Chapter Twenty-Four: Battleground
The girls took to Twitter. They had clever hashtags. "Bring back Annabelle" they chanted. They painted their faces with war paint. Everybody could see that they meant business.
"We want a hero" said Elizabeth their leader. "You have Superman and Spiderman, you have Ironman and Antman, we want Annabelle. You can't keep telling us that we must just grow up and realise that we must accept the everyman. You have never had to do the mental work of putting yourself in other's shoes. Why should we have to do it again."
"Phoenix was unrealistic too" screamed another "We want Annabelle. Why are you so tied to realism? Men die early and often in real life. They are more likely to be disabled, they are more likely to have mental health problems. Stop treating us as if we are fragile. We want fantasies too. Fantasies for us, not fantasies about us"
"Bring back Annabelle"
The cell that Annabelle was given was small. When she lay down in it, she could put her palm against the one wall and the sole of her feet against the other. The room was entirely grey, there was not a single other colour in the room, even her hair and skin seemed to morph to grey in the cell.
With no knowledge of what was going on in the street, she grew frustrated with questions. Did Ferne' become the new leader as he had always wished, was he any good or did his ambition and self-centredness cause him to lose the plot. Annabelle could only think about these things, perhaps get cross and mad about them, but she could not change anything. This lack of information was the worst punishment that the Mamlish could have dreamt up, Annabelle didn't know what deprivation was until this point.
The door swung open and the Lowly Lady Leda walked in.
"Do you understand the concept of amnesty" asked Leda. "We forgive you and you promise never to hurt us again."
"Why would you forgive me" asked Annabelle. "I would never forgive you"
"We understand that life on this island is hard. When we are finished with our assignments, many of us have the option of returning to the mainland and living in quiet retirement. You the sheepherdless are unfortunate enough to call this island home, all the people who you love are here, the people who understand your ways. It must be a hardship. I would be angry if I were you too."
"These are eloquent words, is anybody recording them?" asked Annabelle curtly.
"The prison is a private place. We don't like to keep memories of people in their darkest hours, we would rather keep record of them at their best" said the Lowly Lady.
"It is also where the failures of the Mamlish empire lives" commented Annabelle.
"The Mamlish empire is glorious and we are required to always keep in the fore front of our minds, how future generations will think of it. It is wrong to create a lowly opinion of the forces that created you. We the Mamlish created you too. It wasn't all Madame Green's work, do not forget that"
"I would have been the same without you. I reject your words" said Annabelle.
"No, you would not have been so hard. You would have been a gentle soul. You were a gentle soul before Phoenix's death"
"I was so boring when I knew Phoenix." Said Annabelle looking down "There was nothing interesting about me, I would giggle and prance, but I couldn't have even made it as a dancer. I knew nothing, I was just good at gushing. I'm embarrassed just to think about it"
"People liked you then," said the Lowly Lady with a sad smile.
"Being liked isn't everything" said Annabelle "Sometimes, you need to be disliked. Sometimes people only like you because they are taking advantage of them"
"Sometimes people don't take advantage of people that they like" said the Lowly Lady. "Or they choose to dislike them so that they can take advantage of you, being liked is a good defence mechanism"
"We don't need to defend ourselves. We need to attack you" said Annabelle.
"We will forgive" said the Lesser Lady. "We will forgive you entirely. You won't even need to sign anything; our forgiveness will be so complete"
James stood at the window. He had coffee in his hand. It astonished him, the amount of emotion that the girls displayed. He thought of the men. They had also been angry. An executive came up beside him. "You know, they have buying power too, perhaps we should try and keep them happy as well"
James snorted as he thought as capitalism. He had written his anti-capitalism masterpiece and yet here decisions were getting made by considering whether a group of people had buying power.
He didn't like his role in it, at all. He didn't like the way that his words were being used, but that was the risk of speaking in the world. The audience could change your work. They are part of the whole process. The writer is not God. It is a foolish thing to try to be God, even in the creation of an artwork.
"We must bring her back" said the executive. Luckily, we haven't put out the scene you wrote where we kill her. Instead you must show her fighting strong.
"We can't have her strong" said James "We have broken her, also Vanessa has strong opinions and refuses to work with me."
"You can't let Vanessa dictate the way that the story turns out" said the executive.
James was silent, the executive just dictated how the story should turn out, but she had pretended that the power all lay in James's hand."
"Whatever you want" said James. "I'll do whatever you want"
"Write something that has power James. We are watching you"
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