Droplets with our name on them

[november_5th]

We know it's coming.

We don't know exactly what it is. But we can sense it. It's grown from whispers to thinly-veiled threats to outright outrage. They're not even trying to hide it anymore, whatever it is.

War? Revolution? Tyranny?

It's the hum of a high-voltage wire just before it snaps. The unnerving stillness in the air before the storm hits. It's not a single event we're afraid of, but the realization that the foundation we built our lives on has been eroding under our feet for years, and we're realizing the cracks in the floor have gotten dangerous.

It feels like that time alluded to in those dystopian novels I love. The flashbacks to an earlier time. The stories shared in backrooms by the elderly, clearly disclosing a history that they're not supposed to mention. We are in the before-time right now.

This "before-time" has a particular flavour. It’s a time of frantic, forced normalcy. We go to our jobs, we buy groceries, we discuss the weather, but there's a second, silent conversation happening underneath it all. It happens in the spaces between words, in the glances held a second too long, in the way we instinctively know which topics to avoid with which people. We are all performing a play of "everything is fine" for an audience that is also on stage, performing the same play.

We are rapidly losing ground. We are stumbling, plummeting down a gravelled hill, that just gets steeper and more unstable the further we go. We never realized that we were at the top. We never realized the steps we were taking were leading us down a path it was difficult to recover from.

When we realized, it was too late. The momentum was there. And there was no turning around.

So now, now we're here. Now we're staring down a barrell that clearly exposes that there's something dark and dangerous in the chamber. And it's only a matter of time before they notice and aim at us. In the meantime, they're conditioning us to ignore the splatter from the current targets.

The conditioning is the most insidious part. To make it palatable, the splatter is reframed. The first targets are always people on the fringes, the ones it's easy to label as "deserving." They are the "troublemakers", the "dissenters", the "unpatriotic". And the reasons given for their removal are always so 'reasonable', so logical. It’s for the sake of security. It’s for the common good. It’s to restore order.

Each time a new target is chosen, the circle of what is considered "acceptable" shrinks. The outrage is calibrated to be just manageable enough. It sparks, but it is contained. We tell ourselves that as long as we stay within the ever-narrowing lines, we will be safe. We don't realize we are living in a cage until we finally reach for the handle and find a lock.

We who feel this dread, we are the canaries in this coal mine. We are the ones who remember that the slope was once a plateau. And we are cursed to see the bottom of the hill while others are still complaining about the steepness of the path.

The barrel is there. The chamber is loaded. And the most terrifying part is that the ones holding the weapon don't even see us as people. We are simply the next variable to be eliminated in their equation of control. And we continue to watch the splatter, wondering when the droplets will have our name on them.