brushes it aside.
Gerard takes another look at the bear, and he gets an idea, an urge to draw again, but he doesn’t have his journal with him. He ends up digging out a Party-issued notepad, courtesy of the Minitrue1 offices, from his briefcase. He doodles the scene just as Frank’s described earlier: President Theodore with his weird one-eyed glasses called a ‘monocle’, his impressive moustache and the weird hat, and the bear chained to a tree. Except, Gerard’s never seen a living, breathing bear for himself (most Oceanian citizens live their entire lives without seeing an animal, save for vermins such as stray cats, sewer rats and all kinds of insects found in the attic), so the bear he draws is a hybrid of the teddy bear, and a picture he’s seen of a grizzly bear, in his elementary textbook. The result is a harmless-looking bear, cutesy and out of place next to the president’s hunting rifle, and Frank laughs at it as Gerard makes a face.
“Seriously though, that’s a pretty good drawing. I’m not an expert when it comes to art – far from it, in fact,” Frank sticks his tongue out, “But it’s got style. It’s like, a cartoon, but not exactly? And you’ve definitely got skills.”
“Well, they didn’t hire me to work in the Illustration Department for nothing, if I do say so myself.”
“Such a narcissist.” Frank rolls his eyes just as Gerard retorts with a “you love me anyway”.
“Yeah, yeah,” Frank dismisses with another eye-roll. “But I was thinking, would you mind drawing, well, me? Like, um, a portrait, or something…” Frank trails off with a blush, embarrassed. “I mean, you don’t have to do it. It’s just a random idea, but – yeah, you know what? Never mind.”
“No actually I’d love to. I actually draw a lot when I’m alone in my flat too – I got a whole book of doodles, I could bring it over after the Week.” Gerard’s getting increasingly excited just talking about it – he’s never shared his personal art with anyone before, it’s just too dangerous to do so – but he stops himself, aware that he might sound just too self-absorbed. “Yeah, anyway, about your portrait, I’ll do what I can. Just, be warned, okay? ‘Cause I’ve never really drawn in a realistic style before.”
“Hang on, if you’re in the Illustration Department – you designed those banners hanging out on the streets, didn’t you?”
“Well, some of them. I’m only one person in the whole department,” Gerard says, trying to downplay it, but Frank isn’t convinced.
“Dude, are you kidding? Those posters are amazingly realistic. Boring and predictable as hell, sure –”
“Hey!”
“— but don’t try to tell me you can’t draw, because I’ve seen you. Just, bring whatever you need next time you come over and I’ll pose for you, okay? I’ll even take my clothes off if you want,” Frank adds, wagging his eyebrows, and Gerard laughs. “No but seriously, why are being so modest all of a sudden? I’d love to have your drawing hang on my wall. It’ll totally be a token of love.” Frank says this earnestly, with imploring eyes – batting his eyelashes, even. It’s a face nobody can say no to, much less someone who’s in love with that bastard – someone like Gerard.
“Fine, fine, I’ll do it.” (Frank crows triumphantly.) “But after Hate Week, yeah? I’m pretty much up to my neck in work at the moment.” Gerard sighs with as much self-pity as he can muster, and Frank makes a sympathetic noise. “I’d rather stay home during the Week, too, if that makes you feel better,” Frank offers, and Gerard makes an embarrassing noise that sounds suspiciously like a wail, but he’s past the point of caring.
Frank also offers to give Gerard a massage before he goes, and he makes Gerard promise to stay alive and sane until the Week is over. “Nah, don’t worry. It’s only a few more weeks, I’ll survive,” Gerard assures.
“I’ll hold you to it,” Frank says with a smile.
The kiss they share just before Gerard leaves is prolonged, as if they’re trying to compensate for the coming weeks they have to live without the presence of each other. It’s a kiss that leaves them both breathless, but the smile Frank gives him as Gerard’s leaving is completely blinding. He steals another kiss and hurries out the door, and it takes him three tries before he can wipe his own smile off his face.
Despite promising himself to hurry home before the clocks strike twenty hours, Gerard can’t help but enter a bar when he comes across one. It’s inconspicuous enough on the outside, and he really can do with half a pint of beer to warm himself up. Not that spending time with Frank hadn’t already taken away some of the exhaustion and stress on his mind, but a little alcohol never hurts. His mind’s still stuck on Frank though, so he doesn’t notice that the waitress bringing him his drink is the same small woman from the train, still clad in those grey overalls. But that is what makes it fatal. After he’d downed the entire glass, he leaves a crinkled-up ten-dollar note on the table, but when he tries to stand up, he can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel his arms.
Just as he starts to panic, everything goes black.
@fiftyshadesofmrway
thanks for reading and leaving feedback ^_^ much appreciated :)
4/13/14