Tyrannia Read Free

Tristana was his ex-girlfriend, though they were still on good terms. They had to be, in order to fulfill the plan. She was in the paralegal program in the university—where he used to study, before he got kicked out—and worked as an administrative assistant in the law school. More important, she worked two offices down from the professor.
    “Yeah, so.” Tristana sighed. “How do you feel?”
    “Fine, I guess.”
    “Are you feeling angry about the professor? Rageful? I mean, you’re not going to let your emotions get in the way of things?”
    “I don’t think so,” Patrick said. For him, executing the plan was never that much about a sense of righteous anger. Sure, there was an abstract belief in a just cause, and in a way he was afraid of the professor, though the professor himself, aside from his ideas, posed little threat. And he wasn’t even really afraid of getting caught. Instead, the plan for him was a form of self-discovery, to throw himself into a project that would define who he was. Doing this, he would see himself in a different light.
    “Good,” Tristana said. “I think of emotions as little as possible. They really cloud things.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay, we’ll meet at your place at dawn—uh, that’s 5:57. Got that?”
    “Got it—oh shit.”
    “What?”
    “I forgot to tape up the windows of the minivan.”
    “Well you better get on that. I gotta fill out some briefs now. Later.”
    “Later.”
    When he was in line at Walgreens with the tape, he got a call from Evan, who was the bona fide leader of their group. He was a real anarchist. He went to a lot of protests with bags of blood to throw at police. He had been arrested seven times and Patrick wondered if he was sleeping with Tristana.
    “How are you feeling?” Evan said.
    “Tristana asked me the same thing.”
    “She would. We’re like, one mind,” he said. Then, “We’re all like one mind.”
    “Uh-huh. I feel fine by the way.” He fumbled in his pocket for a dime to finish paying for the duct tape. The woman behind him with two kids pulling at her knees rolled her eyes. She would never know about the plan. And the cashier giving him the receipt and the bag with the duct tape would never know about the plan.
    “What, you going zen on me?” Evan said. He said zen like it was a curse word. “I don’t want you to feel ‘fine.’ You have to, you know, listen to your heart. And your heart should be fucking pissed.” Evan and the static on his end intertwined, as if the hissing interference was coming from his throat.
    “Okay,” Patrick said. “Listen. I’m angry. You can’t hear it on the phone, but I am.”
    “Patrick, this is going to be great,” Evan said. “It’s going to be a fun weekend. The farmhouse, it’s nice. It’s really nice. I have a ton of beer too.”
    “That’s good,” Patrick said, though he didn’t know if he would be in the mood for getting wasted while executing the plan.
    “Okay, look, I have to go,” Evan said in a slightly exasperated tone, as if Patrick was the one who had called him. “I have to print out the manual at the copy shop.”
    “Great, see you tomorrow.”
    Evan hung up and Patrick laughed as he started up the van.
    Back in his driveway, he got to work on the windows. The air was still damp, so he wasn’t sure if he was getting a good seal with the duct tape on the window. And the tape was clinging to the newspaper. After about a half hour, he got all of the back windows taped up with the newspaper. He tossed the duct tape roll onto the front seat. They would need more of that later. He lay in the back for a few minutes, watching the translucent light filter through the news of the world and its ads. Only the ads for flat-screen televisions would not let the light sift through, black rectangles like those monoliths from 2001. At last, he closed his eyes. He was excited. He was starting to feel something.

    “Is that Febreze?” Evan said while Patrick was driving