The Fascists Who Invaded My Breakfast Nook

To the scent of burnt toast they arrived, disorderly though, as one wouldn’t expect, perhaps to sneak up on the proceedings. It was more of a bustle than an occupation.

“No dissent,” a graying ruffled soldier brayed. “We are unaccustomed to having to prove what we say. Get down!”

I was sipping coffee at the time, perusing the morning news for signs of life, waiting on the word “hope” to trickle back down into my vocabulary. A corpulent officer in a white ostrich-skin jumpsuit was upon me before I could tell what side I was supposed to be on.

“There are no other sides. There is only ours.” He barked at what seemed was the sky, but could only have been my poorly painted ceiling. “Get up. Follow me. There is no time for thought.”

I put up my arms in a gesture of willingness to follow. Everyone was blabbering on importantly in hushed cadences about what sounded like nonsense to me. I made out the words “inflammatory” and “quash” in the melee. There were four armed troops pushing me along, and a yellow-toothed captain whose name appeared to be either Peach or Leech, depending on who was pronouncing it. They marched me into the living room, where a firing squad was tipping over my framed pictures and getting mud all over the carpet with their boots. Soon I was against a wall on which hung portraits of…