Wattpad.com recently held a contest to create a story based on Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”. The full first season the the TV adaptation is available on Hulu.com. I had just finished reading the novel when the contest was announced, and I had already been thinking about writing a story set in the same universe. So, I jumped at the chance to do so. My entry was not selected for the top 25, but I’m still pretty happy with the result. You can read the winning entries here: MyHandmaidsTale

Backlash

“It’s legal now.” Marcus said, rolling his eyes. “What’s the point in protesting? They aren’t going to take it away.”

“I want to believe that, Babe, but I know too much history. There’s always a backlash to this sort of change.” He steps up behind me, his body presses against mine. He wants to shut me up, he’s heard enough politics for today. I don’t turn away from the table though. Instead, I add the purple arc to the rainbow on my sign.

Marcus kisses my neck as I drop the paintbrush into a cup of water. A jolt goes through my spine. He will not be ignored. I’m about to turn around and let him distract me when he says, “All the tweeting and protesting, that’s what will cause a backlash.”

I shake him off and turn to face him. Grabbing his hand I lift his engagement ring to eye level. “Can you point to any other time in human history that you could wear this? Just one? What we have now is the exception, not the rule. There are forces ready to take it from us at any moment if we aren’t constantly reminding them that it’s our right.”

Marcus walks away from me. Like any proper married couple, our spat has killed the mood.

***

Why did I have to flash back to that moment? Why can’t I spent my last few thoughts on a time Marcus and I were happy? Not a moment that makes me angry with him.

Even now, as death looms, I think of how naive he was that day. Like everyone else, he refused to see the turning of the tide. The day our event planner canceled on us, the phone calls from his parents expressing their fear for our safety, even the day of the attack- he always thought things would go back to normal. He finally wised up the day the man in the green uniform knocked on our door, told us he had seen our marriage license in one of the burn piles, and suggested Marcus move back in with his parents. Too little, too late. The snowball was already rolling downhill. No eleventh hour revelations were going to stop it.

I try to conjure up a different image: a date, a vacation, the day I proposed. None of them will come to mind. Instead, I replay that day when Marcus was wrong. I resign myself to the fact that I am going to spend my last few breaths being angry with him.

Red cloaks and white wings surround me. Kneeling in the wet grass, I can see up into the white bonnets. There is no pity in their eyes, only hatred. These women have been told I am a rapist. They don’t know they’ve been turned into weapons.

A whistle blows.