Q Report: My Time in Camp Iguana (2026–2069)

“You can survive anything if you can narrate it.”
– Unknown prisoner, Iguana Camp Library, Vol. 3, page 404

 7/4/2071

PROLOGUE: THE POST THAT ENDED THE BLOG

I was abducted on a Tuesday morning.

The sun was still red with shame, peeking through carbon-choked skies like a guilty father who knew he’d left us too long. I was trying to schedule a dental appointment. I’d written a blog post the night before, an aggressively mediocre piece (I thought) titled “Donald Trump Is the Flesh-Toned Hemorrhoid on America’s Inflamed Colon”. It riffed gonzo on the inevitable intersection between fascism, fiber deficiency, and Trump worship. I’d done better. I’d certainly done worse.

But somehow this one struck a nerve in the pasty underbelly of the regime.

At exactly 9:17 AM, the ceiling caved in. Four agents in full MAGA-capped tactical gear burst through like Kool-Aid men of the apocalypse. They shot my cat, unplugged my router, zip-tied me in a prayer position, and stuffed me in a sack embroidered “MAKE AMERICA SILENT AGAIN.”

No trial. No phone call. Just a high-speed blacksite shuttle ride courtesy of Delta Detainment Airlines, straight to Camp Iguana, Guantanamo Bay’s lesser-known and unpleasantly tropical death pit, where they store the comedians, bloggers, performance artists, queer theorists, and anyone who dared question the wisdom of the golden calf with the cotton candy hairdo.

That was 2026.

WELCOME TO CAMP IGUANA
A travel guide for the wayward dissident

Nestled on the picturesque southeastern tip of Cuba’s bloodstained shores, overlooking the historic Bay of Pigs, Camp Iguana was once a juvenile wing of the larger Guantanamo Bay detention facility. But when President-For-Life Trump rebranded the original Gitmo into the “TRUMP FREEDOM OASIS™,” Camp Iguana became the overflow lot for people who told one too many truths—or one too hilariously well.

The camp is surrounded by three layers of electrified razor wire topped chain link fence, each with its own flavor of rust, and adorned with tasteful signage reading “THOUGHTS ARE TREASON” and “RE-EDUCATION IS RECREATION.” The guards wear Hawaiian shirts over Kevlar, and most are addicted to a sedative called MAGA-ZINE, which makes them docile enough to watch us rot but aggressive enough to beat us for blinking wrong.

Accommodations are minimal but memorable. Each prisoner is granted a personalized aluminum bucket for all elimination needs (labeled “PATRIOT PAIL”), and a two-inch thick mat with the words “SLEEP IS CONSENT” emblazoned across it in faded gold ink. If you’re lucky, your mat has run out of batteries and no longer screams at you.

The food is inspired. Wait, no, EXPIRED. On Tuesdays we were fed “Freedom Stew,” which tasted like cornmeal boiled in mop water and was likely made of mechanically reduced school lunches from defunded districts. Thursdays brought “Melania Mush,” a pale gruel of indeterminate origin that was best consumed with nostrils clogged with nearby dirt.

Daily activities included:

• Mandatory Flag Worship at 0600 and 1800 hours
  
  

• Freedom Yoga, where you scream apologies into the sun until your spine realigns
  
  

• The Tucker Carlson Hour, which was mostly gaslighting peppered with ads
  
  

• “Water Is For Winners”, a game where the top 3 informers received drinking water for the day
  
  

DECADE ONE: SURVIVAL AS TREASON

The first ten years were about not dying.

I met my first cage neighbor, Ramesh, on day 5. He had been disappeared for publishing a children’s book that lightly implied America was not the center of the universe. His illustration of a raccoon climbing a ladder to meet alien cats was deemed cultural treason. Ramesh was beautiful. Smart. Knew seven languages. We’d play language games through the fence using fragments of chewed plastic.

He died in 2029. Shot for smiling.

The first Trump died the same year, before cloning began. We were given special hats to celebrate, but the hats contained tracking chips. Six of us were vanished the next day for “dancing too freely.”

I wrote plays in my head. A whole trilogy called The Silence Opera. Never wrote them down. Didn’t dare. My memory became my hard drive. I built whole worlds in the dirt with sticks, as children do when there’s no budget for toys or rights.

In year 8, I was officially listed as dead. My Social Security Number was reassigned to a Roomba that managed a Carl’s Jr. in Arizona.

DECADE TWO: HOPE IS ILLEGAL

The mid 2030s were the worst.

It was during this time that Camp Iguana was rebranded as “The Harmony Complex,” complete with mandatory jazzercise and public beatings choreographed to Pulitzer Prize winning musician Kid Rock. We weren’t allowed to say each other’s names anymore, we were numbered. My name became Q-404, which felt like a joke until I realized it was.

The Trump III campaign began during this decade. The slogan was “FETUSES FIRST.” All citizens were required to wear fetal helmets. America became a womb cosplay convention.

Books were burned on livestream. Elon Musk annexed the moon. Texas declared itself a Christian interstellar kingdom. Camp Iguana got Wi-Fi, but it only streamed reruns of The Apprentice and Wheel of Freedom, a dystopian game show where prisoners spun for punishment.

I tried to kill myself three times, failing each. Once by plastic spoon, once by drowning in my Patriot Pail, and once by antagonizing a guard to shoot me. That last one earned me a year in solitary with nothing but a Trump puppet that screamed when I didn’t laugh at its jokes.

I found love in year 17. They were known as V-8. Like the awful juice. We weren’t allowed to touch, but we developed a language of glances and toe-taps. They taught me how to hum again.

They were taken in year 19. I still hum our tune.

DECADE THREE: THE AGE OF IRONY

Strange stuff happened in the 2040s.

The guards stopped believing.

Some were younger than the camp itself, kids who grew up hearing bedtime stories about the fall of Portland and the legendary Coup of Bernie Sanders. They'd whisper apologies when they passed us. They couldn't believe we could actually read. One guard slipped me a real book—Slaughterhouse-Five. I wept for four days and couldn’t stop saying “so it goes.”

Revolution was whispering through the fences as they slowly lost power.

I began telling stories again. Q Reports. Made-up broadcasts to an imaginary world that hadn’t yet burned. I'd climb the latrine tower at night and whisper into the hurricanes, hoping my voice could ride the wind into some unpoisoned ear.

I had followers. Dozens. We weren’t just detainees anymore. The disappeared. We were characters. Humans. I became a jumpsuit prophet. The guards started quoting me. One carved “TELL THE PAST” into their arm before disappearing into the jungle.

I knew the end was coming. But I didn’t know how fast.

DECADE FOUR: THE RAINBOW FLAME

On June 21, 2069, the Trans Liberation Army came from the sea.

We heard the drums first. Then the songs. Then the fire.

They wore armor made of mirrors. They wielded hammers wrapped in Persian silk and ARs painted with outlawed poetry. They breached the remaining fence like it was paper. Every standing structure was torn to the ground with iron and rage. The sound system played Born This Way on repeat as they liberated the living and gave funerary rites to the lost but not forgotten.

The final act was both carnal and sacred. Rage and celebration interwoven in a ritual of rutting and screaming on the corpse-pile of fascism’s final outpost. It wasn’t pornography. It was proof of life. Of survival. Of truth unbroken by a half century of lies.

The TLA found me under the latrine tower. They lifted me onto their shoulders. My jumpsuit torn, beard clotted with mange, my teeth like broken tombstones.

I was free.

EPILOGUE: WELCOME TO THE RUINS OF AMERICA
A final travel guide, for the brave

The former United States no longer has borders. The West Coast is a series of anarcho-syndicalist city-states running on solar punk barter economies. The Midwest is a scorched memorial. The South is wild and free and dangerous as hell, run by queers, witches, and gun-toting semi-pacifists who’ll hug you after they test your pronouns.

D.C. is underwater. Mar-a-Lago a coral reef. Trump statues have been melted into memorial latrines.

Camp Iguana?

Gone.

In its place is a peace garden. Tall vines of history. Tomatoes fat with memory. A plaque that reads:

“Here stood a cage. It held prophets, writers, lovers, and fools.
Here it fell, torn down by the children of those it tried to erase.
You stand on sacred ground.
Walk with care.”

If you’re reading this in the past, don’t be scared. Be loud. Be strange. Be ungovernable.

The future is watching.

We’re laughing through our tears.

Q