Page 32 of Resurrect Me

He chuckles, rises, and goes to the bathroom.

“So, what? You just think you’re going to move back in? Like nothing ever happened?” I say as I start cleaning up the room. We made quite a mess. There are covers twisted at the footboard, the sheets are covered in sweat and bodily fluids, and we even broke a glass figurine on the nightstand. Little shards of porcelain encircle the bed post. I bend to pick them up.

The toilet flushes and he returns. I survey him. I notice two things I hadn’t before (it’s hard to look at a man when he’s fucking you doggy style) – he has a new tattoo on his ribcage. It’s looks Ancient Egyptian, but I can’t quite tell. And there’s a gnarly scar across his chest that resembles a canyon with raised edges.

“Were you burned there?” I approach him and run my fingers over the edge of his scar.

He nods, “yes.”

“You wanna tell me about it?”

“No,” he replies. “Not yet.” He stares at me with those big, beautiful eyes. And I melt. Fucking Sol. Fucking ARIS. I always fall for him.

“You want to tell me what happened that day? The day of the election? Did you fake your own death and decide to keep the entire thing from me? Do you have any idea what I went through when you went missing? The pain your children endured.”

We’re sitting on the edge of the bed, facing one another. I take a deep breath and prepare for the worst.

“I think I liked it better when we had to trade clothing for secrets,” he says and runs a calloused hand through his hair.

I slap his arm playfully. “Yeah, I bet. But the game’s over. I figured you out. I win. Now come on. Spill it, Solomon.”

“First, it’s best if I remain undercover. I know you know me as Sol, but you can’t call me that anymore.”

“I’m supposed to call you Aris?”

“Yes.”

“How did you come up with the name Aris King, anyway?”

“It’s Lazaris King on paper. Aris, for short. I chose Lazaris, because it’s biblical. You know the story about the guy that Jesus raises from the dead? Yeah, that one. And King because…well…you used to call me your king.”

“And?”

“There’s a lot I can’t tell you, Tacy.”

“Stop right there. You don’t have the right to keep secrets from me anymore. You forfeited that right when you left your family behind. Your children and your ailing father, along with your colleagues and friends. Everyone thinks you’re dead. The world thinks you’re buried in the ground. Some of us have already moved through most of the five stages of grief…some of us havecome out the other side. I’m not one of them. I refused to accept you were dead. And, well, looks like I was right.”

“I hear you,” he says. “And I know how crazy this all may seem. I’ll try to start from the beginning. But you have to promise you won’t tell another living soul any of what I’m about to divulge. If fallen into the wrong hands…well, we’d be fucked. Royally.”

I bite my lip. “Yeah, of course. I promise. I think we’ve been through enough shit together that you should be able to trust me at this point. Don’t you?”

He sighs, “here it is. The year leading up to the election was an eye-opening one. I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started a career in politics. You know I just wanted to help people and make a difference in our community. But the deeper I got into it, the more I realized how twisted our government is. And how the conspiracy theories of the elite members of society controlling everything were true. There are certain members of the elite that consider themselves the leaders of the pack, if you will, and they call themselves The Organization, or The Org for short. They’ve spent the last century infiltrating every industry in this country. I mean, everything from finance to construction. Information, chemicals, transportation, food, telecommunications, you name it. They’re at the top pulling all the puppet strings. Finally, the education and healthcare systems. You and I both know the entire reason I jumped into politics in the first place was because I sought an education reform. I’ve always felt the kids were being left behind, particularly kids with disabilities, and what I learned confirmed my fears. The reason kids with disabilities get left behind, discarded, is because they are viewed as useless to The Org. The Org needs worker bees only. In addition, after going down that rabbit hole and realizing that I neededto become Governor to create any real change for the kids, I started questioning some of the healthcare bills being placed on my desk. One was to overturn an old law that held doctors and pharmacists responsible for prescribing dangerous drugs. This set off a red flag in my mind and that’s where I should have stopped digging. But you know me Tacy, once I got that fucking shovel in my hand I don’t stop until I’ve dug a tunnel straight to fucking Alaska.”

I shake my head, “I can’t believe this is real. I mean, people have been saying it for years. Wait, so about the medications. Duselizab, specifically. I’ve had multiple patients, young men and women, die on my watch after they’ve taken it. I did some research, and it looks like a lawyer in San Fran is trying to draw up a class action lawsuit against Richardson and Company.”

Aris snorts. “It’ll never happen. Not until we take the whole fucking Organization down.”

“Why are they so bent on pushing this drug out to the masses? They are even hiring people like Declan to promote it.”

“Declan is one of them. I mean, he’s not high up but he’s been bought and paid for. Secondly, they’re using medicine as a weapon, Tace. They want to sterilize the young. Their newest plan is to prevent overpopulation, and they’ll do it by whatever means possible. Since they have their hands in literally everything, they’re using the quickest, most effective means to destroy and kill the nation’s youth. And prevent procreation. Which is medicine. Next, it’ll be water and food.”

“This is so fucked up. What happens when the human species starts to die out because they’ve pumped toxins into us for so many years? What then? Then they won’t even have us little worker bees to do all the grunt work, will they?”

“Don’t worry, they’re not taking their own poisons. They have their own medicines, their own food and water. Separate, clean resources they use. Their goal is to annihilate the lesser of us and breed more of themselves to populate the earth. Eugenics. Remember that term from World History class?”

I don’t know what to say. “I’m having a hard time processing all of this. I think it’s just going to take some time. But you still haven’t explained what the fuck happened to you.”

“Once I dug too close to a leader in The Org, they caught wind of me. They sent me a couple anonymous threats, but I thought those threats were idle. From opposing candidates or something. Someone just trying to scare me out of running. But the day of the election, I walked out of the office and two men pulled me into a van. Put a bag over my head. Drove me out of the city. Beat the shit out of me. Then, when they thought I was pretty much dead, they tossed me into the bay.”

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