Michael is thirty-nine and gay. Like his little niece, Kim, who has a learning disability, he is considered a non-citizen under the draconian Normalcy Laws. Kim’s parents quietly arrange to flee to New Zealand, where the Normalcy Laws haven’t been implemented. As Michael has a good job and has been careful to hide his homosexuality, he doesn’t consider going with them. Instead, he remains behind and goes about his business as normal until one morning when he is confronted by two Black Guards. Hooded, Michael is taken to what he assumes is the Department of Law. Once people are taken there, they never see the light of day again. Elimination is the only punishment in the New World Order. There he is interrogated by The Man, a handsome officer of the Black Guards. In a desperately hopeless situation, is there any hope of surviving elimination? No one ever has in the past, but Michael discovers something about The Man that hints at his situation not being as bleak as it appears. Can he dare to hope there is a way out? Or is he so delusional that his fantasies of freedom have clouded his judgment? Under the oppressive Normalcy Laws, nothing is certain.

Forbidden

They touched hands before parting and Michael left Bevan with a determination to be the one to make their situation better. He went down to the docks and asked discreet questions and came across a mariner’s bar where two salty old sailors with weather-beaten skin and woolly hair mentioned they had heard of a skipper who smuggled people out.


Michael was intrigued but kept the conversation casual, peppering his questions with remarks he hoped would ease their suspicions he was some kind of undercover agent. In the end, he came away from the conversation only with the knowledge that there was a skipper who took illegal passengers. A fact he had known already. He met others along the way, dock workers and the odd deck hand, who hinted about hearing of sympathetic skippers, but most were reluctant to talk, and one prickly old barnacle was openly aggressive.


By mid-afternoon he’d had enough. His feet were aching and his body craved rest. He could only hope that Bevan had had more luck.


Chapter 29