I am dusting off this blog after many months of neglect to share with you a short story I'm working on that was inspired by last year's threat of government shut-down. This is not a final version, but because it seems so timely I don't want to wait until I have time to revise it before sharing it.
This is a story about choices. About false dichotomies. About the ever-increasing gap between our nation's leaders and its citizens.
I welcome your thoughts and comments about the story itself or about ways in which we might move forward as a country.
Warmest regards,
S. H. Aeschliman
The Choice
by S. H. Aeschliman
by S. H. Aeschliman
“An
increasing percentage of Americans are becoming alarmed at the
aggressive posture taken by the members of government toward the very
people who not only elected them into their respective positions, but
also grant the members of government the required privileges to carry
out their constitutional duties.”
—Orion M. Martin in a letter to the editor of newsreview.com
—Orion M. Martin in a letter to the editor of newsreview.com
The room was not large. Maybe six by eight feet, no more. The fluorescent lighting made the white linoleum floor gleam and turned her skin a sickly gray-green. The walls were cement blocks painted gray. And there were two doors.
Both doors were set in the same wall, and they were identical: polished wood with a brass handle. They looked like the front doors to suburban houses, not the kind of doors you’d find in a cement-block room with linoleum flooring.
Though Sara could not remember how she’d come to be here, she was sure she had not entered through either of those doors. One moment she’d been lying in bed under her down comforter, thinking she should get up, gray winter light coming in through the window…the next moment she was sitting on a metal chair in her pajamas, facing two doors.
