Broken Earth

My Story

My story starts, as most do, with a beating. In this case I was on the receiving end of the beating, although, as you will soon see, I stop taking hits, and began dishing them out by then end of my life.

My earliest memories are of waiting in queues. That's it: long lines, standing next to gradually diminishing numbers of family members, waiting to board a plane or have a medical check up or board a boat or get a shot or board a bus or have a man with "DOKTER" on his sign look at my teeth.

I was shuffled around so much in my younger years, I can't even remember what country I'm from, but people around me say I have an English accent. This is useful to me, because I ended up in the USA, so people tended to like me more. My other advantageous traits included being white, and being male.

Now, normally, I wouldn't want these to be advantages, not at all, but when everything starts falling apart, people went crazy and tried to revert to the dark ages (something which, it seemed, was already happening), and I saw more women than I could count be suddenly dragged from a line and taken to be a slave or worse to some warlord, or people of colour being told to go to the back of the line, no matter the situation. I was spared these injustices, and so perhaps lived when I didn't deserve to.

In any case, there I was, lying on the dusty ground, being kicked by four or five men, rolling around as I tried to absorb the shock of their blows. I had queued without knowing what I was queueing up for: it had turned out to be the use of a woman, a poor, tired down, groaning, pained woman. The queue had been long. I had told that official that, as she clearly didn't want me, I didn't want her, and that no one else should either. Thus began an interesting kind of debate, where I calmly explained my point of view while he screamed that he was going to kill me; this was cut short when he cracked his hand sharply across my face.

I stopped talking, but he wasn't done: he kicked me sharply in the shin, then drove his first deep into my stomach. At no point did I attempt to fight back: refusing to rape someone was a minor crime in comparison to raising a hand to one of the warlord's men, and I knew that it'd soon be over. Or rather, I thought it would be.

The official, seeing that I was unperturbed by his blows (it came to me later that perhaps I should have cowered a little, maybe with a touch of grovelling), called over the nearest guards to join in. Together they brought me to the floor, not even stopping then. As I lay there, being beaten, I made a promise to myself: no more. After this, I would leave this wretched community, and start my own life, out in the wild, with my own laws.

Assuming, of course, that I managed to survive this ordeal.