A World Without Golda Meir

This is a story start I wrote some time ago. Since I[m not using this blog currently for anything else, thought I'd put this out to the void. Trigger warning for violence.

Three cameras saw them rape her. Two on each side of the North Square, and one on top of the store building. Three cameras saw her little pink hat bobbing on the way back from class, and saw two guys rip off the cute matching windbreaker ($10.99 set from the store she was raped in front of). And the cops responded, 30 minutes later, when the two guys ran into the store to steal from the cash register.

The outcry was deafening. The somnabulant public would accept a lot from the government, but a failure to protect a sweet-looking white girl from a nice family who was just coming back from her class, well that was too much. And didn't we give up privacy, all those cameras in public, for safety? Blood must be had, Something Must Be Done.

In order to appease a restless public, the government's response was swift: two men (whom looked nothing like the lily-white boys in their frat jackets on the video) plead guilty to the rape and were executed. Also, there would be a 10 o'clock curfew for every woman on the streets. Your wives and daughters were now safe. John Q. Public was hushed, and calmed. The pitiful squeak the few women (and even less men) made about it "not being a criminal activity to be female" and "those women with jobs" were ignored or quelled immediately.

I was one of those small voices. Of course, who would care what I thought of the plan; no one asked me when they decided to play the three cameras endlessly looped on network television either, my face and nipples fuzzed out as to not upset anyone's delicate sensibilities. I was the rape-girl; I had to be victimized over and over again, reliving the experience until it just became a fuzzy, white-and-gray mushy image on a screen.

And, then to be told it was my fault- if I would have been at home it wouldn't have happened. Those who didn't say it tacitly agreed with it when they didn't oppose the law. Rape just happens; all we can do is get our women out of the way. And if they have to be restrained...well, it's like seat belt laws. You have to be restrained for your own safety.

But the classes weren't moved; the night shifts stayed the same. You want to get ahead in the world? You have to go to school, you have to have a job.

So here I am; hair cut pixie short, and under a ball cap, dressed in a bulky leather jacket, shapeless pants, walking with the swagger of one who knows he owns the world. I am a criminal violating the law, after some criminals violated me.