Written in the style of Anthony Burgess ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Most of the language is taken directly, other parts have been created for the purposes of the story.
“What will it be then? You lowest of souls, most diligent workers, sufferers of Bourgeois oppression, what is your choice? Revolution or Slavery?”
Now now Comrades, no need to be getting all razdrazzed already! I viddy these starry-timer slovos are tough to ken for some of you simpler droogs of mine, so please allow your Humble Orator to explain in good old salted-earth Nadsat! That’s the lingo spoken by me and mine up and down this country in every workhouse and proleshed from here to the big grey sea. Quite a lingo it is too! All cockney, Slavic and commoner slovos bundled up together-like in a real powerful shared goloss for us revolting so-and-sos! Many a time in the old world did some uppity lewdie get all spooked-up by our collective goloss. None of us gave a cal then, so why would we now?
But I digress, O dearest Comrades. For the slovos above were not govereeted by me, but by Our Glorious Leader, on the nochy of the Horrorshow Roundabout’s beginning, with the uprising of all rabbiters (workers, that is). The bolshy chelloveck had stood oddy knocky atop his platform wearing the platties of the common rabbiter and the otchkies of an academic type, and “espoused” his “ideal” of a classless society. Aye, what pronouncements they were too, O my Comrades! His honeyed slovos dancing into our collective ookos, blessing us merry masses with vigour and hope and the like! That wise, starry dedoochka filled our gullivers with sparkling viddeons of pasture and plenty! Lands free of bosses and statesmen, where we rabbit for our bratties and not for masters! “Rise up” he said, “teach the oppressors the power of the common man! What is there to lose but your chains?!”
He went on, creeching red murder for those Boogs and Cat Pits with their big fat plotts with bulging brookos! Them with their piles of pretty polly. Heaps and heaps of silver-like treasure sealed in grand starry domys, real horrorshow domys too. With gates and gardens and drawing rooms, all that cal. He compared the cosy jeeznys of these Boogs and Cat Pit Capos (or Bourgeoisie and Capitalists if Sir Reader doth prefer) to our measly lot, us the rabbiters on whose backs the bratchys had prospered. He reminded us of the prolefeed (or rabbit-food) which had been doled out to us Diligent Workers, that grey stuff which tasted like swissy noga after a full day’s run! All rancid and mucky for us deserving chellovecks, the cheek of those Boogs! It was enough to drive a veck bezoomny, bratties! Yet we had kept our gullivers down and stayed all quietish, real bogmen-like. I admit I was a eunuch jelly in those days, as were many of us law-abiding lewdies. Hey, hey! I see you liar vecks wobbling your thick gullivers in flat denial! You can’t lie to me bratnchys! Anyways, not like that cal matters anymore, does it Comrades?
It all changed with the Horrorshow Roundabout, when Me and We merriest of masses swept the nation as one! Dratsing and ultra-violence spread like the plague-pox from polis to polis, coast to coast. Cat pit krovvy, O my Comrades, ran like the finest vino down our swinging shlagas and swooshing nozhs! A swift tolchock to the litso of a flabby Cat Pit Capo dropped the veck where he quivered!
The Organs of State were set on us in retort; uppity milicent coppers and their bossmen in camo armed to the zoobies with steel and fire! But it didn’t take long til’ all the Sov’s horses and all the Sov’s men fell to pitchfork and torch, after which we burnt jackboot and truncheon in blazing raucous bonfires! We’d cracked up the hard shell of the Beast, now we got to filly with all its soft, gooey insides! We stormed Workhouses, Law Courts, Flatblocks, Sky Stabbers, Grand Domy’s, Railways, Med-Sheds and Schools. We cut out the cancer of the Capo yolk wherever our drat took us. All had to go, you viddy? They being the State of Things: the thousand black arms of that mighty Levythor, pet sea beast of Job and Bog, which had strangled us proles for generations untold!
We went for the bogmen next, starting with the Yahoodies. Them in their… what was it? Synthemesos? Sympatibogs? Synagogues? I don’t remember the slovo now me old droogs. Whatever the cal, those Yahoody Bogmen (or godmen, you ken?) had ran afoul in some such way of the Gleader’s mighty viddeon. We went and ransacked their holy houses. Wasn’t long before the Christocossacks and Mussulmen rose to our fury in divine disgust too, as if Bog himself had slooshied our call to arms! These religious lewdies put up quite a drat I admit, clinging to their chants and trinkets like men possessed. But in the end, we did the deed, casting the crarking vecks side by side into their own precious Afterland! Abraham died for Abraham died for Abraham, ancient enemies in the war of the Three Bogs bleeding and dying as one. A “historical irony” the Gleader told us. But who gives a cal about history anymore? Me and We have scattered that slaughterdome to the creeching winds and built on its bones our timeless Commune!
So, there you have it, O my Comrades! This Humble Orator’s fondest account of the noblest drat in history, the Horrorshow Rounda… Ay, what’s that? Ah yeah, I forget we aren’t to call it that any more. Ahhh cal, what’s the preferred slovos again? “The Glorious Revolution” or “The End of History” right? Aye, those starry bookish vecks which the Gleader keeps around always did hate our eemya. To be fair to us humble prolesoles we never meant anything by the naming, HR being a straight-up honest translation of “Glorious Revolution” after all. The problem was in them niggling im-muh im… Implamations… imp lacerations…? Implications! That’s the slovo! Not conclusive enough, you viddy Comrades? Roundabout suggested some such struggle after struggle, another drat after this one. It made the delicate vecks fret about krovvy that would never stop flowing. Rivers and rivers of krovvy and vino from here to the big grey sea!
In truth and frankness, I struggle to swallow sometimes that we who shed our blue krovvy for the cause don’t get to eemya the thing! For us who poured our each and every deed into a noble drat, a nod or the like wouldn’t go amiss. I know I’m not the only veck who’s strained against those dark tides… nor the only one who still suffers. I need to confess something to you now Comrades. Some personal cal, if you’ll have it? Sometimes, when I think back to the Horrorshow Roundabout, I get filled up with a baddiwad feeling. All sicky-bolnoy, the kind you get on eating up rancid pishcha, or on having too much peet at the Liquorpit. It happens when nochy falls and I lie oddy knocky on my bed in the perfect dark, and I begin to sloosh the creeches and cries of dead-and-gone foes. Distant at first then growing to a clamour, their rakzazzes creech raz and raz and raz again, starting and finishing like clockwork, until I bury my litso in pillow and creech my gullet raw!
By the looks on your litsos it seems a great poly of you have stared down the same spectral eye as I. Bog, how they burn us with their anguished caw-caw-cawing! Those cackling spookydooks causing such posthumous palaver, as ugly in death as they were in life! Whispering black words into our dozing gullivers, they chide and mock and speak of secret corruption – a little black spot on our golden cause.
Could it be so? A pox in the collective? “Never!” You say. “How could that be? How could us innocent We, who only ever fought for me and mine since the start, get all choked-up by such vile ugliness?” The answer, my droogs? Only through the works of a stranger! An outsider stands among us, Comrades! Some secret defiler of pure hearts sowing greed and malice into the perfection of the Commune! Someone who stands above and beyond; pretending to be one of us, but never truly of the Many. It beggars the question, who has gained the most from our corrupted crusade? Who indeed…?
Yes, I see you vecks getting it now! I put it to you that the snakes in our garden are none other than the Gleader and his cohort! That ailing cabal of weary fossils, just like the Capos, have built an empire on krovvy and rabbit sweat! They are now the keepers of the Capo crown! They rape our ranks and punish their “dissent”, while we live jeeznys all too familiar! Well, I say ‘piffles and cal’ to the whole thing!
So, what’s to be done then, eh? My dearest Comrades who I stand beside in this here great gutter of history, what to do? Bend and break under the weight of the world, or rise and resist the truncheon tide? Do we give up on the works of the Horrorshow Roundabout, or carry it out to its natural end? All us droogs have to choose together. But, I promise you this: come with me, bratties and sestras, and we will kill history in all its spinning wretchedness! Our fury will sweep the horizon like a red sun, melting starry dedoochkas atop krovvy-soaked thrones from here to the big grey sea; let us rile and enrage that bitter-bored ocean, which bears ice cold witness to our shining works!