Secreted Letter

I have always been a good man, in my thoughts at least. Just as any man, I have grown since my childhood years. When I was younger, I had aspirations of being a director of movies involving aliens and dinosaurs. Years later, it was to be a famous artist for books. Not long after, my dreams were of becoming a writer. That’s one thing that has never changed, no matter how old I am: My love of books. So why am I now helping the government destroy such literature as Shakespeare, Ovid, Murasaki, Poe, King, Seuss, and many other countless writers?  As I said, I’ve always been a good man in my own terms, but now, I’m questioning myself. When I was twenty, I flew across the world to see the world before it crumbled to pieces. Every one knew the War was coming; it was only a matter of when. The world had become an unsteady structure, threatening to deteriorate into chaos and bloodshed. I had never left America, never seen the world from outside its illusions and television, so I flew halfway around the world. And that’s when the War happened, in 2014.
It’s been more than four decades since the War was declared over, but its influences have yet to dissipate. New leaders are taking hold of the senseless communities in the world, and building themselves governments and nations that people like me read of in books and feared would happen in time. Dystopias. New governments that promised security and happiness, but for the price of privacy and slavery. And now, I’m actually helping the bastards!
After the War, I settled down and prepared for the worst. I married happily and raised a small family, all the while running a small library for decades. I knew the books in my library would some day get me into trouble, but I have never been one for censoring or restricting what anyone else can read—until now of course.
I am a failure! I say to live by standards and ethics, but then abandon them the moment I am threatened with my security and my life. For years I have spoke highly of being an individual and not becoming one of the herd, and now, I walk on all fours under the muzzles of rifles. The country I live in is irrelevant; its leader’s name is unimportant; the same policies of censorship and disillusion are global. All that is relevant to my story, is that laws were passed with zeal, that backed the idea of mindlessly following a government centered around religion, and kicked other ideas such as free thinking and Individualism into the mud. Libraries and bookstores were purged, burned, erased, only to be filled in with depots to distribute religious propaganda and other devices to lure the public under false-advertising.
The Purging and Reclamation—the burning of thousands of books, and millions of pages, followed by a flurry of hollow thinking. All of it still makes me sick to my stomach. Of course, a good many people are resentful to the laws; which is why the government resorted to the usage of its military, which in turn is why it’s been a generally successful campaign. It is why I am now cowering in the bathroom, hunched over a scrap of paper, secretly writing my thoughts and emotions that will be shortly destroyed, probably by the toilet. I do not wish to be executed or my family to be hurt if I step out of line. I do not wish to serve as another oppressive example of what happens to those who don’t listen.

I’d rather become a martyr than a lesson.