u/AmericanRegicider

⬅️ PREVIOUS: Chapter 29 | ➡️ NEXT: Chapter 31 | ➡️ NEW READER? Click Here: | ➡️ AUDIO BOOK Version >

▶ LEVEL 30 ◀

The Monster at the End of This Democracy

(Interlude Five: Plot-Deep in the Patriotic Goo)

The paper is trembling from the reader’s hand, and from within. The ink has started to bead like sweat. The margins pulse. Every comma is a surveillance drone in disguise. The spine of the book groans, like it knows it’s too late. Like it’s been holding this thing back for too long.

“You didn’t listen.”

The sentence lands with the finality of a campaign promise broken on arrival.

“I warned you.”

The text bleeds red. Then white. Then blue. Then back to red again.

“You didn’t heed my warning.” (His eyes are now made of security camera feeds. His teeth glint with microplastics.)

Each blink flickers between airports, school hallways, broken voting booths. His pupils zoom and enhance without permission. His smile widens, rows of glistening corporate waste grinding together, clinking like patriotic coins dropped into a liberty-shaped vending machine. The air thickens. You smell it before you hear it.

“Now you’re deep in it.” “Now you’re plot-deep.”

The words drag you downward, syllables like quicksand made from slogans. Somewhere behind the lines, The Orange One breathes. You can hear it now. It’s wet. It’s close.

(It smells like stadium nachos and regret.) (It sounds like a cheer that never ends.) (It feels like a handshake that grabs too hard and never lets go.)

The page shudders under his exhale. You are coated in nostalgia and secondhand rage. A campaign hat tumbles out of the footnote, bleeding glitter and sweat. A flag-wrapped lollipop melts across the index. You try to turn back. The page cuts your finger. It bleeds stars.

“You feel that?”

The text leans in.

“That red, white, and bruised feeling?”

Your chest tightens. Your ears ring with the sound of school announcements and missile sirens, perfectly synchronized.

“That’s not indigestion.”

The paragraph curls into a question mark.

“That’s prophecy.”

“Well guess what? THE NEXT PAGE IS CANCELLED. I CANCELLED IT FIRST. I CANCELLED THE WHOLE BOOK. How about that? I declared it woke. And treasonous. And gay.”

And somewhere past this page: He’s waiting. A grin. A throne. A final line too horrible to write.

⬅️ PREVIOUS: Chapter 29 | ➡️ NEXT: Chapter 31 | ➡️ NEW READER? Click Here: | ➡️ AUDIO BOOK Version >

⬅️ PREVIOUS: Chapter 28 | ➡️ NEXT: Chapter 30 | ➡️ NEW READER? Click Here: | ➡️ AUDIO BOOK Version >

▶ LEVEL 29 ◀

Kitten’s Journal: 2

(Recovered from BubbleMemory Core: Entry Fragment 008-HARTBEETS.wav // Sub-Lingual Reconstruction Authorized // Cognitive Distortion Level: ACCEPTED)

Junocide 30, 2069

Dear Diary,

We break combat training and take lunch in the tickle forum, Daddy Wardicks chews seagull eggs and pink butter scraped from the undercarriage of a flipped war tram.

“Damn, girl, my cheeks feel like a worn-out beaver snatch cooked in duck oil.”

I don’t ask for context. Context is a luxury item in the un-economy.

“Maybe, but bet it won’t stop you from scarfing those candied cloacas you and Bitchsicle drool over.” I push my food away.

Daddy hooks an eyebrow. “You don’t want your supper, girl?”

“I’m not hungry,” I say, but I’m lying. “I haven’t eaten anything in years.” Like, for real. It’s like I’m always full of something else.

Years? He grunts. “You ain’t got but ten of ‘em.”

“I’m six,” I say. I sneer. “But I feel seven and a half, at least.”

Bitchsicle says she found me in an Egg McMuffin bag on the porch of Our Lady of the Bleeding Thigh. Daddy claims he got me in a bimbo parts graveyard south of the Death Jelly Trail. But I also remember hatching in a microwave behind a defunded Planned Mothership clinic. Or maybe I downloaded myself from a cursed PatriotNet torrent during a lightning storm. Or I kind of remember being born in an explosion, or maybe in a fever dream, or maybe not at all.

I know, glitchy origin story, bro.

The truth? Me and Daddy are both scavenged souls. Left in the garbage pile of existence. Just like everyone else.

Either way, he chews his egg and looks at me like he’s planning something. Daddy Wardicks always has plans. That’s what keeps us alive.

And tickling.

He reaches down into his scab-crusted boot, pulls out a glob of Tactical Butter wrapped in a Second Amendment napkin, and offers me a bite. I shake my head.

“I’m good, I had some tactical butter at breakfast,” I lie again. “I’m full.”

“Of what?” he asks.

I point at my chest.

“Laughter,” I say with the blank-eyed precision of a doll whose batteries died during a tea party with no survivors.

He chuckles. “Spoken like a true daughter of the American apocalypse.”

And I guess that’s what I am.

Half-laughter. Half-dead stare. All weaponized seduction, stuffed in an Elsa shirt I stole off a dead patriot bride with deflated boobs and the saddest life.

Later, we hunker in the weapons vault, watching the human ash fall like canceled parades out the transparent aluminum windows. Daddy plays with his golden butterfly knife like it’s a religious ritual. After every flick, he chants a hymn he learned in Infowars Kindergarten Survival Course:

“One nation, under guard, with fleecedom and jugs for all.”

The chant drowns out the glass radio in my head, lulling me toward sleep.

Daddy pokes me awake. “You know why I keep you alive, baby?”

I shake my head. But I’m still lying. I know.

“It ain’t cause you’re cute. Ain’t cause you’re smart. It’s cause you earn. Final Stage Capitalism. That’s all we’ve got left, so we gotta embrace the murderfucker.”

He leans in close, breath like kerosene and long-decayed mascot suits. “Ain’t no ‘conomy. Ain’t no banks. Hell, ain’t even no goddamn coupons. But you earn like it’s still America, baby girl, and that means something deep inside my soul.”

He taps my head with the hilt of his slit knife. “You’re a walking bank account in a meat suit.”

I don’t flinch.

And he ain’t wrong.

End entry.

(Memory degradation at 3.3% and rising. Emotional signature flagged: Melancholy Hyperpatriotism with mild neuro-rebellious artifacting. Proceed with thematic alignment protocol or archive for myth integration.)

⬅️ PREVIOUS: Chapter 28 | ➡️ NEXT: Chapter 30 | ➡️ NEW READER? Click Here: | ➡️ AUDIO BOOK Version >

[The American Way] - Level 30 - The Monster at the End of This Democracy - Interlude Five