Menolyrical; Final Friday Fiction

For my own entry to this month’s FFF, I chose that classic of dystopia by George Orwell, “1984”.

 8 - revolution

12 - prefer

16 - him

“Permit yourself, just this once, to walk a path opposite to your choice. See it from the other side. The revolution was not about individuals like yourself but about the whole of our society. There can be no haute couture of governance. Only ‘one size fits all’. Which, of course, is a complete misnomer. Some will feel too constrained, some will feel drowned. Most, though, will be content with the fit because it allows them, it allows YOU, to let it happen around you and you can get on then with being your individual self.”

Zara glared at him. Which did she prefer, she wondered. The individual she once knew her husband to be, or the button-pushing atomic tyrant he had become. Staring at the screens showing the aftermath of the ‘revolution’, knowing there was no society left to fit his one size, she had her answer.

She knew she had to return to her path and take him with her. When he slept, she opened the shelter doors, switched the air-con to external, and left.

(176 words)

© Yamini Ali MacLean 2019