Hadrian's Rage Read online

  Hadrian’s Rage

  Patricia Marie Budd

  Dedication

  Hadrian’s Rage is dedicated to Vladislav Tornovoi who was raped with beer bottles, tortured, and murdered by two of his friends on Friday, May 10, 2013 in Volgograd, Russia after coming out to them as gay. The world must never forget the violence committed against this young man.1

  I also wish to dedicate Hadrian’s Rage to my LGBTI students: in particular my Safe Zone students. Regardless of the daily prejudices thrown your way, you have found the inner strength to be you. You are my inspiration.

  #pmb

  1 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/05/13/russia-identity

  -of-man-killed-and-raped-with-beer-bottles-revealed/

  Acknowledgements

  My initial editing team: William Chappell III and Brindusa-Katalin Poenaru. Your personal responses to what I have written were instrumental in the birth of a new novel.

  Robert Wilson, as with A New Dawn Rising, your keen eye and editing advice have helped make my fourth dream, Hadrian’s Rage, possible.

  Co-Administrators for Hadrian’s Lover’s Facebook Page: Allan De Vuyst, James Duncan, Blueyed Angel, and Bartley P. Busse (the hidden admin who sends me links to post on a regular basis).

  Garet McKenzie Deusenberry for sharing her story and what it is like to be a transgendered female.

  Cody-Liam Blake for reading through chapters that included or referred to transgendered persons.

  Christine Marie Scott, your unwavering support and endless fountain of advice have been one of the greatest gifts given to me in this life.

  My sister, Michelle Gavigan, for her continued unconditional love and support.

  My loving parents, Edith Marie Gavigan (1920–2014) and Keith Jerome Gavigan (1916–2002), who raised me to love and respect all persons!

  Most importantly, my husband, Simon John Budd, the man who gives me the strength to write and the will never to give up on myself.

  “The sin of my ingratitude even now

  Was heavy on me: thou art so far before

  That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

  To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,

  That the proportion both of thanks and payment

  Might have been mine! only I have left to say,

  More is thy due than more than all can pay.”

  — William Shakespeare1

  1 Macbeth, Act I, scene iv, lines 294-300. OpenSourceShakespeare. Retrieved from:

  http://www.opensourceshakespeare.

  org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID

  =macbeth&Act=1&Scene=4&Scope=scene. Retrieved on: August 16, 2015.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  To the Reader

  Characters from Hadrian’s Lover

  Prologue

  BOOK 1

  Frank’s Mantra

  Frank’s Evaluations

  Devon’s Fury

  Geoffrey and Dean

  BOOK 2

  Humanity’s Sun

  A Detritus Fisherman’s Fiasco

  Messages

  Call Him!

  What in Hadrian’s Name…?

  Catastrophe!

  Mama Cecilia

  Hadrian’s Real News

  The Past Resurfaces

  Tara’s Coming Out Party

  BOOK 3

  Cantara

  Jeremy Stoker’s Mistake

  Ripe for the Shaking

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Geoffrey, Please!

  First Date

  Frank’s Evaluation

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Tara’s Eulogy

  Tara’s Welcoming Ceremony

  Lying in Devon’s Arms

  Hadrian’s Martyrs

  Unexpected Encounters

  Hadrian’s Real News

  The Day of Exile

  BOOK 4

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Dean’s Speech

  A Social Experiment

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Nothing Is Sometimes Everything

  Hadrian’s Real News

  36 Questions

  War Games

  Training for the Offensive!

  Two-Mile Dash

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Death Is Orgasmic

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Christine Sterne

  Hadrian’s Real News

  Third Party Politics

  A Campaign Ad!

  Hadrian’s Real News

  The Human Pentagram

  Epilogue

  Presidential Pardon

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  When I wrote Hadrian’s Lover, I created a parallel world to illustrate what happens when an individual’s sexual awakenings and sexual exploration go against societal norms and the impact this has on our youth. With Hadrian’s Rage, I was inspired to develop further that parallel by illustrating the heinous hate crimes committed against the LGBTI2 community on a global scale. Many chapters have been inspired by very specific acts of hate committed across the globe. Whenever you come across a footnote, click on the live link (or type in the url) and read about the horrors we put our LGBTI brothers and sisters through on a regular basis. Hadrian’s Rage was sadly inspired by all of this hate.

  Please visit my Victims of Hate album on Hadrian’s Lover Facebook Page and observe a moment of silence to honor those who have suffered most cruelly under the real abomination: HATE.

  https://www.facebook.com/HadriansLover/

  photos/a.533170636810518/533171296810452/?type=3&theater

  For more information on the victims of anti-LGBTI hate, go to Erasing 76 Crimes Blog: 1000s who died in anti-gay, anti-trans attacks:

  http://76crimes.com/100s-die-in-homophobic-anti-gay-attacks-statistics-updates/

  Disclaimer: I cannot be held accountable for non-functioning website links that may change in the future.

  #pmb

  2 LGBTI: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex.

  To the Reader

  Hadrian’s Rage is written as a sequel to my previous novel Hadrian’s Lover. In case you haven’t read that novel or have not read it recently, let me catch you up on the story.

  Hadrian’s Lover opens on the fiftieth anniversary of the country of Hadrian’s founding. Its citizens are reminded through Salve!, the nation’s news agency, why the founding of Hadrian was so important. The world is on the brink of disaster. Overcrowded, poverty-stricken, and with starvation and disease running rampant, there is little hope left for the earth’s future. Except for the population of one country: Hadrian. Hadrian has successfully protected itself against immigration and unchecked growth, but it has taken radical and unorthodox measures to ensure its survival. An unusual and progressive law governs the land, one that prohibits heterosexual relationships and natural reproduction. While homosexuality is held up to be the moral ideal, heterosexuality is deemed to be the ultimate ill, one that has led humanity to the dire conditions it now faces. All those who break the law are subject to severe consequences: reeducation or even exile from Hadrian. Although a great majority of Hadrian’s citizens conform to these devastating rules imposed by the government, a few are unable and unwilling to adjust.

  In Hadrian’s Lover, Todd Middleton was one such rebel. At sixteen, he has finally come to realize that his sexual orientation will never be accepted by Hadrian’s society, and in order to avoid being criminalized, he must do everything possible to keep his intimate life a secret. When Todd falls for a beautiful young woman, he is unable to hide his feelings and is quickly caught being sexuall
y intimate with her and charged by the state for his crime. As a juvenile, Todd is dispatched to a reeducation camp, but his confinement and his separation from the girl he loves prove to be an emotional torture. As his depression deepens, thoughts of suicide run through his head, over and over again. It will fall to Todd’s closest friend, Frank, to save his life. As his darkest hour finally passes, Todd begins to see that Frank’s intentions are not as innocent as they first appear. Even the man who loves Todd like a son, Dean Hunter, cannot save Todd from the despair created by a society that abhors him for his sexual orientation.

  Hadrian’s Rage begins not long before Hadrian’s Lover ends. As the Hunter family (Geoffrey, Dean, Frank, and Roger) struggle to heal the wounds incurred by Todd Middleton’s death, the country, too, is feeling a rip in the social fabric. The country of Hadrian has become polarized on the issue of sexual equality. With heterosexuals no longer fearing the threat of exile if exposed, some have dared to live openly in a world that abhors them. Anti-heterosexual laws spring up that refuse heterosexuals the right to promote their way of life to anyone under the age of twenty-one. Regardless of continued restraints being placed on the lives of those who live outside society’s sexual norms, the more conservative citizens of Hadrian feel their lives threatened by the growing acceptance of bisexuality and heterosexuality. The country is besieged with internal violence as people physically lash out at those perceived abnormal.

  Characters from Hadrian’s Lover

  Crystal Albright: Best friends with Todd Middleton and Frank Hunter, she was one of the three stars of Pride High’s b-ball team, the Pride Panthers. Although she had seduced Todd Middleton and was sexually intimate with him she did nothing to defend him after they were exposed. Though she never stated the fact, she never denied her aunt’s insinuation that Todd raped her.

  Stephanie Chatters: Trans woman, member of Hadrian’s re-ed class. When still identifying as a man, she was Matthew Molloy’s guardian at the Northwest Reeducation Facility. She had been Gideon Weller’s favorite and had adopted his brutal approach.

  Melissa Eagleton: News Anchor for Hadrian’s National News Service Salve!

  Sissy Hildebrand: Jeremy Stoker’s little sister; a closeted heterosexual, who runs the sheep ranch just north of the Cattle Ranch.

  Dean Hunter: Originally a member of the founding Stuttgart family; married to Geoffrey Hunter, currently separated. He is confused about his sexual orientation, though claims to be straight. He is attending Augustus Uni and is President and founder of Augustus Uni GSA.

  Frank Hunter: Geoffrey Hunter’s eldest biological son; a private (penal restriction) in Hadrian’s National Army.

  Geoffrey Hunter: Dean’s husband, CEO of Hadrian’s National Detritus Fisheries (detritus fisheries serve Hadrian by salvaging all reusable waste from Hudson Bay as well as ecologically disposing of all toxic and non-reusable waste).

  Roger Hunter: Geoffrey Hunter’s youngest biological son, attending Antinous Uni.

  Todd Middleton: A seventeen-year-old heterosexual whose death provoked change in Hadrian’s sexual reform laws. After Frank Hunter’s trial for Todd’s murder and the trial of Gideon Weller (Warden of the Northeast Reeducation Camp) for rape and physical and emotional abuse of reeducation students, the country of Hadrian no longer exiled heterosexual men and women unless proven they participated in penile vaginal intercourse.

  Matthew Molloy: Detritus fisherman for Hunter National Detritus Fisheries; member of Hadrian’s re-ed class.

  Cantara Raboud: Faial Raboud’s biological daughter, heterosexual; a student attending Augustus Uni; Vice President of Augustus Uni GSA.

  Faial Raboud: Hadrian’s top defense lawyer.

  Devon Rankin: Todd Middleton’s old boyfriend; Roger Hunter’s old boyfriend; a lieutenant in Hadrian’s National Army.

  Ms. Sterne: Crystal Albright’s biological aunt. Math teacher at Pride High. Also, the teacher who exposed Todd Middleton and made sure authorities suspected him of having raped Crystal.

  Elena Stiles: President of Hadrian. Her non-biological daughter, Crystal Albright, is bisexual.

  Jeremy Stoker: A closeted bisexual man, and co-owner of the historic Cattle Ranch. Geoffrey and Dean spent their second anniversary at the Cattle Ranch.

  Destiny Stuttgart: Dean’s grandmother (mimi) and the last of the founding family members living (one of five families) of the country of Hadrian.

  Jason Warith: Todd Middleton’s guardian at the Northeast Reeducation Camp. Responsible for Gideon Weller’s arrest. Promoted to head of Hadrian’s Reeducation System.

  Gideon Weller: Former warden of the Northeast Reeducation Camp; his use of corporal punishment and taunting of young men who had had sex with women was so brutal six boys committed suicide under his watch. He was eventually charged with causing unnecessary trauma to the wards in his camp and with rape. He was found guilty of all charges and elected to drink Black Henbane rather than face exile for his crimes.

  humanity is

  one separated being

  open your arms soul

  tara may fowler

  Prologue

  A Plague of Prejudice Threatens to

  Undermine Hadrian’s Society

  Submitted to Professor Cora Politis

  Sociology 100

  By Tara May Fowler

  What is the greatest evil that befalls Hadrian today? Some have suggested our inability to curtail wild climate change that has besieged our planet for nearly two hundred years. Many would suggest it is the constant threat of insurgents battering against our walls due to the outside world’s inability to curtail the plague of human population. Underlying each of these theories is one that many of Hadrian’s citizens believe (perhaps even the majority): all the evils of this world, from those we suffer inside Hadrian to those suffered by the supposedly barbarian masses outside our walls, land firmly on the shoulders of heterosexuals—the strai—“knives” as we like to call those males and “stabs,” our preferred insult slung against the females. And yet, all of these theories would be wrong. The real ill that sickens Hadrian to its very core is prejudice, plain and simple.

  What form of prejudice, one might ask? It is the overwhelming hatred Hadrian holds against heterosexuals. Bigotry will be our country’s undoing. We must, as a nation of enlightened people, find a way to reconcile and accept all forms of human sexual expression by consenting adults. Without this basic understanding and acceptance of humanity, Hadrian will never be able to develop and grow as a healthy society for all its citizens.

  Let us begin first with climate change. How is it that we have managed to create the misconception that it is the result of heterosexuality? Some say that overpopulation lent itself to industrialization. As humanity’s numbers grew, so too did the need to mine for the materials required to create energy. Not only must we keep ourselves sheltered and warm, but we need to eat. Thus began the excessive raping of the land for agriculture and stock. There is no doubt that as the human population grew, man’s respect for nature diminished at an equal, if not exponential, rate. But why must heterosexuals be blamed for all of this? Is it not wiser to consider man’s greed as the greater ill? The need for power, money, control—these were, and still are, the greater motivators for man’s abuses of this earth. Yes, the human population must be restrained, but history has proven that, with the use of proper birth control, a heterosexual family need not exceed that of the expected size dictated by Hadrian’s government.

  Then there are the outsider barbarians trying to break through our front line of defense: Hadrian’s Wall. As much as Melissa Eagleton, propagandist extraordinaire for Hadrian’s National News (HNN), would like us to think, not all of these people are heterosexual. In fact, I will go so far as to say they are no different than us. They, too, can be seen in light of the Kinsey scale. Kinsey was, after all, a part of this outside society some two hundred years ago. According to Kinsey, over 10 percent (14 percent based on my calculations of his point scale of 0 to 6) of the hum
an population across the globe is heterosexual. Another 10 to 14 percent or so are homosexual. For the purpose of this essay, I leave out transgendered individuals, accepting their unique status and assuming each to hold his or her own sexual orientation according to his or her true gender. Everyone else, therefore, is somewhere in between, identifying at varying degrees of bisexuality.

  Now, Hadrian’s scientists claim to have eradicated 14 percent of the human gene that is heterosexual, but those citizens, like Todd Middleton, who only experience opposite sex attraction, know this propaganda to be sheer nonsense. Hadrian’s citizens have been fooled into believing any opposite sex attraction is merely a teenage phase or limited to bisexual tendencies that are to be repressed and ignored.

  Every Hadrian citizen knows full well what to think of heterosexuals. We hear the expression, “That’s so strai,” daily. A day doesn’t pass when someone doesn’t jokingly, or seriously, insult a friend by saying, “You’re acting strai.” If a man gets too friendly with a female friend, even just the simple act of falling against her by accident while laughing, he will be accused of being a “cunt-hammer”—an insult verging on bad porn! That is certainly not one of our kinder put-downs. A woman perceived to be straight is condemned as “a breeder.” She is also called a “sagging hole” or a “flapping vagina.” I don’t think there is another community of people in Hadrian that suffers as much extreme verbal abuse.

  Let me give you an example. As a youth attending junior high school at the Virginia Woolf Children’s Academy, my peers ruthlessly pushed me into the coat stalls of my seventh grade classroom. Tauntingly, I was asked whether I was strai. Not having heard the word before and unsure of its meaning, I declined to answer. When I enquired as to the meaning of this word, fearing somehow it wasn’t meant to be nice, my classmates insisted I answer the question first. “Just say, ‘Yes,’” they insisted. “Just say, ‘Yes.’” Finally, I caved to their aggression and replied in the positive, which resulted in one of the most negative moments of my early life. I quickly learned what a strai was, and from then on, I was identified as such amongst my classmates. That they had cajoled this so called confession out of me made no difference at all in their minds. I had admitted to being a strai, so it was now open season on little Tara Fowler.