Welcome back to America! For a man trapped in the Homeland Security machine, passing through customs becomes a nightmarish odyssey in this story by the author of Beasts of No Nation.
He's a well-travelled consultant arriving home at a metropolitan airport. He's also become accustomed to extra scrutiny for his brown skin and many-stamped passport. But when he's whisked away, isolated, and chained in a stark white room without explanation, his reality crumbles. Because what he doesn't know is the most damning evidence against him.
Anonymous is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.
***
[It has happened this way before, the tension, the agony, the embarrassment as the immigration officer leafs through your passport from beginning to end, flips it around, and leafs through again]***
(Amazon Original Stories, 27 June 2019, ebook, 18 pages, borrowed from @AmazonKindle, Prime Reading)
***
***
Wow, this short piece of writing blew me away. It chilled me to my core. One of the most impressive things about it is how relevant it is today. The unnamed narrator is an American citizen yet because of the colour of the skin and the fact he travels all over the world causes airport security to be suspicious of him and detain him. With the way things are in American at the moment due to Trump I have no doubt something similar has probably already happened or had the potential to. Of course, in the story the guard's beat and torture him and I hope that hasn't been part of anyone's reality. I will definitely seek out more of the author's work.
