Devon Stack - The Day of the Rope (The Days of the Rope) (Volume 1)

Devon Stack

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THE DAY OF THE

Copyright 2018 Devon Stack All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1727381276 ISBN-10: 1727381270

The first thing I'd like to say is, thank you for purchasing my book. I spent countless sleepless nights writing it. I hope you find it thought-provoking and unique.

I would also like to say that this is a work of fiction.

This is not a prediction of the future or even a fantasy of the present. It's just a story, and any connection to real-world events, places, or people, are all just coincidences, and nothing more.

Enjoy.

-Devon Stack

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

-John F. Kennedy

Laughter escaped Ethan's lips, but it was cut short immediately. He hadn't expected to laugh like that. Not out loud. Not at all. The hysterical edge he'd detected in his unexpected outburst reignited his paranoia. He glanced around, scanning the faces of everyone inside the metro car with him. Had they noticed?

Nobody seemed to be aware that he even existed. Ethan was very familiar with this. He'd been commuting in and out of the city on the red line for years and had never had a conversation with anyone that he could remember. There were only those occasionally awkward moments when some urine-stained lunatic would try to solicit money from him, or lost tourists would ask for directions to the various monuments.

A new and increasingly common phenomenon was the sudden appearance of large groups of pushy black teenagers that abruptly performed half-baked "performance art" pieces that were supposedly about racism. The teens would loudly shout platitudes about bigotry and bias, as the train moved between metro stops. These performances always ended with mildly threatening requests for donations from their captive audience.

If nobody took the bait, the teens often got aggressive with whichever white passengers looked easiest to intimidate. The teens would point their phones at their victim, call them racist, and shout nonsense about "white privilege" until the mark invariably either fled the train or paid the teens off to avoid confrontation. Many of these passengers were government employees or contractors, and the last thing they wanted was to play a starring role as the evil white racist in the next viral outrage video.

Ethan avoided these situations the same way most people did. He simply avoided eye contact at all costs, even if it meant pretending to be intensely interested in the bits of left behind garbage and filth on the floor, and seats of the metro car.

He felt bad for the tourists who were intimidated into handing over their cash. Most of the time these were patriotic retired folks who had spent most of their lives getting fleeced by the ruling class that operated out of the city above. Now, here they were spending some of their savings to see their nation's capital. Seeing, but not really seeing. It angered Ethan to know that if Norman Rockwell were alive today, he'd be forced to paint an elderly war veteran wearing a foreign made "We the People" t-shirt purchased from a gift shop from someone who didn't speak English, getting shaken down by these illiterate delinquents in a graffiti-covered underground train.

All the tourists had gone now. Most of the car's inhabitants had their noses in their phones. Some were tapping and sliding their fingers across their screens as the rest of their bodies swayed rhythmically in unison to the thumping and squealing sounds coming from the wheels of the car below, as it bounced and scraped against the track beneath them. None acknowledged his presence. The hypnotic blur of brick and concrete just outside the dull windows took no notice of him either. It did, however, remind him to pay attention to the next stop. Was he out of the city yet?

It seemed like just moments ago, that adrenaline had been splashing through his veins. He had been pushing and shoving his way into the metro car alongside the others like suit-clad, tie-wearing.

salmon. He had been acutely aware of everyone around him. Now, it seemed his brain chemistry was struggling to return to normal. The adrenaline had mn its course, and it had turned sour in his blood.

He suddenly found it difficult to keep his balance as the metro car bobbed up and down. His grip on the stainless steel hand railing made his arm seem stiff and corpse-like. His knuckles were white as bone. The rest of his body swayed in reaction to the car's movement, not unlike a ragdoll attempting to look dignified.