How to Fight the Monsters Under Our Beds

The Art of Quiet Resistance, Chapter 4

THE NEWS ALERTS ON RILEY'S PHONE flickered like warning fires in the darkened prop room, each one a beacon of another freedom lost. There are moments when history stops being something in books and becomes the air you breathe, the weight in your chest, the tremor in your hands. For Riley Morrison, that moment crystalized at midnight with Vivian LaFarge's quiet words:

"I was seven when Paris fell," Vivian said softly, her cultured accent carrying echoes of that lost time. "June 14, 1940. I didn't understand what was happening at first. Just that Mother kept me closer, spoke more quietly, watched the streets through our lace curtains. A child notices things, even when adults think they don't. I remember the way she started burning certain papers at night, the way her hands shook when she did it, though her face stayed calm."

The bottle of wine between them was a poor shield against the darkness gathering outside, but tonight wasn't about protection. It was about truth. About finally admitting what they both knew: they were counting down their own fifty-three days, watching democracy die in real time through endless news alerts and executive orders.

Riley's phone lit up again. "They just fired twelve more J6 prosecutors," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Harrison's coming tomorrow with his 'inspection team,' and we both know what that really means. They're not even pretending anymore."

Vivian's elegant hands were steady as she poured more wine, but Riley saw how she touched Catherine's ruby ring – a gesture she'd noticed the older woman made when memories pressed too close. "No, they're not. That's how it starts. In Paris, they called them 'administrative changes' at first. Just routine government reorganization." Her cultured accent carried echoes of old pain. "Mother came home that first night and taught me how to recognize the sound of boots on stairs. 'Some monsters announce themselves,' she said."

"That's what keeps me awake at night," Riley said, staring into her wine glass. "We keep trying to fight by the old rules - the Constitution, legal challenges, proper procedures. But they're playing a completely different game with Project 2025. They're rewriting every rule while we're still trying to defend the old ones."

Vivian's laugh was bitter. "Mother saw the same thing in Paris. The resistance kept trying to work through official channels at first - petitions, legal appeals, formal protests. But the Germans had already changed the laws. Made their own brutality legal while criminalizing basic human decency." She paused, touching her mother's scarf. "By the time people realized they were playing by rules that no longer existed..."

"Like what's happening now," Riley whispered. "The Democrats keep filing lawsuits, demanding oversight hearings, writing strongly-worded letters. And meanwhile, they're just... dismantling everything. Firing prosecutors, corrupting the Treasury, targeting journalists. They're not even pretending to follow the Constitution anymore."

"No." Vivian's voice was very quiet. "Because Project 2025 is their new constitution. A complete blueprint for destroying democracy using democracy's own mechanisms. While good people waste time demanding investigations and proper procedures, they're systematically eliminating anyone who could conduct those investigations or enforce those procedures."

Riley's phone lit up again: another federal watchdog fired, another career official replaced. "It's like watching a slow-motion coup, but we can't stop it because they're making it all technically legal."

"That's exactly what it is," Vivian said. "Mother used to say that by the time most people realize the old rules don't work anymore, it's too late to fight back using those rules. The game changes, but only one side admits it's changed."

"So what's the point of any of this?" Riley gestured at the theater around them. "Our little acts of resistance, our bureaucratic sabotage - we're still playing by their rules, aren't we?"

"Perhaps." Vivian's cultured accent carried echoes of old grief. "But what's the alternative? Surrender? Violence? Mother chose quiet resistance not because it was certain to work, but because it was the only way she could fight without becoming what she was fighting against."

The silence stretched between them, heavy with the weight of history repeating. Outside, sirens wailed in the distance - another protest being broken up, another group of citizens learning that their constitutional rights had become conditional.

"You know what I remember most clearly?" Vivian's voice was distant, lost in memory. "Not the big moments. Not the tanks or flags. I remember my friend Sophie stopping coming to school. Just... gone one day. And when I asked Mother, she got this look on her face - this terrible stillness. She said Sophie had gone to visit family. I was seven, but I knew she was lying. Knew something was terribly wrong. But we never talked about Sophie again."

Riley's hands shook as she reached for the wine bottle. Another alert lit up her phone: protests being classified as domestic terrorism. "They're already making lists," she whispered. "Of journalists, activists, anyone who's ever spoken against him."

"Mother burned our address book," Vivian said quietly. "Page by page. I watched her from the doorway, though she thought I was asleep. She burned every name, every connection that could lead them to her friends. The next day, she taught me never to write down who came to visit. 'Memory is safer than paper,' she said. But now..." She gestured at Riley's phone. "Now they have databases. Facial recognition. Social media histories. How do you burn digital paper?"

The question hung in the darkness between them, unanswered.

Riley stood abruptly, her kitten heels tapping an anxious rhythm as she paced. "But how do we fight them now? They have cameras everywhere, facial recognition, social media tracking. Musk's people just took control of federal payment systems today. They can track every call, every email, every—" Her voice broke completely. "I'm so scared, Vivian. All the time. And I hate that they've made me afraid in my own theater, my own country, but I don't know how to stop it."

"Come here, ma chérie." Vivian opened her arms, and Riley collapsed into them, decades of elegance and steel offering shelter as the younger woman finally let her tears fall. Vivian stroked her hair, remembering another night, another girl crying in her mother's arms as sirens wailed over Paris.

"I was terrified too," Vivian murmured. "Every day. Even after we learned to resist, after Mother showed me how to turn their own bureaucracy against them. Fear doesn't make you weak – it makes you human. The trick is learning to act anyway."

"How?" Riley's voice was muffled against Vivian's shoulder. "Everything's different now. Digital. Connected. They can erase people with a keystroke."

"Can they?" Vivian's devastating smile held generations of defiance. "Tell me, when their facial recognition system crashed last week because someone kept uploading theater publicity photos that somehow matched persons of interest – was that digital failure or human resistance?"

Riley pulled back slightly, wiping her eyes. "What?"

"Monsters rely on their systems, their technology, their perfect control. But systems are run by people. And people..." Vivian's smile sharpened. "People can be wonderfully, creatively incompetent when they choose to be."

Another alert lit Riley's phone: Mexico and Canada imposing retaliatory tariffs. Borders hardening. Trade wars beginning.

"Just like the borders between occupied and 'free' France," Vivian said, reading Riley's expression. "Yes, it's happening again. But this time we have something my mother didn't – we have her manual."

She reached for her ever-present attaché case, pulling out the worn OSS document. "Remember, Mother received this from a close friend of hers, an American agent. It taught us that sometimes the best way to fight monsters isn't with guns or bombs, but with their own rules turned against them."

"But Harrison's coming tomorrow," Riley whispered. "With his whole team. They'll have tablets, scanners, direct lines to their surveillance systems—"

"And we'll have what we've always had," Vivian cut in. "Human imagination. When their systems demand verification, we'll verify everything. When their algorithms look for patterns, we'll give them so many patterns they'll drown in data. When they demand compliance, we'll comply them into paralysis."

She opened the manual to a well-worn page. "Mother used to say that monsters expect resistance to look like rebellion. They never expect it to look like perfect cooperation."

Riley straightened slightly, something shifting in her tear-stained face. "We've tried some things," Riley said hesitantly. "The security camera feeds that keep having 'technical glitches.' The database entries that somehow duplicate themselves every time they're accessed. But it feels so small, so inadequate against what's coming."

Vivian's expression was grave. "Because it is small. Mother's manual taught us techniques, yes, but we're trying to adapt handwritten resistance strategies to a world where they can track every keystroke, monitor every phone, access every camera. Sometimes I wonder if we're just..." She paused, searching for words. "If we're playing at resistance while they build something far worse than what we faced in Paris."

Riley's phone lit up again: Treasury systems compromised, federal funds redirected. "They're dismantling everything so fast," she whispered. "And tomorrow... tomorrow Harrison comes with his team, and we don't even know what tools they'll have, what they'll be able to see, what they'll—" She broke off, hands shaking as she reached for her wine.

Her words were cut off by another news alert: A New York doctor indicted for sending abortion pills to Louisiana. State lines becoming weapons.

Riley's hands started shaking again. "It's really happening, isn't it? Everything you survived, everything you fought against – it's all coming back."

"Yes." Vivian's voice held granite beneath the silk. "But so are we. With every trick my mother taught me, every lesson Marie showed us during civil rights, every technique Catherine uncovered in her investigations. We carry their knowledge forward, adapt it, pass it on."

She touched her mother's Hermès scarf, remembering another night of fear transformed into resolve. "The monsters may be real, ma chérie, but so is our resistance. And tomorrow, when Harrison arrives..."

"We'll be ready," Riley finished, her green eyes still bright with tears but now holding something else – the same fire Vivian remembered seeing in her mother's gaze the morning after Paris fell.

Vivian's hand tightened on her wine glass. "There was a woman," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Simone Laurent. She wrote for an underground newspaper in Paris. They caught her in '43. Made a spectacle of her trial. Mother... Mother made me listen to the radio broadcast." Her exquisite hands trembled slightly. "She said I needed to understand what we were really facing."

Riley stayed very still in the darkness, barely breathing.

"They tortured her first, of course. Tried to make her give up her network. Then they put her on public trial - made it all very legal, very proper. Evidence, witnesses, all the trappings of justice. But the outcome..." Vivian's cultured accent cracked slightly. "The outcome was always certain. They executed her in the public square. Made everyone watch."

"That couldn't..." Riley swallowed hard. "That couldn't happen here. Not in America. Not now."

Vivian's devastating smile held no warmth. "Couldn't it? Tell me, what do you know about Alice Paul? Lucy Burns? The American suffragists?"

Riley shifted uncomfortably. "They... fought for women's voting rights."

"They were tortured," Vivian said flatly. "Right here in America. Alice Paul, force-fed raw eggs through tubes shoved down her throat until she vomited blood. Lucy Burns, chained to her cell wall with her arms above her head and left hanging there all night. Women beaten, sexually assaulted by prison guards, denied water, denied sleep." Her voice was steel. "And do you know what was perhaps most terrifying? Their own husbands, fathers, brothers could have them committed to insane asylums with a single signature. Called them 'hysterical,' 'unstable,' 'a danger to themselves.' All perfectly legal. All sanctioned by the state."

Riley's hands shook as she reached for her wine. "But that was—"

"That was America," Vivian cut in. "Just as this is America now. The same America where they're already calling women 'hysterical' for warning about fascism. Where they're already passing laws to control our bodies, our movements, our choices. Where Project 2025 includes provisions for 'mental health interventions' for 'politically disruptive individuals.'" She touched Catherine's ruby ring. "The methods change. The monsters remain the same."

Riley had gone very pale. "Tell me more about them. Please. We... we need to know."

"The Night of Terror, they called it. November 14, 1917." Vivian's voice took on a distant quality. "Forty suffragists at the Occoquan Workhouse. The guards beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands above her head, left her hanging all night. Dora Lewis - they threw her into a dark cell so hard she lost consciousness. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought she was dead and had a heart attack. They kicked Dorothy Day - you know her name from her later work - they kicked her twice in the back. Guards grabbed Julia Emory by her throat..."

She paused, taking a careful sip of wine. "But here's what truly terrifies me about that night. It was all official. All authorized. The guards had permission to 'handle' these dangerous women who dared demand a voice. Just like now, with the laws they're passing about 'handling' protesters, about 'managing' dissent."

"What happened to them? After?"

"Many never fully recovered. When Alice Paul was force-fed, they deliberately used dirty tubes. Pushed them in roughly, pulled them out before she'd finished vomiting. She had nightmares about it until she died." Vivian's cultured accent carried an edge of rage. "But what's equally chilling - doctors supervised these force-feedings. Stood there in their white coats, making it all seem medical, professional, legal. Just like how they're using doctors now to 'certify' that certain women are 'unfit' to make their own healthcare decisions."

She touched her mother's scarf, a gesture Riley had come to recognize as self-comfort. "And if the women complained? If they spoke about their treatment? Their husbands could have them committed. One signature on a form - 'my wife is having hysterical delusions about mistreatment' - and they'd disappear into asylums. Some never came out."

"Like Project 2025's mental health provisions," Riley whispered.

"Exactly. 'Psychological intervention' for 'politically disruptive individuals.' They don't even need to change the language much." Vivian's devastating smile was sharp as broken glass. "Today they're already calling us 'hysterical' for warning about fascism. Calling journalists 'unstable' for reporting truth. How long before they start using those labels officially? Legally?"

Vivian set down her wine glass carefully. "There's something else we need to discuss, Riley. Something unpleasant but necessary." She paused, choosing her words with precision. "Anyone you know - anyone at all - who supported him, who voted for him... you must regard them as the enemy now."

Riley flinched. "But my sister... my cousin Mark... Mrs. Henderson from my old church..."

"All of them," Vivian's voice was gentle but implacable. "I know it's horrific. I know it hurts. But I watched it happen in Paris. The neighbor who'd brought you soup when you were sick, the shopkeeper who'd given you extra bread for years - they'd turn you in in a heartbeat. Not always out of malice. Sometimes out of fear, or misguided patriotism, or simply because they'd convinced themselves it was for the greater good."

"I can't just cut off half the people I know," Riley protested weakly.

"You can. You must. Be polite if you must interact professionally. Smile. Nod. But never trust them. Never spend time with them voluntarily. Never share personal information." Vivian touched Catherine's ruby ring. "And Riley... I hope you'll forgive my presumption, but I've noticed... your identity, your sexuality seems quite fluid, as they say now."

Riley went very still. "How did you..."

"I lived through McCarthy, dear. Through the AIDS crisis. I buried Marie, the love of my life, while politicians called her death God's judgment." Vivian's devastating smile held decades of pain. "Walk a very fine line. Don't hide - that destroys the soul. But be very, very careful. Project 2025 has specific plans for people like us. Remember what they did to Sophie's family."

"What... what happened to them?"

"Someone reported them. Someone who'd eaten at their table for years. Called it 'protecting community values.'" Vivian's cultured accent carried an edge of old grief. "The world's full of people eager to do monstrous things while calling it virtue. Your sister who posts about 'traditional values,' your neighbor with the Trump sign - they're one signature away from becoming informants. One law away from believing they're righteous while destroying lives."

Riley's hands shook as she reached for her glass. "Even if they don't mean to..."

"Intent doesn't matter. Results do. Mother taught me that after our old friend Madame Dubois reported a Jewish family 'for their own protection.' She truly believed the authorities would help them..." Vivian trailed off. "We never saw that family again."

"God," Riley whispered. "I had dinner with my Trump-supporting cousin last month. Told him about the theater's new initiatives..."

"Then we'll need to prepare for that information to be compromised," Vivian said matter-of-factly. "This is your life, Riley. The only one you'll have. We can't afford sentimentality about people who've chosen their side, no matter how much we once loved them."

In the small hours between midnight and dawn, exhaustion finally claimed Riley. She drifted off against Vivian, drawn to her warmth like a moth to flame. Vivian gathered her close, all Parisian grace even in this moment of shared vulnerability. Her white hair caught what little light filtered through the high windows, her perfect posture unchanged despite the late hour and empty wine bottles.

She held Riley with the same elegant precision she brought to everything - one arm curved protectively around the younger woman's shoulders, her other hand moving to touch Catherine's ruby ring with practiced grace. Even now, even here, she carried that magnetic presence that had once made Marie catch her breath in civil rights meetings, that had drawn Catherine's camera lens away from her investigations.

The prop room was quiet save for Riley's soft breathing and the distant pulse of the city. Vivian's devastating smile softened as she looked down at the sleeping woman in her arms. Another protégé, another fighter drawn into her orbit like so many before. But this one... this one carried echoes of her own youth, her own awakening to resistance.

She remembered another night, another embrace. Being seven years old, curled against her mother's chest while their resistance cell whispered in the shadows. Marguerite's perfume - the same gardenia scent Vivian wore now, passed down like their methods of defiance - had mixed with the smell of burned papers and midnight fear.

What would her mother make of this moment? Of her daughter, now ninety-two but still turning heads, still wielding elegance like a weapon, holding the next generation of resistance? What would that fierce group of fighters say if they could see their beloved America - that shining hope they'd dreamed of in occupied Paris - now falling to fascism just as France had fallen?

Riley stirred in her sleep, making a small sound of distress. Vivian's arm tightened instinctively, her French silk blouse a poor shield against the nightmares to come. Tomorrow would arrive too soon, bringing Harrison and his digital storm troopers, his tablets full of enemies' names, his powers backed by Project 2025's blueprint for a new reich.

But for now, in the darkness, Vivian LaFarge held tomorrow's hope against her heart and remembered her mother's words, whispered in a Paris basement: "We fight not because we know we'll win, ma chérie, but because to do otherwise is to lose something more precious than life itself."

She pressed a kiss to Riley's temple, her lipstick leaving a perfect crimson mark like a blessing, like a brand. Through the windows, she watched the city's lights flicker like warning fires, like resistance signals, like hope going dark. And still she kept her vigil, straight-backed and elegant even in her fear, watching the shadows for monsters that had never really gone away.

*To be continued...*

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A Note on Reality

The OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual is not fiction. Declassified in 2008, it was created by the Office of Strategic Services in 1944 to teach ordinary citizens how to disrupt enemy operations using nothing but inefficiency and frustration. Its lessons in bureaucratic warfare remain startlingly relevant today and it sits in the CIA's archives, a testament to how people just like us once changed the course of history through simple, daily acts:

The complete manual can be found in the CIA's own archives:

CIA.gov - OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)

Here I am sitting at my desk, coffee in hand, cat attempting to sit on the keyboard, and somewhere out there—across fifty states and sixty-five countries—people are reading She Who Stirs the Storm. That’s right. You, me, and an entire global club of people who understand that resistance isn’t always about storming the castle. Sometimes, it’s about waiting at the gate with an ironclad piece of bureaucratic paperwork and an air of serene determination.

What if we all realized that resistance doesn’t have to be loud, chaotic, or theatrical? That it can be patient, deliberate, and backed by a slightly yellowed WWII manual? That sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is follow the rules exactly as written—so well that the system has no choice but to trip over its own shoelaces?

And sometimes, it’s just talking quietly and being still in the moment. Accepting what is while still working on what will be. Because here’s the thing: the loudest changes don’t always come from the noisiest people. Sometimes, they come from the ones who nod, smile, and quietly turn the tide.

I appreciate every single one of you. Gloria