Ficly

The End of Moderation

I shouldn’t say this. I just got home and I can already hear the voices of moderates in my brain, “Stop it. Both extremes are equally wrong, etc, etc, etc.”

Except that I’m extremely Atheist and extremely gay, and I’ve never hurt anyone. Except that my chest feels half caved-in and is covered with bruises. Except that what happened today HAPPENED, goddamn it.

I raised my voice to the wrong person in the wrong place; I spoke against what his father had spewed from his pulpit. And he beat me down, that massive teenager who had been taught to hate my kind.

He grinned down at me as though everything—him standing on me, his full weight collapsing my chest, was just some sort of game. Every breath became a strangled gasp. Before I passed out his words seemed to imprint on my brain.

“Just trying to save your soul from Hell.”

Now I should just go to bed and pretend it never happened, right? Moderates will hate me for this. But I really thought I was going to die, damn it. Everyone has a breaking point.

View this story's 3 comments.