24 Comments
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MA Knight's avatar

I love this near future (maybe just current) cult response to our surveillance state. Who knew you could make smashing someone’s face with hammers such a spiritual experience. I believed it, though 😬

EJ Trask's avatar

near as in this weekend.

Jessica Maison's avatar

Oomf! The choice isn't really a choice is it? The two societies are the same in a way, one is just in its infancy. I would probably rather die. I felt the panic and horror. Well done!

EJ Trask's avatar

great insight Jessica, I honestly didn’t realize that they actually parallel each other. thanks for reading!

Jessica Maison's avatar

I am just so suspicious of any and all purity tests. There is such insidious control in all of them.

EJ Trask's avatar

you will probably survive while the rest of us are smashed with hammers

NJ Fiction's avatar

Some of your finest work! It’s up there with the shoe story for me!

EJ Trask's avatar

thank you so much!

Garen Glazier's avatar

Brutal!

Sean Thomas McDonnell's avatar

Not my pretty face. Nope.

EJ Trask's avatar

back to the border guards with you!

Wendy Cockcroft's avatar

Absolutely brilliant! How very clever!

EJ Trask's avatar

thank you Wendy

Nick Buchheit's avatar

I like how you constructed this whole world around a simple scene of two people talking. The opening pulled me right in. And their conversation felt so natural.

EJ Trask's avatar

thanks Nick!

Saint-Lazare's avatar

Gripping and disturbing from the start to the ending 🫨

Nick Winney's avatar

Beatiful. all the context, all the character, the immediacy, the reality that is just out there ahead of us, the threat of the industrial scale ID harvesting and the honest brutality needed to escape the subtle cage thats closing from every angle.

but they leave the teeth...that's a genius touch. 🫡

such a lot in so few words.

well done!

EJ Trask's avatar

thanks so much Nick!

Evelyn K. Brunswick's avatar

That was seriously disturbing. I couldn't ever agree to something like that, regardless of what I looked like beforehand. Can't they do plastic surgery but a different sort of initiation ritual?

Brilliantly written, though... made me shiver.

EJ Trask's avatar

thank you! i don’t think I could either!

Liz Zimmers's avatar

Wow! The humanity within the brutality, the freedom within the pain…their approach is a visceral nope for me, and at the same time I can understand the philosophy.

EJ Trask's avatar

thank you Liz!