1. Unless action is taken soon, the global climate is being altered in ways that will surely lead to the utter demise of every living creature on your planet (except the cockroaches, for it has been prophecized that they shall one day inherit the land). The Ruling Oligarchy, however, ceaselessly continues to insist that everything is perfectly fine. Relax, you worrisome dissenter. Everything is just fine. Fasten your government-issued gas mask and get back to work or there will be no rations for you this week.
2. To be accepted in society, one must either conform to its rigid standards or be cast into oblivion.
3. Which is why you live in hiding.
4. No matter how hard you try – and you have tried – you just don’t fit into any of the pre-manufactured, sheep-shaped boxes that society has placed in front of you. That’s because you’re a fucking unicorn. Your fancy horn takes up a shit ton of space.
5. Your looks are totally average but you’re secretly drop-dead-gorgeous, which is how you got into that ridiculously melodramatic love triangle in the first place.
6. You’re the Chosen One but you really suck at making decisions, which is why you can’t get out of that ridiculously melodramatic love triangle in the second place.
7. Truth has become fiction and fiction has become truth. The only thing anyone still knows for certain is that no one looks cool while riding a Segway.
8. The Ruling Oligarchy has begun to sabotage the educational system, dismantling it piece by piece because uneducated people are by far the easiest to brainwash.
9. The children have begun to lead the resistance, poised at the ready with torches and pitchforks and organized marches.
10. Poor people are just the worst. Literally the worst thing there is. Nobody likes them.
11. At least one caste is instantly recognizable by the clothing it wears. Nobody likes them, either.
12. The prophecy is coming to pass, right on schedule, and the cockroaches are super excited.
13. It is far easier to build an arsenal of military-grade firearms and ammunition than an arsenal of medicine during cold and flu season because you can only buy one very small box at a time. Any attempts to purchase more than one very small box of cold medicine per week will result in your name being added to The List.
14. Everyone fears having their name on The List.
15. In the darkest corner of every citadel, the collective rebellion is plotting its next move.
16. The local market sells “meat” that is not actually meat at all. This knowledge troubles you.
17. You have a sneaking suspicion that something is seriously broken within the existing system of government and society at large. You are Woke.
18. Even though you’re Woke, there are entire months when you’d rather stay in bed. The nightmares you have while asleep are a welcomed respite from the waking nightmare in which you live.
19. You think you may be a character in a dystopian novel. At this point, you’re basically counting the days until the final page of the book is written and hoping that George R. R. Martin isn’t the author because he takes forfuckingever to write a goddamned book.
*****
About the Author
Mother of Doom and Destruction, Alison Huff is a writer from rural northeast Ohio. A contributor to anthologies and random websites that strike her fancy, she regularly writes for BLUNTmoms and on her own blog, Please Stop Putting Crackers Down My Shirt.