Voting Day

Two big eyes, familiar eyes stared at her, into her. They belonged to her mother. They didn’t blink, “No matter what, don’t look away. Do you understand me?” Her gaze was piercing. “Do you understand?”

She softly nodded her head.

“Don’t be scared, but don’t look away. Too much depends on this. Please, just don’t look away.”

She could feel her mother’s grip on her small shoulders strengthen with this last piece of advice.

Don’t look away.

She wouldn’t forget that. Her mother took a deep inhalation and relinquished her grip. She looked down at her daughter, hands on her hips and shook her head back and forth with a drawn out sigh. “My little girl,” fell out in a whisper.

— — —

She stared out the window watching the orange sky turn to blue. Riding the county school bus she could feel every bump and pothole on her hometown’s dilapidated and empty streets. She watched the landscape change from fields to small buildings to skyscrapers and as she did so she repeated her mother’s instruction over in her head.

Don’t look away.

She stepped off the bus and was immediately led to a table where she verified her name and age. The volunteer was typing away cementing her information into the database. Another volunteer placed a pulse oximeter on her index finger and smiled only with his teeth while his eyes were busy reading the numbers on the small computer. She was stuck staring at the orange dust gathered around his teeth, he had obviously just been chewing on some government-supplied snack, they always left a residue. He read off some numbers to the first volunteer who typed them into the system and without looking up stated, “Red five.” The teeth-smiler removed the oximeter and led her to a line with other kids she didn’t recognize.

Here she was on her first ever voting day. She was wearing her best yellow dress and had her hair tied with a ribbon, also her favorite color, ready to perform her civic duty. She looked around at all the other school children not yet old enough to fill out a ballot, but old enough for their vote to count nonetheless. It wouldn’t be until she was twenty-five, when her brain was scientifically proven to be fully developed, that she’d be allowed to actually fill out a voting ballot. For now, it was the American Psychological Imaging Political Categorization Process that would decide her vote.

It had been discovered hundreds of years earlier that the amygdala, or the part of the brain that processes fear, was larger in social conservatives than in liberals. It had also been found that social conservatives when presented with a decidedly gross or disgusting photo would turn their heads more quickly than their liberal counterparts. This was the science that allowed for her vote to be counted before her brain had fully developed. This was the scientific way of things.

“Red five!” was called through a loudspeaker and suddenly her group was being led into the auditorium. She followed the back of the head before her repeating her mother’s words in her head.

Don’t look away.

She found her seat in the auditorium. There were bored adults all around them. Some of them spoke with each other and giggled. Most just wore the mask of adulthood and performed their actions without emotion. One such man pressed a button on a computer screen and suddenly a giant version of a familiar face appeared in a hologram before the group of voting adolescents.

The face belonged to Gregory Chinaski the Eighty-Seventh President of the United States of America. His smile was large and inviting and unlike the dust-covered smile of the volunteer, his eyes were seemingly involved in the process as well. He spoke to the children in heightened language reminding them of the importance of what was happening here today and thanking them for what they were to do presently. He smiled and at the end tagged on the catchphrase that had won him his first term and secured his second, “Follow the Science and there you’ll find Freedom.” Some of the palpably bored adults mouthed the phrase with President Chinaski. Then his image disappeared and the adults began to lead the children one by one into another room.

She lined up and watched them go with her mother’s guidance repeating in her mind.

Don’t look away.

She tried her best to read how the other kids felt as they were marched into the next room. Some to her best estimates seemed happy, excited to finally be doing this. Some seemed indifferent and others looked as though they lived a bit closer to how she herself felt at the present moment, scared, frightened even.

She knew what to expect. Her mother had prepared her, told her all about it. She would be sat down and she would be watched, as a slew of images would be presented to her. Some images she knew would fill her with comfortable and lovely feelings. Some of the images would remind her of happy memories and quiet, contented moments of bliss. But it was the others.

Don’t look away.

It was the other images she was worried about. Soon she would be exposed to disgusting and disturbing scenes. Her mind wandered considering the worst of it all and it kept coming back to that rat she had seen that one time. She was taking the trash to the incinerator and that’s when she saw it all those years ago. The flattened cadaver of a large rat squeezed dry of its innards with its long, scruffy tail curling up behind its corpse like that of a kite. In her head, it was the worst thing she had ever seen. Sometimes in dreams it would talk with her. The rat would turn its collapsed skull with its eyes now gone, it would open its snout revealing small yellow and black incisors and tell her secrets.

She never listened to him though. She didn’t believe him. He was just some broken rodent. What did he know about being free?

The line before her was dwindling; soon it would be her turn. Looking at the bored adults confused her. Her heart was beating so fast and her brain couldn’t grasp how anyone could be bored at a moment like this. But they had all done it before, couldn’t they remember the fear? It made her embarrassed to feel scared seeing that others weren’t. She tried her best to hide it. She spied down at her right hand. It was trembling. She stared at it. Harder, trying to kill the nerves in her fingers. She squeezed her hand into a fist and covered it with her left. Now she felt the tremors in her small elbows. Her breathing was shallow, but she didn’t notice. She wanted to be brave. She wished to be brave. She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s.

Don’t look away.

She opened her eyes and saw the child in front of her disappear behind a large oak door on the side of the auditorium. She was next. She took a deep breath as her hands ironed out the front of her yellow dress. There was a man with a tablet standing by the door, one of the bored volunteers. He had an earpiece and was doing nothing, but waiting. She just stared at the door. It was heavy and daunting. The knob and hinges were golden bronze, but what stood out was the carving in the wood.

In the wood was the image of a tree on top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a roaring sea spitting salt across the door. And above the tree striking to its roots was a bolt of lightning emanating from the sky. The carving was delicate and precise yet strong. She got lost in it. Wondering about the tree on the hill. How it must feel to be that tree and to be struck by that lightning. Or did the lightning not hurt the tree, but craft the tree? Was that the story she had heard? She had seen this image before. Remembered something of a city long ago and the idea of gifts and names. The tree looked safe. The tree looked scared.

Then the door opened.

She was ushered into a dark room by the bored volunteer with the earpiece. It was hard to make out much in the room, shadows mixing with darker shadows. But what she could see were three men in lab coats. They all wore glasses and had gadgets about them. The volunteer with the earpiece left the room and the door clicked shut with finality. Now the only light sources were the green and blue blinking lights on the men’s machines. One of the men placed another pulse oximeter on her index finger. It stayed there.

“Do you understand what is happening?”

She told them yes she did.

“Do you understand what to do?”

She once again told them yes.

“The voting process will begin.”

One of the men pressed a button and immediately the room was a lighthouse beacon. The image of a puppy on soft blankets with the sun shining through a window illuminated the room. She felt at ease. Then a cup of hot cocoa with steam rising up.

A sunset.

Baby laughing.

Ice cream cone.

People dancing.

Fireworks.

Don’t look away.

The men in the lab coats watched her like a cell under a microscope. Studying her as her eyes reflected ladybugs on a flower.

Gutter collecting rain.

Cow in a pasture.

Friends around a campfire.

Rainbow.

Sunflowers.

Don’t look away.

One of the men began to type on his tablet while another whispered in his ear. Still she was staring at a garden tea party.

A lone boat rowing.

Star-gazers.

Don’t look away.

One of the men yawned. Still a countryside.

Lovers holding hands.

Dolphins.

Lemonade.

Don’t look away.

Forest path.

Birthday cake.

Don’t look away.

Monks praying.

Don’t look away.

Ballerinas.

Don’t look away.

A symphony orchestra.

Don’t look away.

Then something funny happened. A moment before she saw it. One millisecond before she saw it her heart skipped a beat and her breath got lost in the labyrinth of her esophagus. Before she saw it she knew she’d see it. Not in the way of knowing she had been taught. But the way of knowing that lived in the burrowed out section of her deepest evolutionary self. A storm was brewing in the nearest distance and only in the dark recesses of the cave of her most primordial being did she feel a drop or smell the scent of incoming doom. Still she reminded herself.

Don’t look away.

And there it was in bright detail. The lips had receded on the woman’s blue face. Her eyelids were shut and liquids were gathering under the puffy dead skin. Below her right eye hung years of pain as well as swollen red and purple blood. Her mouth displayed like proscenium arches decayed teeth protruding from rotten gums. While on the right side of her head, deep in her ear canal and spilling over her visage maggots feasted on cheeks once used to show embarrassment. The infestation spilled out of her nostrils no longer needing air; perfect white larvae in heavy contradiction of the used up shell of the human condition.

She told herself not to, willed herself not to look away. The men in lab coats looked on like teachers on exam day. Her stomach gurgled like magma and her face went hot. Her palms were ice, slick with nerves.

Time was still as the face’s eyes opened, her mother’s eyes controlling eroded lips mouthing the warning.

Don’t look away.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but poured unearned years of grit down the chimney of her throat and killed the heat of the magma yearning for her to turn her gaze. She looked on in defiance of the feeling of disgust born from the image. She looked on in defiance of the urge to surrender. She looked on. Still she looked on heeding her mother’s words.

She didn’t look away as she saw children on a swing.

Sunbathers.

Man smoking his pipe.

Then darkness again.

“The voting process is complete,” one of the men wearing a lab coat announced. Another man in a lab coat removed the oximeter and led her to another door and opened it for her. Blindness, pain behind the eyes. She was surrounded by light and was shown to yet another table where a woman volunteer handed her a sticker still attached to its release liner. She took it without seeing.

Looking down her eyes adjusted and she read the words,

I voted

She was given a choice of grape or apple juice. She pointed at the apple and it was handed to her. As she waited with the other children for the county school bus to return to carry them home she unsheathed the straw and punctured the box unleashing the juice. As she sucked down the sugar water she smiled knowing her mother would be proud of her.