Of Your Peers

I wrote this story several years ago while processing some emotions I didn’t yet know what to do with. Writing gave me somewhere to put them.

I never intended to share it.

But lately, I keep finding pieces of it outside the document.

In the scrutiny of women who come forward. In the examination of their clothes, their histories, their tears, the time it took them to speak. In comment sections where strangers decide what a woman deserved before they finish reading what happened to her.

There is something horribly familiar about a witch hunt conducted by people who believe themselves qualified to recognize a witch.

In 2024, pastor Joel Webbon advocated publicly executing women who make false rape accusations. I keep thinking about how readily people decide an accusation is false. How a woman’s inability to look at the man who hurt her becomes evidence against her. How crying makes her manipulative, silence makes her suspicious, and having a past apparently means surrendering the right to say no.

Then came the Pentagon’s announcement that it planned to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad.

Hasan is paraplegic. The proposed broadcast would show a firing squad killing a man who cannot walk.

Whether you believe capital punishment is right or wrong is beside the point I am making here. Public executions are barbaric. I do not want this country putting them on our screens and calling it justice.

And I keep thinking about the soldiers on the other side of those rifles. About asking them to pull a trigger for a livestream. About their wives, their children, and their communities being able to watch. About the recording remaining available long after everyone involved has to find a way to live with it.

It is so beyond messed up.

That has been bothering me all week. The willingness to make a person’s death something we can open on our phones, watch, share, and discuss beneath the recording. As if we don’t already see enough death and destruction in our live feeds.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve kept thinking about this story sitting in my files. When I wrote it, it seemed far-fetched.

The story takes place in a dystopian future where a jury of your peers has been replaced by a nationwide audience. Trials are livestreamed, and every adult U.S. citizen can vote guilty or not guilty. The majority decides the verdict. Then the same audience chooses the losing party’s punishment.

When I wrote it, I was trying to process the fear of being disbelieved alongside something harder to put into words: the possibility that people could believe what happened to you and still decide you deserved it. Or that the person who hurt you didn’t deserve to face the consequences.

I gave that audience the power to choose what happened next.

I never intended to share the result. But after this week, leaving it in my files feels harder than putting it here.

A SHORT STORY

Of Your Peers

Before the broadcast, the technician asked Scarlett whether she wanted the tissues visible. “Some people find them sympathetic,” he said. “Some people think they’re staged.”

Scarlett looked at the box.

“We can keep them beneath the table,” he offered.

“Okay,” Scarlett said. “I’m worried I’ll throw up.”

The technician glanced from her to the tissues. “Do you want the box on the table or underneath it?” he asked, ignoring the rest.

“Underneath,” she said, trembling and trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

He tucked the box beside her knee, then adjusted the camera until her hands were in the frame. Across the room, Grant was having powder brushed onto his forehead.

The video was four minutes and eleven seconds long. She had watched it once with the investigator and once with the prosecution. Both times, she had turned her chair toward the wall and sobbed before it finished.

Now it played above her, large enough for everyone in the studio to see. The timestamp showed 8:43 p.m. Most of the office lights were off. Scarlett stood beside the conference table with her bag over her shoulder. Grant stood between her and the door.

On the recording, she stepped to one side. He moved with her.

“I need to go.”

He reached for her. She pushed his hand away.

“No.”

When he caught her wrist, she twisted toward the door. Her bag slipped from her shoulder. She shoved against his chest, then struck at his face when he forced her back against the table.

“Stop. I said no.”

“Fight me again and I’ll fucking kill you.”

Her voice stopped. On the recording, her free hand remained pressed against his chest. Then she lowered it.

“Please,” she said.

Grant said her name as though she were being unreasonable.

Beside the prosecutor, Scarlett watched herself look toward the open doorway. She remembered the empty desks beyond it. She had called goodnight to the last person leaving forty minutes earlier.

The recording came from the company’s conference-room security camera. It saved automatically to an off-site server. Investigators had recovered the complete file, including the audio. No missing frames. No disputed identity. Her refusal, her resistance, his threat, and what he did afterward were all on the recording.

The prosecutor had explained all this before the broadcast. “We have unusually strong evidence,” she had said.

Scarlett had held on to unusually. Now she held the tissue beneath the table, trying not to look his way. Trying not to be sick.

Along the bottom of the screen, the first public responses appeared.

• why is she looking down
• because she knows
• convenient place to start the video what happened before? lovers quarrel?
• We just saw him rape her.
• everyone else went home why did she stay?

The moderator raised one finger to his earpiece. “For viewers joining us, the complete evidentiary package is available through the blue tab.”

The blue tab pulsed. Most viewers stayed on the broadcast.

Grant looked into the camera when he answered questions. He had been advised to do that. Scarlett had been advised to look at the moderator, but the moderator sat beside Grant, and every time she lifted her eyes, she saw his hands resting on the table. She knew the watch on his left wrist. She had felt its clasp against her face. Heard the sound of it ticking as he assaulted her.

“Ms. Bishop,” the moderator said, “citizens have submitted a question about your reporting delay.”

“Okay.”

“You waited six months.”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain that?”

She had practiced this answer. In the prosecutor’s office, she had managed to say all of it. Here she got as far as, “I thought if I could just go to work and keep doing things normally…”

Her breath caught. The moderator waited.

“I didn’t want it to have happened. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

On the public feed, someone isolated the moment her face crumpled. The clip reached a million shares before she finished answering.

• six months to get her story straight
• look him in the eye if your telling the truth
• im a woman and i would of reported immediately
• she barely fought back she wanted it
• He threatened to kill her. It is on the recording.
• the crying is a little much. what a joke.

Grant’s attorney submitted photographs from Scarlett’s public accounts. A low-cut red dress at her sister’s birthday dinner. A bathing suit. A picture with a former boyfriend whose face had been circled. He had also been a coworker of hers.

“These images are not evidence of consent,” the prosecutor said.

“They speak to the complainant’s credibility and lifestyle.”

The moderator permitted them. The red dress filled the screen. The image zoomed in on her chest.

Scarlett remembered buying it on sale. Her sister had taken the picture inside the restaurant bathroom because the wallpaper had little lobsters on it. She remembered laughing while they tried to keep the hand dryer out of the frame.

• you dont wear that for yourself
• how many men has she seduced before this one
• She could have slept with every man in that office and still said no to him. No means no.
• women like her make the rest of us look bad
• None of this changes the video. He did it.

Voting opened at nine. Every verified adult U.S. citizen received one ballot. They could revise it until the window closed. Two buttons appeared beneath the broadcast: GUILTY and NOT GUILTY. The totals rose beside them.

At nine seventeen, Scarlett stopped watching. At nine twenty-three, the prosecutor reached beneath the table and found her hand. At nine thirty, the moderator thanked the country.

Sixty-eight percent had voted NOT GUILTY. Grant closed his eyes. His attorney put an arm around him. His wife smiled and hugged him. Other coworkers gathered to congratulate him.

For a moment Scarlett thought she could leave. She wanted to run. She stood halfway, reaching for the bag at her feet. The prosecutor tightened her grip.

Across the screen appeared a message: ACQUITTAL CONFIRMED.

Then another: RECIPROCAL CLAIM ACTIVATED.

Scarlett had voted for the administration that introduced the public trial system. When the referendum followed, she had voted for that, too.

She had liked the promise that no crime would disappear behind closed doors. She had liked being told justice would finally belong to everyone. A true jury of your peers. In a video she posted before the election, she had said women deserved to feel safe reporting what happened to them.

She had understood reciprocal accountability to mean people who deliberately fabricated evidence. She wanted to limit false reports because she felt they hurt true victims.

The investigator had explained the actual rule before she signed. “If the claim fails, you become the respondent.”

“But there’s a video of the crime.”

“Yes,” he had said. “There is.”

The sentencing feed opened beneath the same case number. Grant’s name disappeared from the heading. Scarlett’s remained.

Someone found her election video. Soon it played beside the verdict.

• she voted for this administration!
• So did I. I thought we would be safer.
• well heres what you voted for
• I voted against it. She still does not deserve this.
• maybe women shouldnt vote then
• my wife voted how i told her no problems here

Citizens could nominate penalties. The highest-ranked lawful proposal would proceed to a final vote. For the first hour, compulsory labor led.

Then someone posted an old poll asking women whether they would rather encounter a man or a bear alone in the woods. Someone put Scarlett’s red dress beside it. Someone wrote:

• let her choose the bear

“I never said that,” Scarlett told the prosecutor.

“I know.”

“I didn’t even answer that thing.”

“I know.”

By midnight, the nomination had a name: THE BEAR CHALLENGE.

The proposal entered review. Wildlife custody, containment, broadcast rights, and survival provisions were assessed. The amended version specified one bear, one enclosed arena, and one opportunity for release. If Scarlett survived ten minutes, her sentence would be considered served.

It passed with seventy-one percent.

They kept her for six days. On the fifth, a woman came to fit her with a microphone.

“Can you lift your chin?”

Scarlett lifted it. The woman threaded the wire beneath her collar.

“What kind of bear?” Scarlett asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Has it been fed?”

The woman’s hands paused. Scarlett had heard the guards talking outside her door. One had asked whether withholding food was necessary. The other had told him to read the approved conditions.

“Has it?” Scarlett asked again.

“I only handle audio.”

After checking the connection, the woman gave her a cup of water. Scarlett held it in both hands.

“Will my mother have to watch?”

“No one has to watch.”

The arena smelled of bleach beneath something older and sour. There was nowhere to climb. Scarlett noticed that first. The walls curved inward at the top. The doors lay flush against them. Even the camera housings were behind protective glass. A clock above the exit showed a ten-minute timer.

Behind a steel partition, something moved.

“Can you hear me?” a voice asked through the ceiling speakers.

“Yes,” Scarlett said.

“Please confirm you understand the release condition.”

She stared at the exit.

“Ms. Bishop?”

“Yes.”

The clock started. The partition lifted. For several seconds, the bear stayed where it was.

Scarlett backed toward the opposite wall. She could see its ribs when it turned. Above the exit, the clock changed to nine minutes and fifty-five seconds.

“Please,” she said. “Please stop this.”

The camera tightened on her face.

“I’ve never been in trouble. You can look it up. I work. I pay my taxes. I’ve never hurt anybody.”

The bear moved along the partition, sniffing the concrete.

Scarlett looked toward the glass above her. She couldn’t see anyone behind it.

“Somebody’s there. I know somebody’s there. Please open the door.”

• Open it. Please. Someone must be able to open it.
• why is she telling us her resume lol
• she said please guys guess we gotta let her out

Outside the enclosure, the host began explaining the species to the audience.

Scarlett pressed both hands together beneath her chin. “God, please. Please help me. Forgive me of all my sins. I love my family. Please save me.”

The bear turned toward her voice.

She stopped speaking. For a moment, the microphone caught only her breathing. Then she looked directly into the camera.

“I’m sorry I reported it. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

• THERE IT IS she admits it
• She said she regrets reporting. She did not say she lied.
• same thing
• i choose the bear they said stupid woman

“I wish I hadn’t. I’ll do whatever you want me to. Please.”

Her apology appeared in the live captions. Someone clipped it before she finished speaking.

The camera followed her as she edged toward the exit. She tried to find a handle, a seam wide enough for her fingers, anything she could pull.

“Is that what you need? For me to say I’m sorry? I’m sorry.”

• thats better
• all we wanted was women to learn some respect
• I’m a woman who voted for this administration. I am begging you to stop.
• you got what you wanted
• Does that mean she deserves to die?

The bear crossed the space between them. Scarlett flattened herself against the door.

“No. Please. Somebody help me.”

When it reached her, she raised her arms over her head. The impact knocked her sideways. She tried to get up, slipped, and reached again for the door.

• someone make sure she doesnt hurt the bear
• It is killing her, and you are worried she might hurt it?

The camera zoomed in.

• WHY ARE THEY ZOOMING IN?
• Oh, my God. Turn it off.
• there you go thats your bear
• She cannot get away. Let her out.
• You want a man to save her?

Blood marked the concrete beneath her hand. Scarlett dragged it across the bottom of the door, searching for the gap she had been unable to find while standing.

“Help,” she said.

The microphone caught it.

“Please help.”

One camera held on her face. Another moved closer to the blood spreading across the floor. The broadcast switched between them.

• as a man im just saying she hasnt said no
• She said, “Stop.” Now she is begging for help.
• stop isnt no sweetheart
• You can hear her. We can all hear her.
• She said, “No,” too.

Scarlett called for her mother.

• Please make this stop. Open the door. Help her.
• guess she dont like her choice now lol
• I’m a mother. I cannot imagine hearing my daughter calling for me while people stand outside and let this happen.
• should of raised her better then
• men are done listening to women cry about everything
• Please. There are people right outside that door.

Scarlett tried to speak again. Her mouth moved, but the host was explaining how much time remained.

• turn his mic off we cant hear her screams
• shes quieter now 😂
• this is what I voted for

The camera stayed close enough to show her trying to take another breath.

• her moms watching? thats brutal 😂
• Her mother can hear this. Please cut the feed.
• should of thought about that before ruining his life
• HE IS ALIVE.

At six minutes and forty-two seconds, Scarlett’s hand stopped reaching for the door.

The clock continued.

For twenty-three seconds, the broadcast held the close-up.

At six minutes and nineteen seconds, the clock stopped. The host waited for confirmation through his earpiece. Then he thanked viewers for their participation.

The feed went black.

The comment field remained open.

• That animal was clearly starving. Whoever authorized this needs to be prosecuted.
• NOW you believe in prosecution?
• i voted labor dont put this on all of us
• Her mother is in these comments. Have some respect.
• she had ten minutes that was the deal
• she shouldnt have lied about rape
• There was a video. There was a fucking video.
• did anyone screen record it i cant find the feed
• blue tab
• its gone
• someone send me the last part
• Rest in peace, Scarlett.
• You voted for this. I can see it on your profile.
• I didn’t think they would actually do it.
• wheres the replay i missed it
• You want a replay? My daughter just saw that.
• good. teach her young that she should know her place.
• has grant made a statement
• he dont owe anyone anything
• This country hates women.
• then leave
• You want all women to die or leave?
• no just shut up and submit
• I’m her mother. Please stop sending me the recording. Please stop sharing.
• your daughter is a slut! a dead slut.