I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of my blue eyes, because I felt blue before I met them. Or is it because my hair’s natural colour oddly turned blue through the years?
I grew up in the Rajona District Orphanage. We were with lots and food was scarce. The Head Mistress divided us in groups of 10 and let us fight. The winner was allowed one decent meal. The losers had to starve another day. Sharing your food was forbidden. If you were caught, her Slaves would tighten you up on the pole in the middle of the playground, or should I say “fighting arena”. Then they’d fetch her whip. 15 whipping for some water. 25 for one slice of bread. 80 for a piece of meat.
“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” their motto was and unfortunately still is. If you were killed during combat or starved to death, you didn’t deserve living in the first place. The orphanage is only meant for the strongest. For the survivors. Everyone else is just a waste of their precious time.
The government is determent to win the Great War and “winning just isn’t possible with a bunch of losers”, every propaganda poster in the public orphanage says. That’s why they only invest in feeding and housing the best.
I’m one of the lucky ones to get out of that orphanage alive. Although, “lucky”… I’ve seen many children die. Of course, I revolted. I tried to save them, but I just wasn’t strong enough to handle those Slaves. All I ended up with was me getting another round of whipping. That didn’t stop me from trying, though.
When I turned 17, the Head Mistress’ whipping didn’t bother me anymore. I had become immune to the pain. This was my chance to take over the orphanage. I’d get rid of the tyranny for once and for all!
I became a threat for the Head Mistress. But before I could execute my plan, she put me in solitary confinement. Days passed by. Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. I don’t know how long I’ve been there. I completely got disorientated. “Is it Monday? Or was it Wednesday?” There was no way of telling. There wasn’t a single regularity I could grasp on. Sometimes they daily gave me some crumbles to eat, sometimes I had to go what seemed weeks with a half glass of deliberately dirtied water.
I loured rats with the crumbles of bread. I gained their trust. Then I took one of the bricks that had fallen down of the ceiling and smashed the slowest rat’s head with it. I broke a piece of the glass and used it to skin the little fellow before devouring its corpse. Rat tastes heavenly if you haven’t had a meal in a while, but it actually tasted horrible looking back. Rats’ flesh is tough and not much. The organs have a ghastly smell and the tongue is like rubber. Unlike what you’d think, the eyes are slimy, but tender. Actually, the only good part of a rat is its tail: fleshy, soft and eatable without cooking. It feels like candy melting in your mouth, in comparison to the rest of the body. The other rats avoided me after seeing what I did to their friend. I had to wait three generations before I could eat rat again. Luckily those creatures reproduce fast.
I made a bowl out of the bones and used a mixture of fur and bird poop to make it waterproof on the inside. When it rained, I stood on my toes on the pile of fallen down ceiling, my hand reaching out of the barred window trying to catch some rain drops in the bowl. I had to be careful to not get caught by the Slaves: they’d throw all the water in my face before destroying my hidden stash of rat bone bowls. Then I could start over: gaining the rats’ trust, smashing their skulls, skinning their bodies, collecting bird poop and start fiddling around behind the Slaves’ backs. Did you know it takes two moons to make a medium sized water holding bowl? Not to mention all the time and rain it takes to finally fill it…
But do you know what the worst part of solitary confinement is? Not talking to a soul. Not seeing anyone for so long… It just breaks a man. How I dreamed about seeing the outside world again! I didn’t even mind getting back in the fighting arena, as long as I just could be in the presence of something that wasn’t a rat.
Every single day I imagined long philosophical debates with people who didn’t try to kill me. With people who -for once- were nice to me. And every night I dreamt about children walking hand in hand with their parents. I dreamt about girls selling flowers on corners, bakers making bread. Kids were playing and people singing around the most beautiful fountain you’d ever seen, the lantern lights dancing on the water.
One tends to loose oneself in lonely situations like this. If you don’t watch out, you’ll go mad. And I did go mad. I went mad every time they catapulted me back to the harsh reality. If it weren’t because they threw a bucket of ice cold water over me, a scream of Death coming from the playground shivered through my spine, making me remember the fear and despair in the children’s eyes before drawing their last breath. “I have to save them!” flashed through my miserable mind. Almost simultaneously, voices whispered in my ear: “You can’t save them. You’re too weak. You can’t even escape from this place. You’re just a puppet, dancing whenever the Head Mistress yanks the cords. Let them die. See how the life slowly drips out of their tiny little bodies. Hear their desperate last scream for justice. It’s all your fault. And there is nothing you can do about it. So sit back and relax. Fall asleep on the bittersweet melody of their cries.”
“No! This is not my fault. The war has separated them from their parents. The government put them in this Hell’s Hole, not me! I’m their only hope. I have to get out of here alive and save their souls!” My words echoed through the orphanage. Crows cawed agreeing. Quick short steps in the hallway answered my yell. Clearly I’ve had alarmed the Head Mistress. I straightened my back and started to assemble the pieces of my broken body. “I’m not anymore going under without a fight.” I stood up, my eyes focused on the door ready to attack. Ready to escape.
The small fat pig entered the room, accompanied by five of her Slaves. “So, number 93, you think this is a Hell’s Hole?” she said with a sneer. “You think you can save all those little brats? You think you’d survive outside these walls? Let’s see what you think of the outside world!” She signed her Slaves to grab me. I struggled, but this solitary confinement had weakened me too much. I had to give in and let them take me with them. They dragged me through the hallway to what seemed to be the only window in the orphanage looking out at the District. It was covered with a thin layer of dust, making it difficult to see through. One of the Slaves took out a handkerchief and cleaned a round piece of the window, just enough to have a glance at what was on the other side of the glass.
The streets were deserted. On the small bakery at the corner of the street hang a big “out of business” sign. Houses were destroyed. The fountain I dreamed about had been turned into merely a puddle of reddish dirt. The sun shone pale on the once so livingly Rajona District.
The pig pushed my head against the window glass. “Do you still think those brats are better of outside these walls? Even a piece of scum like you wouldn’t survive a day! This Hell’s Hole is Heaven compared to the outside world. This is what war does with a country. You all have to be happy we took you in, unthankful little rat! If you want to ‘save their souls’, go and end this war.”
My last bit of hope shattered. If the whole country was like this… “At least I now know why my parents never came to get me out of here…” I kept staring at the scars war had left behind.
(image found at: www.myrealms.net)
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