You know the word.

Margot did. She supposed some part of her, dormant, always had. Now that part had awakened, and Margot was volcanic. Her calling had found her. Her time had come.

Fingers tightening on the blender, choking the handle. The blades revved up.

The day is almost here.

And Margot was ready.

MARCH 2020

While not quite as momentous as Diana or the Twin Towers, the tubby blonde’s address to the nation, announcing the greatest constraints on civil liberty in British history from behind a desk in the corner of his Downing Street office, would be forever pressed into the memory of the country, a pushpin in the collective cranium. And beneath the initial shock, Margot Kyle felt a stirring of unease, that perhaps this moment might just prove to be a tragedy on the scale of a dead princess or demolished skyscrapers.

Unprecedented, that was what they said. What everyone kept saying.

But they were talking about the virus they claimed was sweeping the globe. About the decisive actions of a quasi-wartime government. No one was talking about the unprecedented loss of freedom that was blanketing the country like overnight snow. That didn’t get a mention.

Following the Prime Minister’s broadcast, Margot drove straight to work. The business park where the Kyle Centre was located was dead. She swiped her fob to pass through sliding glass doors into the fitness studio she had owned for over fifteen years. Flicking a switch, she turned on the central strip of lights. She surveyed her studio, cold and sallow in the half-light; exercise mats, stacks of yoga blocks, balls and hand weights neatly stacked to the sides.

A decade-and-a-half of building her business up from nothing. This studio, only here because of her perseverance. A second home for its hundreds of members, shuttered. All this equipment, set to gather dust. The livelihoods of her team of instructors, cut like the string of a balloon.

‘Utter insanity,’ she whispered.

APRIL

The world had cracked. On TV, an endless barrage of viral fear. Husband, holed up in his study, working even longer hours than before. Kids, deprived of their basic right to education. Cleaner and gardener, unable to perform their contracted duties. Someone had to be responsible for all this. Someone had to be held to account.

What staggered Margot was how willingly the public surrendered their freedom and accepted this authoritarian regime. How could a nation built on liberty discard it so freely? The economy was collapsing faster than an overwhipped soufflé, and no one seemed to be worried about what this would mean for generations of young workers. Even when she tried to talk to Derek about it, he shut her down with a pat ‘We’ve just got to focus on protecting the NHS right now.’

Margot knew she had to act. She applied for business loans, furloughed her staff on 80% pay (leaving them no doubt free to enjoy the spring break while she fretted about their future) and chipped in to a multimillionaire’s crowdfunded lawsuit against the government’s egregious lockdown.

Derek was content working from home, coding away from dawn till dusk at his screen. Their seven-year-old twins, Miles and Giles, relished the break from school. They raced around the family’s renovated farmhouse, playing in the sprawling gardens and their swimming pool. Their private school delivered classes, which they grudgingly tuned into on their iPads, before switching to Minecraft as soon as the teacher signed off.

With the mainstream media trotting out nothing but state-sponsored scaremongering, Margot wondered if anyone out there was speaking the truth. She logged into the Kyle Centre’s Twitter account to post another apology that the studio had been forced to close.

Her eyes drifted to the trending topics. She clicked on the top one: Lizzie Sayles. A woman in her late twenties, attractive, causing outrage for her video celebrating a garden centre which had stayed open despite the lockdown.

‘What are we supposed to do if we can’t garden?’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘Stay indoors? Plants can’t spread a virus! You don’t see flowers making people cough and sneeze! I for one applaud this place for showing some common sense and staying open, and I applaud every person who’s rejected government tyranny to come out here today.’

Margot was stunned. Most of the commentary around Lizzie Sayles was vitriol, but she ignored this, clicking into the woman’s profile and skimming through her tweets. She seemed to be posting the same thoughts that had been swimming round Margot’s head, crystallising her feelings of unease into sharp, impactful statements.

Fear is more contagious than Covid, and probably more deadly.

Democracy dies when good people don’t stand up to authoritarianism.

Has anyone actually seen ‘the science’???

Margot scrolled, and scrolled, for most of that afternoon. She watched Lizzie’s videos. She digested the articles Lizzie posted. She sought the outspoken experts Lizzie quoted. And soon she started to get an idea of what was really going on.

MAY

An email from one of her instructors, listed in her contacts as ‘Kickbox’: Could the Kyle Centre start running Zoom fitness classes?

Margot almost choked on her coffee.

This is your chance. Show him the truth.

She started hammering her reply into her keyboard, copying in the rest of the team.

The Kyle Centre is built on expertise and personalised – IN PERSON – training sessions. I will not risk damaging my reputation with substandard ‘virtual’ classes because of draconian restrictions enforced upon us by this corrupt government. I am glad you want to get back to work (which doesn’t seem to be too common a trait in your generation!!) but if you all want to have a job in 6 months, I recommend you get out on the streets and protest this illegal lockdown!!

Send.

Margot thought for a moment, then realised she could share more about what she’d discovered over the past weeks.

If you’re interested in what’s really going on behind ‘the science’, I suggest doing a bit of research. Doesn’t seem to be much real consensus around this Covid virus (many say no worse than flu or common cold). Only handful of deaths in under 60s. Any of you think it’s very worrying that they want to trash the economy, children’s education and mental health of millions for a disease with a 0.01% mortality rate??

She attached links to various articles that explored the doubts around the story pushed by politicians and mainstream media, as well as a fascinating six-hour YouTube presentation from Professor Lawrence Dillinger, detailing the connection between current events and the long, silently waged ‘war on capital and individual freedom’.

Margot closed her laptop, taking a slurp of coffee as she watched the boys chasing each other across their sloping lawns. A bitter thought pricked her like a wasp sting.

What future will your boys have after all this?

Margot opened up her laptop, jumping onto Twitter.

JUNE 

‘You’re not seriously going to wear that are you?’ Margot asked. ‘You look like you’ve hooked a pair of Y-fronts over your ears.’

‘It’s the law,’ came Derek’s muffled reply from behind his facemask.

Margot scoffed. ‘And that’s exactly why I’ve been telling you we need to worry.’

‘It’s just a mask.’ He folded up the piece of cloth. ‘We only have to wear it in the supermarket.’

‘You can wear it in the supermarket. I certainly won’t be. It may be “just a mask” in Waitrose this week, but give it a year and we’ll all be marched to labour camps in burqas.’

Derek, laughing, ‘You don’t really believe that.’ More hesitantly, ‘Do you...?’

Margot shrugged. ‘Who knows what they’ll do anymore? We’re letting them rule by whim, without even any parliamentary debate.’

‘Margot, you know it’s an emergency situation…’

‘You can say that again. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one treating all this like an emergency.’

But that wasn’t strictly true. Over the past couple of weeks, Margot had become an active member of free-face advocacy group Mums Against Masks, which she’d joined on Facebook. While lamestream journalists were falling over themselves to offer ‘homemade face covering’ demos and virtue-signalling lefties were posting masked selfies on Instagram, the members of MAM were sharing plenty of interesting ideas in one of the few places where open debate was still permitted.

Margot had forwarded on some of the studies posted in the group, from academics across the globe, showing how mask-wearing actually harmed the immune system and made people more susceptible to viral infection.

‘I’m not sure I believe this Professor Dillinger bloke,’ Derek had said. ‘Where’s his credentials?’

‘Where’s anyone’s credentials?’ Margot had snapped back. ‘The internet is rife with fake news the government wants us to believe, all so we’ll go along with their agenda. I mean, it’s crazy that people aren’t questioning anything anymore. The state wants to keep us all locked up, but they’re happy for hordes of black people to flood the streets protesting against statues. What’s that about?’

Margot knew what the masks and the lockdowns and the ‘social distancing’ were really about. They wanted to stop people communicating. Eliminate free speech. Suppress dissent.

Not on her watch.

JULY

Things were looking up. Finally, her cleaner had agreed to return (though insisted on opening all the windows ‘for ventilation’ faster than Margot could get them shut). The Kyle Centre was allowed to welcome members again. Mums Against Masks had become a more supportive community than any Margot had been a part of in the offline world. And the more sensible papers – The Mail, The Telegraph, The Spectator – were even beginning to publish some lockdown scepticism.

But it wasn’t long before mutterings of discontent from her team about a lack of ‘Covid security’ at the studio.

‘What’s the problem?’ she ranted to Derek. ‘I’ve done the risk assessment’ – all the staff were under 40, so not at risk from the virus, according to her interpretation of the data – ‘and shelled out for an industrial sized bottle of anti-bac. They’re all adults. Our members are adults. Everyone can make their own common-sense decision about whether they want to come in, keep their body and mind healthy, or face the consequences of a ruined economy and no employment.’

‘You told them that? In those words?’

‘Of course I bloody told them that! And do you know what they said?’

‘What?’

‘The body pump girl suggested we do those bloody Zoom fitness classes again. As long as this is my company, it is my name above the door’ – at this point Margot had pointed to The Kyle Centre logo, which was indeed above the door – ‘we will not be damaging my brand and sacrificing my integrity with Zoom fitness classes.’

‘And what did she say to that?’

‘She said she’s got an offer from Peloton.’

AUGUST

You have to take a stand. They may scorn you, mock you and fear you, but you have to fight this oppression. History will vindicate you.

Margot took the train into London, anticipation thrumming through her veins. As the city approached, she began to spot others en route to the same destination – those rejecting the mask mandate, those with badges and signs: I am a free man! State control is the real virus! Hang up on 5G!

‘All viruses are killed by direct sunlight,’ she informed the masked and disgruntled woman she’d sat beside, straightening the Save Old Normal t-shirt she’d ordered from Lizzie Sayles’ Etsy store.

The bubbles of nerves she’d felt upon leaving had swelled to excitement. She was doing the right thing. She was part of something. A community. A movement.

Trafalgar Square. Hundreds of bodies had engulfed the roads, too many for the (thought) police to even attempt to oppose. A makeshift stage had been erected, focusing the crowd’s attention.

‘Make some noise! Make a frenzy!’ the compere shouted into his mic, to riotous cheers. ‘For Mr Bert Colbert!’

A hefty middle-aged man in leather biker gear took to the stage. Margot was shocked to see his sprawling copper beard clasped back by a blue medical mask. The crowd seemed similarly stunned, their clapping petering out. Bert Colbert grasped the microphone, unhooked the mask with that hand, and sparked up a lighter with the other.

‘We will not be muzzled!’ he bellowed, touching the flame to the mask, which crinkled into a pathetic smoky ball. A white wave of white applause tore through the crowd. Margot found herself yelling and screaming in delight along with those around her. One man was so enthusiastically jumping up and down that he knocked into a mother in front of him, sloshing his can of lager all over her cradled infant.

‘The day is coming, my friends,’ Colbert continued. He left a gap between every sentence, which was punctuated by more cheering. ‘The people are rising. We the people. The Frenzy. We will fight for our freedom. We will fight for the truth. We will fight against the state’s tyrannical agenda!’

A skinhead beside her was wearing a shirt emblazed with the slogan 2020=1984. ‘It’s pure Orwell,’ he said. ‘1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World all rolled into one.’

‘Just look at it: Covid-19,’ added a woman swaddled in a parka. ‘They’re not even trying to hide that it’s the nineteenth version of the virus manufactured by China.’

Margot had heard about the #FreeTheTruth protest through Mums Against Masks, but from chatting with her awakened comrades, she now knew that word had spread through a dozen other forums and messaging apps. All kinds of people were coming together, and they stripped the scales even further from Margot’s eyes.

Dots were joined, connections made, at lightning speed.

Virus lab – lockdown – control – new normal – new world order – great reset – united nations – masked singer – masked population – six feet apart – military protocol – public suppression – elite cabal – child abductions – secret experiments – underground tunnels – 5G – 9/11 – BLM – MKUltra – mass vaccinations – microchips – the deep state.

On the train home Margot sought out Bert’s podcast, Truth Watch. He’d been posting hour-long daily episodes since the start of the plandemic, and she began devouring them at once. Over the next week she paced the garden, AirPods in, Colbert raging in her ears. Every time the boys or Derek tried to get her attention, she waved them away. No time for distractions.

Besides, they weren’t interested in listening to her views anymore, so why should she give them the time of day?

‘They call us crazy,’ Colbert said, in a rare sombre moment. ‘They always call people like us crazy. But you must remember that’s just an attempt to discredit us, to make us feel crazy. If you look at the original Roman meaning of the word frenzy, it refers to a heightened state of understanding. That’s its true meaning. So when we are frenzied, we are awakened. We see the reality behind the delusion. Our Day of Frenzy will come when enough of us are awake. Friends, that day is coming.’

Colbert laid out the truth of what was happening, and what they had to do about it.

SEPTEMBER

The truth was more disturbing than anything Margot could have envisaged. But it made a nightmarish sort of sense. Once all the pieces started to click into place, the grim picture was sharp.

Nothing that had transpired this year was accidental. It was just the bursting blister of a conspiracy that had been bubbling away below the surface for years, possibly decades. The deeper Margot dug, beyond Facebook, far into the subreddits and 8kun message boards, the closer she got to the truth.

Thousands of children had been going missing each year, and a team of dedicated online sleuths had uncovered evidence that the abductions were all linked. Infants were being taken across the globe to be abused and experimented on by a sinister group intent on engineering a way to control the population en mass. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before corrupt governments had colluded with these monsters, and so the deep state had been infiltrated. Its tendrils were vast, turning many across all levels of society into enablers, fuelling and concealing their crimes. And now their silent war was upon us, with every weapon of fear and control in use to cripple the public into submission.

You know the word.

Yes, Margot knew. The word was frenzy, and the moment she’d heard it uttered by Colbert it had connected with her. The frenzied, the truth-seekers, the resistance. She was part of something great.

So Margot stewed alone, hidden away from her family in the conservatory with only her laptop for company. She didn’t go into the studio, leaving Kickbox and Pilates to run the day-to-day of the business. The Kyle Centre had haemorrhaged clients, which some of the instructors still blamed on a lack of online classes, but Margot put down to a sleepwalking public cowed by fear. Even Derek had had the cheek to tell her she should be worried about the company and her income more than her ‘silly conspiracies’, but he spent most of his time now with his study door shut, muffling the rumble of endless phone calls.

Look at them.

Margot gazed out the kitchen window at her boys, as she prepared their lunchtime soup. Miles and Giles were laughing, spraying the gardener with their supersoakers, leaping over the flowerbeds, bombing into the pool. They were so young, so untainted, so vulnerable.

Just think what could happen to them without you.

Her fingers went ghostly white as she gripped the hand blender. She looked down at the pan of vegetables and bore down with the gadget, relishing as chunks were crushed and masticated by her blades.

OCTOBER

With the government continuing to screw the country over with forever shifting tiers and local restrictions, Margot called all her staff into the studio for a crisis meeting.

‘These are dark days indeed,’ she said, voice thick with horror as she glared at each person in turn – Kickbox, Pilates, Yoga, Spin, Zumba, Meditation, Tai Chi, Dumbbell and the new Body Pump. ‘This fascist government is determined to crush the economy. They’ll have you all out on the streets unless we start getting more members in. No more reduced occupancy classes. No frozen contracts. I need you going door-to-door flyering if that’s what it takes to get people in here.’

Now they were beginning to reflect a spectre of her fear, glancing nervously at each other and trying to edge into the corners of the cramped office as Margot paced between them. Perhaps they were starting to wake up at last.

The next day Tai Chi sent an email round the office saying that he had tested positive for Covid. Before Margot could react, Kickbox had responded to tell everyone that they would have to self-isolate and close the Kyle Centre for ten days.

Fury seared up to her temples.

Absolutely not!! she typed, fingers jabbing the keys through the base of the laptop. We are on our knees as it is! If we close the business will go under!

Message sent, she took a stuttering breath, then dived straight into another.

You do not have to self-isolate. He probably just had a cold. These tests are notoriously inaccurate – there are many lawsuits against them across the world. That’s why we’re in this casedemic. Leading scientists have discredited PCR tests. Here she posted links to articles on Lawrence Dillinger’s blog. Look at the law!! You do not have to isolate unless you came within 2 metres of him, which none of you should have under the guidelines. (Margot didn’t think it worth mentioning that their meeting had been held in a room barely two metres wide.) You didn’t have to come in for the meeting if you didn’t feel safe. You were free to make your own decisions! The survival of this business and your jobs depends on common sense and not submitting to the tyranny of test and trace!

‘You’re not actually sending that, are you?’ Derek had been reading over her shoulder.

‘Of course I am,’ Margot said, to the whoosh of the email departing. ‘Someone has to stand up to this nonsense.’

Derek sighed, ran a hand through his thinning hair.

‘I know you don’t agree with me,’ Margot said. ‘That’s fine. But when did it become a crime to be sceptical?’

‘That’s not what this is about.’

‘Oh, it’s exactly what it’s about,’ she snapped. ‘You’re so smug, believing what you’re told, but I have news for you, Derek. The truth is coming out. And no amount of censorship is going to stop me –’

‘This is about your responsibility as a business owner. As an employer.’

‘I’ve been the only one trying to defend their jobs throughout this whole year!’

‘You’re putting your staff at risk. You’re encouraging, and pressuring, them to take risks, while dangling their continued employment – in the middle of a global pandemic – over their heads. Even if, for whatever reason, you don’t believe the virus is real –’

‘Shut up!’ Margot cried, furious now. ‘If you would even look at the data – the true figures – you’d see what a sham this all is. Then you’d understand what the state is really trying to do. How do you think they want to end this mess? Mass vaccinations? Yeah, I think we know what’s really in those injections.’

Derek took a steadying breath and Margot realised he was barely containing an anger rivalling her own.

‘Your arrogance is staggering,’ he said, incredulous. ‘You claim to be a sceptic, to be out-thinking the rest of the population, but you’ll happily lap up any codswallop spewed out by those crackpots you follow.’

‘Pah! You people only call them crackpots because they dare to challenge mainstream groupthink.’

‘I call them crackpots because they are, objectively, fucking crackpots. You know why they’re doing it?’ Derek jabbed a finger at her Free Britain Now sweatshirt. ‘To sell you t-shirts. That “Professor” Dillinger? I looked him up. He was sacked from his only teaching post in the nineties. But his YouTube videos are racking up views in the hundreds of thousands, and each one is packed with advertising. Bert Colbert’s podcast – it’s sponsored. He’s banking speaking gigs by the dozen as a “professional contrarian”. They’re con artists, Margot. Nothing but con artists, taking advantage of a confusing situation to make a quick buck.’

Margot glared at him. ‘Well, I believe in free speech. And believe me, you’ll miss it once it’s gone.’

He sighed again. ‘Free speech doesn’t give anyone the right to shout “Bomb!” in a crowded airport, and it doesn’t give them the right to pump out dangerous misinformation in the midst of a deadly pandemic.’

An icy silence, broken only by the ticking of the kitchen clock.

‘Are we done?’ Margot said.

In the hallway, clattering as Miles and Giles came in from the garden, bare feet smacking on tiles, breathless laughter.

‘Come back to us, Margot,’ Derek said, more gently now. ‘Don’t put them at risk. Come back to reality.’

He placed a hand on top of hers. She shook it off.

Five days later, he started to complain about a migraine.

‘It’s just a headache,’ she told him.

Then he got a cough.

‘It’s just a cold,’ she said.

And then he retired to bed, breathless.

‘Flu,’ she decided.

NOVEMBER

You’ve always known.

Margot’s eyes snapped open on hydraulic springs. Staring up at the dark ceiling, revulsion to the realisation flooded through her. The man breathing raggedly beside her, the man she’d been married to for twenty years, the man who’d fathered her beloved boys, had been scheming to sell those children into abuse and horrific experimentation all this time.

Silent tears from unblinking eyes cut her cheeks. Her head burned as she examined the idea, turning it over, and as it rolled, like a snowball, it gathered mass and momentum. His endless hours shut in that study, the furtive phone calls, his worries about money. He was in on it. He had betrayed her. That was why he was so keen for her to abandon her fight against the state, that was why he called her crazy, that was why he said she’d been putting the twins at risk – at risk from his hideous plans for them. How long had he been part of it? Her heart raced. Since his move into the vagaries of ‘IT’. How could she have missed that? The perverted activities hidden in plain sight. IT. Infant trafficking!

Margot launched herself out of bed, barrelling into the en suite and vomiting her guts into the toilet bowl.

For the next couple of days, she stonewalled the sick bastard as she worked out what to do. There was really only one option. The people he’d called to take their children could already be on their way. She had to protect the boys, or risk losing them forever.

The day is coming.

The day was coming. It was almost here. November 5th. Set by Bert Colbert, the Day of Frenzy, when the people would rise and the truth would be revealed. The anniversary of the historic attempt to overthrow the deep state, which had sadly failed, and the date chosen by this corrupt government to flex its authoritarian muscles by implementing yet another illegal lockdown.

This is your day. This is your time to act.

Margot knew what she had to do; she knew it was right, her only option, but that didn’t make it any easier. As she settled down to sleep on the night of the fourth, she felt nauseous to the pit of her stomach. She’d been getting breathless all day, which she put down to the nerves and adrenaline of what was to come. She’d kissed Miles and Giles goodnight, before glaring with distaste at the man still lying recumbent in a sweaty heap in their bed. ‘You’ll pay,’ she whispered. ‘All of you will pay.’

At 5AM, Margot was standing in the kitchen, silver moonlight falling on her skin as she gazed out the window. She didn’t see the autumn darkness, she saw her children laughing and playing in the sunshine throughout their seven precious years. Margot grabbed what she needed, and returned to her bedroom.

Derek had done little but sleep since he’d started feigning his ‘illness’ to throw her off the scent of what he was really up to. He was sleeping now, a throttled snore whining through his nostrils, as Margot padded across the soft rug, stepped up onto their king-size bed, and climbed on top of him. Then he woke.

‘Margot. Why – why are you wet? You’re soaking,’ he said, dazed.

She ignored him, reaching over to unplug his bedside lamp and replace it with what she’d brought from the kitchen.

‘What’s going on?’ Derek coughed, a sound like splintered wood on granite.

‘Doing what I have to do,’ Margot muttered. ‘Doing what you evil bastards forced me to.’

Derek’s tired eyes were adjusting to the darkness. He squinted, trying to make out what his wife was holding up as though she were going to stake him like a vampire. ‘Is that the bl—’

The rest of the word was shoved back down his windpipe as Margot brought the blender down to dock onto his Adam’s apple. Bitter tears budded as her fists squeezed the button.

Whrzzzz! The blades stuttered on sweaty skin. Derek gasped, tried to cry out. Margot pressed harder. Whrrrchhhh. The motor ground for all its top-of-the-range might. As Derek grabbed her thighs, Margot shifted, giving her the tilt she needed. The blender found purchase, sinking its steel teeth into flesh, sawing hungrily into cartilage.

Now Derek screamed.

Whrizzz!

Ribbons of blood lashed her cheeks, redecorating their bedroom in seconds. Her husband’s hands slamming against her legs, nails clawing at her stomach, Margot held firm, pushing at his neck as though with an angle grinder. Derek bucked, spewing gore across the sheets. The blender became a piston, ploughing in and out of the hollow beneath his chin. Blood welled out in gallons like newly discovered oil. Whrrrtttt. The blades stuttered as they chewed through tongue, severing it and his screams as one.

And then he was still. Eyes an endless stare to the heavens. Throat collapsed into a pit of rustic salsa. Margot tossed the blender aside and dismounted with a shuddering, angry breath.

You are a warrior. A saviour.

Margot grabbed her car keys and left the house. Her Covid-1984 pyjamas, soaked in crimson, flapped against her bare ankles. Gripped by an iron focus, she strode across the lawn, lit by the first rosy hint of dawn. She walked past the climbing frame, the curvaceous flower beds, the badminton net, the pool where her boys floated facedown among the autumn leaves. She saw none of it.

Opening up the garage, Margot jumped into her Toyota, revved up the self-charging hybrid engine and placed her phone on the dashboard, flipping the camera to selfie mode and hitting record.

‘This is the day. Our day. The day we free the truth and the world wakes up to everything they’re doing to us.’

Foot on the accelerator.

Let’s go.

Red rage thundered in her temples as she tore out of the village, towards town. Her forehead was searing, like someone was pressing a hot brand into her skull. Everywhere, outside, sheeple in their face-nappies. Margot wanted to roll down the window and screech at them, Don’t you see what you’re walking into? Don’t you know what they’re doing?

A crusty cough burbled out of her throat and the Toyota swerved out of lane, earning angry honks from other motorists.

Concentrate.

Margot tried. Her nerves were frayed, sick sweat running in rivulets down her torso. She had the wheel in a death-grip (the same death-grip that had, a short time before, held the heads of Miles and Giles underwater even as they bawled and thrashed).

‘Here it is,’ she said to her phone, still recording, as St Jude’s came into view. ‘I’ll show you what they don’t want you to see. I’ll show you the empty hospital. Expose their Convid-19. Topple their pack of lies. The only thing in that building is hundreds of innocent children tortured in the name of their scientific experiments.’

Speaking her truth brought the months of revelations she’d experienced flooding through her mind again all at once. The decimation of livelihoods and lives, of freedom, good business, mental health, education, the lies, the fear, manipulation and oppression, the perversion and corruption. It made her furious.

The mighty hospital filled her windscreen. A nurse, wheeling an elderly man in through the doors, both of them masked up.

‘He’s not sick!’ she screeched. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, except you lot smothering his airways!’

Perhaps they couldn’t hear, or were ignoring her, so Margot ploughed her palm into the horn. The nurse turned, frowned, and carried on walking.

Something snapped. Bare toes curled on the pedal. Muscles tensed, teeth ground. Margot roared. The Toyota slammed forward. Tarmac skidded away beneath its wheels. St Jude’s entrance ballooned towards her. Parking sensors screamed. And for one brief, fragile moment, Margot was flying, in perfect serenity, enlightened, in true frenzy.

Glass doors cascaded over the bonnet, metal frames twisted in architectural agony. Staff leaped and scrambled in fear. Alarms wailed. Her phone sailed from the dashboard. Margot juddered forward, the cushion of the airbag pouncing from the steering wheel to smack her into oblivion.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeping is a lullaby compared to the clattering, rattling, slapping of shoes on tiles. The coughing, the spluttering, the sobbing. You wake to white light, clinical light, turquoise curtains and blue-aproned figures.

Doctors, wrapped up like hazardous waste, faces obscured behind perspex visors, fuss around you, checking you, machines, drips.

You try to shout. Your throat is raw, your tongue sandpaper. Molten sweat rolls off your brow.

You want to scream at them, berate them for their part in the hostile takeover of society. Tell them the disease is a hoax. Tell them everyone is well. The hospitals are empty. These people? They’re crisis actors. Look! That man over there, being given the oxygen, you’ve seen him on Line of Duty. The ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’ – they’re the very same thespians forced out of work by our corrupt lawmakers!

They look at you with pity and pain. Perhaps they know what you’ve done. But you had no choice. You did what any rational mother would do. You had to protect your boys. You had to protect them from their father’s despicable plan, from the people coming to take them. And in any case, what Orwellian future would they have faced otherwise?

You see the TV in the corner. Reporting on what you’ve done. What you’ve done. You, singular. Where is the Day of Frenzy? Where is the uprising? Bert Colbert issuing a statement, condemning the actions of a ‘lone nutter who does not represent our peaceful campaign for freedom’. Mums Against Masks has disbanded, its admins admonishing themselves of any association with Margot Kyle.

Suddenly you feel very alone.

You look to your left, seeking some human connection. The man in that bed is glaring at you. It takes you a moment to recognise him beneath the oxygen mask strapped across his face. Kickbox! No, what’s his actual name… Darren?

You try to explain, to tell him that what you were doing was right, that it is everyone else who is blind to reality. He closes his eyes and turns away.

Then you realise why he won’t listen. He can’t hear you, can’t understand your words. A blue blur across your nose, stale breath brushing your lips. They’ve muzzled you! You lift a hand to try and tear the mask away, but your wrist is caught. The other, too. You’re cuffed to the bed frame.

Police officers approach you.

Panic rises like a geyser. The bed shudders. You writhe and struggle but it’s helpless. They’ve got you trapped.

‘Get away!’ you scream. ‘I know what you are. I know all about the deep state and you will not take me.’

This one has heard you.

He leans in close, and in the eyes above his mask, you see nothing but darkness. ‘Ma’am,’ he says, ‘the only deep state here is the one we’ve found you in today.’

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