The Dregs – a dystopian short story
Edward M Wolfe
April 19th, 2042.
Acting on a credible, anonymous tip, the officers kicked in the door of the small cottage. A standard poodle barked and rushed them. Officer Karnes aimed and fired. The first shot missed and he fired again as the dog squatted to leap at him. The second shot sent the dog sailing backwards. It hit the ground and toppled over, coming to rest on its side, whining and panting as its blood pooled in the white carpet.
“Freeze!” yelled the other officer, pointing his gun at an old woman who emerged from a doorway, holding one hand over her heart.
“What are you doing? Why did you shoot my baby?”
“Put your hands against the wall,” he commanded.
“But I don’t—“
“Now!”
Both officers rushed into the hall. One of them slammed the lady against the wall, kicked her legs apart and frisked her, while the other checked the room she had come out of. It was a bathroom, and it was empty. He then moved down the short hall to another door. He put his ear against it and listened.
“This is the police. Come out with your hands up, or I’m coming in, shooting.” He took a few steps away from the door, placing his back against the hallway wall and aiming his gun at the door.
Karnes cuffed the lady then swept one foot at the back of her calves while pushing her backwards with a hand on her chest. She landed on her back and cried out in pain.
“Shut it, scumbag. Don’t make me stomp on your face.” He pulled his gun out of its holster and pointed it at the door that Wilson was still aiming at. Karnes nodded and Wilson raised a foot and slammed it against the door next to the doorknob. The thin, hollow door crashed open and both officers rushed in.
A black cat lying on the bedcover hissed at them. Wilson shot it and rushed over to the master bath door. He stopped and slowly peeked his head around the doorjamb. It was empty.
“Clear!” he called out.
“I’m gonna check the kitchen. Drag the bitch into the living room and find out where she’s hiding it.” Karnes left the room and stepped around the woman who was breathing rapidly and stifling sobs, arching her back to keep from pressing down on her cuffed hands.
Her legs were sticking out into the hall and rather than step over them, Karnes kicked them out of his way. Wilson came out and grabbed the lady by her feet and dragged her down the hall into the living room. He let go of her when her face was adjacent to her dead dog.
“Where is it?”
“Oh, my dear Pooksie! What have they done to you?” The woman broke out in fresh sobs as she stared at the dead brown eyes of her beloved pet staring back at her.
“I’m not fucking around, scumbag. Where are you hiding it?”
“What are you talking about? I have no idea what’s going on. Why did you kill Pooksie?”
“We know you’re holding, so the sooner you cooperate, the better things will go for you in court. Don’t make it worse for yourself by acting stupid and playing innocent.”
He walked over to a shelf beside the couch and swept an array of collectible glass figurines to the floor. The small animals fell to the carpet with a series of thumps. It was less dramatic than he had hoped for so he pulled the shelf forward, causing everything to slide to the carpet and causing the shelf to crash into the coffee table, shattering the glass top. That was better.
“Where is it?!” he demanded to know.
The sound of crashing objects from the kitchen echoed into the living room. Wilson was ransacking the cabinets.
“Got it!” he yelled.
“You’re lucky. I was just starting to get pissed off. The D.A. will be informed of your failure to cooperate. You’re going down, bitch.”
Wilson entered the living room hefting a zip-lock baggie with a granular, dark brown substance. It was damp and left residue on the baggie as he shifted it around.
“Dregs. Probably half a pound. Recently used. She’s probably high on it right now.”
Karnes looked down at her in disgust and saw the guilt in her eyes as she looked away.
“I hope it was worth the rest of your life. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
***
Later, under questioning, the elderly perp talked. The cops offered her a good word with the D.A. and a reduced sentence for cooperation if she’d reveal her source. At 64, she didn’t want to spend her remaining time in prison and agreed to tell them where she’d got the dregs. What she revealed was better than they had expected. They usually had to work their way up a distribution chain until they reached a big dealer. But Phyllis was well-connected, getting her fix from a major dealer with whom she’d played Bridge for years.
The next morning found Karnes and Wilson participating in a multi-agency raid. It would’ve just been a D.E.A. team, but since the two Vice detectives provided the intel, the feds reluctantly permitted them to accompany the raid team. But they wouldn’t be first-in. The feds reserved the right to any action coming through the door.
The sun crept up over the horizon as men in black took up positions all around a beige two-story house. The loudest sound around came from birds in nearby trees. The suspect’s house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. The other end of the street was blocked off with police sawhorses with crime scene tape strung between them. Two officers stood with their backs to the suspect’s house, watching for any neighbors who might emerge to see what was going on.
Four agents approached the front door carrying a battering ram. The lead agent spoke into his lapel mic.
“Snipers, sit rep?”
“Sniper One. All clear. In position.”
“Roger, One.”
“Sniper Two. Woman walking her dog past the end of the street… Okay, we’re clear. In position.”
“Roger, Two.” He glanced around at the agents he could see, then spoke into his mic again. “We’re a Go. On three. One… Two… Three”
The battering ram smashed through the front door. Glass shattered as other agents fired tear gas grenades through the front windows. One sniper peered through his scope at the upper level windows. The other perused the perimeter for anyone trying to escape.
The battering ram agents withdrew, trotting backwards, and other agents with gas masks rushed in, yelling, “D.E.A. Nobody move!” and “Freeze, motherfuckers!” Agents spread throughout the house. Within a minute, they declared the downstairs clear. The lead agent, Gelkins, pointed at two agents and motioned for them to follow him up the stairs.
A door near the second-floor landing creaked open and one of the agents fired past Gelkins.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled, running up the stairs and taking a position beside the partially opened door. The two agents on the stairs came a little further up and aimed their guns at the door.
“Come out with your hands up!” Gelkins ordered.
Adrenaline raced through the three men as the door creaked again and slowly began to open. An elderly man in a dark blue robe carefully edged the door back with one foot, holding his hands high above his head. His hair was sticking out in every direction and his eyes were wide with fear behind lenses that make them look much larger than they were.
“Face on the floor, asshole!” Gelkins screamed from three feet away. “Slowly!”
The man bent down to his knees, then lowered his hands to the carpet to lower himself in a reverse push-up. Gelkins gestured with his gun. The two agents on the stairs rushed up and secured the prisoner. One pressed the man’s head into the carpet while the other patted down his backside and then cuffed him.
Karnes and Wilson saw the perp coming down the stairs with the agents behind him.
“How did you know?” the old man asked.
“Your good friend Phyllis sang like a bird, shithead. Your career is over,” Karnes spat.
“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” he asked, wincing in fear of the tactics that might’ve been employed to compel his lifelong friend to turn him in.
“Only as much as necessary. Where’s your stash, you old puke?”
“In the basement. You’ll find everything in the basement.”
“Very smart! I guess you still have some brain cells left.” Turning to the nearest D.E.A. agents, Karnes ordered, as if he were in charge of the scene, “Get this piece of shit out of here.”
A voice came through one of the agents’ radios.
“Jackpot! He’s got a whole fucking java-lab down here, along with a nursery, grinders, antique percolators, and everything else.”
“I’ll never understand you fucking dregs,” Wilson said, watching as the man was escorted out his front door.
***
Walter Brown was booked on charges of cultivation, trafficking, and possession of over fifty pounds of coffee. Phyllis Kant was charged with possession with intent to distribute. Her attorney argued that half a pound was nowhere near sufficient to distribute. The average coffee drinker could easily drink that much in less than a month. In addition, she had cooperated and was promised leniency. They wouldn’t have gotten Brown if it wasn’t for her. The D.A. agreed to simple possession and a term a reduced sentence of six months in light of her assistance which led to the apprehension of a major trafficker.
Brown’s trial commenced a few days later. He and his attorney sat in his cell facing the wall screen. Two metal folding chairs were brought in for the proceedings. The wall lit up and the face of the bailiff appeared.
“Please rise. The Honorable Jacob Jackson presiding.”
Brown and his attorney stood.
“Defendant Walter Brown and attorney Sheldon Knight are visibly present, Your Honor.”
“Court is in session,” the judge intoned.
“You may be seated.” The bailiff stepped out of the camera view and re-positioned it to aim at the judge’s bench, then rattled off the formal list of charges against Brown.
“How do you plead?” the judge inquired, looking over his old-fashioned, half-framed glasses at the video monitor.
“Your Honor,” the attorney spoke up, remaining in his seat. “Sheldon Knight, representing. My client pleads Guilty with an Explanation.”
The judge sighed and turned to face another monitor. “Will the State hear an explanation and consider a sentence less than life in prison?”
A small picture appeared in the corner of the wall display, featuring the District Attorney Janet Callaway. “The State will hear the explanation.”
“You may proceed,” the judge said, looking into the camera perched above his desk display.
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Sheldon looked down at the papers in his lap, then back up at the camera. “My client is from an era when coffee was in common usage and sold in every establishment. He grew up in a household where coffee was served every morning with breakfast. It was—“
“Mr. Knight. The court is aware of what life was like before the Anti-Stimulant Act of 2039. Your client admits his guilt. If there are no extenuating circumstances beyond the accused’s childhood when the laws were different, then we can proceed with sentencing.”
“I understand, Your Honor, and I apologize. I just want to speak to my client’s motivations in breaking the law. To his way of seeing it, he wasn’t doing any harm, and there were no victims who suffered as a result of his actions.”
Janet Callaway interrupted. “Society is the victim here, Counselor. Mr. Brown cannot take it upon himself to decide which laws benefit the people. The people themselves have already decided that.”
“You’re correct, Ms. Callaway. I just want to point out that my client is 67 years old and has a clean record. His only crime, in all his life was to ingest a stimulant that he had ingested his entire life with no harm to any other being besides himself. I ask that the court consider my client’s intention – that being, to do that which he had always done without running afoul of the law. Granted, he failed to change his daily routine when the laws changed, and he continued—“
“Mr. Knight, your client did not only continue to drink coffee in blatant disregard for this nation’s laws, presumably for the last three years, but he also took it upon himself to enable others to do the same. He engendered a spirit of anarchy and rebellion, thumbing his nose at authority, and the People. The State is showing plenty of leniency already in only seeking a life sentence.”
“We appreciate that, Ms. Callaway, and don’t deny his guilt and his debt to society for what he’s done, and which, he’s prepared to pay. I thought it might help to show that my client was a law-abiding citizen his entire life. He, himself never changed in his nature or intentions, and unfortunately, neither did his habits and routines change. One day he was a pillar of the community, and then the next, he was an outlaw – but only because the laws changed and made coffee an illegal substance. My client is the same law-abiding citizen he was four years ago, but for the criminalization of coffee, coffee grounds, and caffeine.”
“Are you finished, Mr. Knight?” the D.A. asked, not at all impressed by the defense attorney’s proffer of an explanation for his client’s guilt.
“Yes, Ms. Callaway. My client asks the State and the Court for mercy in its wisdom in handing down his sentence.”
“Does the State have anything to add, Ms. Callaway?”
“The State rests and asks the Court to not be swayed by the defendant’s explanation. We still seek life imprisonment.” The picture within a picture at the corner of the screen winked out and the judge’s face filled the entire wall display, then zoomed out to show the United States flag hanging behind him.
“In the matter of the People versus Walter Brown, the Court accepts the guilty plea but does not feel the Explanation provides any mitigating circumstances or considerable reason to sentence the defendant to less than the minimum sentence that the State has leniently requested.
“All through this nation’s history substances have gone from legal to illegal, and vice versa. There was a time when families enjoyed beverages that included such vile substances as cocaine. And they did so in family restaurants and other places where respectable people gathered for meals – not in dark alleys and seedy motels, as they do today. People ingested morphine to ease their pain. Marijuana was grown and used in many ways in competition with the cotton industry, as well as ingested to alter one’s consciousness. The fact is, Mr. Brown, society decides what is okay to consume, and what is not. The people make the laws by way of their representatives and their votes. When the people have spoken, the people must also obey. To state that there are no victims to the crimes you’ve committed is to say that the voice of the nation as a whole is irrelevant to you. That you can decide what is right and wrong, despite what hundreds of millions of your countrymen have decreed to be wrong.
“Our society has determined that no substance shall be ingested that accelerates the natural functioning of the central nervous system. Stimulants are illegal in this country in all of their manifestations – regardless of how you were raised. The laws have been passed. And you’ve admitted your guilt in violating them. The Court hereby sentences you to remain in custody for the remainder of your natural life.”
The judge banged his gavel one time then set it down.
“Court is adjourned.”
The screen in Brown’s cell wall turned black. Knight grabbed his papers and put them in his briefcase, then stood and grabbed his folding chair with his free hand.
“I’m sorry, Walter. I did my best.” He looked at his client, chagrined. “If there’s anything I can do for you…”
“I appreciate it, Sheldon. I just don’t know how I’m going to make it in here. I’ve never been in jail before. I’m so stressed, I feel like I’m going to have a heart-attack.”
“I’ll ask the guard to bring you some heroin. It’ll help you relax, Walter.”
###
