We're Not Gonna Take It

Chapter VII: Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

We had finally made it. Finally, after weeks upon weeks upon months and possibly even upon a year- Ben and I had made it to the capital.

The capital in of itself was rather unimpressive; as we had come in through the poorer neighborhoods, the capital looked just like any other dilapidated, impoverished part of the country we had been to.

"It's really just like the rest of the towns in this damn country, isn't it?" I asked Ben, looking ahead at the crumbling stone, faded wood, and grimy streets that made up our nation's capital. In response, Ben lightly hit me on the shoulder and told me not to disrespect the people. Stupid Ben with his stupid conscience and moral code and stupid hair.

As we investigated further into the city, I turned out that the capital really was like any other city in this country- a run-down town square with boarded up shops, beggars looking for food, children playing catch in the streets, and the atmosphere of despondency and despair. It was no shinning, glittering capital of a strong empire like what the Chosen Ones made it out to be- the capital was exactly like any other deplorable town in this deplorable country.

In a way, the capital was stunning- it was a stunning methaphor for the lies told by the Chosen Ones. We are promised a glittering utopia, full of peace and prosperity, of loving and caring leaders, we are promised that in a few short years, everything will be perfect, that the thousand year reign is coming upon the glory days. But in actuality, this nation is full of anger and squalor, of oppressive tyrants- this nation has likely been the same for a thousand years, for all I know. All that I know is that when I look upon the capital, that is so glorified, so illustrious in our textbooks back in school, that when I look upon the capital it is the same dystopia I knew back home.

Of all the lies and stretched truths and censorship pushed by the Chosen Ones, the capital is perhaps the greatest. Because out of all the sadness, the death, the food rations, the utter hopelessness- the capital was a glimmering beacon of hope. No matter how disillusioned and angry I was at the Chosen Ones, I had always imagined the capital to be different; I had always imagined the capital to actually be prosperous. I had never envisioned the capital as the same deadful place I had left. No wonder this was the area that held the most animosity towards the government- they had firsthand accounts of the lies perpetrated in this country.

The capital was always promised to be greater, a life beyond the barricade of poverty and inferiority- but the capital is no further to breaking down the barricade of oppression than any other town. The capital was just the same as every other town in this damn country.

Irregardless, Ben and I found ourselves walking through the falling down and faded buildings of the capital, looking for a hotel to stay at as there were no longer any forests, and even though the days were much warmer and longer, the nights were still bitterly cold.

We were walking across a street in town, when suddenly Ben grabbed my hand. "What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"We're holding hands when we cross the street, didn't your parents teach you anything?" Ben looked at me seriously, with the twinkle in his eyes, barley visible through his mass stupid hair, that meant he was only slightly joking.

"My parents died," I replied, straight-faced, staring him directly in the eyes.

"Yeah, but when you were NINE, you should have learned to cross the street by then! Gosh, Liz, you live on the edge." I didn't recall ever telling Ben when my parents died exactly, but I didn't think much of it and instead kept walking, Ben's hand in mine.

Holding hands and wandering the streets, Ben and I eventually found an old hotel run by a kind old lady on the outskirts of the city.

Through some fast talking and hand gestures, Ben managed to get us a room at the hotel for, as the old hotel clerk informed Ben, "as long as you need Sunny." I have no idea HOW Ben managed to do that, but with his level of charisma it didn't exactly surprise me either.

The hotel elevator didn't work; Ben and I carried our backpacks up three full flights of stairs that should not have met any form of a building code, and began to set up our hotel room as a base camp.

In the hotel room, there was a single bed in the middle, facing a television screen for "important government information regarding the excellent state of our nation," with an old, crusty chair in the corner next to falling apart, ugly green curtains and a radiator that couldn't possibly still work. (Ben and I found out that the radiator did not, in fact, work by any stretᴄh of the means and made an ominous cIicking noise and smelled weird when turned on. We agreed not to touch it after that.) On the right of where we first entered the room, there was a door falling off its hinges that led to the small bathroom, and just past that a small kitchen with a microwave, a comically small fridge, and a single burner that, miraculously, worked. When I first left for this insane odyssey, had I checked into this hotel I would have been disgusted and enlisted in the military right then and there. But now, after so long traveling through the forest, through camping in the wind and rain and snow, through absolute hell, through nearly getting stoned to death each day, the hotel room looked like paradise.

Ben and I dropped our belongings down on the floor, and began to start letting things air out. Our tents went in a pile, with our sleeping pads next to it, and our sleeping bags draped over the chair. Our clothes were unceremoniously dumped in piles on our respective sides of the bed (I had claimed the side closest to the window for ease of escape, and Ben could fight my entire self), and I threw the remaining instant noodles into the sole cabinet in the kitchen area. Finally, I could get those wretched things out of my sight.

Upon investigating the bathroom, Ben and I found the water had a slight blue-ish tint, which all in all was quite pretty, but also quite disconcerting. Regardless of the toxicity of the water, the two of us made a mental note to buy soap in the city tomorrow, because Ben was sure we both smelled atrocious and we were going to die anyway, so why wait.

For the morning, we promised to each other to go into the city and buy REAL food again, soap, and the cheesiest tourist momento from the capital we could find, and Ben promised to take me to the touristy area of the capital that he saw before he left for boot camp. With that, Ben and I got ready for bed- in an actual bed whose sheets probably hadn't been changed since Hoesktra's inauguration.

That night, Ben stole all the covers from me. In times like these, I wonder why I even let him stick around.