Dawn of Dystopia: Prequel to Dystopia in Drag

By C. M. Barrett

Gerry’s mother told him he came from the stars, but when the ten-year-old comes home to an empty trailer, he fears being homeless on earth. To survive, he learns to charm social workers and orphanage administrators. His new friend, Anthony, guides him through the child welfare system, and Gerry refuses to leave Anthony behind when a wealthy gay man wants to adopt him.

Their life in a Greenwich Village brownstone seems too good to be true—and it is. After famines and plagues kill millions, the Redeemers, an increasingly powerful evangelical church, blame all deviants—including scientists, academics, artists, and anyone else who challenges their dogma—for the disasters.

Those targeted by the Redeemers believe that the church plans punitive action—but their intentions are far more brutal than anyone could have imagined. Now a young man, Gerry discovers that his unusual ability to create harmony flowers to serve his community, but it takes a tragedy to shock him into realizing what coming from the stars really means.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. M. Barrett
• Release date: Jan 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370153244

C. M. Barrett

On my mother's side of the family, I come from a line of storytellers. My grandmother's stories ranged from my grandfather's arrest for draft resistance in England during World War I, the uncertainty of life during the Troubles in Ireland, to the day she decided to leave her marriage (but didn't). My mother's stories described a rural childhood that to a child of a suburb of little boxes seemed idyllic. Both of them encouraged me to read and provided me with books to feed a growing habit. When I was seven or eight, I discovered mythology, and the gods and goddesses in those tales were as real to me as the dragons and cats in my own stories are now. Thanks to my early training in fantasy, I like to hang out with dragons. Accepting the bizarre directions my imagination takes has allowed me to conjure up Zen cats, cougars, gossip-vending hawks, and other critters. Currently I live in upstate New York on a wooded piece of land not unlike some of the terrain in Big Dragons Don't Cry. Since 2000 I've belonged to the online writers' group, Artistic License, subtitled Shameless Blameless Hussies. They've read all my books, but don't blame them if you find errors, because they're shameless. I also paint, and the art on my book cover is one of my watercolors.

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Dawn of Dystopia

The Prequel to Dystopia in Drag

Book 0

C. M. Barrett

Rainbow Dragon Press

A Note to the Reader

The Church of the Redeemers is not based on any (known to me) church or denomination. In other words, it’s a fictional creation.

I would like to add that I know many Christians (including family members) who practice their faith with love and generosity. They have my respect and admiration.

Chapter 1

When I was ten years old, my parents abandoned me. Already a malnourished and undersized boy, I became a throwaway child and candidate for starvation.

During the twenty-first century, desperately poor people left their children behind when they moved to places they thought would give them better opportunities—not for prosperity; they’d pretty much given up on that. They were prepared to settle for survival, which was easier to manage without the burden of kids.

They set off for Arizona, Colorado, California, and any other place where they’d heard the weather was better, the chance for work greater, and—for many—drugs easier to score.

Opioid addiction was climbing to record heights, and one of its effects seemed to be suppression of the guilt parents might have otherwise felt about abandoning their children. When it came to the bottom line, nothing mattered but the fix.

The day I discovered I was alone in the world, I came home from school to an empty trailer. This didn’t alarm me at first. My mother occasionally got work cleaning houses, and my father earned income from the kind of work that also led to arrest.

I didn’t start worrying until bedtime. Then I wandered into their bedroom and noticed that empty hangers hung in the small closet. In the bathroom the medicine cabinet was empty. I slowly realized that they’d left, leaving behind only an unwashed odor, the fumes of tobacco and alcohol—and me.

Unable to deal with their abandonment, I went to my small bedroom, burrowed beneath the dirty bedclothes, and cried until I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, the emptiness of the trailer encircled me like the oblivion that had so often blanketed my parents. If it came any closer, it would smother me. For one tempting moment, I wanted that. I was just a kid; how could I hope to survive?

Because you have to.

I didn’t know where that voice came from. It didn’t yell or wheedle; it whispered with the sound of an ice-white star, so distant that it didn’t care whether I listened or not. Despite its indifferent tone, it had more force and strength than either of my drug-weakened parents had ever exercised. It represented my only hope, so I kept on listening.

Forget them; they forgot you. Are you going to let them kill you?

Like the whiplash of a starbeam, those words slashed through my cocoon of helplessness. To avoid a second swipe from the cosmos, I jumped out of bed and stood, shivering.

Okay, I told it. I don’t know how I’m going to make it, but I will.

For a week school lunches and the small supplies of food left in the trailer kept me alive. When the cupboards emptied, I got desperate and went outside late at night to search through the dumpsters. I was pulling out a fast food bag with leftovers in it when a neighbor came by.

Mrs. Cameron studied my dirty clothes and hair. Where are your parents?

I looked down at my torn sneakers. Gone.

She bit her lip. People. Do you have any family you can call?

My parents had both emigrated from Ireland, and, as far as I knew, they’d never gotten letters from there. No one.

You know what that means, don’t you?

I’d avoided thinking about it in the hope that the voice that suggested the feasibility of survival would come up with a better plan, but I knew all right. My future would be foster care or an orphanage. I didn’t like the idea of strangers running my life, but they could hardly do a worse job than my parents had.

A foster home might not be terrible. Foster kids went to my school, and their clothes were old and mended but clean, and the children looked like they ate. If I could get to some place where they’d feed me, I could figure out the next step.

Tomorrow morning I’ll call the child welfare office. Someone will come here. You can stay at our place tonight; it’s not safe for you to be alone.

I realized how lonely I’d been in the trailer—and frightened. They taught us in school about rapists and child molesters. I was sure that every deviant in the area must know I had no one to protect me.

Mrs. Cameron made me take a long shower the next morning and gave me some clothes that were too big but clean.

Now you look like a kid someone would want. She gave me one of those phony adult smiles I knew too well, but I needed to be a kid who would be wanted. Getting into a good home meant making the social worker care about me.

I had a few things going for me. In addition to having blue eyes and blonde hair, I knew the importance of charm. Even if my winning ways hadn’t gotten me a ride to Arizona, they’d usually prevented my parents from hitting me.

Miss Cirillo, the social worker, had long, curly black hair and a very good figure. She smiled at me. Is it ok if I look around in the trailer? I might find addresses for relatives.

I unlocked the door. They didn’t even have friends.

Poor child, Mrs. Cameron said.

Looking through a stranger’s eyes, I saw what a complete dump the place was: cigarette burn marks on every surface, filthy linoleum, and mold crawling up the walls. The social worker looked as if she didn’t want to touch anything, but she went through drawers, cabinets, and even lifted the mattress of my parents’ bed. She found no useful evidence.

Why don’t you gather up whatever you want to take? While you do that, I’ll have a word with Mrs. Cameron.

They moved away from the trailer, but my hearing was excellent.

He seems very polite and well-behaved. It’s unusual under the circumstances.

You don’t know how unusual, Mrs. Cameron said. Without too much exaggeration, you could say it’s miraculous. Do you think you can find a place for him?

Certainly a foster home.

And you’ll let me know?

Give me your phone number.

Mrs. Cameron hugged me, and I got in Miss Cirillo’s car. It smelled clean and started right up. I noticed how pretty she was. Her blouse and skirt were nothing much, but they weren’t stained, and no buttons were missing. She smelled like lavender. She probably took a shower every day. I would have liked her to hug me.

She drove to the Child Welfare office, which smelled of piss and disinfectant. We went into her small, clean office.

Can you sit quietly while I make some phone calls? she asked.

Absolutely. (I had a good vocabulary for my age.)

She smiled again and handed me a coloring book that would have been suitable for a five-year-old and some crayons. I wanted to ask her if she had something else, but I was afraid that I’d irritate off my lifeline to the future. I opened the coloring book and picked out a crayon.

She got on the phone, and I colored. Several adorable kittens later, she finished her calls.

I can place you in about a week. Until then, you can stay in our temporary shelter here. Let’s get you set up.

We went to the back of the building by way of a kitchen where an enormous woman cut up vegetables. I was hungry enough to grab anything, but I kept my hands by my side.

Behind the kitchen was a small dormitory with six cots lined up on either side. Only one boy was there, a skinny black kid, maybe twelve years old, with dreads.

The others are playing outside, Miss Cirillo said. Anthony, this is Gerry. She left.

You a throwaway? Anthony asked.

I hadn’t heard the term before, but I understood it. Yeah.

Fuck them, right?

Yeah.

I mean, fuck them. They left while I was in school. I come home; the place is empty, not even a dime rolling on the floor. My little sister comes home; she starts crying. She’s only six. What are we supposed to do?

I looked around. Where is she?

She got lucky. The phone service hadn’t been cut off yet, so I called my uncle. He took both of us for a few nights, but he said he couldn’t keep me. I ate too much. Bullshit. My sister was little and cute. I was big. I was a boy, and his wife didn’t like me. She said she didn’t want another man in the house. Like I’m a man, like I was going to jump her or something. I would have done anything she asked to stay with my little sister.

Anthony swallowed hard,