How to Flee the Beast by Olivia Madeline Abigail

I get home from work and some dude's tied to my kitchen chair. He's got a buzzed head and a ball gag in his mouth. No shirt and a bandanna as a blindfold. He's covered in bruises and he's out cold.

"Roach, your hookup's passed out," I call.

"It's not like that," she shouts back.

"No he's definitely out," I respond. Roach comes into the room. She's wearing fatigues and a sports bra. One of her biceps is wrapped in gauze. She's carrying her braided steel whip. She's wearing the cat socks I got her for Christmas.

"No, I mean he's not a hookup," she says. "He's fash."

What the fuck.

"What the fuck?" I say. We've had this conversation a thousand times. I don't ask how she gets her cuts and bruises, just patch them up. In exchange, she keeps that world far away from me. From our home. That was supposed to be the deal. "Why is there a passed-out fascist in my living room, Roach?"

"What, you want me to wake him up? I can wake him up." She goes to the sink, fills a glass with water. I notice I'm grinding my teeth and make myself stop. The dude in the chair pulls in a wheezing breath. Water sizzles from the faucet. When Roach walks over with the full glass, I expect her to throw it on him, to make a point. Instead, she presses it into my hand and guides me to the couch. She sits next to me, dropping her whip. I sip the water.

"Ok, Eve, here's the thing. I really need you to be cool about this - just for now, just this once. I wouldn't be here, with him, if we had a better option." I open my mouth but she plows ahead. "The dude is high up. Important. A big get for us, enough that we might be bringing some folks home. So please, please, I know you want to keep your space separate and all that, but please, just this time, let it slide."

I'm fuming. While she spoke I ran retorts, searching for something cutting. Something to break her out of the ends, therefore means loop she's clearly stuck in. But when she pauses my barbs fall away and I mumble "Well it's not just my space because you live here too"

Roach opens her mouth, ready to pick up our familiar argument, but stops when she absorbs what I said. She raises an eyebrow, as if to say 'you wanna try that again?' I'm not sure I do. I think about letting my faux pas hang; letting Roach untangle the feelings for once. But that prospect is somehow more frustrating than rerunning the conflict we use to shield the emotions.

"Yeah," I continue, "You live here too, though you try to forget it, out playing guerrilla for days at a time accomplishing god knows what. And in the meantime I'm stuck taking care of the house and keeping Mrs. Ellis' nosy ass off our case. Or I'm stuck in the subway for hours, trying to shove down a panic attack. Or I'm at the clinic trying to help people with gangrene from sleeping outside, or trying to convince them not to off themselves, or, best of all, trying to get a doctor to patch up morons like you who decided that, for some reason, the queers are the ones to bring the revolution to New York and got themselves shot by some cretin like the one you decided to tie up in our living room!"

I catch my breath. That was harsher than I usually get when we go down this road. I watch it hit Roach. Her thick eyebrows scrunch in and down, shading her eyes. The corners of her mouth drop into a slight pout. I want to run across the room, hug her, and apologize. But then, being Roach, her selective hearing parses my outburst and her face returns to neutral.

"Who the fuck is Mrs. Ellis?" she asks, crossing the room and squatting behind the kitchen chair to inspect the cord binding the unconscious man's hands. She undoes a knot then reties it, cinching it tight as if to constrict the argument to a manageable loop. It works. Or maybe I let it work, eager to postpone the fallout of calling the people she risks her life for morons.

"Mrs. Ellis, our downstairs neighbor," I hiss. Sound carries and I don't want the sound of her name to catch our housemate's ear. "You know, the widow. The church lady."

"Ohh, okay sure," Roach says, standing up. Her right knee pops and she winces. "But ok, so fuck her. Who cares what she thinks?"

"I care!" I whisper-shout. "And you should too! She's our neighbor, I don't want to live above someone who hates my guts!" Roach chuckles

"Ok, well, you already live with someone who hates your guts so I don't see what the big deal is." God this bitch gets under my skin.

"Roach can you fucking chill please."

"You're the one who's spazzing."

"I'm not 'spazzing,'" I say, my voice rising again. "I am worried because I got home to find you'd dragged some street-fight hostage into our house to, as far as I can tell, torture him. And it doesn't seem to have occurred to you at any point that our downstairs neighbor may have heard or seen you and decided to call the cops." Now Roach really laughs - a deep belly laugh that disarms me.

"Girl, be for real," she says. "Are you actually scared she called the cops?" I don't know what to say to her jocularity, so I settle for staring daggers.

"Babe, ever since the autonomous zone started up in Prospect, NYPD hasn't been south of the Park. It's been months since anyone's even seen a drone. They were already stretched with the defections and the sabotage at 1PP, but throw in trying to sweep all of Prospect Park and they've got no one left. There's no way they're sending a car to Coney Island after dark. Mrs. Ellis probably knows that better than you."

Just as Roach finishes speaking, there is a knock at the door. Three short raps. We freeze. The knock comes again, harder. Roach curses under her breath. Then, the person at the door speaks.

"Evelyn?" From head to toe, my muscles relax. I have never been happier to hear my downstairs neighbor's voice. "Evelyn, can you come to the door please?" I pad to the door and open it a crack. Mrs. Ellis stands on the landing, arms crossed. She wears a pink bathrobe and a sky blue silk headwrap dotted with crimson strawberries. When I meet her eyes, she pulls her scowl into a tight smile before letting it drop. I mimic her smile automatically, but pin mine in place.

"Hi Mrs. Ellis," I say.

"Evelyn, what in the world are you yelling about so late in the night?" she asks. Unless I've really lost track of time, it can't be past eight. I don't point this out.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Ellis, it's nothing, really," I say. "Just a stupid argument, I promise."

"You know my son stays with me," she continues, "and he works in the morning. You know this Evelyn! He drives the bus, he can't be going to work tired. There could be a crash!"

"I know, I know, you're right." I turn my palms to the ceiling in what I hope is a placative gesture. "I'm really sorry, I promise we'll be quiet. Really." She looks me up and down, then raises an eyebrow and cranes her neck, as if to look past me. For once, I am glad of my bulk, certain she'll see no one but me. She doesn't seem to. Rocking back on her heels, she kisses her teeth. Then, leaning in, she speaks in a low voice,

"Evelyn, if that boyfriend you have isn't treating you right, you should get rid of him." My face flushes. I pray Roach isn't listening.

"No, no no, it's nothing like that. I promise. I just, I had a hard day at work and I was frustrated. But I'm ok, really. Both of us are." I show her the calmest smile I can, given the scene just out of her sight. Mercifully, she accepts it.

"Mmm...alright then. Just please keep the noise down. It's very late." I nod vigorously.

"I will," I say. "I promise."

Having not once uncrossed her arms, Mrs. Ellis turns and marches down the stairs. I ease the door shut. When I turn, Roach is looking at me skeptically.

"Boyfriend?" she says. "Is that me?"

I'm on the back foot now, the kidnapped fascist suddenly the lesser transgression. I consider lying, but after a full day as an emotional sink for New York transsexuals frightened, discouraged, and enraged by the failing medical system upon which their lives rely, I don't have it in me.

"Yeah," I sigh. "She thinks you're my boyfriend who just comes over sometimes. Maybe if you were here more she'd realize her mistake."

It's a bitchy thing to say. I'm being a bitch. But then, I spend most nights not knowing if my best friend is alive, dead, or worse – in jail. She can cut me some slack on this white lie.

"Why are you being a bitch?" she asks. It seems like a genuine question, not an accusation. I feel myself deflating. I sink to the couch. Roach stands next to the man in the chair, arms crossed.

"Is he still breathing?" I ask, inclining my chin towards the motionless skinhead. Silently, Roach extends one arm to check his pulse. She has to shift her weight towards him to reach.

"Yup."

"Okay. What happened to your arm?"

"Got a cut."

"From what?"

"Don't know." I'm out of ideas. Roach gives me nothing.

"Okay, fuck, I'm sorry," I say. "I should have corrected her, it's shitty that I didn't. Letting it slide was a shitty thing to do and I'm shitty for doing it. I'm sorry for hurting you and then being a bitch about it."

"That's not a real apology," she says. Her expression is dead flat. My skin has started to hum, a quiet fizz of panic debriding the edges of my heart. I squeeze my thumb and forefinger together as hard as I can. Roach's phone buzzes. She looks down to check it, then starts to walk out of the room. She speaks as she passes me on the couch, not looking down. "I have to take this."

And then, I am alone, drifting in the endless stream of dread which weeps through the interstitial spaces of my being. I've hurt Roach, perhaps badly. Probably not irreparably, but only probably. It won't help to explain to her why I let Mrs. Ellis think she's my boyfriend - how that one word laid the first stone in a bridge I hope the two of us are building. When she first referred to my 'boyfriend,' it was in asking why I didn't have help lugging a desk I'd stooped up the front steps. "Evelyn, where is your boyfriend? Why won't he help you with this?" When she clarified she meant "that boy who comes here late at night, a few times a week," I knew she meant Roach, and though I recognized that I should correct her on Roach's gender, I didn't. In asking the question, Mrs. Ellis had opened a door to another life.

I stepped through it and let myself enjoy what I found. A life in which I was straight, presumed cis - where my greatest worry was an absent lover and the looming threat of infertility rather than the cold certainty I would never have a family. The possibility floated around the space that, one day, I might find a kind, dependable man who would pay his half of the rent, kiss me gently as he made love to me, and help me raise a child, or a small dog. Perhaps the two of us would even continue to live above Mrs. Ellis and the three of us become close - almost family. Understand that even as I inhabited this dream, my feet were still firmly enough on the ground to know it was not guaranteed. But even the chance to admire it, to run my fingers through the fine mist of possibility which surrounded me as I passed through the portal of Mrs. Ellis' perception, filled me with contentment. It felt as if that miasma alone could be enough to obscure me from the searching eyes and grasping tentacles of the prison, the sanitarium, the crippled medical system.

In my waking hours, there is little chance for much beyond work, transit, and worry. There seems always to be time to hold a patient's traumas, to surveil a subway car for angry men so that I am not attacked for sitting near children, to pace the house and watch endless hours of content so that I do not think too hard about what visceral things Roach may experience in each absent moment. Mrs. Ellis' assumptions of me are a dream I can step into while awake. A few daily moments of sleepwalking allow me to slip more easily between the hours. I don't know how to explain this to Roach.

This is not the kind of thinking she abides willingly. Her approach when confronted with a slimy pale appendage of the lumbering carceral state is to hack at it, weaving and dodging to avoid capture as she attempts to sever the outgrowth of coercion. To her, my dreaming would be equivalent to playing dead, allowing the behemoth to hold me tight in the hopes that it might eventually pass me by. Worse, by sacrificing not my own dignity, but that of a sister, I would be telling a contemporary version of that old joke: two friends are chased by a bear and one says "I don't need to outrun the bear, I only need to outrun you." But replace "bear" with "Strategic Response Group." Roach would counter her own aspersion by reminding me that if enough of us refuse to move, the SRG will find itself on the run.

How can I explain to her that I know she is correct? I've seen, through a screen, that when enough people at once stare down the state, the state will blink. In the space of that blink exist endless possibilities. Cops will run from protesters. Landlords will go without rent. People will feed and house and care for each other as an act of love, rather than silo themselves away for fear of dispossession. And, when enough people are willing to defend those possibilities, they may be able to skirt the furious thrashing of a state watching itself become obsolete. I know all this. Most of the time, I believe it, too.

But I cannot wrap my head around being one of the unlucky ones. One of the ones who catches the eye of the frenzied beast and is subsumed into its violent architecture to be worked, killed, or disappeared to feed its endless appetite for extracted value. I do not know how to ignore the reality — not the possibility — that if I, a trans woman, am incarcerated I will be imprisoned with men and raped, repeatedly and frequently. That the primary value the prison extracts from someone like me is not labor, but flesh; an accepted outlet for the very terror on which it relies. I can't imagine telling Roach that her ability to act, understanding this as well as I do, frightens me as much as it inspires me. Each day drains me so deeply that I cannot imagine being squeezed for a single drop more without losing myself completely.

Roach's soft steps in the hall jolt me into reality. I grasp at the thatch of ideas and feelings I wove while she was out of the room, hoping I can wrap her in it and show her why I'm acting like this. But it falls apart as I see her face. She looks defeated; mascara smudged, shoulders folded forward. She holds her phone in one hand. Her other arm is wrapped across her bare stomach.

"Does the neighbor really think I'm a boy?" she asks in a small, focused voice. She does not meet my eyes. With each word, my posture slumps to match hers.

"Oh..." I say. I wait for something to say. The moment that passes in silence is not endless, but it is long. Then, Roach's phone rings again.

"Oh," she says. "I have to take this, sorry." She walks down the hall. I fall back on the couch and see the fascist tied to the chair. I had forgotten about him. He's not an impressive specimen. Pale as a tundra, chest covered in wisps of dark hair. I can tell that he was once muscular, but that his bulk melted away when he lost access to creatine, Equinox, and synthetic testosterone. His gynecomastia gives the game away. A couple of bad synthol bubbles in his biceps are the cherry on top. I can't help but imagine the conversation we could have about gender dysphoria, in a different life. Then his head twitches. He's awake. I freeze. He mumbles something unintelligible through the ball gag. Hearing no response, he does it again, louder.

"What?" I ask. My heart is pounding. I'm readying myself to sprint down the hall to Roach. Then, he performs a maneuver with his tongue that suggests prior experience with a gag, pushing the ball out of his mouth and to the side.

"Shemales," he spits.

If he had used any other word, I probably would have ignored it. Tranny, faggot, sissy, they slide off me, to a degree. Sometimes I'll use them endearingly. But that word...it's used in one context only. The only place on earth shemales exist is in the kind of tranny porn targeted at straight men who find excitement in our bodies only as perverse transgressions, whose arousal stems from a morbid fascination sheltering a reviled need. The only reason he would choose that slur over any other is because he has immersed himself in images of our bodies until his desire and his fear and the poison of this nation oozed together inside him. Until his lust was transmuted to violence and his heart consumed by rot. I shoot up from the couch.

As I do, my blouse ruffles and from it billows the scent of the clinic. It is a familiar blending of stress sweat, stale air, sanitizing chemicals, dead skin. The sense-memories it holds flood into me - demands for care I cannot legally provide, quiet confessions of suicidal ideation, shouted stories of violent pimps and abusive husbands. Working in pain for months following a surgery after being denied accommodation by management. The presence of the fascist as I remember these innumerable indignities shatters the container in which I keep them. Before me wallows an embodiment of the entitled evil which demands suffering from me and my loved ones, a physical manifestation of the impotent fury of a bigot humbled. Men like this are the reason we hurt each other, the reason Roach and I fight in the first place. In two quick strides I cross the room and slap him as hard as I can. My palm stings. It's not enough. I can feel it all, and I want more.

I make a fist and hit him. The bones of his face hurt my hand. I don't care. I hit him again. And again. I see a flash of bright red blood. My next blow is followed by a flash of pain and I see that the blood is coming from one of my knuckles. I scramble across the room and snatch up Roach's whip; a short length of PVC-coated steel cable attached to a wooden handle. I've seen the welts it leaves on Roach and her hookups. I trust it will hurt. My first lash produces a yelp from the fascist. My second, tears. These man-children have no real taste for pain – no guts. I strike him again and again with the sex toy. I can hear words pouring from my mouth but I cannot make sense of them. Then, I am wrapped up in a pair of arms. They pin my own to my side. I struggle for a moment, but Roach's voice cuts through the haze of fear, pain and anger.

"Eve! Whoa, whoa Eve what's going on? Are you ok?" My face is soaked with tears and snot, my hand covered in my own blood. Roach shifts her body, taking more of my weight in her arms. I try to form words but all that comes out are hitched sobs.

"Eve," she says, "Eve, deep breaths. Deep breaths. What's going on? Why were you hitting him? Did he do something to you?" I try to calm myself, seeing the worry in Roach's eyes.

"He called us 'shemales'" I say, hoping this alone will convey what I need it to. It does not.

"So?" Roach says. Her eyes are locked on me.

"I hate that word. It's terrible." I feel like a petulant child.

"Sure, yeah," Roach says. "But he's a Nazi, he says all kinds of terrible shit. I don't care about that, I care if you're okay. Did he hurt you? Where is that blood coming from?"

"You'll never be wo-" the fascist tries to interject, but Roach cuts him off by kicking him squarely in the chest. He and the chair topple backwards. At some point Roach put her boots on, and her kick leaves a print across his sagging bitch tits. He wheezes on the floor. Roach turns back to me. I hold up my hand to show her my ragged knuckle. Roach laughs.

"Oh my God Eve! I didn't know you had it in you." She looks me over and, satisfied that I am otherwise unhurt, wraps me in another hug. "You know that kid belongs to one of Bleckman's lieutenants?"

She's referring to the aging Nassau County politician-turned-warlord, the first politician in the New York area to attack trans people and to welcome ICE. Some part of me registers that what's happening in our apartment might actually be kind of a big deal.

"I did not know that," I say. Roach lets me go and continues, excited.

"Yup yup yup. I tried to tell you when you were going off on me! We've been in touch with their side and we have a deal. In exchange for that lump on the floor, we're bringing home twelve people. Twelve!"

"Woah," I say. Then, there is a pounding at the door. Roach flits to the peephole.

"Shit," she says, "It's the neighbor. It looks like her son's with her. Eve, I've got someone coming in, like, less than five minutes to bring me and the fascist to the swap. Can you please get her to go back downstairs so I can get out of here when they arrive?"

I look down at the pathetic form on the floor. As I roll the decision I'm about to make around my head, I am surprised to find it an easy one.

"No," I say. Roach looks at me, incredulous.

"No?"

"No. I'm coming with you. We'll bring him down together. Mrs. Ellis can deal." Roach grins from ear to ear.

"No shit?" she says.

"No shit," I echo. "Let's do it." She squeals and jumps in place. I come to the door, gently moving her aside. "Let me talk to Mrs. Ellis. You get the passenger positioned so we can make a quick exit." Roach squeezes me and sets to dragging the kitchen chair towards the door.

"Hi Mrs. Ellis," I yell through the closed door.

"Evelyn, what is going on in there!" she yells back.

"Uhh," I yell. "It's too complicated to explain right now. Look, can you and your son stand back from the door a little?"

"What?" She does not move.

"Please Mrs. Ellis, just for a few seconds! We're about to bring something big and heavy out the door very quickly!" She looks startled, but she and her son do step back. Roach taps me on the shoulder.

"They're here," she says.

"So that boyfriend is finally helping out!" shouts Mrs. Ellis.

"Ok," I say to Roach. "Let's go."

I throw the door open and grab the top of the chair. Roach hoists two legs up to her waist. Mrs. Ellis and her son gawp at the man in the chair, eyes wide, mouths hanging open. Her son curses. She takes the Lord's name in vain. Then, Roach and I are moving down the stairs, the chair and the fascist jostling between us with each step.

"Sorry Mrs. Ellis!" Roach calls over her shoulder as we reach the bottom of the stairs.

"She's not my boyfriend!" I yell. "Just my roommate!"

A battered Tacoma idles out front of the house, waiting for us. Roach and I heave the chair and the fascist over the tailgate and then hop in ourselves. We sit at the top of the bed, backs against the cabin, as Roach pounds on the side of the truck. The driver peels out, screeching down the quiet street. After a quick series of turns, we're riding down Surf Avenue.

"The meetup's out on Fire Island," Roach shouts over the roar of the wind. "Right now we control one road onto the island and Bleckman's militia controls the other. The exchange is gonna happen at what's left of Robert Moses Lighthouse. There probably won't be any shooting, cuz they can't risk hitting their guy."

"Ok!" I shout back, beaming. I realize I'm still wearing my blouse, soaked in the clinic. I can't bear it any longer. I want to move unrestrained. I pull it over my head and toss it, watching the wind whip it away. Roach whoops beside me and throws her arm over my shoulder. The cool night air flows over my skin and through my hair, but the heat from Roach's body keeps me warm. The night sky is bright these days, with power outages across the city. But when we pass Luna Park, it's lit up. Bright carnival lights swirl through the air against the endless backdrop of the ocean and the sky. A carriage crests a peak of the Cyclone and then drops away, prompting distant screams and cheers.

Roach's assurance that there probably won't be any shooting rings in my head, but I'm finding it hard to worry. The winds of the open truck bed have blown away any mist of possibility. I am overcome with pure sensation. My knuckle stings. My shoulders are tight. My back hurts. My hair whips around my head and my heart sings. I am flying beneath a sea of stars. Beside me is my best friend, one of the people I love most in the world, and we are going to bring home the people she loves. I understand, in some distant way, that the future — a future — exists on the other side of this moment. But I am too busy just now remembering that the present still exists to worry about what may come.

Olivia is a transsexual woman living in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn. She works in healthcare, plays in a band, and loves her friends a lot. Her fiction explores trans life in the New York Area, particularly following the boom of trans visibility during Covid-19 and the migration of trans folks fleeing American fascism. You can find her online at omalas.blog and read more of her work in WMN Zine and smoke & mold