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

“This is like a dream, isn’t it?” said Michael as they navigated one of the crowded malls.


“People can just be themselves in a way that seems odd to me now.”


“Get used to it,” said Bevan leaning in and rubbing his shoulder lovingly against Michael’s. “We’ve been ourselves quite a few times already since we first got here.”


Michael laughed. “You’ve got a one track mind. Thankfully.”


There was only one thing Michael needed desperately and that was a pair of sturdy boots for work. They went into a couple of shoe shops before deciding upon a pair of tan colored boots with reinforced toes and sturdy soles.


And while they were there, Bevan purchased two pairs of patent leather shoes for his job as ma?tre d’.


“Can’t have too many shoes, darling,” he said in the campest voice Michael had ever heard anyone use.


Chapter 37