Chapter 1 - Winds of Change A'blowin'
Well...there went the neighborhood.
Skyler was beyond agitated watching his neighbors, Kyla and Jenson McGomer, finish packing their U-haul. It was the third divorcee on his block who moved out in the last year, but Skyler had liked Jenson a lot. They had gone to school together in Sugar Hollow’s one and only elementary school, its singular middle school, and high school.
Jenson was escaping their cloistered world to head down to UCLA, to “Escape the small town life” and “suck it up and accept that he was who he was”.
It was such bullshit.
His mom, Kyla, was moving to LA with him. After her divorce, she had been lonely, and lonely in Omega-land meant she was feeling the burn of her new single status.
Her husband, Denise, had quit taking his Alpha-T boosters about a year back, crashed his testosterone level, and went running out the doors to find himself some blockhead, piece of garbage out beyond their community gates, too.
It happened a lot, especially when an Omega began to take the AT shots, trying to become something they inherently weren’t, and gradually began to feel displaced in their own skin.
However, it had never happened to someone Skyler knew as long as he had known the McGomers. His entire life, they had lived across the street from him. He and Jenson had played together down at the rivers, in the streets, played video games, and did the whole sleepover, having dinner with each other’s family thing.
It was depressing.
It took Sugar Hollow’s total occupancy to a whopping five hundred and thirteen people.
Ten years ago, it had been over a thousand.
Skyler knew what it was. The Lobbyist movement for “natural reinforcement”, or The Party of Anti Segregation and Communal Natural Living, PASCNL, for short.
They’re rhetoric was picking up major steam across the US, preaching their bullshit of how “unhealthy” it was for Omegas to be apart from the A/B population. How much “happier” O’s were when they could fulfill their natural state of being.
They cited stupid shit like the detrimental effects of AT stimulants on Omega males’ bodies long term, the sexual side effects, the pain of enhancing their genitals, and also, the side effects of suppressants keeping Omegas from going into natural heats.
It sucked, and Skyler had always been a proponent of free will and choice, both things he felt were stripped when his type were left to run free and be forced under hands who supposedly “complemented” them so well.
Well, tell that to the assholes who kept their O’s in chains and on leashes, or pimped unmarked O’s out at parties when they were vulnerable and unhinged. Tell that to the legions of people who were drawn to someone based solely on stupid things like scent, control, and “containment” practices, and not love or heartfelt chemistry.
It was bullshit, and yet terrifying how popular the movement was becoming. Worse, how many O’s in the many, many secluded communities like Sugar Hollow caved down the line as it was. Now with the PASCNL shitshow, that was painting some fairytale picture for them of the benefits of Naturalism.
Skyler was under the impression that PASCNL supporters were just pissed that they didn’t have access to the private lands O populations took over. They were usually far and apart, secluded, with a free pass to bar entry to protect their citizens from A/B influence. It was segregation, and it was prejudiced, and it was close to Cultism, but Skyler liked it.
It was the only thing he had ever known.
He didn’t have to wake up every day and worry that he’d end up ass up for some stranger in the middle of a Denny’s. He didn’t have to deal with the nesting frenzy, and the bullshit of tapdancing around his heat cycles, or Alpha assholes on a mission to claim him. Instead, he could just eventually get with another fellow Omega who wanted to inject the AT to have a family, and sure, maybe he’d never get the whole Alpha knot effect, but it would at least take the guy to Beta status. They could get married, have some kids, whatever.
Skyler was fine with the idea.
Maybe it would never “hit that spot”, but it was better than a life of servitude, lacking self-control, and being subjugated like the other O’s who chose to mainstream outside places like Sugar Hollow.
He wished them the best. He did, but seeing Jenson that day fall to that idealism?
It was a little crushing.
He looked so happy, too, throwing his bags into the back of his mom’s Subaru, excited over leaving their tiny community to go out and explore, to meet new people, and form a life with some Alpha Douchebag no doubt.
Skyler was jealous that he was so unconcerned about it, but also scared to see how easily he had just let go of the ideals they had been raised with.
It scared Skylar to think that he actually didn’t know any of the people out there, and the only thing they were taught was how awful A/B’s were, and yet still, Jenson was suddenly so indoctrinated he had quit taking his suppressants a week prior, and was skipping out the doors willingly, with a skip and a shout.
Skyler couldn’t express how disquieted he was over it.
Over all of that, they were catching wind that PASCNL was trying to push legislation through to kibosh their community and practices on the grounds of occultism and child endangerment. Of altering kids without consent from an early age...literally anything they could think to throw to break their walls down.
Terrifying to think that eventually, what Skyler knew and wanted could eventually become some relic of a past where his lifestyle had been stripped from him.
Sure, he logically knew, even if it all pushed through, no one was going to make him go anywhere else or do anything he didn’t want to do, but deep down, he was concerned over that part of himself he didn’t know. That part of himself that he had never been allowed to explore, because his parents had been terrified for his entire life that their natural condition would make him a slave to that greater power.
He didn’t want to be a slave, even to himself, and he didn’t want to lose his autonomy.
He didn’t want to believe the A’s and B’s could be decent people, and he wanted to believe that PASCNL was a bunch of lying sacks of shit.
In truth, he just didn’t know.
But he knew Sugar Hollow, and now, as the McGomers pulled out to leave for the big world beyond, he weirdly felt as if the same walls that had always protected him were sort of closing in on him.
A dying fortress where the rest of the world was crowding around, banging their doors down, and trying to drag them out into the light.
Skyler sighed, watching their taillights vanish around the corner of Tenth and Willow Street, putzing toward the gate leading in and out of the compound.
Another one bites the dust.
He shut his blinds and turned to go take a bath, maybe put on some music, and do some college work online. Anything, in other words, other than thinking about Jenson, the world, or the impending future.
