[ WP ] You 've been caught stealing , and your punishment is simple ; you must defend against the monsters outside The City .

Even as they were marching me down the stuffy concrete corridor, with a hand on each arm gripping me so hard my feet barely touched the floor, I still wanted dimly to protest that there must have been some mistake. Mine was not one of the arguable cases, though: the telephone system was actually in my hands when the security forces turned the corner and crunched in over the broken glass of the store-front. What followed was a night that made me sick to my stomach, in the hands of these faceless oppressors with no concept of the value of life. 
 
 This morning, anyone walking past me in the street can tell at a glance what I have done. There is no need for branding, mutilation or shackles: my outfit is already causing my fellow citizens to shrink away from me in disgust and fear, half-wanting to approach me and tear the clothes from my back and half-wishing I were transparent enough to see through and show the searing gleam of the buildings behind me. My stomach curdles and my head is threatening to burst like a rotten pumpkin. I can already see the massing hordes milling from street corner to street corner, with the quiet hum of a swarm of ragged bees. Only the lava rifle weighing down my shoulders stands between them and The City I am compelled to protect. 
 
 They had taken me into their slick and velvet-draped chambers, those washers of brains. They had plied me with champagne and exotic mushrooms masquerading as cheeses. They rubbed my shoulders with fragrant oils and played me music, telling me they always knew I was *one of them*. I ate and drank because I knew the cold and concrete box that awaited me if I did not; now I am convinced they are rolling their exquisite torture of me around their mouths to savour it. They know the bitterness of my regret and it tickles them. I stand in the centre of this concrete plaza with its gilt fountains, an instrument of death at my hips. It eats at my soul like mould to know that the huddled masses of the despised opposite me, those ‘ monsters ’ who dare to take back the harvests and fresh water robbed from them by the bespoke-tailored barons of The City, wear the same faces as the neighbours who shared their table with me and the nurses who treated me as a sick child. 
 
 The crowd is closer now. Unless I squint, I can make out the brothers who work at the textile plant in my home town and the kind woman who works at the library, so I squint. My whole body, clad in its freshly-stitched and fashionable business suit, is wracked with violent fits of trembling and I hear myself speak in a voice that bears no likeness to mine: “ Stay back or I ’ ll shoot! ” 

