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Kevyn ‘Hagrid’ Jacobs
ENG 351 – Intro to Fiction Writing
Nick Dybek, Instructor
2008.02.25
Die Weiße Rose Blüht Wieder
(The White Rose Blooms Again)
“Jess! Someone’s coming!”
Jessica released her finger from the nozzle on the can of spray paint. The hissing of the propellant stopped, and she held her breath, frozen in place. Any movement at all might be heard by the unknown person walking towards the enclosed sculpture that hid her. The consequences of being caught spray painting graffiti on campus – especially political graffiti – were too uncomfortable to contemplate.
She could hear footsteps on the red brick walkway now, heavy, booted footsteps that probably meant one of the Blackwater campus security guards.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. It was right on the other side of the slanted metal slab that made one wall of the sculpture.
“Oh please don't stop,” thought Jessica, trembling. “Please, please don’t smell the paint. Please don’t look inside.”
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. The booted steps were moving past the Wright’s Triangle now, the massive three-sided sculpture in which Jessica and her lookout were hiding.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
No helmeted head peered inside, no flashlight caught her in the act of vandalizing the sculpture, no rifle pointed at her head. The footsteps faded into the distance, towards the DuPont Chemistry Building.
Jessica let out the breath she had been holding. For a few moments, she didn’t move, except to tremble. She waited for Rachel to give the all clear.
A moment later, a dark silhouette peeked out from one of the metal slabs that made up the sculpture, and whispered, “That was close!”
“Was it Blackwater?” Jessica breathed, barely loud enough to be heard. The Blackwater campus police were everywhere.
“Yes,” answered Rachel from her lookout. “One guard. I don’t think he noticed anything. He just went into the chemistry building. Are you almost done?”
“Almost, almost,” replied Jessica, trying to steady her hand as she started spray painting the stencil again. A few more shaky passes with the paint, and she pulled the stencil away from the metal slab.
She took a look at her handiwork on the inside wall of the sculpture. A stencilled white rose, and around it the words, “Who will carry on the work of the White Rose?”
She glanced around the inside of the art installation. It was constructed of immense metal slabs, standing on edge and leaning against each other, welded into place, forming a triangle. And on each one, there was now a spray painted white rose.
“OK, let’s get the steps leading into Red Square,” whispered Jessica. She stuffed the can of white spray paint into a sock, and stuck it back in her bookbag with the others. The socks were Rachel’s idea, to keep the cans from clanking against each other suspiciously in her bookbag. Blackwater guards were known to randomly search students' bags, and she didn't want to draw attention to hers. Her bag had already been randomly searched twice this quarter.
“Hold on,” whispered Rachel, peering out the north end of the enclosure. “The camera on top of the gymnasium is still pointed this way.”
Tense moments passed, and Jessica peered up into the dark, cloudy sky overhead, having second thoughts about the whole mission. Was it worth the risk? Would anyone even get the reference?
Finally, Rachel gave the OK, and the two girls dashed out of the sculpture, and crossed the expanse of red bricks between the sculpture and the Adobe Systems Art Building.
Panting, Jessica and Rachel pressed themselves into the shadows of the building, in one of the few places on the Western campus where they knew no cameras looked. Regaining their composure, they steeled themselves for the next leg of their mission. Rachel carried her black industrial design portfolio with her, and Jessica had her bookbag, stuffed with cans of white spray paint and stencils. To anyone watching -- and they most certainly would be watched -- they would appear to be just two art students, leaving studio late. Nothing out of the ordinary.
They walked out of the shadows at the end of the building, and down the steps to the main walkway. The camera on top of the Nike Gymnasium swung in their direction and focused on them, but they ignored it and pretended to be nonchalantly strolling back to their dorm room in Edens hall. The camera followed them as they walked the red brick walkway towards Red Square, and then moved away. The ruse had worked.
The reached the steps at the entrance to Red Square. Jessica dropped to one knee, as if to tie her shoe. Rachel watched the camera. They knew from careful study and casing over the previous several days that none of the security cameras in Red Square focused on this particular spot. Only the gymnasium camera saw this area, and it was currently pointed in the other direction.
“Go!” hissed Rachel.
In one fluid movement, Jessica pulled out a rose stencil and a can of spray paint. She slapped the stencil on the steps, and quickly coated the stencil with white. Then just as quickly, she placed the can and stencil back into her bookbag, and stood up. Next to the fresh white paint of the rose she had stencilled the words, “Sophie Scholl Lives!”
The two girls walked into Red Square with studied calm. Huge banners hung from all of the buildings facing the square, each showing the symbol of the Christian Dominionist regime: a stylized black Statue of Liberty, holding aloft a blood red cross instead of a torch. Jessica hated that symbol. It was a perversion of everything she had grown up believing about America.
The camera on AT&T Bond Hall swivelled to focus on them as they walked to the series of picnic tables lined up in front of Pfizer Miller Hall. They sat down at the first one, and chatted about nothing in particular. The camera on top of Microsoft Haggard Hall also zoomed in on them, but as they appeared to simply be a couple of students taking a late-night study break, the cameras moved away. The girls breathed a sigh of relief. They had made it this far without being caught. Everything was going to plan.
The plan was a simple one: spray paint the White Rose meme all over campus, hoping that someone would understand its message of resistance to totalitarianism. With luck, someone would pick up the message of the White Rose resistance movement, and carry it forward.
Jessica hadn’t planned on becoming a revolutionary. She had just come to Western Washington University to get a degree in history, and then go on to teach high school history, just like her father. She’d always loved history, and it seemed natural to follow in her dad’s footsteps. Dad had always taught her to look past the propagandized history, and find the real story behind the rhetoric.
Like most young people of her generation, Jessica disliked the repressiveness of the Christian Dominionist government that had taken over the United States a few years back, after the terrorists had nuked San Diego. But she had never felt compelled to do anything radical.
That is, until last week. One of her history teachers, Professor Hall, a harmless and funny man with a penchant for World War II video documentaries, was arrested for possessing subversive materials and “supporting terrorists.” That was what they always said when someone was arrested for doing anything the Dominionist party didn’t like – they were “supporting the terrorists.” Of course, no one believed it, well, no one except the hard core party faithful. Most people knew this was just Dominionist lies, but were too afraid to speak up.
Professor Hall’s “crime” was sharing with his students a late-20th century documentary about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance movement, which opposed the Nazis at the University of Münich in 1942-43. The university administration, controlled by Dominionist party members, came down hard on the professor, accusing him of corrupting young minds, and giving students wrong ideas about resisting proper authority.
“Ironically, that is exactly what happened after he was arrested,” thought Jessica.
In the week following Hall’s being shipped off to a camp, Jessica sat in her dorm room, thinking about the injustice of the world. She talked with her roommate Rachel late into the night, sharing the story of 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, who had been executed for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets at her university. Rachel was impressed. Jessica talked about the White Rose as a symbol of resistance to oppression. And the more she talked, the madder she got. Finally, Rachel had asked her, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” and the plan was born. Now, she and Rachel were here, risking being sent to the Halliburton detention camp in the Okanogan, in order to get out an obscure message about resistance. She had doubts that it was worth it, but she felt she owed it to Professor Hall – and to Sophie Scholl – to make sure that the message of the White Rose continued on.
“Ready?” asked Rachel, startling Jessica out of her reverie.
“Yes,” replied Jessica. “Are the cameras still on us?”
“Not at the moment,” replied Rachel.
The two girls had rehearsed their next moves several times earlier in the week, and were able to move rapidly and fluidly in a choreographed manner. They knew that they were not in visual range of the camera atop Pfizer Miller Hall, and the only other cameras in Red Square that could see them were the ones on AT&T Bond Hall, and Microsoft Haggard Hall, neither of which were pointed at them at the moment. Knowing they had only a few second to act before the cameras swung around on them again, Jessica handed Rachel a can of paint and a stencil, and then moved on to the next table herself. Quickly slapping a stencil down on each table, they painted the white roses on each of the five picnic tables, before running back to the first and sitting down in the position they had been in previously. To the Blackwater security camera operators, it would look as if they hadn’t moved at all.
Laughing, they stood up.
“Ready for the Miller courtyard?” asked Rachel, giddily.
“Let’s do it!” laughed Jessica, and both girls quickly walked through the archway and into the courtyard.
* * *
On the second floor of Pfizer Miller Hall, graduate student Greg Ayers was recording the last exam grades into the computer from the introductory psychology course he was teaching. Greg liked teaching, but he knew that he didn’t want to teach freshman psych courses forever. He wasn’t especially happy that the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Corporation had purchased the psychology department and Miller Hall last year, and essentially turned the building into a training school for drug reps. But, things were as they were, and he really didn’t see how he could do anything about it. At least, not while he was still working on his Master's. Afterwards, maybe, but not now.
Greg stood up, stretched, yawned, put on his coat, and turned off the light. He was about to leave the office when he noticed something odd out the window. Looking down, he saw two girls, spray painting something on the walls of the courtyard.
“What the…?” he thought, doing a double take.
The girls were holding stencils up to the brick walls between classroom doors, and spraying white paint over them. He looked closely at one of the completed stencils. It read, “Who will carry on the work of the White Rose?”
“What the heck does that mean?” he mused.
Just then, one of the girls was lit up by a flashlight, and a voice shouted, “FREEZE!”
Greg gasped, as he saw the black-uniformed campus guard coming into the courtyard. The guard was aiming his automatic rifle menacingly at one of the girls. The girl was obviously terrified, pressed up against the wall, fresh white paint smearing her hair. She was looking for a way out. There wasn’t one.
The guard grabbed the radio microphone attached to his jacket, and spoke into it. Greg assumed he was calling for backup.
Greg edged over to the window, hoping not to be noticed, and quietly eased the window open to catch what was being said below.
“Writing a little terrorist propaganda, are you missy?” growled the guard. The girl didn’t answer. He apparently hadn’t noticed the other girl, yet.
“What’s your name?” demanded the guard. “Show me your identity card.”
“J-Jessica Hardy,” stammered the girl, fumbling for her ID card. She found it and held it out to the guard. She was shaking. He took it.
“Well, Jessica Hardy, You have a lot of explaining to do,” he said with a leer.
Clomp Clomp Clomp. Three more booted guards ran through the archway, weapons at the ready. One shone his light around the courtyard, and spotted the other girl, cowering in a corner. “There’s another one!” he shouted.
The guard pointed his rifle at the second girl. “Come out here. Now!” The girl complied, shaking. Greg noted that they were both young, probably undergraduates, and obviously scared. Who wouldn’t be?
One of the guards was looking at the graffiti. “White Rose? What’s that, some kind of Islamo-fascist symbol? Better get the Halliburton boys down here to clean this up pronto.” He spoke into his radio.
Greg watched as the guards roughly handcuffed the two girls, and pushed them out of the courtyard, into Red Square. He shuddered to think what horrors lay ahead for those two girls. He’d heard stories about the Blackwater interrogation rooms.
And what was this “White Rose” business, anyway?
He walked back over to the computer, and hit a few keys, bypassing the security lockout. Soon, he was accessing a forbidden website: Wikipedia. He typed the words “White Rose” into the search box, and pulled up an article.
And then, he understood.
His reading was interrupted by a sound in the courtyard. He stood up and looked out the window. Three men, their coveralls blazoned with “Halliburton WWU Facilities,” were using pressure washers to remove the paint from the wall. Soon, the messages that those two girls had sacrificed everything for would be gone, never to be seen by anybody else.
Except Greg.
He had seen.
Greg stood there, thoughtfully, watching the facilities guys erase the White Rose from the wall. He watched them finish the cleaning job, and leave. But Greg still stood there, thinking.
Half an hour later, he was still thinking, staring out the window into the empty courtyard. Replaying the events he had witnessed in his mind, and pondering the message that he alone had received.
Then Greg made a decision. He walked to the supply closet, and pulled out a pencil, a sheet of posterboard, and an X-acto knife.
Then he sat down at the desk, and began to sketch on the posterboard.
He drew a rose.
ENG 351 – Intro to Fiction Writing
Nick Dybek, Instructor
2008.02.25
(The White Rose Blooms Again)
“Jess! Someone’s coming!”
Jessica released her finger from the nozzle on the can of spray paint. The hissing of the propellant stopped, and she held her breath, frozen in place. Any movement at all might be heard by the unknown person walking towards the enclosed sculpture that hid her. The consequences of being caught spray painting graffiti on campus – especially political graffiti – were too uncomfortable to contemplate.
She could hear footsteps on the red brick walkway now, heavy, booted footsteps that probably meant one of the Blackwater campus security guards.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. It was right on the other side of the slanted metal slab that made one wall of the sculpture.
“Oh please don't stop,” thought Jessica, trembling. “Please, please don’t smell the paint. Please don’t look inside.”
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. The booted steps were moving past the Wright’s Triangle now, the massive three-sided sculpture in which Jessica and her lookout were hiding.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
No helmeted head peered inside, no flashlight caught her in the act of vandalizing the sculpture, no rifle pointed at her head. The footsteps faded into the distance, towards the DuPont Chemistry Building.
Jessica let out the breath she had been holding. For a few moments, she didn’t move, except to tremble. She waited for Rachel to give the all clear.
A moment later, a dark silhouette peeked out from one of the metal slabs that made up the sculpture, and whispered, “That was close!”
“Was it Blackwater?” Jessica breathed, barely loud enough to be heard. The Blackwater campus police were everywhere.
“Yes,” answered Rachel from her lookout. “One guard. I don’t think he noticed anything. He just went into the chemistry building. Are you almost done?”
“Almost, almost,” replied Jessica, trying to steady her hand as she started spray painting the stencil again. A few more shaky passes with the paint, and she pulled the stencil away from the metal slab.
She took a look at her handiwork on the inside wall of the sculpture. A stencilled white rose, and around it the words, “Who will carry on the work of the White Rose?”
She glanced around the inside of the art installation. It was constructed of immense metal slabs, standing on edge and leaning against each other, welded into place, forming a triangle. And on each one, there was now a spray painted white rose.
“OK, let’s get the steps leading into Red Square,” whispered Jessica. She stuffed the can of white spray paint into a sock, and stuck it back in her bookbag with the others. The socks were Rachel’s idea, to keep the cans from clanking against each other suspiciously in her bookbag. Blackwater guards were known to randomly search students' bags, and she didn't want to draw attention to hers. Her bag had already been randomly searched twice this quarter.
“Hold on,” whispered Rachel, peering out the north end of the enclosure. “The camera on top of the gymnasium is still pointed this way.”
Tense moments passed, and Jessica peered up into the dark, cloudy sky overhead, having second thoughts about the whole mission. Was it worth the risk? Would anyone even get the reference?
Finally, Rachel gave the OK, and the two girls dashed out of the sculpture, and crossed the expanse of red bricks between the sculpture and the Adobe Systems Art Building.
Panting, Jessica and Rachel pressed themselves into the shadows of the building, in one of the few places on the Western campus where they knew no cameras looked. Regaining their composure, they steeled themselves for the next leg of their mission. Rachel carried her black industrial design portfolio with her, and Jessica had her bookbag, stuffed with cans of white spray paint and stencils. To anyone watching -- and they most certainly would be watched -- they would appear to be just two art students, leaving studio late. Nothing out of the ordinary.
They walked out of the shadows at the end of the building, and down the steps to the main walkway. The camera on top of the Nike Gymnasium swung in their direction and focused on them, but they ignored it and pretended to be nonchalantly strolling back to their dorm room in Edens hall. The camera followed them as they walked the red brick walkway towards Red Square, and then moved away. The ruse had worked.
The reached the steps at the entrance to Red Square. Jessica dropped to one knee, as if to tie her shoe. Rachel watched the camera. They knew from careful study and casing over the previous several days that none of the security cameras in Red Square focused on this particular spot. Only the gymnasium camera saw this area, and it was currently pointed in the other direction.
“Go!” hissed Rachel.
In one fluid movement, Jessica pulled out a rose stencil and a can of spray paint. She slapped the stencil on the steps, and quickly coated the stencil with white. Then just as quickly, she placed the can and stencil back into her bookbag, and stood up. Next to the fresh white paint of the rose she had stencilled the words, “Sophie Scholl Lives!”
The two girls walked into Red Square with studied calm. Huge banners hung from all of the buildings facing the square, each showing the symbol of the Christian Dominionist regime: a stylized black Statue of Liberty, holding aloft a blood red cross instead of a torch. Jessica hated that symbol. It was a perversion of everything she had grown up believing about America.
The camera on AT&T Bond Hall swivelled to focus on them as they walked to the series of picnic tables lined up in front of Pfizer Miller Hall. They sat down at the first one, and chatted about nothing in particular. The camera on top of Microsoft Haggard Hall also zoomed in on them, but as they appeared to simply be a couple of students taking a late-night study break, the cameras moved away. The girls breathed a sigh of relief. They had made it this far without being caught. Everything was going to plan.
The plan was a simple one: spray paint the White Rose meme all over campus, hoping that someone would understand its message of resistance to totalitarianism. With luck, someone would pick up the message of the White Rose resistance movement, and carry it forward.
Jessica hadn’t planned on becoming a revolutionary. She had just come to Western Washington University to get a degree in history, and then go on to teach high school history, just like her father. She’d always loved history, and it seemed natural to follow in her dad’s footsteps. Dad had always taught her to look past the propagandized history, and find the real story behind the rhetoric.
Like most young people of her generation, Jessica disliked the repressiveness of the Christian Dominionist government that had taken over the United States a few years back, after the terrorists had nuked San Diego. But she had never felt compelled to do anything radical.
That is, until last week. One of her history teachers, Professor Hall, a harmless and funny man with a penchant for World War II video documentaries, was arrested for possessing subversive materials and “supporting terrorists.” That was what they always said when someone was arrested for doing anything the Dominionist party didn’t like – they were “supporting the terrorists.” Of course, no one believed it, well, no one except the hard core party faithful. Most people knew this was just Dominionist lies, but were too afraid to speak up.
Professor Hall’s “crime” was sharing with his students a late-20th century documentary about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance movement, which opposed the Nazis at the University of Münich in 1942-43. The university administration, controlled by Dominionist party members, came down hard on the professor, accusing him of corrupting young minds, and giving students wrong ideas about resisting proper authority.
“Ironically, that is exactly what happened after he was arrested,” thought Jessica.
In the week following Hall’s being shipped off to a camp, Jessica sat in her dorm room, thinking about the injustice of the world. She talked with her roommate Rachel late into the night, sharing the story of 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, who had been executed for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets at her university. Rachel was impressed. Jessica talked about the White Rose as a symbol of resistance to oppression. And the more she talked, the madder she got. Finally, Rachel had asked her, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” and the plan was born. Now, she and Rachel were here, risking being sent to the Halliburton detention camp in the Okanogan, in order to get out an obscure message about resistance. She had doubts that it was worth it, but she felt she owed it to Professor Hall – and to Sophie Scholl – to make sure that the message of the White Rose continued on.
“Ready?” asked Rachel, startling Jessica out of her reverie.
“Yes,” replied Jessica. “Are the cameras still on us?”
“Not at the moment,” replied Rachel.
The two girls had rehearsed their next moves several times earlier in the week, and were able to move rapidly and fluidly in a choreographed manner. They knew that they were not in visual range of the camera atop Pfizer Miller Hall, and the only other cameras in Red Square that could see them were the ones on AT&T Bond Hall, and Microsoft Haggard Hall, neither of which were pointed at them at the moment. Knowing they had only a few second to act before the cameras swung around on them again, Jessica handed Rachel a can of paint and a stencil, and then moved on to the next table herself. Quickly slapping a stencil down on each table, they painted the white roses on each of the five picnic tables, before running back to the first and sitting down in the position they had been in previously. To the Blackwater security camera operators, it would look as if they hadn’t moved at all.
Laughing, they stood up.
“Ready for the Miller courtyard?” asked Rachel, giddily.
“Let’s do it!” laughed Jessica, and both girls quickly walked through the archway and into the courtyard.
On the second floor of Pfizer Miller Hall, graduate student Greg Ayers was recording the last exam grades into the computer from the introductory psychology course he was teaching. Greg liked teaching, but he knew that he didn’t want to teach freshman psych courses forever. He wasn’t especially happy that the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Corporation had purchased the psychology department and Miller Hall last year, and essentially turned the building into a training school for drug reps. But, things were as they were, and he really didn’t see how he could do anything about it. At least, not while he was still working on his Master's. Afterwards, maybe, but not now.
Greg stood up, stretched, yawned, put on his coat, and turned off the light. He was about to leave the office when he noticed something odd out the window. Looking down, he saw two girls, spray painting something on the walls of the courtyard.
“What the…?” he thought, doing a double take.
The girls were holding stencils up to the brick walls between classroom doors, and spraying white paint over them. He looked closely at one of the completed stencils. It read, “Who will carry on the work of the White Rose?”
“What the heck does that mean?” he mused.
Just then, one of the girls was lit up by a flashlight, and a voice shouted, “FREEZE!”
Greg gasped, as he saw the black-uniformed campus guard coming into the courtyard. The guard was aiming his automatic rifle menacingly at one of the girls. The girl was obviously terrified, pressed up against the wall, fresh white paint smearing her hair. She was looking for a way out. There wasn’t one.
The guard grabbed the radio microphone attached to his jacket, and spoke into it. Greg assumed he was calling for backup.
Greg edged over to the window, hoping not to be noticed, and quietly eased the window open to catch what was being said below.
“Writing a little terrorist propaganda, are you missy?” growled the guard. The girl didn’t answer. He apparently hadn’t noticed the other girl, yet.
“What’s your name?” demanded the guard. “Show me your identity card.”
“J-Jessica Hardy,” stammered the girl, fumbling for her ID card. She found it and held it out to the guard. She was shaking. He took it.
“Well, Jessica Hardy, You have a lot of explaining to do,” he said with a leer.
Clomp Clomp Clomp. Three more booted guards ran through the archway, weapons at the ready. One shone his light around the courtyard, and spotted the other girl, cowering in a corner. “There’s another one!” he shouted.
The guard pointed his rifle at the second girl. “Come out here. Now!” The girl complied, shaking. Greg noted that they were both young, probably undergraduates, and obviously scared. Who wouldn’t be?
One of the guards was looking at the graffiti. “White Rose? What’s that, some kind of Islamo-fascist symbol? Better get the Halliburton boys down here to clean this up pronto.” He spoke into his radio.
Greg watched as the guards roughly handcuffed the two girls, and pushed them out of the courtyard, into Red Square. He shuddered to think what horrors lay ahead for those two girls. He’d heard stories about the Blackwater interrogation rooms.
And what was this “White Rose” business, anyway?
He walked back over to the computer, and hit a few keys, bypassing the security lockout. Soon, he was accessing a forbidden website: Wikipedia. He typed the words “White Rose” into the search box, and pulled up an article.
And then, he understood.
His reading was interrupted by a sound in the courtyard. He stood up and looked out the window. Three men, their coveralls blazoned with “Halliburton WWU Facilities,” were using pressure washers to remove the paint from the wall. Soon, the messages that those two girls had sacrificed everything for would be gone, never to be seen by anybody else.
Except Greg.
He had seen.
Greg stood there, thoughtfully, watching the facilities guys erase the White Rose from the wall. He watched them finish the cleaning job, and leave. But Greg still stood there, thinking.
Half an hour later, he was still thinking, staring out the window into the empty courtyard. Replaying the events he had witnessed in his mind, and pondering the message that he alone had received.
Then Greg made a decision. He walked to the supply closet, and pulled out a pencil, a sheet of posterboard, and an X-acto knife.
Then he sat down at the desk, and began to sketch on the posterboard.
He drew a rose.
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Thank you so much for the feedback! It was most helpful. I see what you mean about wooden dialogue. That's hard for me, because I generally don't tend to listen to haw people talk -- ten again, I don't tend to listen to people period!
1/M H
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