🕯 EATMS//0011 Theatrical Thursday

EATMS//Story Reclamation Series 01

The Funeral for the Living

by Eloise Yarvin

(Is not, and has not been connected to any current or past administration.)

Greeting fellow Spitters—today’s transmission is filed under RITES, REVISED. A new ceremony from a girl they tried to forget…

He was not yet dead.

But the community gathered anyway.

The chairs were folding plastic. The dais was a compost bin turned podium. The stage backdrop was made of warning posters, laminated and reused, like everything else.

The man in question—K-114, a former ration clerk from the Compliance Office—had been sentenced to the Memory Farm. That meant he was gone, but technically retrievable. The state said such figures were "in pause," "under reconstruction," or "awaiting restoration." But everyone knew what it meant.

So they held a funeral.

A woman who once baked bread in his building spoke first. She said he had known her name. Had once looked her in the eyes. Had once said: "You don't deserve this."

Then another speaker came forward. A boy he had mentored before the boy's reassignment. He read a poem in binary. The translator chip blinked red twice and stopped.

Then they asked her—our girl—to speak.

She hesitated. Not because she was afraid, but because she didn’t yet know what part of herself could still speak without being traced.

She stepped forward anyway.

She didn’t read.

She didn’t eulogize.

She asked a question:

"What is the name of the one who took him?"

The wind caught the posters behind her. They flapped like drying scripts.

Someone in the crowd whispered it:

"Protocol Virgil."

She nodded. Then said:

"Then this is not a funeral. This is a line in the sand."

The boy with the chip began recording. The breadmaker pulled her apron tighter. Someone tore one of the posters down. Underneath, an old stencil appeared:

"REMEMBER HIM IN FICTION."

She stepped away from the podium. Her heart was loud.

They would come for her again.

Good.

She would rewrite the ritual.

She walked out of the ward. We walk with her now.

The story lives where they tried to erase us.

"Mock the takers. Fund the story. Every sat sabotages their script."

🔦 wallabyluminous26635@getalby.com

🌐 www.eatms.me

#EATMS #StoryReclamation01

#TheFuneralForTheLiving #TheatricalThursday

#UndergroundLibrary #RewriteTheRitual #ProtocolVirgil