Written with the aid and comfort of comrade Shroom Manski!
Final Bearzhnev: Commienists Within
The corridors of the Kreamlin were dark, a suspenseful night to follow a most hectic day. A day spent explaining himself to the Politburo,which called a meeting of the Central Comittee to decide his fate. To pass judgement on premier Shroomanski.
The premier was an old dog, a veteran of the Kreamlin’s political struggles and power plays. He has survived more than one attempted assassination and a great many plots to depose him with less violent means. But it was coming to an end. He was growing old, and at his age, a man missed things. Forgot who his allies were, misplaced documents and did not have as much energy to put into the business of staying in business. His enemies were working in the dark, behind his back, and he did not have the strength to combat them. Shroomanski was tired. Tired and old and wrinkled and weak. And the successful Murcan landing on the Moon, that was a horrible, horrible blow to his dwindling popularity within the halls of power.
The night was growing darker, as the Moosecow power grid was partially shut down, to conserve electicity. Mists fell around the great metropolis, which even in the middle of summer was quite chilly. A cold gust of wind blew open the office’s windows.
And things were happening in the dark corridors of the palace. Shroomanski could hear them. The little rats, coming softly on their tiny rat feet. Coming to feast.
How would he go? What would history record about his time here and his passing? Was there even enough time to consider these questions? The rats were coming closer, smelling their victim. In a moment of realization, the Premier knew there would be no arrest, no show trial and exile. No, the soft footsteps in the corridors were not those of people who would wear velvet gloves during their takeover.
It is good Vanya went home already, the premier thought all of a sudden, remembering his secretary. The people coming for him would have certainly not spared poor old loyal Vanya. The man was too loyal to Shroomanski, and too idealistic for his own good.
The Premier smiled. Shadows fell on the small crack of light under the door.
“Just a matter of time, I supposeski,” he murmured and reach down, undoing his shoelaces.
The oak door to his office was kicked in, sailing slowly through the air for a brief moment before crashing on his desk in an explosion of wooden splinters and secret papers. But the Premier was already on the move. The first masked man entered the room, only for a flying shoe to strike him square in the face. The sound of pulverizing facial bones could be heard while his neck snapped back harshly. His limp form collapsed to the ground.
Whatever meagre lights were still shining suddenly went out. Moosecow has been experiencing power shortages recently, and not even the Kreamlin could avoid taking some of it. The remaining assassins stopped for a moment, disoriented and unsure of what to do next. They could feel chills down their spines, as there was something otherworldly and eerie about this office, the imposing oak tables and the massive, barely visible yet intimidating picture of Lennon staring down at them disapprovingly.
Lightning struck the top most tower of the Kreamlin, suffusing the room in a stroboscopic flash of illumination. The air smelled of corn.
The lead assassin saw his target and moved to strike. He pulled out his silenced Maccaronikov pistol and aimed, but the Premier was faster. With his remaining shoe in hand, he struck the gunman, breaking his fingers and disarming him. The killer tried to strike with his other hand, but Shroomanski grabbed him by the wrist with a vice-like grip, snapped his forearm like a twig with a second shoe-blow, and slammed him down to the floor - causing the tiles and concrete to crater.
The assassins spun around, raising their pistols, but saw nothing. Then another thunderbolt struck, and suddenly they saw something. It was the Premier’s face, scowling, half-buried in shadow. It was a terrifying sight.
But these were stone-cold killers, the last of Bearia’s NKVDVDROM wetmen, who fell in with Bearzhnev and now the anti-Shroomanski remnants, and they would not be deterred.
The Premier’s office was filled with the suppressed noise of gunfire, the very audible screams of men, and brutal snapping of bones. Lennon looked on, his brow furrowed in a fierce expression, so utterly ummoved by the sight. The portrait has seen worse during its time inside this office.
Finally, silence fell again. A lone figure appeared in the ruined doorframe, stepping with shoeless feet over the dead body laying in the entryway.
The premier wheezed and coughed and took some time to take his breath. He prevailed, for a time. But that time was running short, and he was sure more rats would come soon enough. They had already taken his friends, his allies, his confederates. They had saved him, the best, for last.
He knew their ways, for those too were his ways in the time of Ztalin, and he had also resorted to them in disposing of Bearia. In the time of de-Ztalinization, he had hoped to put an end to those old ways, so that the Onion could enter a new age without treachery. But as Bearzhnev had shown, the old men of the Politburo had long memories. Now that the conspirators smelled blood, they could not be reasoned with, they could not be bought, and they would absolutely not stop, ever, until he was dead.
The Kreamlin’s halls were lined with the portraits of dead Tsars, all now staring down at Shroomanski with their blank lifeless eyes. Lennon had kept them as memories of enemies past, to remind them of their revolutionary victories. But they were now more like ghosts haunting the emptiness of the Kreamlin, shadows dancing on their faces, warping them into mocking sneers. Was this what Ztalin saw when he was driven beyond the brink of madness?
Shroomanski would not give them the satisfaction of watching him fall here, alone, at the mercy of his enemies. He could not hope to best all of the armed men lurking in the palace in combat: but he bought some time. But still he did not know what use to make of it. How could he fight such forces arrayed against him? As he stalked the corridors, he had no purpose and no goal, and he felt despair slowly crawl creep into heart.
The brewing thunderstorm made trees wave and windowshutters flutter in the wind. Eerie light reflected off the old portraits when the Premier moved across the empty halls with a sense of purpose. He passed the typing room, where papers and memoranda and letters were being blown around, whirling in the air above the empty typewriters. Driven by some insane reflex, Shroomanski closed the open window, and then turned around to continue towards his goal.
There was another thunder flash, and suddenly the small portrait of Lennon hanging near the window was gone. And somebody was standing there, in the darkness, positioned precisely so that the shadows concealed his face.
The Premier turned towards this newest intruder, raising his last corn cob, and then noticed that despite the closed window, the papers were still fluttering in the air in a massive bureaucratic maelstrom.
“Who are you? What sorcery is this?!”
The figure stepped forwards, seemingly unafraid of the menacing vegetable pointed at him, and spoke with a booming voice, “I am the ghost of Commienism Past.”
For the first time, Shroomanski felt a pang of fear. This apparition, this outdated superstition for the opioided masses had to be a product of his own imagination. Was he finally going mad? Senile, perhaps? Was this all a fever dream he was having, in reality being locked up in some psychiatric ward, to be left alone and forgotten?
As if reading his thoughts, the apparition spoke again, “You have summoned me yourself, and thus, at the end of your road, here we stand together.”
“But...”
“No butts. Your ploy was clever, yet you should have known it would not be enough to deter me. I have merely decided to spare you. For Lennon is forever and watches all his children. Now come, premier, for we have much to see.”
A door on the wall opened, blinding light came from within it, suggesting that within its interior was a far vaster expanse than the broom closet it was. The apparition of Vladimir Lennon led Shroomanski towards it.
“What’s in there?” Shroomanski asked hesitantly.
“Only what you take with you,” the apparition answered.
They stepped into the light, and emerged on the other side to a withering snow storm. Gusts of wind blew between ruined buildings. Collumns of smoke billowed in the distance, and right near them, young dead men lay, the snow slowly burying them in impromptu winter graves.
Graves made by mother Zenobia for her children. The Premier stared at the scene in disbelief, for he knew this scene...this city...and this very street.
The apparition walked before him, unaffected by the storm and the cold. It descended into a dug-out bunker below a collapsed building. The Premier followed, and they have soon heard an argument, muffled as it was by the earthen walls and moans of the wounded who littered the floor.
“I did everything I was asked! I sent in all my boys! What more could we have done?! The Ratzis have airplanes! Tanks! Artillery! And what do I have?”
“The sacred duty to resist!”
The apparition turned towards the premier, “You recognize this place, da?”
“Da,” Shroomanski nodded. “It is Ztalingrad. And that argument, inside...”
“Indeed. It is you.”
A single gunshot rang out, followed by the sound of a collapsing body.
“It is you, fighting the Ratzi menace. Holding on to dear life in a city ruined by war, burninated and starving, the final stand between the Thanasian hordes and the richest of Zenobian oil fields. It is you, ruthless and uncompromising in your struggle for the greater goal, the greater good.”
“Da.” Shroomanski nodded vigorously. It was a time that he always remembered proudly. “The boys needed the encouragement. I had to make them attack like they had balls! I wanted them to stop shitting their pants! And I did it, by Lennon I did!”
The apparition of Lennon smiled smugly at the invocation of its revered name, “That is your past, premier Shroomanski. You are a fighter. You never gave up, even if the times were dire. You participated in Zenobia’s darkest hour. But we both know it was not the first, nor the last time the motherland’s children had to sacrifice themselves for her, da?”
“Da.” Shroomanski agreed. He thought of the revolutionaries and soldiers who had to die to make the Onion a reality, and then countless more who fought to preserve it, even as their beloved motherland paid them back with imprisonment and forced labor in the gulag. Was he not a part of this legacy? During his time at the Onion’s helm, did the NKVDVDROM not imprison and denounce? Perhaps less than in Ztalin’s time, but still...
And even before then, did he not bloody his own hands at Ztalin’s command? Were the reasons why he made his Seekrit Speech truly noble and selfless? Or was it because he was ashamed of his own past?
Confusion came. It was as if there were two sides to the premier, one ruthless and unforgiving, and another, gentler one, not suited for the life he led in the halls of power. He could use one to aid the goals of the other, and he often did. But if so, what were
his goals? Why has he done the things he’s done? The justifications he had used back then sounded hollow and untrue now. Oh, how he longed for the days past, of the Great Patriotic War, of the Revolution, when he and his comrades knew who their true enemies were!
The premier gazed upon the horrible visage of Ztalingrad, at the full extent of its death and misery. Such struggles did the Zenobian people endure! It was so easy to forget about this, despite the constant rallies and reminders and obligatory speechifying. In a way, he felt shamed the most of his forgetfulness, in taking for granted the sacrifices of the past, and the steel with which the Zenobian faced adversity unflinchingly. Yet it also filled him with renewed vigor, seeing his past self, so young and brash, fighting the foul Thanasians and hurling profanities at the huddling conscriptskis of the Red Smarmy with such commienistic zeal - fighting for a noble cause as though there was no tomorrow. It was like a baptism. He felt young again.
The images of Ztalingrad stopped suddenly, and Lennon turned towards the premier. “You have gazed into your glourious past. As we all make mistakes, premier, so have you,” the apparition spoke. “Even if what you’ve seen was merely a glimpse of a life filled with challenges and danger, you have also gazed into yourself, and searched your soul for the truth, which is more than most men do. But now, you must face another challenge.”
“What will happen?” Shroomanski asked. “What comes next?”
“You will meet some old friends of yours,” Lennon replied cryptically as he began to fade away, his corporeal form growing transparent, while his beard remained long after the rest of him vanished. Then, Lennon’s jutting chin-beard also disappeared from sight.
And just like that, Shroomanski was out of the bunker and in the snow-covered streets of Ztalingrad again. He heard whistles blow and all of a sudden, hundreds of frostbitten conscriptskis rushed out of a trenchline across the square, charging Thanasian machine guns in a strange display of futility.
But then shells fell on Thanasian positions. Artillery blew apart fortified buildings and foxholes - and then, with horrerrffic horrer, Shroomanski realized that he was standing amongst Thanasians, rather than his fellow Zenobians. And he saw a huge shell glide gracefully straight towards him, its every detail clear as day, the explosive-filled canister rotating slowly.
The shell stopped in mid-air, right before impact.
Everything stopped, the wind, the snow, the small arms fire and the dead and wounded and shouting men. Everything, except for one Thanasian.
“NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN!!!” screamed the hunchback in a pickelhaube. “NEIN!”
The premier was horrified. It was him! The fucker of the devil’s horse, that miser... Evilstein!
“Nyet!”
“NEIN!”
“What are you doing here, you Thanasian slave driver?!” Shroomanski growled with annoyance. It was his travel through the ages!
His series of allegories for character growth, using common literary archetypes as proxies of internal re-evaluation of long held prejudices! Why were Ratzis in here?
“NEIN! I am keinn proxy, ja! I am ze ghost of Commienism Present!” the hunchback spat angrily, as if it resented the role.
“But you are a Ratzi!”
“Ja! A Ratzi mutilated and abused due to your Zenobian power struggles! Zey said it vas very, was ist das, literarily appropriate!”
“I refuse to listen to your Thanasoid lies!”
Evilstein smiled, and when combined with his wicked form and an imposing pickelhaube (and the monocle - Shroomanski hadn’t noticed the monocle before!), that came out as a very evil smile indeed. “You do not have a choice,
premier!” It said with great sarcasm.
“BANDITEN! ES IST ZEIT!”
Ztalingrad
exploded, wiped off the map with a terrifying blast. The searing flame engulfed Shroomanski and terrified him. It was a blast of hate and violence and possibly rocket fuel.
It ejected him, the Onion’s premier and his hated arch-enemy, high into the air. Evilstein laughed maniacally. He rode a disintegrating rocket, that trailed panelling and body parts behind it. Shroomanski looked down, finding himself caught in an eerie state of freefall, yet neither ascending nor descending, the entirely of the Onion laid bare below him, from the plains of the Youkrane to the icebound shores of Baldibustok.
“Watch zis, proud premier! Your choices, jawohl, and what they brought!”
Fires started to rage in the night. Simultaneously in a hundred places, they light the darkness, fires of a thousand Killyshnikovs firing in unison, and hundreds of trucks coming in the dead of night. Screams echo across the frigid air, when people - good people, all, whom Shroomanski knew by heart - are dragged from their homes.
The Thanasian hunchback son of a whore took Shroomanski by his hand, and they both rode the rocket below.
“Observe as you mongrel untermenschen rampage across your own nation!” Evilstein cackled so hard that spittle flew off his mouth while his hunchback heaved up and down. “All your friends und allies now being rounded up like rats for their inevitable demise, waiting in ze stockades to be executed or shipped off to ze gulags - just like I was. Oh how ze wheel turns, ja?”
“You shits!” Shroomanski cried out as he seethed in rage.
“But I am getting ahead of myself. Of course, zey are vaiting for you. Only then vill ze purge fully begin. As zey say... after you.” Evilstein’s monocle flashed evilly, with a malicious glare, and with it came a new sight. It was the Politburo, now conferring somewhere at the Kreamlin, even as Shroomanski went deeper into his fever vision. It was a secret session, one that he and his allies had not been informed of. Only the confederates of the late, unlamented, Bearzhnev seemed to be in attendance.
The opulent expanse of the chambers chosen by the traitors for their secret meeting were lit by flickering chandeliers, their light erratic with the fluctuating power grid. A window was half open, gusts of wind fluttered papers, the great red banner hanging on the wall swayed slightly. Only half of the seats were occupied by the usurpers, working feverishly in the dead of night. There on the podium was Youri Mandropov smashing his gavel hammer and shouting out names all too familiar to Shroomanski. They were the names of his comradeskis, and now that Bearzhnevoid crony was denouncing them all. Beside him was Al Kushygin going over a list, in his hand was a pen with which he crossed the listed names out with red ink.
“Vatch, oh mighty premier, as ze very power you worked so hard to accrue ist eroded before thine very eyes,” Evilstein sneered with relish. “Your foolish gambits gave them all that they needed.”
“Nyet, nyet, nyet...” Shroomanski shook his head in dismay. “I never wanted it to be this way. The space program, the cornskis, all I wanted was to better the Onion for the proletariats. It was never supposed to be like this.”
“That ist why you lose, herr premier.” Evilstein cackled. “You accrued power in a foolhardy attempt at helping your common man. You stupid fat bald shoeless dummkopf. Vat hast your love for your common man brought you? You became weak and soft and thus now have no power at all! Eet iz irrelevant now, ja, what your wishes were!”
The Thanasian hunchback laughed some more, all while Shroomanski glowered at him in silent rage.
“Now, in the end, do you understand. All the power ended up in the hands of people like
me,” a grin splayed out on Evilstein’s twisted visage. “Power for its own sake, premier. That ist vhere it is at. That ist the true face of humanity. Not for love. Not for compassion. Extending your hand to a neighbor? Bah! Scheisse! You use power to
break those opposed to you, just as your friends in ze Politburo will now do to you and yours.”
“Nyet.” Shroomanski said quietly.
“Ja!” Evilstein gasped ecstatically.
“It can’t end like this. It won’t.” Shroomanski shook his head once more. But what could he do? Here he was, bald, shoeless, helpless as the mechanisms of the Politburo playing out in the demented dreamscape that surrounded him.
“Tsk, tsk. So weak.” Evilstein chuckled “You see, premier, humans do not respect kindness, ja! They vill alwayz bite ze hand that feeds them. Observe how commienism’s ideals of equality and brotherhood died, consumed by those with ambition and drive to dominate their lessers! Observe and learn!”
“You little Thanasian shits,” Shroomanski glared at him, walked over and grabbed him by the collar of his Shitstaffel trenchcoat. A crooked smile flashed on the Premier’s weathered and pitted granite-like facial features. “Tell me, you hunchbacked cretin. If this power for power’s sake, your ultimate aphrodisiac and all that, was so effective... then why are you yourself powerless? Why did you end up becoming Syrgy’s lab rat if all that shits you were spouting was all it was cracked up to be, I wonder? How come you were not rewarded with power for being such a ruthless Ratzi bastard, hmm?”
“Uhh....” A look of befuddlement fell on Evilstein’s face. He tried to struggle away from Shroomanski’s grip.
“Because none of it is true, you snivelling fascist rat!” Shroomanski suddenly slapped him. Hard. “Because deep down, for all that talk, you’re
still a spineless, hunchbacked little piece of shits! Just like those traitors in the Politburo, balls-less castratiskis all!”
“Fuck you!” Evilstein spat, before Shroomanski slapped him again, shattering his monocle.
“You couldn’t cut it as a half-assed rocket scientist, you couldn’t cut it as a laboratory experiment either. Your little prick got vacuum tubulated and you ran screaming into some hole. Where were you hiding? West Thanasia? Stenchia? Anglia? Who gives a shits! And now you’re dead! Dead! DEAD!” Shroomanski threw Evilstein to the floor and as the hunchbacked Thanasian desperately tried to crawl away, the Premier grabbed one of his feet and twisted it by the ankle. There was a sickening snap, Evilstein screamed, and then, horrer of horrers, the Premier ripped off one his shoes. Now the one-shoed Evilstein tried to drag himself away. “That’s it, you shits. Run like the coward Thanasian fascist you are!”
Shroomanski began to beat Evilstein with his own boot.
“You died in real life, and now I’ll make sure you die in the afterlife too!” Shroomanski spat, staining Evilstein’s broken monocle with phlegm-wadded spittle. “You can Heil Shitler in Hell!”
“Nein!” Evilstein screamed with womanly fear, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he brought his hands up to shield himself. “Nein nein nein nein!”
Shroomanski threw the Thanasian’s filthy fascist boot away and began throttling Evilstein’s throat with his bare hands.
Outside, thunder and lightning once more began to rumble. A terrifying cyclone gathered around both men, the two literary symbols of Man’s inner struggle with his own ambition, one currently attempting to murder the other.
“Klar!”
A bolt of lightning blasted both men apart, and the wind picked Evilstein up into the air while he screamed on in sheer mortal horrer. Another bolt struck him dead center in the chest, causing his whole body to convulse so hard that his very hunchback was momentarily straightened. Around them, faint white-clad figures appeared in the whirlwind, scurrying and busying themselves. Voices echoed in the howling wind.
“Klar!”
Another thunderbolt struck Evilstein in the heart.
“You coward! Don’t run away from me!” Shroomanski screamed with fury as Evilstein faded away from his grasp. “You’re such a failure that you can’t even die properly!”
The lightning-scarred Evilstein raised a finger at Shroomanski and despite the deafening howl of the wind, he could be seen mouthing three words. “Fuck you, asshole!”
“FUCK YOU TOO!!!” Shroomanski shouted back as he returned Evilstein’s gesture with both hands.
“Klar!”
A final lightning bolt impacted the hunchback. And then the Thanasian, the whirlwind, and the entire Politburo was gone.
Shroomanski was alone again. Alone on a great plain of Boratistan, in a sea of gently waving grass. Darkness fell upon the premier’s world. In his conversation with the ghost of Evilstein, the premier claimed with conviction that his ideals were true. But what he screamed to the Thanasian about the state his scheming and lust for power left him in...it was not so different from where Shroomanski was now. In the insane Ratzi’s cackling madness, there did lie some nuggets of truth.
Neither Evilstein’s ruthless drive for power nor Shroomanski’s idealistic crusade for the common man succeeded in their goals. But if he has failed, then what did the ghosts try to tell him? Why did they bother showing him his past, his terrifying present?
“Rise, comrade premier, for we are not quite done yet.”
Shroomanski looked up, and to his astonishment, he saw yet another ghastly apparition. A figure of stocky build, square-jawed and relatively short, the man was unmistakable - even despite his current deathly paleness, the bloated black lips and strangely lifeless eyes.
“Syrgy? Syrgy Pavylyvych? Nyet, you can’t be...”
“Dead?” Syrgy smiled slightly. “Comrade premier. In the fullness of time, we are all dead.”
Shroomanski was silent for a while, comprehending those words before saying, “I suppose you are the ghost of commienism yet to be?”
“Indeed I am, comrade premier. You have seen your past, and you know of the present, but the most difficult journey still remains.”
“Then the solution finally awaits us!”
“I provide no easy answers, comrade. What you are about to see will not be what you expect.”
“Then what do you want from me?! Why do you and other outdated bourgeois inventions keep torturing me so?!”
“Is it torture to know the truth?” the apparition answered, smiling. “Perhaps. But if that is so, then this is suffering that every man deserves. It is a fire that burns, but also cleanses.”
“I do not know if I am ready...” Shroomanski whispered softly. He was terrified.
“No one is.”
The plain rushed outwards, stretching and deforming, impossibly, across time and space, folding upon itself in a way that defied the human mind. Dimensions blossomed and collapsed, forming fractal designs that could only be described with numbers that did not exist in mathematics.
Shroomanski screamed, for the vision was too much. The very perception of it threatened to destroy the fabric of his mind. Just before the premier felt he wouldn’t be able to handle it anymore, the phenomenon stopped.
And he found himself on Red Square.
There was a parade, like in the times of old. Mighty warmachines rumbled past. Soldiers marched, saluting the high officials gathered on their tribunes. All of the officials wore military uniforms.
Shroomanski looked into the face of the nearest soldier. With a flash, he stood on an empty field somewhere in Zenobia. A house was burning, casting an eerie light on the military vehicles that surrounded it. The young soldier stood there, watching impassionately as the house’s inhabitants burned to death.
With another flash, they are at a checkpoint in Bearlin. The same soldier screams profanities at another one, in a different uniform, who stands on the other side of a white line painted on the ground. Their weapons are raised. They look ready to fight.
“We are now in the year 2001. What you see here, premier, is yet another incident that threatens nuclear war with the West. For the last three decades the world has lived in unprecedented terror. After having liquidated all domestic opposition, the Red Smarmy with the ultramilitant Bearzhnevists, now in complete control of the Onion, keep the world on the brink with their threat to start a global bath of blood.”
“Isn’t it said ‘bloodbath’?” the premier asks absentmindedly, as he contemplates the faces of the two soldiers, twisted with hate.
“Thank you, but I prefer it my way,” the apparition says and smiles, as if it just told a good joke “The Onion remains an undisputed superpower, though. Its smarmies are innumerable and strong and the West trembles at the mere sight of the endless hordes of tankskis at the East Thanasian border. To preserve the Onion’s wholesomeness, dissent is ruthlessly supressed. The nation remains stable and pure, and will continue so.”
“Da. The decadent capitalists quiver in fear as well they should!” Shroomanski says, but his conviction is not what it used to be. He has seen his share of struggles. He has seen death and fear and even hate, and Lennon’s spirit reminded him of what Zenobia had to endure to live. He had to ask himself, was it really worth it?
Should the Onion be bringing commienist enlightement to the world at the tip of a tankski barrel? Strong smarmies meant his nation remained safe; but they could also be used to bring misery and death as in the time of Ztalin.
The vision changes. The young soldier from a checkpoint in Bearlin is no longer in uniform. He is screaming, yes, but along with him other youths stand, side by side. They are chanting slogans. The
militsia charges them with white phosphorus bayonets, scattering the crowd.
But it is futile. Moosecow burns. Young people are holding rallies everywhere. Apparachtniks are thrown out of windows. The anti-fascist wall of East Thanasia crumbles, and standing atop the construct is a capitalist pigdog with a flashing neon-lit jacket. He is singing badly.
“Nyet! Comrade Syrgy, what is happening?!” Shroomanski asks in alarm, for it seems as if the very Onion crumbles before his eyes.
“This is another future. It is also 2001. The hardliners have faded into obscurity, and the Red Smarmy rules supreme, having cleansed the secret police and NKVDVDROM. But after three decades of fumbled policies and heavy-handed attempts at holding on to power, cannot continue so. Radicals and reformists chip away at their rule. Popular dissent throws the Onion into chaos, as military units are unwilling to kill their own countrymen to preserve the military’s rule, and turn on the government.”
“But the streets are burning! The country will disintegrate and the capitalists will seize on this opportunity to break away our comrade-nations! Perhaps neuter Zenobia and turn it into their client state!”
“Perhaps. It is a distinct possibility.
“A distinct possibility?!” Shroomanski sputters in disbelief at how his comrade could say such things so calmly.
“There are many branches of the future. Decision trees and probability scenarios blossom out with every second and quickly become impossible to catalogue. The Onion’s fall and the end of commienism is the one central event to all these futures.”
“Wait, Syrgy! How can it be possible for the Onion to remain strong and yet fall?” the premier is distraught and confused “Did you not just say yourself that our beloved proletarian nation will be powerful and make the world tremble?”
“And here we come to the conclusion of your journey, comrade premier, for the choice of which of these futures happen...it is up to you.”
“What are you saying? How can I decide it?”
“You can submit to your fate and face your final retirement at the hands of your enemies, and the Onion will persevere, as powerful and warlike as you’ve seen.”
At that, Syrgy handed the premier a long, metallic shaft. Shroomanski stared at it in disbelief, for it was Ztalin’s very own Marshall’s Baton. The object seemed to weight far more than it should, Shroomanski realized, burdened as it was with the will of power of its previous owner.
Or...” Syrgy reached into a pocket inside his weathered old suit jacket and pulled out a shoe. “You can chose to fight, and doom the Onion to destruction at the hands of the people. You must chose one, or the other.”
“So... for the Onion to grow stronger than it has ever been, I must surrender myself to my enemies.” Shroomanski spoke sullenly, looking at the baton “And usher a new age of militant crypto-Ztalinism.”
“But that is not the only way,” Syrgy handed him the shoe.
“Yet if I fight against my enemies, Zenobia as we know it will fall for sure.” Shroomanski took the shoe and gripped it tightly.
“The choice is yours, premier.” Syrgy said.
The soldier and the protester, two faces of the same man, the same nation, stood before Shroomanski. It was an agonizing, terrible thought. There had to be a third way! Another solution!
“You know better” Syrgy noted solemnly, as if reading his thoughts. “Life does not yield itself to easy answers. Such are the laws of historical inevitability.”
Hundreds of years of history coming to this single moment. But was this really about history and politics, humanity’s grand, old game? Whatever choice Shroomanski made, the world would continue. It lasted this long without him, and will survive just the same. It was, in reality, a choice he had to make for the benefit of himself. For his own soul, as the capitalists would say.
The shoe glinted in the light of the burning Palace Of The Soviets.
The whirling papers dropped to the floor with a terrible rustle, and suddenly everything was quiet again. Everything but the rising thunderstorm outside.
Still not decided, the premier gripped tightly his
allegorical storytelling devices newfound shoe in one hand, and the Marshall’s Baton in the other. He left the typing room, and as he was walking out, a flash of lightning briefly revealed two shadowy figures, who watched him intently.
The same flash startled the Bearzneviks during their impromptu Politburo meeting. The fluctuating power grid made the great chandeliers flicker and darken from time to time. It was altogether fitting that this attempted power grab, the underhanded move against the Premier be framed by a thunderstorm.
Thunder signified change, after all. And the thunderous voice of Youri Mandropov played well with the hellish spectacle outside. Now if only the chambers could be appropriate as well, rather than the Kreamlin’s ballroom... still, nobody expected the conspirators to meet tonight, nor would they come looking for them here of all places.
“Comrades Gugyvych and Boarchevsky, what do we do with them? They are well-placed in the nomenklatur, are they not? Could be useful...” Al Kushygin wondered aloud as he tapped his red-inked pen over the names on his list.
“But unreliable!” Nikolai Poodgurney shouted from the floor “Boarchevsky is too much of a Troutskyist fool, and Gugyvych changes allegiations like he does his women!”
“And has as much taste in them, it seems.” Al Kushygin chuckled lightly.
“No jokes, comrades! This is a serious matter we are discussing, not the organization of the May Day parade!” Mandropov calmed the room. A gust of wind came through the half-open window behind him, causing the curtains to flutter and prompting him to slam it shut. “There is no doubt comrade Boarchevsky has to go. Can we convince Gugyvyvh to join us for now?”
“We could move his family to Moosecow. Grant them a nice apartment, and a pair of NKVDVROM officers...” Came a suggestion from Mick Pshedgorny
“Da!” Mandropov agreed enthusiastically “With his family close at hand and under close watch, he will think twice about changing alliances once again. And should he become a liability...we will know where to find them. Da. I like this.”
Another name was crossed out with red ink. “Then it is settled and we have decided on what to do with Shroomanski’s allies,” Mandropov straightened himself up and began his penultimate speechification. “We can move to the fate of the erstwhile Premier himself. Even now he is being... taken cared of, in his old and feeble age, which is something we should have done years ago with comrade Bragonoid... if only that meddling Youkranian hadn’t somehow cheated death,” Mandropov cursed under his breath. Even now he was still at a loss at how the Premier had evaded certain doom.
He continued, “But now! The Premier shall pay the price for his carelessness. His insipid policies at introducing capitalistic cornskis into our great agricultural industries have wreaked havoc on the kolkhozskis. And his foolish attempt at racing to the moon, bah, an endeavor that even the decadent Murcanskis now regret, and which shamed our nation and brought failure due to the Premier’s ineptness! It is time to make him pay for this, for his ridiculous reforms and revisionisms. He will be made to answer for his crimes! He will -”
The doors to the room slammed open as they were kicked in by a bare foot. The assembled apparachtniks gasped in shock and awe. Gusts of wind from the outside blew into the chambers.
“He will answer for them before you himself.” Walking in, coat fluttering in the harsh breeze, was none other than...
“Stanislav Shroomanski.” Mandropov growled at the man who defeated his mentor.
“Youri Mandropov,” the premier replied icily. “I should’ve known there had to be someone for Bearzhnev to hold on his leash. I recognized your foul stench the minute I entered this room!”
“You shouldn’t have come here, Shroomanski.” Mandropov’s eyes narrowed as he stared down his nemesis. “You don’t know how easy I will find it, signing the order to terminate your life!”
“But I have not come empty handed.” Shroomanski closed the doors behind him and slammed something into the locks to jam them. “Ztalin’s Marshall’s Baton! It will hold these doors closed with its iron will, comrades, while we discuss our future!”
“Our future?! There is nothing to discuss! You have lost, premier! The game you’ve played has new rules now! You
have no future!”
The Bearzneviks rose from their chairs and faced Shroomanski as one. Old faces all, veterans of the Party’s endless power struggles and corridor wars. Entrenched in their ways, and possessing an iron and undaunting will to power, even as their bodies slowly failed them. Their story was Shroomanski’s story, only one chapter behind.
“Hah! You have decided to set new rules? You, the old fossils, interested only in preserving the status quo? Nyet, Yourij, your new rules
are the old rules. As old as you and me.”
“This is irrelevant! You won’t talk your way out of this!”
“So, I can see a list here, da? You are starting another purge?”
“Da!” Mandropov seemed defiant. The doors were hit by something heavy from the outside, as the Bearzhnevik enforcers from the NKDVDROM started battering them “It is necessary, for the gloury of the Onion!”
“Oh, and the Onion will be glourious, indeed. I have seen it. It will make the world tremble.”
The Bearzneviks said nothing, glancing sideways at the slowly cracking door. They were not sure what to think of Shroomanski’s rambling. Why was he here? He brought no allies, no enforcers, not even idle threats and curses.
“Its Smarmies will be the greatest that the world has ever seen. But what of the people?”
“Who cares!” Al Kushygin shouted. “The people? The people are a tool that should be used to build Zenobia’s greatness. The people should do as they are told!”
“Or what? They will be made to?”
“If necessary, yes! Innocents die so that the Onion may live!”
Shroomanski glared at Kushygin. He seemed to have come to a realization about his compatriots, and his nation, and himself. He remembered how the Onion maintained its grip on power. He recalled the horrors of Khylima, the prisons of Liebyanka, the Bearlin Wall with its armed guards. He remembered all of that and more. Worse, he knew that as long as the Onion lived, no matter who became Premier, they would continue. It was too late. It always was. Always would be.
“You claim your labors are to build a heaven, yet your heaven is populated with horrors,” he said slowly.
“Enough!” Mandropov slammed his gavel repeatedly. “There is only one reason why, after dodging the NKVDVDROM men, you chose to come here alone and unaided before our midst. It is to face the Politburo’s judgment, and now that judgment has been passed. As you yourself said...” as his other hand continued on slamming the hammer, Mandropov produced a golden sickle and with a mighty swing he hurled it at Shroomanski’s head. “We will bury you!”
The golden blade sailed through the cold midnight air, its glint reflecting off Shroomanski’s eyes. Time seemed to slow down as he watched it, observed every minute detail of it, the sharpness of its edge, the angle of its spin, and the strange rhythm of its rotations as it came closer and closer to his face.
This was the crossroads. Where the fate of the Zenobian Onion would be decided. He stood now, face to face with certain death. It was said that the one had to give his life for the many.
For the Onion to live, he had to die. Should he live on and fight, the Onion would most certainly fall.
There was no other choice. The blade sang. He gripped his shoe with one hand.
...if I fight against my enemies, Zenobia as we know it will fall for sure...
“But the voice of the proletariat will be heard once again!” Shroomanski said. With his other hand, he caught the sickle mere inches away from his head.
“What?!” Youri Mandropov gasped. There was a collective intake of breath from the entire Politburo, and then the chamber became quiet.
“The choice has been made,” Shroomanski declared as blood trickled down from his wounded hand which grasped the blade. He raised his hand and the sickle for all to see, and mirroring Mandropov’s motion, he hurled it into the air towards the Politburo.
“Nyet!” Mandropov ducked instinctively as the blade swished far over his head and embedded itself into the wall. He looked up at the stuck blade, looked back at Shroomanski, and laughed. “Ha! You missed!”
“Did I?” Shroomanski smiled bitterly. There was a snap as the chains holding the overhanging chandelier, which were damaged by the thrown sickle’s blade, had finally broke. The crystal chandelier fell and struck the floor in an explosion of glass and sparks, setting alight the red banner covering the far wall of the chamber. The crimson flag of commienism made manifest was consumed by the flames, burning away into soot and smoke, revealing a gleaming wall-high mirror behind it. Within it was a perfect reflection of the chamber and all those inside it.
“It can’t be...” all the color drained away from Mandropov’s face. His realization was shared by the other Bearzhnevists, whose eyes all widened in fear.
“But it is.” Shroomanski stood tall amongst them. He cleared his throat, looked straight into the mirror, and spoke thus: “I, Stanislav Shroomanski, rightful Premier of the Zenobian Onion, Marshall of the Red Smarmies, and servant of the first true commienist Vladimir Lennon, hereby invoke the Stas Bush Proclamation!”
“NYET!” Mandropov screamed. He bolted from his podium and ran towards the exit, past Shroomanski, and together with the rest of the stampeding Politburo he slammed his fists at the doors - jammed shut by the Marshall’s Baton. “Let me out! Let me out!”
“Stas Bush!” Shroomanski paid them no heed as he barked out the first invocation.
“Shroomanski! Stop this at once!” Mandropov begged desperately as the wave of bodies, all of high-ranking Zenobian geriatrics, threatened to crush him against the oak doors. “Please! Nyet!”
“Stas Bush!” Shroomanski shouted on. The pleading and begging turned into screaming. Men were stomping each other’s faces in a vain attempt at clawing to the doors, and those who reached them were in turn buried by those behind them, all trying to flee for their lives. These were the brave men in charge with leading the Zenobian Onion to greatness, these were the ones who were entrusted to safekeep the lives of all the Motherland’s children, these were the inheritors of the commienist legacies of Lennon, of Ztalin, and yes, of Shroomanski too.
He looked at them. Not by glancing over his back, but by gazing forward at the reflection in the mirror.
The one had to give his life for the many. But the many had to give their lives for all. For better or worse, they all had to go, to clear the field for the future, to bring forth a new age of renewal, so that in the next generation the proletariat could finally find the liberty they would win for themselves. So that the Zenobian Onion would be free - free to chart out its own best course in the world, free to grow and change and, as it turned out, free to fall.
It was time to step into the shadows without complaint or regret.
Shroomanski closed his eyes.
He gripped his shoe tightly.
He felt fear... for the last time.
Lightning struck the building. The power died, and the ballroom was bathed in darkness.
“STAS BUSH!”
