Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and The Hidden Holocaust
Note to the reader: Before you begin this story, a few ground rules. The story of the Cold War’s base potential is a story of unleashed scientific and ideological horror touched upon in so many literary and cinematic works, but no matter how powerful the craft or artistry of the storyteller is, the true scope of a nuclear war can't truly be imagined by the human mind.
But fiction is just that, and there are real horrors strutting in broad daylight, mocking us, unafraid and seemingly unassailable. To confront these, you must have strong nerves. And eyes of steel that can gaze steady and unblinking. And, I pray, some of you can find the strength of heart and the courage to begin, in your own way, to address the many wrongs written in blood upon our national conscious.
This story is dedicated to Quentin, who I’ll always miss. Each and every year.
The day I’m writing this is a humid late July day, and as we slide slowly and unceasingly into the dog days of late summer, the air is heavy with the damp, earthy and not always pleasant scent emanating from the marshy, hilly part of New England I call my home. It is days like this that reasonable people might wonder why anyone would deliberately live here, let alone come here from better climes. Where are the palm trees? Where are the thick stucco walls the hide behind until nightfall? Where are the lovely clay tile roofs, the small patios and the cool springs welling out of attractive fissures in the rocks? Not in New England, where farmers seem to grow stones in their small fields and life can sometimes be as difficult now as it was when the Pilgrims first arrived on these rugged shores.
Let’s talk about literature for a while, if you please. From my desk, I can see many of the books I surround myself with. The important ones. The ones I turn to constantly. There are some odd Victorian-era ghost stories, and nearby, a variety of interesting science fiction anthologies. Stacked on the lower shelves are the heavy but necessary Cold War history texts I tend to collect, and right next to my monitor is a thin volume focused on modern mortuary practices. Next to that is my well-loved, dog-eared copy of Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta.
And then, there are the Shirley Jackson short stories.
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