Chapter 11: Escape from Palm Beachonia
Chapter 11: Escape from Palm Beachonia
The walls had always been the proudest achievement of Palm Beachonia.
Thirty feet high, gold-painted, crowned with statues of eagles holding golf clubs — the Wall was supposed to be the ultimate symbol of triumph:
Triumph over outsiders.
Triumph over doubt.
Triumph over the unbearable uncertainty of reality.
But walls, like dreams and batteries, don’t last forever.
By the time King Donald’s last broadcast flickered into oblivion, the Wall was crumbling in spirit, if not yet in substance.
And the people of Palm Beachonia, once so proud to be locked inside, began to see the Wall for what it truly was:
A prison built from wishful thinking and bad credit.
The First Escape Attempts
The earliest escape attempts were sad and tentative:
A group of retirees tried to charter an Uber to freedom, only to realize the Wall’s checkpoints had been abandoned and nobody was coming to pick them up.
A self-proclaimed "Freedom Engineer" attempted to build a catapult out of golf carts and beach umbrellas.
He launched himself thirty feet into the air—and thirty feet straight back down into a decorative fountain.Children dug "Freedom Tunnels" under the Wall with plastic beach shovels, selling passage for three cans of Freedom Pudding and a half-charged vape pen.
For a brief, glorious week, the beaches were dotted with Homemade Raft Districts:
Inflatable flamingos lashed together with fishing line.
Pool noodles strung into barges.
Paddleboards covered in duct tape, prayer, and MAGA stickers.
The rafts often capsized within sight of the Wall, their passengers yelling heroic slogans like:
"Tell the truth about us! We existed!"
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to eat!"
"Somebody save my Gucci flip-flops!"
The Great Truck Exodus
The Truck Lords, seeing the writing on the Wall (literally—someone had spray-painted "SO IT GOES" across Gate 4), launched their own plan.
Big Earl of the Red Hat Riders declared:
"We’re taking the Wall down the American way — WITH HORSEPOWER!"
A massive convoy of monster trucks gathered at the South Wall, engines howling, tires the size of moon craters.
The plan was simple:
Hit the Wall.
Hit it harder.
Hit it until either the Wall fell or the trucks disintegrated.
For several hours, Palm Beachonia became a roaring, smoking demolition derby.
The first wave crashed into the Wall and immediately bounced backward, flipping spectacularly into Freedom Markets and Loyalty Kiosks.
The second wave made a dent.
The third wave, aided by a clever use of surplus fertilizer and a misguided catapult attempt, cracked a visible fissure.
Onlookers cheered as the Wall shuddered under the assault.
But the victory was short-lived.
With the Wall destabilized, entire sections began to collapse—not outward, but inward,
burying several trucks, the last operational Freedom Gas Station, and half of Big Earl’s convoy in a glittering avalanche of bad decisions.
Still, a hole remained.
An opening.
And through that ragged breach, the citizens of Palm Beachonia poured, blinking into the bright, confusing world beyond.
The Flight
The exodus was not orderly.
Some fled in monster trucks.
Some fled on foot, dragging roller suitcases through the ruins.
Some rode inflatable unicorn rafts across the canals, saluting ironically as they passed the crumbling Wall.
They carried what they could:
Precious stashes of canned cheese.
Tattered loyalty cards.
Souvenir Trump bobbleheads, which would soon flood eBay as rare "historical artifacts."
A few die-hards remained, clinging to the dream.
One man sat cross-legged atop a fallen section of Wall, playing a broken banjo and singing:
"Palm Beachonia forever,
Until we meet in Mar-a-Lago, in the sky..."
But most were ready to leave.
They slipped through the breaches, trudged through the swampy grasslands beyond, and reentered the bewildered world they had so long declared themselves superior to.
The United States, to its credit, was remarkably forgiving.
No trials.
No mass arrests.
No walls rebuilt to keep them out.
Instead, Palm Beachonians were offered:
Peanut butter sandwiches.
Paper maps explaining how voting worked.
Counseling services for "Post-Reality Stress Disorder."
Some adapted quickly.
Some struggled.
But none ever spoke too loudly about where they had come from, or what they had believed.
Palm Beachonia faded into myth faster than even the historians could catalog it.
The Final View
Weeks later, aerial drones captured the final image of Palm Beachonia:
Crumbling golden walls.
Abandoned trucks rusting in the sun.
Tattered flags whipping like defeated dreams.
At the heart of it all, the Royal Keep stood silent and empty, a mausoleum to loyalty unearned and glory imagined.
The wind whispered through the ruins, carrying away the last slogans, the last songs, the last ridiculous promises.
There was no one left to listen.
And somewhere, far across the gray Atlantic, on a battered golf course under a curtain of Scottish rain, a lone figure waved to the mist and called it a parade.