(Photo canva stock)

The lottery was tonight. Gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, it was held every night, and everyone had a ticket. They had to. 

Alyssa had a red ticket. It shook on the cell phone screen, jittering in her nervous hands. She knew she shouldn’t be scared, but the tiny code on that glowing, lifeless little box could change everything. 

The anxious heat of it climbed up her neck and clamped around her head, drawing sweat from every pore. She fanned herself. He breath was unable to fill her lungs. 

“Are you alright?” Her sister, Emma, asked from the couch where they sat side-by-side after work each night. 

Alyssa nodded. Unable to voice her fears, she sat like a chicken awaiting a hawk. 

“You barely touched your coffee.” Emma pushed the tall, double corn-syrup extra candy foam cup toward her. 

Alyssa glanced at it and shrugged. How could her sister be so calm? Who could taste anything when the lottery was about to announce a winner? She clutched her phone as if it were a weapon, both protecting her and threatening her life. 

“Two minutes.” Her sisted smiled, chugging her loaded coffee over bloated lips that bubbled atop her double chin. 

Alyssa hated the coffee. It tasted like death and made her feel sick. She also hated herself for not believing everyone who told her how beautiful her sister’s rolls were. The fat burst out of Emma’s clothes like batter rising atop a cake pan. 

Emma never got a red ticket. The green hue of hers glowed on her phone from the small table before them. The blood red ticket watched Alyssa from her phone. It reminded her of her education. This was for unity.

The uniparty had united everyone through their unification platform. All political parties became one. Every program became one. The schools united with the uniparty so the nation could unify every struggling societal need and impress the importance of unity.

All businesses were uniparty-owned. The healthcare industry unified the uniparty. The banks all unified the uniparty’s unifying currency: the unit. Units were carefully awarded by the most dedicated union workers, and everyone was a union worker; they had to be. It was all for the sake of the all-powerful human need for unity. 

Union dues were paid in services. Workers put in as many hours as the uniparty declared necessary, and the unions put them to work. Workers lived on uniparty-owned, union-controlled untills which contained small untments for the workers to live in. They were stacked like boxes on top of each other and reached high and wide. Everyone was packed and stacked, put in their place so the uniparty could monitor every step. 

Alyssa sat in her untment with Emma, wondering why she had never received a green lottery ticket. It made her think something was wrong with her. Nothing could be wrong with her sister or the uniparty lottery. To think so would be selfish, and selfish thoughts were the worst crime against unity. 

She focused on the screen, trying not to think about anything. Thoughts in themselves were dangerous, she had learned. Her teachers constantly warned her about the dangers of thinking too much. For thought could lead to division, and division would destroy everything and everyone the uniparty had worked so hard to unite. 

A text popped up, blocking the bright red ticket. Jay’s name ran across the screen. For a brief moment, she forgot about the lottery. 

Jay was her union rep. The only one who ever smiled. He even joked at times, but only when he knew no one was really listening, because jokes were almost as dangerous as thoughts. They could hurt, they could harm, they could make people think that laughter was important, and that would rival the seriousness of uniparty standards. 

He had a way of looking at her that unsettled her soul, yet somehow made her yearn to hear his deep voice and see the flecks of gold in his eyes. “What’s your color?” his message said. 

She pulled her phone close to her face and sat back on the stiff couch. Her hair brushed her cheek, and she glanced at her sister to see if she had spotted the message. Emma sat laughing at a five-second video of someone falling down a long flight of spiked stairs. 

Alyssa froze in her discomfort. The uniparty frowned on anyone discussing their ticket color. It could lead to de-unifying talk, and nothing was more terrifying than de-unification. 

Everyone had to unify in what they wore, where they lived, and what they did, but especially in how they spoke. Language was the most important unification tool, above all, so no one could speak of anything that de-unified anyone. 

Alyssa wished Jay had sent her a simple message, nothing so obviously wrong. The words grated on her head, made her brain pound like union feet marching to work to build more untills. If only he had asked if her coffee was hot or if her phone was working. 

Her fingers itched. What could she say that wouldn’t be flagged by the uniparty’s underling system? It monitored every tenant. It was safer that way. No un-unifying conversations could go on, and so peace was always retained. Unifying unity for the uniparty. 

No one could possibly suspect Alyssa of any acts of de-unification. She had always unified. She loved unity and all its units. She had a nice untment, a great place in the union, and the uniparty had always generously allowed her to enjoy the freedom of their free health exams, where she was always given a unifying bill of health. Diseases didn’t exist. They couldn’t. The sick went to the uniparty and were unified through the greatest act of unity; they were let go from their life functions for the sake of everyone. 

Alyssa had never questioned her life until she met Jay. But she remained agreeable. Even when a single un-unifying thought crept into her mind to cloud her training, she kept it to herself, sure that it was some personal defect. She didn’t want to be let go from her life, so she attempted to make that horrid thought disappear, but now, with a red ticket, she wondered… Why? 

Why did all of this feel so wrong when the time came to reveal who won?

It made her recoil at herself. She was disgusted to her core. A highly-educated person, like herself, could never question the uniparty system. That would de-unify her. It made her feel like one of the savage colonizers from the dark history that was only slightly touched on during her lessons in school. Those dirty colonizers brutally believed in individuality before the uniparty saved everyone from a non-unified life of arguing and disagreeing. 

No. She was too educated to fight for anything. The uniparty had made sure of that. 

But now, Jay had broken the unity in her life. His question was forbidden. Alyssa didn’t want to become concerned. That too would be uneducated. She had to trust that the uniparty was protecting her, or he was testing her loyalty. 

She sat back. She smirked slightly at the thought. Maybe Jay was pulling another strange joke. 

“ A unifying color from the great uniparty,” She texted back. The relief of replying without betraying herself and her leaders lifted her heart. 

“Mine’s red,” Jay responded. 

Alyssa’s throat closed. She had to remind herself to breathe. She suddenly became aware of the stale air in the untment. It stank with the gasterous scent of her sister’s digestion. Not Jay, she thought. 

Emma stared at her with raised eyebrows over her fat bulldog cheeks. “Who you talking to?”

“Jay,” Alyssa answered. 

“What does he want?” her sister slurped the last of her sugar coffee down, then belched and laughed out loud, scratching the rolls under her breasts.

“He asked me what my color is.” Alyssa stared at her phone, unsure how to reply to him. 

“We all play our part.” Emma nodded as if she hadn’t heard anything Alyssa said. No mention of de-unification. No concern. No emotion at all. She never listened to her. Nobody ever really listened to anyone else. It was easier to unify that way. She got up to grab a jumbo pack of uniparty sandwich cookies and shoved handfuls of them into her mouth like stars being sucked into a black hole. 

Alyssa didn’t understand why she could feel her pulse beating in her fingertips. She feared she was getting sick. Her forehead certainly was getting wet. The heat in her body rushed from her cheeks across her neck and throughout her body until she felt like she could burst into flame right there for even talking to someone in a de-unifying way. 

And that word returned: Why. Why did it feel so bad to get a red ticket or talk to someone about it? Why would anyone want to talk about it or get in trouble for talking about it? Suddenly, a hundred “Whys” were built off of that one. A union crew could not have built a taller, wider until of untments than the whys that build within her. And those questions built up and up until everything felt ready to collapse. 

Alyssa didn’t understand why she was trembling. Her whys stopped. She jumped at her sister and snatched the cookies from her fat hands. She ran to the window of their small untment with Emma gaping at her as she threw them out the window. 

She didn’t know why she had reacted that way. But it felt good. Nothing about her life felt right. It never really had. The whys made her realize that. She wondered if that’s why questions were discouraged by the uniparty. 

Still, she knew she couldn’t admit anything out loud. Her actions had probably already flagged her untment underling understander. She feared eviction more than the red ticket. Plenty of people got red tickets and survived. Why not her?

Another why. 

Alyssa saw the rage in her sister’s eyes as she screamed and fell onto the floor like a massive blob of despair, clawing at the carpet for any cookie crumbs she could devour. “My snacks!”

“I’m… sorry.” Alyssa glanced at the unity cameras in the corners of the room. She walked over to Emma and bent down to help her up, but her sister grasped her. She squeezed with all 300 pounds of her body and dragged herself up to shout and clobber her. The pain of Emma’s blows made Alyssa cower. 

Still, Emma smacked and pushed her. She was bumped around like a bag of unifying fast food being torn apart by a hungry union worker after a long day of unity work. Alyssa’s phone was kicked across the room as her sister attacked her. The blows shook her body. She couldn’t think; just react. She held her hands over her head, hoping Emma would calm down. 

She covered her face and bent over herself for protection. New fears assaulted her until the jolt of each impact stopped much quicker than they had begun. 

Alyssa dared to stare up at her sister, and Emma panted. She gasped and clutched at her giant, heaving chest. She reached for Alyssa, but Alyssa backed away, afraid of everything she had experienced in that short span. 

With a wheeze, Emma fell to her knees in a coughing fit. Alyssa crawled back against the wall under the window where she had thrown the cookies. Her bruised body grew heavier and heavier, like a raincloud just before a storm. An eruption within trembled her lips until tears poured out of her. Real tears. 

She was so ashamed. The uniparty had warned against caring or expressing too much of any emotion. Displaying extreme feelings affected the unified well-being of others. Only the uneducated would do such an ignorant thing. 

A knock sounded at the door. Its echo matched the rhythm of her heart. She sobbed at the thought of a de-unification reprimand. She feared a re-unification sentence. Re-unification required weeks of hard labor mixed with a series of medical alterations and prescriptions to unify the brain and body with the uniparty once more. 

She had seen how those who returned from reunification resumed life, barely living. They stared ahead. No words, no thoughts. Just work. They didn’t look or seem alive, yet they breathed. Their mouths drooped under great, empty eyes as lifeless as the cookie box she wished she hadn’t taken from her sister. 

“Alyssa, it’s me,” Jay’s voice cut her despair in half. The deep tremor of his voice was sincere. Caring. Everything she had never heard in her life. It made her wonder how he became a union rep for the uniparty. 

She glanced at Emma, passed out on the floor like a beached whale. She got up and slowly edged herself around her sister’s body and went to open the door. 

Jay’s square jaw sat crooked. His shining eyes were surrounded by the red of sleeplessness, nearly as bright as their lottery tickets. He grasped her shoulders and bent forward. “You know I like you, right?”

He leaned closer, and Alyssa breathed in his earthy scent. It revived her senses and offered comfort. She didn’t understand why, but she leaned forward too. He rested his forehead against hers. She froze. She liked him, too. But couldn’t possibly say it, could she? Not without serious consequences. That was de-unifying.

Touching, dancing, choosing to be with anyone who wasn’t born from the same lab was de-unifying. Everyone knew that. They were perfectly categorized and taught when to go to the lab to continue their lineage through the uniparty. 

But she and Jay both had red tickets. For unity. The uniparty. Life was now uncertain. Unity meant accepting the organ donor lottery for the unification of all unions. The uniparty needed to live forever, after all. They knew best and had to replace their organs with healthy ones. It was the ultimate unification when a uniparty unionizer took an organ from one of the union workers, like her. She was in a class of people so highly considered for her good health that she knew she could easily reach the ultimate level of unity by giving her life to the uniparty, if chosen in tonight’s lottery. 

It was a great honor. But another question haunted her. If giving her life for the uniparty was such an honor, why was she so frightened? Why did she long to run away with Jay in the hopes that the uniparty would forget them?

He grasped her hands, and nothing else existed. For a moment, all her training had disappeared. She had been warned about the alluring power of pleasure again and again in Unity School, but how could something so wonderful be un-unifying? She pulled away, afraid for his sake. 

The distance hung between them. She dared to blink up into his eyes, and his stare was unwavering. A decision had been made; it called to her in a single look. He marched into her room and kissed her. Arms grasping, lips searching, his hot breath intensified within her. Alyssa’s body tingled. Her ears rang. An uncontrollable smile engulfed her mouth as she pressed her lips to his again and again. His hands rubbed her back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. 

When she finally pulled away again, she forced herself to remember her place. She pleaded with him, pointing at the camera. “We’ve de-unified. We must be punished.”

“Must we?” He grinned with a new light glowing in the golden freckles in his eyes. “Why?” He rubbed her arms. 

“Stop that.” She giggled and sighed at her ignorant behavior. “Unity is all that matters.”

“To the uniparty.” He chuckled. 

“You’re a union rep,” she said, backing toward the window.”

He shook his head. “A union cow. Milked and primed to be carved up.”

Alyssa’s feet felt like boulders. She needed to stay and be punished. Her education had said so. “Don’t do this. We must stay unified.” The tears poured like rain once again. All of her life, she had been a desert free of emotion, yet one red ticket, and now her whole world flowed with a tsunami of feeling, great colorful red and green feelings. Bright. Bold. Uneducated. 

“I am unified.” Jay reached for her again, and she stumbled over her sister’s body. She suddenly remembered her sister. “Emma!” She turned to check on her. 

“What happened to her?” Jay bent down to help Alyssa roll the giant body over. 

“Emma!” Alyssa patted her sister’s cheeks to wake her, but nothing happened. She shook Emma’s flabby shoulders, but her head just drooped.

Jay held up Emma’s hand and dropped it. He pushed Alyssa back and pressed his ear to the giant chest lying motionless before them. “Nothing.” He tilted her head back and leaned over her mouth to give her some of his air.  Then he pounded on her chest to try and wake the still heart beneath the folds of fat and skin. He did this over and over again. 

Alyssa’s eyes felt as if they’d never be dry again. Jay worked until sweat dripped from his face. Finally, he glanced up with a wrinkled brow. “She’s gone.”

She pulled at her hair and stood up, screaming and shaking. “I killed her. It was all my fault.” She ran to the window and thought of jumping out to smash against the ground 89 stories down and meet the same fate as the cookies she had so selfishly torn away from her sister. But there was no comparison. 

Cookies were unifying. The uniparty said so. Everyone was allowed one box a month. But she, she had become a disgraceful deunification within a single day. Why? 

“You didn’t kill her.” Jay pulled Alyssa from the window and held her close. 

She leaned into his comforting chest. “How do you know?”

He looked down at her so she could smell his salty breath. “Did you?”

She pressed her face into him and then told him what happened. “They’ll have to re-unify me,” she sobbed when she finished. 

“Why?” he asked.

“Stop it.” She slapped his cheek and pushed him away. “Why must you question everything?” She began to question if all her doubts had originated with him.  

“Why don’t you question everything?” he asked. 

Before she could answer, their phones lit up. The lottery reel listed off the unification uniparty lottery winners. Ally Brinkman… Chris Davis… Damien Jennings… So many names. So many people would give up their organs, their lives, to keep the uniparty unifying the unity. 

Alyssa held her breath, awaiting the M names and the Os. She wasn’t sure why, but if one of them had to complete their unification, she hoped it was her. Then she could stop the asking, the new sense of wonder and fear. Plus, she couldn’t imagine any unity for anyone without a man like Jay. 

The names finally ended. “We’re clear.” Jay laughed. 

Alyssa nodded. Her head was light, but the rustling sounds outside startled her. She couldn’t stop worrying as Jay kissed her again. “They already know I’m done working for them,” he whispered in her ear. “The question is, will you wake up with me?”

Before she could answer, a great force pulled them apart. A troop of drones whizzed around the room. One grew limbs like a spider and grabbed Alyssa’s arms and legs. It held her head and scanned her eyes. 

Jay wrestled with two before her. More buzzed over to him as he rolled and punched and kicked. It took 10 drones to hold him down and pry his eyelids open before he was scanned. 

A gravely voice beeped from the devices, announcing: Your de-unifying behavior broke a series of uniparty unity laws. Alyssa Mclaughlin, you are found guilty by video evidence of yelling, throwing, fighting, kissing, laughing, crying, theft, and littering. 

The voice addressed Jay: Jay O’Connor, you are found guilty of joking, laughing, stalking, kissing, questioning, plotting, and denouncing unity.

Miss Mclaughlin, you are a first-time offender of perfect unity standing, which would warrant you a re-unification sentence underusual unifying protocol, but being as you were caught with Mr. O’Connell, a union rep of great influence, who has dangerously threatened our great uniparty’s unity by abusing his power, the both of you are hereby sentences to donate your organs to the uniparty at once. Your sentence will be executed immediately to ensure the unified unity of the uniparty remains perfectly and unequivocally united. 

It was at this moment that Alyssa realized there was no unity. No winners and no reason to believe in any of the lessons the uniparty had taught her. Nothing mattered anymore. Survival was the only prize, and that had been ripped away from them. 

Marie McCloskey is an artist and writer who longs for her work to speak for itself. Her paintings have been featured at the Soulard Art Gallery, 31 Art Gallery, The Starving Canvas, and Saatchi Art. Her short stories have been published by Fiction on the Web, Everyday Fiction, Literally Stories, and Me First Magazine.