Looking back, I understand my childhood fear regarding something lurking beneath my bed was unfounded, born of a hyperactive thought process fueled by watching old Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney movies. I now know there was never any inherent danger. My bedroom was a safe sanctuary, not a horror hostel. At the time though, I was certain these fears were grounded in reality compounded by bad luck.

Why did I had the misfortune of a monster seeking shelter under my bed? Did it come with the home? If so, was that highlighted in the disclosure documents available from the listing agent? And wouldn’t this qualify as a deal-breaker for my parents when they heard about it while attending the open house?

Or is this punishment for some transgression I may allegedly have had? Thousands of kids in the world misbehaved more than I ever did, four of which were close acquaintances, yet I’m the one who has to fend off being mauled on a regular basis by a demon bidding its time among the accumulating dust bunnies? My displeasure with Brussel sprouts was well documented. But just because I got caught wrapping them in my napkin to covertly toss them in the trash so as not to have to eat them for dinner last year doesn’t mean I deserve being thrown to the proverbial werewolves now.

Granted, my folks comply with every bedtime plea to check below my boxspring, ensuring it is vacant. But the standard parental response of “There’s nothing there. It’s only your imagination running wild,” is not factual reassurance. I wouldn’t ask you to look if I hadn’t heard something nefarious giggling from beneath where I slumber. At best their findings were on par with “Because I said so” as a way to end a discussion without presenting any irrefutable evidence; a dismissive response with no logical foundation just to get me to go to sleep. At worst it was because my mother and father wanted me dead.

Because duh, of course you can’t see a monster once it deploys and subsequently hides behind a cloak of invisibility. I mean, come on people, that’s basic Monster Defense Strategies 101. If they took my concerns seriously, either parent would’ve grabbed the Mossberg and started spraying double-aught buckshot underneath my Serta so I could get a perfect sleep. But who am I to question those in charge. I’m only six. I’ll go it on my own and make do with the tools at my disposal.

In hindsight, the lack of rational thinking at that age reveals my immature naivete. How did I believe that remaining motionless while wrapped in my 250-thread count, Rocky and Bullwinkle sheet was the key to survival? How did I think a bed sheet pulled over my head was adequate camouflage for postponing a creature’s ambush? Such a futile tactic. If my opponent was shrewd enough to avoid detection from adult prying eyes, upon emerging it knows the first place to inspect would be that trembling mass on the bed. With one swipe, my defenses would have been breached.

And then there’s the closet creatures, who were on standby for when the bed monsters went on holiday. Being denizens of the darkness, through evolution they would have understood the fundamentals of turning off an overhead light. A pull chain has one movement with an immediate result when yanked. Even with razor-sharp claws, the CCs had the fine motor skills to turn off the illuminating ceiling light my dad left on for me moments prior so they could carry out their attack concealed by the shadows.

In the end, my parents were correct. There was nothing under my bed. Or in my closet. Or outside my window. Or in the attic, basement and garage. They humored my over-stimulated imagination concocting overblown anxiety. They let this be part of the learning process involving critical thinking and problem solving.

The mind never stops being a persuasive influence. It creates dire situations and then later reminds you, “There was never anything there. It was only me running wild.” No matter what stage of life you’re in, your brain can convince you to believe or not to believe. To conquer or concur. To live and learn.

Still, I can’t help but wonder though, will what I’m afraid of today seem baseless tomorrow? I’ll have to ask the thing that goes bump in the night. It knows all the answers.

HAB-1 was put into low Earth orbit at the end of the year 2121. HAB-1 was no different than any other space station, except for its record setting size and ability to generate artificial gravity. The large spire was adorned with two rings called GravityWalk's. (very descriptive name I know.) At full capacity it can house five hundred crew with the ability to serve as a small staging port to the lunar and martian bases. For the most part, HAB-1 was a corporate scientific facility with the main goal of studying exotic materials that can't be studied on Earth. Now though, HAB-1 has become the place where rookie nauts come to learn how to do space shit before moving to the outer rim bases or HAB-2. (Freshly constructed with an even cooler name too!)

HAB-1 is being decommissioned after ten long years of service to NewGen. NewGen is the main space corp. from Earth. They took over the space agency NASA in the late 2100's after a few billionaires lobbied to privatize space (still trying to figure out how one can privatize space but hey, I am just a lowly scientist what do I know.) Like most corporations, NewGen only cares about one thing -- profit. There have been plenty of scandals around work deaths, horrible work conditions leading to death, and poor accommodations for their employees that (you guessed it) led to even more deaths. Fortunately, some politicians on Earth grew a pair when NewGen proposed the HAB station. Having a giant space needle that could fall to Earth with the same force as a nuclear bomb (gravity is awesome) made a few people a little apprehensive about the lack of government oversight of NewGen. That means the HAB is one of the most refined posts of any NewGen gig. Only the best can work here and given its the safest too, there is a lot of competition. Lucky for me though, my mommy works here.

I am sure you are disappointing I am a nepo-baby. To you I say, "go fuck yourself". I still had to go to MIT and Princeton for physics and work at CERN for five years. (That place is such a dump now.) So, I would say I am pretty qualified to do some bullshit material synthesis work on a dying station being put out to pasture. My mother, Erisia, is a doctor. Worked out of Boston most of my youth either At MGH or teaching at Harvard medical school. (We lived in Waltham but we tell everyone we're from Boston.) My mother always pushed for me to use my brain and pursue science. I wanted to be like my father and pursue music. After my first guitar lesson though, I made the executive decision to try science out. I actually ended up liking the world of physics by the time I started applying to colleges, and my mother really liked the fact I somehow got accepted into MIT. She even called her hair dresser to tell him.

My father was always supportive of whatever I wanted to do. Makes me wonder how a free spirit like him got with such a stiff-dick like my mother. (Something tells me a lot of drugs were involved, given the amount of Grateful Dead records my dad had.) Dad died when I was about fifteen. Some idiot kids stole a car from his university's student parking lot one night. Dad had just finished up teaching a night lesson for his classical guitar students. Those assholes didn't even stop. Cops told us the car was torched the next town over. First time ever I saw my mother cry. I had to move into the dorms the next day. They never ended up finding those asshole kids but I have three Phd's now so who's really winning now?

The shuttle up to HAB-1 is... janky as shit to put it mildly. My mother had done this trip half a dozen times but still prayed on liftoff and docking. I may have said a prayer or two myself. Docking went smooth, deck hands guided us to the spire lift in zero-g with impressive efficiency. I bounced off a few walls on the tube to the spire lift. (It was fun being a human pinball). My mother made one swift leap from the shuttle to the lift, looking at me as if she was about to scold me. "Stop acting like a child Zoey" she said through gritted teeth. (That made me shit myself a bit but my face didn't show it -- I think.) We rode the lift to the main GravWalk, about halfway up the almost kilometer long central spire of HAB-1. The lift opened to a long rectangular hallway with ladder rungs on opposite sides. Climbing down(up?) the ladder was a strange feeling as I could feel my body get heavier as we approached the bottom (top?) of the passageway. We both stepped directly onto a platform, being lowered down on essentially a service elevator once we both made contact.

- - -

The bridge of HAB-1 was our first stop after getting deconed getting off the lift. (I can still smell the Neutro-Spray on my jumpsuit and boy does it not smell like "fresh linen".) Captain Bron stood in the center of the bridge with his hands clasped behind his back. His jumpsuit was a little nicer than the main crews adorning a few strips down the side of each shoulder and buttons instead of zippers and Velcro. He turned as the heavy bulkhead doors slid shut behind us. "Ladies, welcome to HAB-1. I am Captain Bron, it is a pleasure to have you both on board as we make our final rotation." My mother reached out to shake his hand first, "It's an honor, sir. I was the first doctor on HAB's first rotation. It is truly sad to see the old girl go."

"Sad indeed." Bron let his head drop for a moment before turning to me, "You must be our new science officer, correct Ms. Smith?"

"Ms. Smith is my mother, please call me Zoey, sir. It's an absolute trip to be here for the first time!" My mother shot a glare at me. Bron just smirked and let out a soft chuck as he shook my hand, "Pleasure to have you aboard, Zoey. Martin over there will show you to your quarters and give you the grand tour. The HAB has seen better days so try to be careful and listen to Martins safety brief like your life depended on it." Bron let slip a devious smirk and then motioned towards Martin who was just behind us, getting up from his display station. As we began to part ways with Captain Bron a massive tremor shook the bridge violently. Display surfaces blinked sporadically and the sound of groaning metal was almost deafening. I almost went to the floor, as well as my mother. Bron somehow stood more steady. He barked over the yelps and sounds of groaning metal, "Status!" A young woman yelled in response, "Green sir, CMP-12665 test just finished. Looks like an aftershock from the labs. Hull is green, life support green. All other systems coming back online now!"

"Good." Bron said, letting out an almost invisible sigh of relief. The groaning subsided slowly as displays began to stop flickering. I steadied myself on a nearby railing, "What the fuck was that!" I yelled.

"That, Ms. Smith, is why we are all here." Bron smirked again. Martin ran over to my mother and I, "This way ladies." He said in a a monotone low voice. My mother and I shared a glance. (Not a glare this time at least.) Bron turned back to the main display, clasping his hands behind his back as we left the bridge.

This is the end of what I will expand into the prologue of Void Heart. This is a very rough draft after not written anything since high school. Please point out any errors and leave your comments/suggestions! I hope to release a draft of parts of this book regularly. (A few times a month hopefully!) Thank you for reading!

-Massimo (the author I guess...)

Here’s the thing: most people don’t want truth. They want confirmation with whipped cream on top. They don’t want to test their beliefs against the void. They want cozy self-assurance wrapped in a weighted blanket of cherry-picked evidence. The null hypothesis? Never even heard of her.

And that’s the goddamn problem.

The null hypothesis, motherfucker. It’s the beating heart of real learning. It’s the assumption that your brilliant idea might actually be bullshit. That your gut instinct is just gas. That your political belief, your magical food allergy, your grand unifying theory about your ex being a narcissist—none of it means shit until you've tried, really tried, to prove yourself wrong. But who does that? Almost nobody.

Instead, we collect moments like magpies, shiny little anecdotes that fit our story. “See? I knew it.” You didn’t know jack. You believed and then retrofitted the past to match. It’s emotional interior decorating, not inquiry. You’ve got a hypothesis-shaped hole and you jam every convenient piece of life into it. Misremembered conversation? Fits. Coincidence? Counts. Contradictory evidence? Meh, must be an outlier. You’re not asking, "How could I be wrong?" You're yelling, "Let me be right louder."

True science—real, raw intellectual courage—starts by saying, "This might not be true."

Not as a passing thought, but as a daily ritual. That's the null hypothesis. It says: let’s assume there’s nothing here until there’s something. And if the evidence screams loud enough, only then do we entertain the idea that we’re onto something. But in life? We go the other way. We start with "I feel this is true," and then surround it with a moat of curated facts and opinion pieces and lived experiences until we can’t even hear ourselves think anymore.

It’s cowardly. It’s lazy. And worst of all, it’s human.

Look around: news cycles engineered for dopamine hits, “research” that’s just a blog with footnotes, social feeds where every comment section is a courtroom for the self-righteous. Everyone’s a genius, a sage, a misunderstood prophet. But no one’s doing the work. No one’s testing themselves against the silence. Because the null hypothesis isn’t sexy. It doesn’t sell. It doesn’t pat you on the back and whisper, “You were right all along.” It whispers, “What if you’re not?”

And that whisper—that doubt—that’s where learning starts. Not where it ends.

So next time you’re sure about something—about vaccines, about your partner, about your boss, about why you can’t sleep—pause. Ask the question science asks every goddamn day: “What if this isn’t true?”

Test it. Challenge it. Try to break it.

Be brave enough to lose your favorite belief.

And if it survives the fire?

Then maybe, just maybe, it's worth keeping.

But until then:

Null hypothesis, motherfucker.

Learn it. Live it. Or keep lying to yourself with style.

I’ve got to leave home first before I start second guessing the signs my parents are giving and the inevitable third degree thrown at my head. Don’t want to get called out by those who’ve coached me this long. It’s time to go on a road trip.

I’ve been batting around the idea of grounding out a niche for myself. I’ll step off this mound and not balk at the opportunity to clear the bench to start anew. Delaying this would risk me being forced out, something that wouldn’t come from left field. I’ll pitch my game plan to line up with my goals of being a winner. Switching when needed, I’ll double up my confidence, giving myself the green light to swing away. I may be a diamond in the rough, but I’ve dug out a good, but not perfect, record.

Although I’ll be on the road for a stretch, I know this change up will fit me like a glove. I wouldn’t trade such an opportunity for all the peanuts and Cracker Jacks in the world. If I’m not delayed by rain, every so often I’ll pop up for a park walk then stretch it into a home run. I’m sure my parents will be rapid fans when they see me playing on a different field.

Chapter 1: The Ambush

Our last date night out was hardly eventful, almost not worth mentioning. July 11, 2017 marked John and my second wedding anniversary and our third overall anniversary. We went to the movies and we went to see The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Tacos, for dinner from a local hole in the wall. I remember I paid for everything, as usual, being that John never worked our entire marriage apart from the month we got married when he worked at the grapevine that Bakersfield is known for. And how can I forget how his mother, Lisa, rushed us to come back and pick up the kids because it was getting late. Define late. Late, to me, is when the darkness creeps into the wee hours of the morning to find the light promised by the dawn. But apparently, to this sweet, but bipolar basket-case who I called my mother-in-law and loved so dearly, late was 10:45. Be that as it may, we picked up Sonny, Charlotte, and Grace and brought them home where they very shortly after, fell asleep. Thus, giving John and me time to be alone for the last time—though we didn’t know it. It was nothing extraordinary. It hadn’t been for a long time since the terrorizing had become a way of life instead of just a frequent occurrence. Still, a far better service of closure than some of our previous traumatic encounters with him slapping me around or being rough when I was in and out of consciousness from being under the influence of alcohol and whatever drug John John was in the mood for when the kids weren’t around. We fell asleep the way we had for the past few years whenever he wasn’t locked up in jail or prison—me, curled up next to him, legs intertwined with his, my hand on his heart and his hand on my hand—per his request, not mine.

The next morning, I got up to the sound of my beloved children beginning to stir. I dared not wake the sleeping husband beside me as I had learned the hard way many times before with getting my face slapped or threats of actual violence for asking too many times what he needed too early in the morning. The air was sweet, even in that stale little apartment on 28th St. Charlotte, always being the first up of the three, with Grace following not so shortly after, shuffled about with me grazing on breakfast snacks and watching cartoons. Sonny, always being the late riser, continued to sleep peacefully despite our girly racket.

I can’t remember the exact chronological order of everything after that. Some of it’s just a blur. I wish I could’ve said goodbye to them properly and wiped their tears. How fleeting these last pleasant moments were. They rarely happened for this little makeshift family we had become, and this blindsided us all in the moments that followed that left our entire world shaken, tossed, and flipped upside down.

There was urgency after John got his first cup of coffee. He needed me to take him to the parole office for him to register in the domestic violence class he was mandated by the court to attend for all the countless times he had beaten me (and others for that matter). I glanced at the clock on the microwave, 11:58. We only had thirty minutes to get across town and John couldn’t be late. Eavesdropping, the girls scurried away to wake Sonny so that we could go. He wanted to stay behind because he needed to shower and wash his bed clothes from another accident.

Him being a month away from being 11 years old, I said, “I’m going to lock the door behind us then and you don’t open it for ANYBODY. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom.”

So, Charlotte, Grace, John John, and I set out into the blistering heat on that abrasively hot summer day that only Bakersfield could provide. I have lived in many other towns throughout my life, known for their high temperatures, but Bakersfield takes the cake. Bakersfield heat makes you feel like you can’t breathe as soon as you step outside of the coveted air conditioning. Open the door—breath, gone! The ostentatious next-door neighbor, Gordon, was outside washing the pavement with a pressured hose. I was surprised that he wasn’t flexing about some new gadget he had acquired for nearly a pittance somehow.

“Beautiful day!” he proclaimed. I was only surprised he wasn’t bumping some loud funky tune into the tiny courtyard or trying to stop us to flex about some new gadget he had bought or installed. It was both adorable and annoying.Then again, he usually didn’t when said company was present. But dear old Gordon was right, it really was a beautiful day, despite the sweltering heat. The girls and I practically skipped to the car, chattering the whole way. I think we were just excited to see John wanting to improve and do something good. I think it gave us hope. We were his cheerleaders per se. We all piled in the car which felt like an oven. The heat outside, paling in comparison to the one inside the little electric blue Nissan that we called Honey Boo Blue.

“It’s so HOT, mommy!” Gracie complained.

“Ouch!” shrieked Charlotte as she reached for her seatbelt that was hot like a branding iron. She put her fingertips in her mouth, always having a flare for the dramatic.

“I know, I know,” I said, “I’m turning on the air now.” But before I could turn the key in the ignition, John put his hand on mine, stopping me, and said, “What’s that undercover car doing across the street?” I looked and immediately spotted the white county car with the CA Exempt license plates.

“What undercover car?”

“You don’t see that white car directly across the street from us?”

“That’s not an undercover car, babe,” I assured him.

“Man, I been locked up by these people all my life and I know an undercover car when I see it.” He looked behind him, scouting for more suspicious cars like the one across the street that felt like we were being watched by. As usual, I denied any danger and shrugged off his hyper paranoia.

“Mommy, I’m sweating!” Grace cried.

“Okay, okay,” I said and turned the key. I put the car in drive and didn’t even move forward three feet when the white car and several other cars behind us, camouflaged to look like other normal cars, came out of the woodwork with sirens, stopping us dead in our tracks. I came to an abrupt halt, put it in park, and put my hands in the air as the cops rushed the car, guns drawn, and literally coming from every direction.

“GET OUT OF THE CAR!” they shouted at us as the girls began shrieking in the backseat. I tried my best to calm them down and assess the situation. I thought maybe this had something to do with John’s parole, so I said the first stupid thing that came to mind.

“We’re on our way to the parole office right now!” I screamed through the closed window at one of them who was pointing a .9mm at my face on the other side of said closed window.

“No, you’re not!”

“He’s got to register for his class by 12:30!” I pleaded. At the time it felt like the devil didn’t want to see our family get better. That’s how I felt…then.

“Not anymore, he doesn’t!”

“Look man, you saw us get in the car with two little girls, PLEASE put your guns down! You’re SCARING them!” I begged loudly over Charlotte and Grace’s sobs.

“Then tell your husband to get out of the car, ma’am! He’s the one we want!”

“FOR GOD’S SAKE, PLEASE JUST GET OUT OF THE DAMN CAR, JOHN!”

“Alright…alright,” he said with his hand up as he reached for the door handle, slowly and cautiously getting out. “Just tell ’em everything’s okay, babe,” he called out to me with his hands behind his hand as they shouted at him to shut up, throwing him to the curb and handcuffing him.

Chapter 2: Where’d Everybody Go?

The face of the detective woman who came to investigate us is hard to forget. And not because she was beautiful or anything like that. On the contrary, she looked like an old school marm with a perfectly wrapped little bun she wore on the back of her head and a pencil skirt suit that, ironically given the situation, screamed corporal punishment in schools. She had not a stick of makeup (although desperately needed) to be found on her punch-face. In case you were wondering what a punch-face is—punch-face is the face of someone who is SO ugly, that for absolutely no reason at all, you just want to punch them in it. She looked like even at her ripe age of 45-50, she had never raised any children of her own. In fact, she looked like she had never been laid in her life and therefore redirected all her attention to her work which, now, was destroying families. You would think you would remember the name of a person who, without batting an eyelash, made my life a living hell that fateful day, but I can’t.

“So, Ms. Daley—”

“Johnson,” I corrected the school marm. “My last name is Johnson. John and I are legally married.”

“Alright, Mrs. Johnson,” she paused, “what happened last Saturday on July—” she looked down at her clipboard, “8th—it looks like it was quite early in the morning? Tell me what happened that night.” In this moment she spoke so gently, showing me the only shred of compassion, I would ever see come from her for me. She showed deep concern, even.

“Well,” I said, blowing out a gust of air, palms getting sweaty, “yes, it was the middle of the night when it happened, but before that, earlier in the day, I went grocery shopping with the kids after I took them to the park…

(where John had one of his scary episodes. After much screaming, dodging him, and scaring all the families at the park, I was able to trick him by screaming at the three of my children to RUN! And HURRY UP AND GET IN THE CAR! One by one I got them to safety. I had trained them at this and by now, we were all professionals in escape. It was there that we ditched him and fled to the parole office before they closed where I demanded help but didn’t get it. I told them that I had made a mistake by letting him reside with me so soon after prison and I wanted him removed and placed in a rehabilitation home for men. They told me there was nothing I could do, being that it was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and most organizations and government offices in good old Bakersfield would be closing in thirty minutes. They told me that they could send a couple of emails and see what they could do first thing on Monday, but as far as right at that moment, there was just nothing they could do.) SIGH

…and after putting everything away, I began cooking and cleaning all over the house while the children played and watched TV. For hours I did this and that whole time I never went into my room. I didn’t have a reason to go in there all that time until later—but when I tried the doorknob, I was mortified to find that it was locked. He had been home the whole time!”

(how creepy)

“I unlocked the doorknob with my fingernail—”

“I’m sorry,” she raised her hand looking perplexed,” you said you unlocked the door with your fingernails?”

“FingerNAIL—just one. My thumb.” I wiggled it at her. She gave me a daunting look—still, I continued. “Anyway, I peered in at him quietly so as not to wake him up.”

“So, he was asleep?”

“Yes.”

(more like passed out)

“And did you wake him up?”

“NO!” I replied overzealously. I realized this and wanted to kick myself because of her body language when she flinched a little from me. I swallowed hard. “No,” I said more calmly this time. “I just backed out of the room quietly shut the door and went back to tending to the kids. After I put them to bed, I snuck back in my bedroom to grab a pillow and blanket so I could sleep out here on the couch. He had moved and that’s when I saw my phone lying next to him.”

“He had taken your phone from you?”

(yes, the dirty bastard)

“Well, we share mine because his is broken.” She nodded, eye-balling me suspiciously. “I tiptoed out of the room again and closed the door and came out here to rest. Sonny woke up from a bad dream and I came in to comfort him and help him get back to sleep. I put on his favorite cartoons to soothe him. When I came back over here, I noticed that my bedroom door was open, but it was all dark inside.

(Out of caution, I turned my phone on silent and stuffed it way down in between the sofa cushions)

I got up to smoke a cigarette outside and when I came back to lay down and I got all cozy, one of my loud, obnoxious smoker’s coughs was what got him up and that was when he came out of the room and asked me…

(“Why the fuck were you at the parole office today?” he said rushing towards me—his eyes wide and crazy. I sat up quickly because I knew what that look meant. It meant that I was going to get it—one way or another. Before I could open my mouth to answer him, he had his hand around my throat—squeezing.

“They called and left a message on my phone today and they said that you had been over there,” he squeezed my neck harder, “now tell me what the FUCK you were doing over there?! You tryna get me locked up or what, bitch? Huh? HUH?!” Just then, behind him, I could see shadows fluttering about in the kids’ room. Sonny hadn’t gone back to sleep! I began to pat at John's burly arms, barely able to get it out through clenched vocal chords, “Please, stop! Sonny will see you!”

“Get away from my mom!” Sonny shouted valiantly from the tiny hallway. John let me go and started toward Sonny and began gently shoving him back into the bedroom that he and his two little sisters shared, commanding him to stay in there and not to leave. Sonny started swinging at him. John told him to stop. I went in after them.

“You better not touch my son or so help me, I’ll kill ya,” I said. I jumped back as he started back towards me where he just kept repeating himself over and over again, like always when he was drunk. He kept ruminating about the fact that I had gone back to the parole office and demanded from me the details of such a visit but never listened to me when I tried to answer. It wasn’t long before Sonny had his attention again trying to be my little soldier, my little bodyguard, standing at 4’8” and weighing all of 60 lbs. soaking wet with all his clothes on. This tug ’o’ war for us to calm John down and for him to remand us went on for about three minutes. Whenever Sonny had his attention, I began to inch closer and closer to the door so I could quietly unlock the door and provide an escape route for the both of us. I knew that John wouldn’t hurt Charlotte and Grace, nor would he dare to wake them. He never physically hurt my kids—but in other ways he definitely did by scaring them and hurting me.

John caught me a couple of times trying to open the door and he would rush toward me, but I think Sonny caught on quickly to what I was doing, because his need to distract John became more ferocious like the little lion that he is. I had no idea where we were going to run once we got out the door. All I knew was I hoped that someone would hear my screams and help us somehow. I finally got it unlocked and pushed open. I looked back and saw there was enough space for itty bitty Sonny to get by ginormous John {it was like David to Goliath} and once that happened, there would be no catching him.

“Sonny! RUN!!” I practically shrieked. He bolted past John and when he got up to me waiting at the door, I started running too. I got to the small parking lot of our apartment complex where I looked back to see why Sonny hadn’t passed me up yet or at least caught up to me, as fast as I knew he was. He had stopped at the door and this time it was John bolting past HIM and coming straight for me. Sonny ran back into the apartment—for what, I didn’t know, maybe Gracie had woken up—or even Charlotte. He’s always been such a good brother. The best I’ve ever seen. I picked up speed and made it across the street, barefoot, screaming my head off the whole way. But this was 28th St.—in the middle of the hood. Wasn’t nobody gonna be stickin’ they neck out at one o’clock in the morning for a couple of screams.

John scooped me up by my neck {and I was no petite gal at the time} and carried me back across the street. While he was setting me down, Sonny emerged from the apartment brandishing his Kitana sword I gave him years ago.

“Oh shit!” I said under my breath.

“You better get the hell away from my mom or I’ll fucking kill you,” he warned his stepdad.

“Sonny! Put that away, please, before someone gets hurt!” I yelled. Just then, thankfully, the white neighbors from across the way came out of their woodwork. Aaron and Kaila. The whitest of the white.

“Everything cool?” Aaron asked, with only a towel wrapped around his waist, fresh out of the shower apparently. He made sure to keep Kaila safely behind him.

“Mind your fucking business,” barked John. “You don’t know what it’s like living with her.”

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong—because when you ain’t here, there ain’t nothin’ like this goin’ on. She don’t ever yell like that when you ain’t here,” Aaron said—and all the while, red-headed, freckled- faced Kaila was egging him on saying things like, “Yup” and “das right” and “she sure don’t!” I had to commend Aaron for his bravery. He only stood at a lanky 5’9” and probably weighed 135-140 lbs. after a good and hearty Christmas dinner. John outweighed him by at least 100 lbs. and stood over him about a half a foot.

“You better get the fuck in this house!” John yelled more at me than Sonny.

“I’m not going in there wit’ you,” I said, feeling empowered because there were witnesses. I gathered Sonny next to me. “Can I use your phone?” I asked them.

“Of course!” they chimed together. They hated John. And for a split second as we walked by apartment B10 next to mine, I wished Mickey, Gordon’s son, the disabled, Afghani war vet was here to hear/see all this commotion. What if he had been there? What would he have done?

Aaron and Kaila let us inside where I kept a close eye on my place from their screen door. Aaron geared up the Xbox for Sonny and they played games while I stood there and made my decision to call the cops. Kaila saw what I was about to do and said, “Are you really going to call the cops? You were just trying to scare him, right?” I thought for a moment and even though I really didn’t want to, I knew I needed to do the right thing.

“I am,” I said, looking down at the phone. She got close to my face.

“You SURE?” I looked at her for a long time. Just then John came to their door and started ranting and threatening.

“I am,” I said and dialed 911. When he realized that I was on the phone with the police, he took off back to the apartment, most likely to steal whatever he could of value and then take off. The cops came and I told them everything that transpired. They took pictures of the marks on my neck. We were able to coax Gracie to the door to unlock it when she woke up and shuffled out into the living room, looking around in incoherent disbelief. They carried Charlee out and literally turned the place upside down and inside out looking for John. I couldn’t believe that even after keeping such a close watch over the place, despite Kaila’s warnings to come away from the door, he had still managed to escape from my bedroom window. It must have been before he left, but I DID see him finagle the front window open, probably to keep it unlocked for later)

…why I had gone to the parole office trying to get him in trouble. We argued back and forth about it for a while, and he left when it got too heated and I called the police. That was why I called you guys because I knew it would make him leave,” I lied. “So really, you need to take him out of the handcuffs and put them on me for making a false police report.”

The old school marm detective lady was taking some notes—but when I said this last part, she shot me a glance so fierce that I knew right then and there I had fucked up. ROYALLY. She cocked her head to one side and said, “That’s an interesting response. Why would you say something like that?”

“Because, it’s the truth,” I said without even blinking.

“That’s not the account you gave to the police last Saturday…”

(But you don’t understand, lady! If I tell you what really happened, you’re gonna take my kids! And even if you don’t take my kids, when he finds out what I said to the police while sitting and biding his time in county for 30-180 days, stewing with anger for me—restraining order or no restraining-stupid-piece-o-paper, he’s gonna find us and he’s gonna kill us—or at least come close. And then what? Plus, you don’t understand, this is the first time that he wants to do something good and actually do it without having to be pushed. This is a good sign! I think he’s trying to change!)

“…I know,” I said, “I lied to the police. And it was wrong. And I should go to jail.” I didn’t budge. I didn’t even believe me.

Just then I heard John squeal agonizingly, “Oh mah God! PLEASE DON’T CHARGE ME WIT’ DAT! PLEASE!!” I was increasingly becoming more and more frightened by the second. “He didn’t choke you?” the detective inquired.

(Barbarically)

“No,” I fibbed. She looked at me like she had my number down. And she did.

“Well,” she said, rising to her feet, “I’m gonna have a little talk with your kids.” Her barely noticeable (or mentionable) assistant followed her lead. “Let’s just see what they have to say about everything.” They went into their room and closed the door behind them.

My goose was cooked.

I asked the cop overseeing me if I could have a cigarette. He gave me a wary look. “You could even watch me, and I’ll even go on that side of the courtyard, so I don’t talk to my husband.”

Come on—what do you take me for? that look of his said now.

“But not too far, of course. Pleeease?”

“No talking to your husband or back inside you go—in handcuffs.”

“I promise.” A lot of what happened during and after that cigarette is kind of hazy now. All I can remember while I was smoking that Newport menthol was the detective lady coming outside looking mighty provoked. I heard her say, “Don’t let her in there with the kids. Keep the door shut—I’ll be right back.”

(That can’t be good)

When I went back inside, one of the cops there to supervise my every move was standing, looking out through the lace curtained window of my front room. He kept his gaze and didn’t look at me, but he said, “That piece of bullshit lie you just fed her—I don’t know what you said—but she’s pissed.” He turned around to face me. He was very handsome and militant. “Whatever it was, you better sing a different tune when she gets back. Because I’ve seen how this plays out about a hundred times and let me tell ya—with that lady, shit like this never ends well. And I don’t know why you feel the need to protect that piece of shit out there, but it needs to end here. Right now. I read his laundry list of a record, ok? And I know guys like this—they don’t get better—it ONLY gets worse.”

He was not the first, nor would he be the last to tell me this vital piece of information that I would regretfully ignore. I would come to this understanding eventually, but today was just not that day. Only for a moment on this day would I catch a glimpse of conviction—but shortly thereafter, it would disappear again for a season.

“We weren’t even supposed to be here today,” he went on. “We were supposed to be at another couple’s house, similar names. But you guys popped up. And let me tell ya, we changed plans quick after we read y'all's history. You guys changed the course of the whole day with your shenanigans! Man, I’m not supposed to be telling you ANY of this and I’m not gonna say anything after this—all’s I know, is you better tell that lady the opposite of whatever you said before. I don’t even know if it’s too late already, but…if you can, if she’s willing to listen to you at this point, tell her the truth. Because, I REALLY don’t wanna take your kids today. I hate taking peoples’ kids. And you better pray to God that she has mercy on you.” And with that, he turned back to face the window as if he never said anything at all. I knew in that moment that he was absolutely right. That conviction that I spoke about a moment ago came and snuck up on me and I knew that I had to act fast.

Waiting for her to return was excruciating. What was taking her so long? Was she even going to give me the chance to redeem myself? With each passing minute that felt like another hour, the truth only became that much more compelling and necessary. When she returned, she had the apprehension team impede me in the kitchen. She told me to sit down, which I knew from experience is never a good sign. I sat down in one of my kitchen chairs where a swarm of police surrounded me, ready to pounce on me if I got emotional, ignorant, or just plain stupid. I pleaded with her to please allow me to recant my statement—briefly making eye contact with the officer who had forewarned me.

“Please,” I begged, “please hear me out. I didn’t tell you the whole truth earlier. I was so scared, and I was just trying to protect my family, but I made a mistake. The report that I gave last Saturday is true. Every word. Please don’t take me to jail. Please don’t take my kids. PLEASE. I just started a new job and if I lose it, I won’t be able to take care of them or keep this place. Please don’t do this ma’am. I’m begg—"

“Who said anything about taking you to jail, Mrs. Johnson?” I blinked a few times rapidly, jarred by her response.

“Isn’t that why you guys have me surrounded in the kitchen? To arrest me?”

“No, Mrs. Johnson, I’m not taking you to jail today,” she sighed. “But I am taking your husband to jail.” And then she lowered the boom, “And I am taking your kids.”

“No, no, NO! PLEASE!” I stood up.

“SIT DOWN!” chorused the entire apprehension team. I sat back down, afraid that they might taser me. The ugly detective lady, who was now even uglier, handed me a pamphlet with information regarding domestic violence.

“Here are some resources I suggest you utilize so you can get your life back in order.” And then she gave me a look that I won’t ever forget. She looked at me as though I was the most reprehensible human being she had ever met—then she said this last thing…

“I don’t know what it’s like to be you. I don’t have kids so I’ll never know—I can only imagine. But, I do know this, I sure hope you get your priorities straight –and soon.” Then she said to the team, “Alright, clear out!” and they all piled out of the desolate apartment so quickly that it was as though they had never actually been there at all. Angel, our Siamese kitten, began jumping and clawing at me—probably from hunger seeing as I hadn’t fed her yet with everything going on and we were now well into the afternoon. I patted her away. “Stop!” I cried. My nerves, a wreck as I braced myself for them to come back and take the kids. I sat there a long time, waiting in shock. I could hear Squidward telling Spongebob how much he hated him on the gigantic old school box television in the kids’ room. I realized I better say goodbye properly and let them know that everything was going to be okay. I made my way to their room, not sure what to say. Angel followed at my heels. When I got there, I found the room empty. I began searching frantically from room to room, shouting their names, my despair growing by the millisecond. I bolted out the front door where I found Gordon back at his outdoor chores—he had mysteriously disappeared when the cops showed up, but here it was like he never left.

“They’re gone, sweetie—just as quick as they came, they made themselves scarce,” he said, watering the pavement with the water hose.

“And the kids?”

He looked baffled. “What about them?” he asked.

“They said they were gonna take my kids. I didn’t see them take ‘em, but I can’t find ’em,” I said. I felt like I was in a twilight zone. He looked at me, dumbfounded for a moment longer, then said, “I didn’t see them take any kids.” I ran out to the curb and looked down the street. Nothing. No sign that ANYONE had ever been there.

“Where did they go? Where’d everybody go?” I cried, rushing back to the house—Angel following me closely every step of the way, ignoring my kitchen chair they left in the courtyard where John had been handcuffed not so long before—just to check one more time. Nothing. No sign that I had even ever had children except for the obnoxiously loud cartoons on their television set in their empty room full of toys. I picked up an old, tattered teddy bear off the floor and held it close enough to my face to smell it. It had all the sweet MUSTiness that only a child could MUSTer. I ran back outside to tell Gordon.

“It’s ‘cause they took ’em already. They’ve already gone, Gordon.” He turned off the hose and he said ruefully, “I’m sorry…but now, this is your chance to make things right and do the right thing.”

“Yeah,” I said. And we both headed back to our humble abodes. I sat back down in the kitchen chair where so many had just surrounded me, but had left no trace of their visit, what-so-ever, besides that flimsy brochure about domestic violence. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye! I didn’t even get to say GOODBYE!! I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO SAY GOODBYE!!!” I clutched that stuffed bear so close to me and sobbed my life away. My voice, my cries, I’m sure could be heard from every corner of the apartment complex and down the street all the way to both heaven and hell. Angel rubbed against my leg in circles, crying with me.

Chapter 3: Mommy Dearest

I can’t remember my mother ever hugging me when I was a kid. I know that she did, I just can’t remember it. I don’t remember her spending much time with me when I was at her house— “home” from grandma’s. There was occasionally a movie watched together and a board game played between us every now and then. But those movies were usually scary or highly inappropriate for a child to watch (like The Exorcist or Mommy Dearest)— which she usually fell asleep in the middle of—leaving me to my own discretion. Or if any snide comments were made by me—being a sore loser during a game of Monopoly—it typically resulted in her choking out 7 or 8-year-old me like Homer and Bart Simpson—only a lot more real life and a thousand times more terrifying. One time she choked me to almost the point of unconsciousness at the age of 9. She choked me so hard that the blood vessels in my eyes burst and my eyes bled. She told me to go and look at what I had done to MYSELF in the mirror. How had I done this, I wondered? Sometimes when my grandma was alive, she would just show up unannounced at my mom’s and ask me if I wanted to come back home—to which I replied with shouts of joy, running to whichever uncle was idling in the parking lot. Grandma must’ve known that something wasn’t right with my mom. Perhaps due to my bad behavior or maybe it was my still wetting the bed.

I remember looking to the hallway for my grandmother while my mom was straddled over me, popping my blood vessels from asphyxiation, using one hand to grip my throat and the other hand to cover my nose and mouth so there could be no possible way for me to breathe. I can still feel my little fingers desperately trying to peel hers away from my face so I could breathe and gasping for a quick breath before she swiftly switched hands to clamp off my airways and suffocate me more. There is nothing more frightening on this earth than not being able to breathe—BAR NONE. Even scarier than this, having this natural capability stolen from you at the hands of someone else. I remember thinking, “Can grandma feel that something’s wrong? Is she on her way? She always comes when it’s boring, but never when it’s scary.”

She never did show up that day. Undoubtedly, what stopped my mom is when I gave up and stopped struggling against her. I just got tired of fighting for my life and I remember thinking in my nine-year-old brain that “Mommy’s going to kill me today—I’m going to die right now. I know I’m a bad girl and I probably shouldn’t have mouthed the word ‘bitch’ in plain sight, but did she have to drag me in here by my pigtails to kill me? I should’ve just let her grab one of the leather belts dangling from the back of the bedroom door!” When my arms finally fell to my sides, she jumped up so quickly and released me from her hold. I can still remember coughing and gasping for air and then crying in a ball on the floor. I speculated in that moment when she let me go, she must have thought, “Oh my God, I almost just killed my daughter. They would’ve taken me to jail and charged me with murder of a child where I’d most certainly get the death penalty.”

After she had me go look in the mirror at what she said, “Go look at what you did to yourself—what you MADE me do,” she abrasively helped me change my clothes, shaking me and telling me to shut up my cries. What she did next, I will never forget as long as I live. From a face that was more beautiful than any queen I could ever imagine she said, “Ya know, it should’na been uncle Chris’s baby that died, it shoulda been you,” and then she hawked back a loogie and spat in my face, leaving me there to cry and wipe her mucousy spit from my own nose and out of my eyes, feeling ashamed and disgusting, and wondering why she didn’t love me. It wasn’t the first time (nor would it be the last) she tried to suffocate me—but it would be a while—until I became an adult and we could squab like two feisty cats in an alley. I don’t think she wanted to be accountable anymore, having to stand in the doorway of my classroom so she could make sure that I lied to the teacher. Or keep me from my grandma’s house and hire babysitters while she continued to maintain a plethora of lies.

There was no limit to her abuse and the things she did to me as a kid. No wonder why I was relieved when she left me to myself in my room to watch MTV, (back when it really was just music television) or to sneak Playboy TV, or peek at her collection of Playboy magazines while she was sleeping. I would make my barbies have sex and I would masturbate like they did on the TV and the dirty books. I thought love was sex and couldn’t wait to be a grownup to be loved.

One night I fell asleep to the sound of my mom having sex with one of her boyfriends—watching their shadows on the wall of the living room from under the covers in my bed. Some time after that I woke up screaming from a horrible nightmare. I had no idea how long I had been asleep; but the candles in the living room had long since been blown out or had gone out on their own because everything was pitch dark. I heard my mother quickly coming, stomping like a herd of elephants, (a stomping I would come to fear forever more) to what I thought was my rescue, but when I held my arms out for the hug I thought she was coming to give me, she quickly knocked me to the floor where my stuffed animals (my friends) were neatly lined up against the wall. They looked on sadly, some of them crying for me, but couldn’t help me as she hit me repeatedly. “DON’T-YOU-EV-ER-SCREAM-LIKE-THAT-AGAIN-WHEN-I-HAVE-COM-PA-NY!” Striking me with every syllable of her words. The next morning, I would tiptoe over the old naked white guy that wanted nothing to do with me, while he slept with only a thin, white sheet covering his private parts.

I can’t believe I’m about to make this unbelievably minimizing statement, but sometimes the defamations were mild. Like one time, I got in trouble at school for something I actually didn’t do (which was a surprise for me because I frequently was in trouble for things I actually did do) and my mom had me strip naked and lay face down with my head at the foot of the bed so she could periodically come in and rap me all over my body with one of the those old school rulers. I don’t know if you get what I mean when I say “old school ruler” but the older ones had a very thin, sharp edge to them. I can’t forget this because my mom pointed this out to me when she was warning me not to be bad. She used to say, “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.” If I peeked to see if she was coming and got caught, I received three extra swats. The fact that the edge of the ruler was razor sharp was also ingrained in my memory from the time she hit me on the hand with it (for what, I can’t remember) and that sharp edge grazed me, taking out a small chunk of my right index finger. As if this wasn’t enough punishment, she dragged me over to the bathroom sink so she could pour rubbing alcohol over my open, bleeding wound.

I could hear my aunt Rebecca (a retired social worker for the Department of Children and Family Services) asking her over the phone, “What’s wrong with her? Why is she screaming like that?”

“Oh, she’s just throwing one of her tantrums,” my mother replied with a nonchalant tone, then making scary faces and mouthing the words “Shut the fuck up” in a menacing way as she continued to douse my little finger in the burning liquid. You see, in a family full of social workers, she knew how to mind her p’s and q’s.

This was the final straw for my uncle Joe when he saw my finger one day picking me up after school. He took me straight home to my grandma’s house and whipped out his nice leather briefcase (that looked like he had been saving for just such an occasion) with notepad paper in it and told me to write down every detail I could recall of what happened. He told me to also put down the date and he assured me that from now on we were going to document everything and that it would all come in handy one day soon. He knew that it was only a matter of time that my mom was going to be in a world of hurt if she didn’t stop hurting me all the time. But the time that she waited until I got in the shower to spring a surprise attack ass whipping with one of the dangling leather belts on me, for God knows why, was the time that uncle Joe said to hell with the documentation and decided to take matters into his own hands. My grandmother had to pry from the front doorway where he stood waiting for my mom to pick me up with a bucket of ice water and the longest, thickest belt he could find. “No, I want the bitch to see how it feels,” he’d said, “see how she like it.” It wouldn’t be long after this, right after my 10th birthday, that I would finally be removed from her custody.

On August 1, 1996, I saw an opportunity and I stole it like home base. I did it when she tried to hit me in the face with an umbrella for pouting because she wouldn’t let me watch an R rated movie. The same R rated that she would have let me watch had my three-year-old cousin not been there visiting that day. When she came charging towards me with it, I leaped onto my snoring mountain of an uncle, (my mom’s brother Darren, who also happened to be an active social worker) and jousted him awake, shrieking for help. When the police came and I heard that they wanted to remove me from my mother’s care, I thought that all my prayers had been answered and that they were going to place me with my grandma and uncles on Sunset Ave. in Venice, Ca. and that we would live happily ever after, THE END…WRONG!

I quickly learned that because of how sick my poor grandmother was, regardless that I had two uncles there, the authorities planned to immediately place me in foster care. Anxiety boiled over inside me like a pot of hot soup when I learned this. I was terrified from all the horror stories I’d heard from my uncle Darren. He saw my trepidation and volunteered to be my legal guardian until all of this could be sorted out. He felt morally responsible not only because he was a social worker, but also because I was his sister’s daughter. Once again, I thought that all my prayers had been answered. That I would get to stay at my rich uncle’s great, big house (that was my favorite place to visit) where there was a pool, a dog, and three cousins, and I would get to visit my grandma’s house whenever I wanted, and everybody would live happily ever after. THE END. WRONG AGAIN!

I had no idea that for the next year of my life while my mom worked on getting me back, that my grandmother (my favorite person in the whole wide world) would die slowly, and that I would be tortured slowly, tormented on a regular basis by his two evil stepchildren and his wicked queen of a wife, who promptly let me know that this was not to be a pity party for me. Her words, verbatim. The horrors of living with them are truly a story for another day, but to sum it up in a nutshell, from enduring being pushed into an ice cold swimming pool during the winter, tricking and scaring me all the time, accusing me of molesting my baby cousin Danyelle, constantly making fun of me, physically abusing me, and burning off all my hair with a relaxer perm. I was finally granted a 60 day visit with my mom a little more than a year later to reestablish our relationship. The timing could not have been worse being that my grandmother had just died, and just before grieving her mother’s death, my mother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She wasn’t taking her medication, grieving a massive loss, and dealing with a painful breakup, and then they placed me in her care.

Fine timing.

She dragged me around everywhere in the beautiful city of Santa Barbara. She bought me whatever I wanted to keep me quietly entertained while we slept on her friend’s couches or stayed in hotels where she would leave me sometimes so she could stalk her ex-boyfriend who had dumped her.

Sometimes she would take me along with her at night and leave me alone in the car for an hour or more to do God knows what. I later heard rumor that she had a replicated .45 and handcuffs under my seat in the car. So, when two detectives dressed in trench coats came looking for her one early morning while I was at the vending machine of the Orange Tree Inn, I innocently led them right to our hotel door, thinking that they were apart of Ed McMahon’s team, here to give us a million dollars and change our lives forever. They were there to change our lives alright. They were there to cart my mom off in handcuffs and call my social worker to come and get me. It hadn’t even been 60 days. Hell, I don’t think it had even been 30 yet and my mom was already ruining our chances of being together and being normal. The never-ending nightmare continued when my social worker divulged to me that the very thing I had always dreaded and what she promised she would never do, she was going to have to do because she didn’t have a choice. She was going to put me in foster care. The place where they might sodomize me, or put cigarettes out on my arm, never feed me, and collect a paycheck for me that I’d never see the fruits of (all these stories, compliments of my uncle Darren).

“What about my uncle Darren?! Can’t you just take me back to uncle Darren?”

“Sweetie, I wish I could, but he’s in the middle of a nasty divorce and I just can’t comfortably put you in that hostile environment.”

“I got aunts in Palm Springs! What about them? I got family all over!”

“Yes, I know sweetheart, and in time I’m sure one of them will come to get you, but in the meantime, this is what we have to do. I’m so so sorry,” she said with tears in her eyes for me.

All her sorries couldn’t keep me from leaving scratch marks in her passenger door panel when she had to pry me from the car. It felt like she left me alone way too soon with the Jamaican grandma of the family while most of the other foster kids were at school and the two foster parents were at work. We all sat at the dining room table while they discussed important grownup things while my eyes wandered all over the house, desperately trying to pick up on the vibe in the home. It seemed like a happy home. A clean home. No evidence of any torture chambers for new foster kids, but you could never be too sure, so my eyes continued to wander. I remember sitting motionless—paralyzed, more like it; paralyzed by fear—having a minor staredown with this new person who had been given the power to be my temporary legal guardian after my social worker Debbie left. All I knew was this woman was beautiful in every sense of the word. She had crystal blue eyes, and skin as dark and as smooth as the richest dark chocolate I had ever seen. She had gray dreds that went past her behind and swayed back and forth when she walked. Even her voice was sweet when she asked me in her thick Caribbean tone, “Ya hungry, chile?” She scared the shit out of me. I said nothing. Only nodded. And as I waited, looking at all the happy family photos, the neat Jamaican knick-knacks, and warm, colorful tones that made up this wonderful home, she prepared and set before me my absolute favorite childhood snack of peanut butter toast with sliced bananas and a glass of chocolate milk—without me ever saying a word. I shot her a glance where she was waiting to see my reaction. And I swear, only using our eyes, I said to her with mine, “How did you know that?” To which she replied with hers, “Because I know.” She went about her chores smiling and humming.

In the weeks that followed, I learned how to play solitaire without ever losing, I learned how to play Mancala (an African game with jewels or stones), and I made a best friend with my roommate Amber, who I played jacks and ball with, listened to Spice Girls, and fought viciously like sisters with. They all gave me a warm and secure place to breathe and be happy. I could be carefree. I could be a kid. I never saw them again after my dad came to get me two weeks later. And I don’t remember their names. To the Jamaican family in Santa Barbara, thank you and God bless you, wherever you are.

Title: Fall Down 7 Times, Stand Up 8 (A Book of Testimonial Essays)

Genre: DV Survival, Uplifting, Encouraging, Christian, DV Awareness

Age Range: Adult/Young Adult

Word Count: 8574 (published here) 28,629 (saved so far) and so much more to come! :)

My name is Jessica Urias and I am a survivor of domestic violence and childhood abuse. I believe my project is a good fact simply based on the fact that domestic violence awareness is such a global issue, and my book provides assurance they are not alone, resources for help, tools for peace, all while offering hope during a bleak situation. General statistics relay that an average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States. There are more than 16 million people in the U.S. suffering at the hands of an abusive partner each year; I say more than 16 million because the 16 million are among the reported cases. That being said, I feel it is obvious who the target audience would be. I have over 10 years of education in multiple subject majors (including writing) but have not obtained a degree. I have been focused on healing and recovery for my children and me. As a hobby and during my education, I have entered into multiple writing contests and once won grand prize in the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship in 2020. I am from Venice, California and I enjoy writing, singing, cooking and playing guitar and piano. I am 38 years old and would like to help people through my experiences heal and recover from whatever domestic violence situation they happen to be in or coming out of.

There were two boys who fell in love with the Moon.

It began with star gazing, when they were young and couldn’t really think of much else to do. They each had duties in the day, but found time to go together at night and watch the sky. After making several half-hearted attempts at learning the constellations, they seemingly simultaneously decided that since the Moon was much prettier, and far more consistent, they would just focus all their attention on her.

She didn't have to be a "her" but the boys had picked up the habit of calling all objects "her" from their fathers, who worked with boats.

Most nights as they talked under the Moon, they would throw the odd compliment her way.

"You're as bright as ever!" one would call.

"You're more beautiful than anyone!" the other would add.

As the days and months and eventually years grew on, this habit of complimenting the Moon grew, and was almost competitive. They each confessed their undying love for her daily, and they would say that they only had eyes for her.

Two friends falling for the same person is often a cause for fights, but as neither of them really believed they had a shot, they didn't bicker about it much.

When the boys had become men, one of them had to move away. And so they no longer sat together under the Moon.

I thought that was the last time I would ever see my friend, but I tried not to be disheartened since I could still see the Moon.

I knew that wherever he went, he would also look at her each night, and we would share in that delight even a hundred miles apart.

It was the first night I looked at her alone that she spoke to me.

Her voice was clear and regal, but also kind. For one that had never talked before, she was well spoken.

"Peter says I am as beautiful as the petal of a daisy, floating alone atop a pond. What say you?" She asked me. After a moment of panic - because, really, the Moon was talking to me, for Christ's sake! - I stammered out my response.

"I- I say that you are as beautiful as the first sip of water after a day toiling under the sun!"

"Shall I tell him you say so?" she asked softly. "Or is it enough that I know?" she added, and my heart skipped a beat.

"I... I am glad that you know, but please tell him I say so!" I clearly deliberated over that response. Would she feel slighted that I needed him to know my feelings? Did she wish for it to be our secret? But if she told me what Peter said, he must have asked her to tell me.

She fell silent after that until it was nearly time for the day to break her hold of the sky.

"Peter says that I am more beautiful than any painting of my visage, and that my glow guides him when he fears he has lost his way. What say you?"

"I say that your existence gives me a feeling of home! When my eyes fall on you it takes away all hardships of the day, and I feel a warm calmness that I can't find elsewhere!"

She hummed pleasantly. I couldn't tell if she enjoyed the compliments, or if she felt their sincerity at all, but I would like to believe she enjoyed the talking.

And so a new routine formed between the three of us.

Wherever it was that Peter had gone, we would still gaze at the Moon each night, and compliment her. Now that she could speak, she made it possible for Peter and I to talk again, though not directly, but that was enough.

After a few weeks of this I asked her "how is he?" and I was ready for the usual long wait as she asked him, but this time she answered right away.

"He is well, but there is a coldness," she said. This was the first time she hadn't relayed a direct quote from him. Perhaps this just was her opinion.

"A coldness?" I queried. "Is he not warmed purely by your sight?"

"He enjoys my sight, and is delighted by it, but he must wish to see something more." She didn't sound sad, but I felt the need to console her.

"I certainly do not wish to see anything more!" I assured her. "Your sight gives me the gift of not only seeing you, but seeing each memory I have with you, and each memory with Peter, and each memory of my love for you!"

A long silence fell, which meant she was talking to him now. While I waited, I plucked grass and fed it to a wandering colt, then chewed on a loaf of bread and took wine.

I often would set up a picnic in a field two miles from my estate for these nights, so I could sup with my beloved.

I wondered if Peter was eating enough.

"He says that he is grateful for the memories that my presence gives him, but that memories alone are not always enough in this world."

"And what did you tell him?" I asked, something I had never thought to ask before. I wanted to know if she only quoted my words, or if she shared her views with him as well.

"That is a secret," she said playfully. I laughed.

"Then I shall have to find a secret for you to keep only with me! I will surely find one, and then you must promise not to tell Peter."

"Must I? Very well."

I never could find a secret, though. At least, not for three more years.

Over time, certain obligations would often get in the way of our nights together. Of course, I made time when I could, but it seemed the difficulty was not only on my end. Peter also grew busier. Now, when the Moon relayed our words, it wasn't simply words of praise but also full accounts of how our previous weeks had gone. The shift was gradual enough that I didn't notice at first, but the Moon had become much more of a messenger than a simple object of affection.

I wondered if she was upset by this, or perhaps felt like the third wheel, but I didn’t know how to ask, and what I said instead may have made her feel worse.

“I have found a secret,” I announced, half drunk on the melancholy I got earlier that day after finding a collection of old sketches Peter and I had drawn of the Moon. “You must promise not to tell him,” I cautioned.

“Indeed.”

“I wish that I could see him,” I confessed. “While seeing you is more than anyone could ask, I can’t shake the feeling that I would prefer to look at you with him by my side.” She was silent after that. “Please don’t misunderstand! Your beauty and kindness are more than I can ever hope to express the way I want, even after all these years of telling you. And even now, as you keep me connected to Peter, for which I am infinitely grateful, I feel greedy for wanting more. So, please don’t tell him about this greed of mine. And, though it is too much to ask, please do not think less of me for this, either.”

“I see,” was all she said. Once again, she was silent.

I worried she was telling him what I said, so I began pleading for her not to. I rambled long into the night and slightly into the day, but she didn’t speak again. I was repetitive and probably pathetic at points, failing to justify my own greed while chastising it in equal measure.

The next night there was no Moon in the sky.

The night after, she was still gone. Thick clouds obscured the heavens as they had never done before, and wouldn’t budge. Even if she was there, I couldn’t see her, and she didn’t speak no matter what pretty or pitiful words I threw into the air.

The guilt I felt was crushing, but nowhere near as much as the loneliness. For the first time, I was left without Peter or the Moon.

It had been nearly two months since she left when I had something of an epiphany.

I’d continued to walk into the fields each night, though now only to sit alone in dark silence. I was always wishing to reunite with the two of them, but then, as though bargaining with some unidentified other force, I would ask for just one.

If both was impossible, maybe at least I could see Peter again? Though that was less likely than seeing the Moon, it was undeniably my preference. It dawned on me that I didn’t miss seeing and speaking with the Moon so much as I missed how she allowed me to talk to him, and kept embers of hope for a reunion stoked in the furnace of my heart.

Once I realised this, I had to wonder if it had always been that way. It’s true that as children, the Moon was simply an excuse to spend time with him, but I did gain genuine appreciation for her. Still, though, even when professing my feelings for her, some parts of me simply wanted Peter to be impressed with my word use, or try to one-up me.

It all made sense, but in the emptiest and most useless way. I had no idea where he was, and I couldn’t talk to him without the Moon, who seemed to be done with me.

I clenched my fists and stared purposefully upward into the night. She likely wouldn’t respond, but she could surely hear me, so I called to her for what I decided would be the last time, and gave her a final message to relay.

“Even if I cannot see you, please hear this!” I began. “Tell Peter that it was him all along, not you, that I loved!” I stated as clearly as I could, but my voice trembled over the word in a way it never did when I used it for her.

Just as I unclenched my hands and decided to walk home, a sliver of light illuminated the field. I looked up as the previously steadfast clouds finally rolled away, revealing the Moon in all her luminous glory.

“So he says,” the Moon sighed. “What say you?” I couldn’t shake the confusion until my eyes fell on a figure standing several feet away.

“I say that those words alone made the entire journey worth it,” Peter announced, his eyes firmly on me. I almost collapsed from shock. His face was older, his body broader, but his voice was the same as the last time I heard it. There was no mistake.

“How…?” was all I managed to ask as he walked closer to me. He simply pointed upwards, and once my eyes followed his finger to the Moon he embraced me.

“You must have been lonely. Try not to be too jealous, but I needed her to light my way here, so she had no time to shine for another, not even you,” he explained, his nose rubbing along my neck and his hot breath tickling my skin. “But now things are as they should be. All of us here together: you, me and the Moon.” His hands rubbed up and down my back soothingly before he pulled back. “Really, I didn’t plan to do this, but after you said all of that, you didn’t leave me much choice.” Our eyes met, but I could hardly see him through the fountain of tears cascading over my face.

“Is this… a dream?”

“Not a dream, but a wish” the Moon answered me. “Forgive me for telling your secret, but I have been taking great pains to make this moment happen for years.”

I realised then that she must have always known what I’d only just discovered. And how much did Peter know?

“Peter,” I began, encasing one of his hands with mine.

“John,” he replied.

“How long?”

“Since the very first.”

Well, damn. If I’m the last to know then it seems I have a lot to catch up on to make up for. In the spirit of wasting no more time, I held his face, tilted it into the Moonlight, and kissed him for all I was worth.

At first, the Moon watched on proudly in the sky, but once things started getting more intimate she politely dipped away below the horizon to give us some privacy. Finally, it was just me and him.

We wade through the moonlight, jeans wet up to the knees. We tied a scarf to a tree so we could find our way back, but I’ve come unmoored anyway. Looking at you is like sinking in deep water. I asked you to throw me a life preserver and you laughed in my face. When we were little and the trees dappled sunlight across the forest floor, I called your name without fear. Now you exist only as a whisper in case my words might conjure you. You’re all in my head, now. It’s hard to believe you were small once. In my nightmares you loom. I wake up with my heart pulsing in my throat, memories full to bursting with your blue eyes and those long, long eyelashes.

Bob squinted his eyes, and stared at the blue sky. He took a moment to just simply relish his first long day off from work. Then he heard something like a bird like call coming from the distance. Soon its piercing turkey like cry echoed in the clear azul sky.

Bob quickly scanned his surroundings. He spotted a gathering of bamboos behind him. He decided to run and duck behind them.

But as soon as Bob did so, the bamboos, too, had made up their minds to not play some silly game of hide and (go) seek with Bob. They did not want to be the angry bird’s target.

Now Bob had to quickly come up with a different plan. He dived into the river, and swam deep into the frigid blue-ish waters.

In a matter of nanoseconds, something took a hold of his neck, and began to squeeze the life out of him. Bob’s body squirmed around in the water like a fish out of water.

An hour passed by, and all that was left of Bob was his skull that had been pushed by the river current, all the way back closer to where the bamboo had left Bob out to fend for himself not too long ago.

#CORVUS.

Fri., 21.03.2025

All Rights Reserved

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ2mpcrOWC4

"Remember children," my adopted mother tells my adopted sisters and I, "when you help other people, they are more likely to help you when you in turn need help."

I am with my adopted family, my mother and my two sisters. We are in the living room of our house, sitting on the plush sofas with gold edges, talking. We are beside the big window that has a lively view of the woods outside our house, woods I am very familiar with. I like talking to my family. Mostly. There is something about it that makes me slightly desolated. But I don't know why. My family is nice.

But I'm sad. I'm so beyond sad. I'm always sad, and I don't know why. There must be some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain. Well, whatever. My mother has spent enough money on me already. Money is precious. I don't need her spending more money on getting me therapy and medication and all of that. I just need to deal with my sadness all by myself, even though it's so great, even though it's so terrible. I am stronger than they think I am. I have to be strong. No matter how hard it is.

"That makes sense," my sister Anabella responds. "Gratitude is a very strong emotion, and it can come in very handy." Anabella is very beautiful, because of the complicated skincare routine she does each day, using all-natural, fair trade products.

"Exactly," my other sister Riviera agrees. "When people in a society all owe each other, that makes the society more tight-knit, and they become more able to withstand adversity and obstacles, ultimately benefitting the individual." Riviera is very smart. It shows through in the way she talks, in what she says, in everything about her. She reads lots of books and absorbs so much knowledge from them.

Compared to these two girls, I cannot help but feel as if I'm inadequate. I'm not pretty. I'm not smart. I'm not able to do anything special. I'm just a normal girl. I don't know what I'm able to give to this family. I don't know what I am able to give to this town. I can only try my best. And this sinks down heavy into me. Because it's never enough, not truly. My best is never enough. My existence is never enough. I'm not worth all the resources that get wasted on me. There are so many people who are so much more worthy.

"That's right," mother tells us. "When the group is doing well, the group can take care of you better. We are social beings, us humans. And social interaction is all about give and take. The more you can give, the more you can take."

"You only get what you give," Anabella declares. "Those who can give more can get more."

"Exactly," mother agrees. My adopted mother is a very wise woman. She has so much knowledge. And because she has so much knowledge, she is able to do very well for herself and her family, she is able to thrive in this corrupted world. She has a large house that she has bought, filled with many pretty things, and she was able to take me in as well.

She has raised me since I was a newborn. I almost don't remember my biological parents. Though I suppose that's a good thing. They gave me up. They probably didn't want me. My adopted mother has done so much to take care of me, I really shouldn't be missing people I barely remember. But I do. I miss them so much. I don't know why I miss them, I don't know what I miss. But the absence of my parents sits heavy in my chest, in my throat, in my gut, all the time. I don't know how to escape this feeling.

I feel as if something vital and integral to who I am has been ripped from me. I feel as if I am walking around with an emptiness in my chest, in my stomach, in my throat. I feel as though I am walking around with an emptiness in my soul. As if it's all not mine. As if all the pieces of me are all not mine. My life is not mine. Nothing is mine.

I feel inhuman. I feel unliving. I feel nonexistent yet horribly, horribly, intolerably existent at the same time. As if I am some horrible, wretched beast made of a slime that is too disgusting to be real and too tangible to be fake. I am a hollow shell. I am nothing yet I am some thing. I am a thing.

"What do you think, little Zia?" Anabella asks me.

"I think you guys are very wise," I respond to her. "I'm learning a lot, listening to you guys talking."

"That's good," my mother tells me. "The more you learn, the more you'll be able to fulfill your role in society."

"Thanks," I tell her.

"So, what are some ways you can build gratitude within the people in your life?" mother asks us.

"We can give them things," Riviera suggests. "A debt of a material nature is probably the hardest debt to pay back, especially if they do not have much access to resources."

"Yes," Anabella cuts in, "and they'll be trying to make up the difference in all sorts of other ways, this is a great way to build long term loyalty."

"Loyalty is a very important resource," I say. "You never know when you're going to need it."

We keep on talking, the four of us, until we see the sun set outside. It is a glorious, burning orange colour that fades out into gold higher up in the sky. But it's more than colour. It is so much more than colour, so beyond colour, that it isn't even colour at all but rather pure emotion. It fills me with a sense of wonder. It almost feels like home, feels like belonging, feels like all of these feelings that are denied to me. I almost cry with joy as I look out at the sunset in silence, along with the rest of my family.

"That's beautiful," Riviera comments, a high sort of awe in her voice.

"Look at the colours," mother says. "Red, orange, yellow. So very vibrant and bright."

"It's glorious," I agree.

It's dinner time after that, and we gather in the large dining room. I bring all the bowls of food up to the table.

"Thank you, Zia," mother tells me. I smile at her. She's so nice. I tell myself that she's nice. I tell myself that she appreciates me, she appreciates what I do for her, she appreciates what I do for the whole family. Though it's not enough, it's never enough to make up for all the things she has done for me.

I sit down at my own spot at the large, intricately carved, polished wooden table. I sit down in front of my shimmering silver place mat and give myself a healthy heaping of the vegetable and beef stew that we cooked together yesterday. The food is good. The food is always good. But there is a part of me that feels almost guilty for eating it, I don't know why. It feels criminal, the act of giving myself food. Although there's plenty of food to go around. There is always plenty of food to go around.

We keep talking as we eat. We're a close-knit family. We talk whenever we get the chance to. I try my best to keep a cheerful expression and tone. I try my best to not let anyone see what's going on inside of me. I'm in such a bright and cheerful room with such bright and cheerful people. I should be nothing but bright and cheerful myself, so that I can at least pretend to fit in, so that I can at least pretend to belong.

And they're none the wiser. They don't suspect that I don't belong here. They don't suspect that I don't belong among them. And I'm such a liar and such a traitor but they would be so, so disappointed to know the truth. I absolutely dread disappointing them.

"Take some more stew," my mother tells me, "there's plenty to go around."

———

I'm in my room. The door is locked from the inside. It locks from the outside too, which is a bit scary but it's that way with all the doors in the house. I'm glad that I'm alone right now. It means that I don't have to pretend. I don't have to put on a mask and pretend to be happy in front of everyone else. That's a huge burden lifted from my shoulders, though the heavy weight of sadness is still there, it's always there, and I don't know what to do with it.

Being alone most of the time would kill me even more, and I'm very genuinely glad that I have plenty of company, but having some time to be alone is welcome.

So I lie in my bed. I lie in my soft bed, under my soft blankets, and I cry. I look up at the ceiling and I let my tears fall freely. Why I'm crying I have no idea. I have no idea why I'm crying but I'm crying anyways. And I do know why I'm crying.

I know that it's because it's all wrong, it's all so terribly wrong. Everything is wrong. My life is wrong. Who I am as a person is wrong. It's all twisted, it's all corrupt, it's dark and thorny and it's not right. The thorns of everything I am inside are piercing my flesh, piercing my organs, piercing my capillaries until my entire body is bleeding, my mind is bleeding, my heart is bleeding, my soul is bleeding.

I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding. Everything inside me is bleeding. And everything I am is bleeding. My existence is slipping through my fingers. I am slipping through my fingers. I am losing more and more of myself. I am leaving myself until there is nothing of me left. But I'm here, I'm here, I'm irrevocably here at the same time. And I can't escape, I can't escape, I can't escape.

I am no-one. I am nothing. I am less than no-one. I am less than nothing. And I cannot ever be anything because everything I am is twisted. Everything I am is nothing. Is less than nothing. Everything I am is wrong and everything about me is wrong and it's so wrong and it's so wrong and it's all wrong and my whole life is so wrong.

I don't know why I feel like my life is wrong. But I know it is. There is no reason to think this. There is no reason for me to hate this life that I'm living, no reason to be disturbed by it. But I am disturbed. I am so disturbed. But, my life is fine. I go to school, and the teachers are nice, and the kids are nice. I get decent grades. They're not extremely good but they're pretty good. I have a few people I talk to at lunch time. I go home and my home life is good. My mother is nice. My sisters are nice. They all treat me well. Everyone treats me well. So why do I feel like this?

It must be because I am deeply horrible, I am deeply ungrateful, I am deeply unsalvageable. There are so many people who have it worse than me. There are so many people who have it so, so much worse than me. So why can I not be happy with what I have? Why can I not be grateful for everything? It's all going right. It's all going so very right and yet it's all going wrong. It must be because of me that it all feels so very wrong. It must be because of some fault of my own.

I have so many faults. I have so many flaws. I can't sleep at night, I'm lazy, I'm ungrateful, I can't be happy. I'm not pretty or kind or a good student or outgoing or brave or clever or wise or anything. I'm not athletic, I'm not coordinated, I'm not organized. It's all not enough. Everything I do and everything I am is all not enough. It's all not enough and I'm so inadequate and I'm so wrong.

I'll never be enough. I'll never be enough. No matter what I do, no matter who I be, it's all not going to ever be enough and I'm going to not ever be enough. Because the thing that is wrong with me is intrinsic. It's inherent. It's so deep that it reaches its scarred, infected tendrils down to my very core, through my blood, through my bone marrow. It's so all-reaching that it claws and grasps and wraps around every part of me. Around my throat. Around my eyes. Around my fingers and my toes and my stomach and me knees. It is both invading me and residing with me as if it was meant to be there always. I guess it was meant to be there always.

I guess this is all I am.

I feel poison in every part of me. Poison in my bloodstream, poison rushing through all my veins, all my arteries, all my venules, all my arterioles, all my capillaries. The poison is flowing through me as if it is blood. It is plunging inside me and entering all the space around my cells. All my interstitial fluid is full of dark, corrupted, thick poison. It is entering my cells, and my cytosol is saturated with it. My lymphatic tissue is flowing with poison and my lymph nodes cannot clean it out because there is just so much, just so much, just so much. My cerebral fluid is filled with poison and the poison is surging through my brain. It's surging everywhere.

And the thick, viscous, vicious black fluid is pouring through all the many, many tiny holes and punctures and gaps and tears that are all over my body. That's what it feels like at least. It feels like the thorns of who I am have pierced through all over my body, leaving me torn and ripped and punctured and bleeding. And the poison is seeping through all the holes, is seeping out into the world. It's corroding my skin, it's staining my bedsheets and blankets and pillows, it's leaving inerasable marks that only I can ever see.

If my family knew who I truly was, if they knew what I truly was, then they would be disgusted, I'm sure. They would be disgusted, and shocked, and betrayed, they'd be so betrayed. They spent so much money on me. So much money and time and effort. So much care and consideration. All for me to turn out like this. All for me to turn out like this disgusting, insufferable mess of a human being. I let them down. I let them down. I owe them so, so much and I let them down.

They'd throw me out if they knew how I really felt. If they knew what I truly was. If they knew that the girl they tried to make into their daughter was so ungrateful, was so miserable despite everything that she has, despite everything that's been given to her, then they would definitely throw me out. And they'd have every right in the world to. I don't deserve this. I don't deserve my family and all the care that they have given to me.

I wonder what my biological family is like. I wonder what they would think of me. They probably do not care about me at all. They probably haven't given me a second thought after giving me away. What kind of parents wouldn't make sure that they could be there for their own child? What kinds of parents wouldn't raise their own child?

Of course, it's possible that they had to give me away because they were too mentally ill or too poor or too addicted or whatnot to take care of a child. It could be that they wanted to raise me, they wanted to support me, but they just couldn't. Even if that was the case though, it would still be their own fault. It would still be their own fault for giving me away. Because as my adopted mother said, everybody who is mentally ill or poor or addicted actually, secretly chooses it. So, according to her, my parents could have raised me if they wanted to. And she's right, of course. She's always right.

I hate my parents. But I love them. I love them but I hate them but I want them and I need them, despite the fact that they've let me down so much. And I love my mother, but there is a part of me that cannot trust her. I don't know why I can't trust her. She's been nothing but kind to me during my whole entire life. But something just feels off. I know I shouldn't be feeling like this. I know that there's no reason for me to be feeling like this. But something is off. Something is so very off.

It's probably just me. What's off is probably just me. Just my unending hunger. Just my desire for more, for more, for more than this perfectly happy, healthy, middle class life that I am living. I'm not a good person. I don't abide by the rules and the teachings that my mother is teaching me. I want to. Dear Universe I really, really want to. But I just can't. But I'm just not capable, no matter how hard I try.

Or maybe I am capable, and I'm just not trying hard enough. Perhaps this is all my fault. It probably is. I don't know whether it's worse to not want to be a good person hard enough or whether it's worse to not be capable of being a good person at all. But I know that I must surely be the worse one, whichever one is worst.

I am still crying. I haven't stopped crying. I have no idea how long I've been lying here. I'm supposed to be asleep. I was supposed to have gone to sleep long ago. I've probably been awake here for an hour. I never get enough sleep at night. Not that anybody knows this. But for some strange reason, I am never tired during the days. I must not need that much sleep I guess. But still, night is for sleeping. All the proper people sleep at night. I should be sleeping at night as well.

The house is so quiet. It's eerie. And I'm still crying.

———

"So how was school today?" our mother asks us, from behind the wheel of the eight seat SUV. It's a huge car. Plenty of space for all of us. There's screens on the back of each seat so that the kids in the back can watch movies and play games. But we're not going to do that in the fifteen minute drive to get home from school. The sun is setting behind us. My siblings and I are in the second row. It's idyllic. But I'm still drowning in my hidden misery.

"It was great," Riviera pipes up. She is playing with the end of her strawberry blond braid. Both the sisters have red hair, but my mother is blonde. They must have gotten their genes from the sperm donor. They were both conceived medically, but my mother didn't want to be pregnant again but she wanted a third child. I have raven black hair.

"I got invited to go to a party," Annabella speaks. "It's this Saturday, at Claira's house. Can I go?"

"Of course, my child. What are the rest of you guy's plans for the weekend?"

"I'm going to a movie with my friends," Riviera chimes. "It's the new Shadow Lady movie."

"Oh that should be fun. What are you doing, Zia?"

"I'm just staying home and studying. I'm behind on some homework."

"It's a good idea to study," my mother agrees. "It's how you can develop your mind, so that you can contribute more to society."

"We know, momma, we know." Annabella's voice has a hint of playful frustration in it.

"You girls are all very smart," our mother tells us. "You all have much to give to the world."

"Aww, thanks," I tell her, trying to put as much sincerity into my voice as I can.

"What are you guys learning about?"

"We're learning about batteries," Annabella explains, "and the way that electrons flow through batteries. It's really quite interesting. The metals that lose their electrons become ions and the ions that gain electrons become metals."

"We're learning about how to divide polynomials," Riviera starts. "It's actually pretty easy, but most people in my class find it hard. I don't know why."

"Well, I'm sure it's easy for you. I'm sure it's easy for both of you, is it not?"

"Yeah," Anabella replies, "it was okay last semester when I learned it."

"There is much knowledge and wisdom to be learned in school."

"Yes there is, mother." My voice is smooth and warm. The opposite of how I feel inside.

"Always pay close attention in school," she replies back. "School will teach you many many great wisdoms."

"Of course, mom," Riviera responds. "You see how well I'm doing."

"I do."

"School will help us make that cold hard cash," Anabella chirps.

"Absolutely," my mother agrees, "and that's definitely very important. What's also important though is the fact that school will increase your wisdom and knowledge. It will teach you how the world works. It will teach you why things are the way that they are. It will teach you how things work, how nature works, how the universe works, how people work. It will teach you how to go about your lives in a good and respectable way."

"You're right, mother," I tell her. "School has so many important messages. So many deep and hard-hitting messages."

"Yes, and you girls need to make sure to pay attention so that you can understand these messages and become truly enlightened."

I think about everything that I've learned in school. Math, science, history, grammar, how to analyze literary motifs, statistics. Atoms and neutrons and quarks and positrons. The body and all its failings. They were all interesting, doubtlessly. I have always found school interesting. But still. Still. I always felt like there might be something, something more. I always felt like there had to be something more than all these particles and molecules and metaphors. These had to be something deeper than that.

But I keep these thoughts to myself. I am probably only holding on to fantasy. I am definitely wrong. Of course there isn't anything miraculous and magical about the world. Of course all that we see is all that there is in this life, the only life. I just am stil immature. I'm still a child. I want something indescribable and inexpressible and altogether completely unreasonable. This is how a child thinks. This is what a child wants. I'm fifteen.

I need to grow up.

"What is the most interesting thing you guys have learned in school?" Annabella asks.

"Oh, probably that everything is made up of other, smaller things. Nothing is absolute except for space and time."

"Wow, that's very deep," I comment. "It's really almost mystical."

"The real world is more than mystical," Anabella states. "It's better than any magic."

"So it is," I agree. "So it is."

But is it really? I wonder. Is things being made of smaller things being made of smaller things being made of smaller things, until you get down to the waves, the ripples in space time itself, is that really better than magic? It has to be, after all, it's so cool. But despite being cool, there is this hollowness to it. There just, there has to be something more. Despite how cool this is, it's not enough. Except, it is enough. It has to be enough. It's all that there is.

This is making me feel hollow. This entire conversation is making me feel hollow. Yet I swallow down the hollowness. I don't know why it's here. It has no place. It doesn't deserve to be here. This is a perfectly normal conversation between a perfectly normal family. I swallow down the hollowness, and I swallow down my tears, and I try my best to not choke on either of these things. I always try my best, and I always fail. I wish so desperately that I could cry.

I tilt my head slightly to the side, I lean on the cool glass of the car window. The conversation flows on around me, and I weave my way through it as best as I can. I genuinely do love talking to people, including my family. It makes all the hurt hurt just a little bit less. And it makes my life just a little less storm-drenched, a little less shadow-covered. But this topic that we're talking about, dear Universe I hate it.

———

It's Sunday. We are working, all four of us. Cleaning the house. It's nice, how we all share our work and we all share our responsibility. I couldn't've asked for a better family if I tried. Though part of me still wants to try. I am dusting the many shelves and tables and cabinets that we have. It's really rather tedious work. But thankfully Annabella is helping me. We are working in tandem. It's nice, it really is.

But still I'm drowning. Still the poison is seeping through all parts of me.

But there is music playing in the background, from Annabella's phone which is on the ground. It is nice music. From her favourite playlist. It's nice music, but it is a bit too cheery for my taste. Too cheery, too smooth, too warm. I like music that is sad. I like music that is cold and rough and cut open jagged. Music that is desperate. Though truly no music can even come remotely close to brushing against the true depths of how I feel. All music pools on the very surface edges of me. So I don't really like music at all.

We carefully move all the decorations to one side of the carved wooden shelf that we are cleaning right now. This takes a bit of time, since there are so many decorations, both big an small. Colourful and flowing and made of so very many different types of material. It's beautiful, but I cannot take in the beauty of it. I cannot take in the beauty of any of it. I am too sad.

It's a pity really, my mother spent so much money on this house and I can't even appreciate most of it. She always spends so much on this family, she always gives so much to this family. But far too often I am far more ungrateful than I should be. I really am really rotten inside.

We work at an unhurried, almost leisurely pace, Annabella and I. Actually, all of us do. Because we're at home, we're not at work. No-one's forcing us to do this, no-one's paying us, we don't have to rush ourselves. And anyways, there are so very many delicate little pieces everywhere. It would be a bad idea to get careless. I mean, mother will probably understand if we break something, but still, I don't want to cause any problems for her.

We finish moving everything on this side of the shelf and we pass our dusters over the surface. Now we just have to do the same thing for the other side of the shelf and then we have to rearrange all the decorations. We arrange all the decorations differently each time we put them back. That's a clever idea Riviera came up with, and it always changes up the way that the house looks, it always gives a new feeling to the house. Since each shelf is rearranged every once in a while, there is always something different to look at. If only I could appreciate it.

"You're doing a great job," Annabella tells me, cheeriness in her voice.

"Thanks, Annabella, you are too."

"It's nice, working together, isn't it?"

"It is," I say, and it both is and isn't a lie. I appreciate her company, her companionship, her help. But my life is not nice. I don't know why.

"These shelves were so dusty when we started out. They look so much better now."

"They do," I agree. "This house is so big, it's inevitable that things will get dusty."

"Yes it is inevitable." There is a hint of tiredness in her voice. "There's always more work to do."

"Yes."

"Should we move on to the next piece?" she asks. We are done with this intricate, multilayered shelf. But there is a lot more furniture to get to. Not that we have to finish everything today. It would be very difficult to finish everything in one day. I don't want to push Annabella too hard.

"Sure. Where to now?"

"Let's go to the television stand on this floor."

"Sounds good."

There are a bunch of televisions in our house. One in the basement. One in the sunroofed attic upstairs. My mother and my two sisters both have televisions in their rooms. And there is the main television, which is as wide as I am tall, on the first floor. It's for all of us. But my mother asked me if I wanted a television as well. I told her that I didn't want one, since I didn't want to use up any more of her money than I had to. I wonder if I would be happier with a television. I don't really need one, but still, I'm the only one that doesn't have one.

We move on to the large shelf of the television, which is raised eye level to the couches. There's a lot of stuff to move around here as well. Moving stuff around always takes the most time. My sisters say they like it though, because they can focus on all the very pretty things we have around. But I don't feel the same way. I can't focus on all this stuff, ever. Like I said before, there's something strange about me, something deeply wrong with me.

"How are you girls doing?" our mother asks us.

"Doing fine, how about you?" Annabella replies.

"I'm doing alright myself. You guys have gotten a lot done. Good job."

"Thank you, mother," I answer.

"So I'm thinking this is enough work for today," our mother begins, "what do you girls think? Do you want to keep working?"

"I think we've had enough for today," Annabella answers. "What do you think, Zia?"

"Yeah, if you guys are thinking of wrapping up then I'm fine with that." My voice is a lot smoother than I how feel.

"I think we should go and eat dinner," our mother suggests. "I can order food for us. What restaurant to you guys want to eat from?"

———

Mother's eyes are darkened with worry, with a light sort of terror. It makes my heart freeze with hard ice in my chest. I don't know why she has gathered us all around her, sitting around the dining table despite there being no plates in front of us. Whatever it is, it cannot be good. We all look at her and at each other worriedly and solemnly.

"What is it, Mom?" Annabella asks.

"My girls," she begins, "I have terrible news to impart to you. The bank that has all of our savings, that has my paycheque for these next six months, this bank has been robbed. Now we have nothing. No money, no paycheque, nothing."

"But can't the bank give us back our money?" Riviera asks, concern and disbelief flowing through her voice.

"I'm afraid not," our mother replies. "The bank has been robbed to the ground. They have nothing left to give to anybody."

"What about the government?" Annabella suggests, "can't they help?"

"The government doesn't help normal people like us and you know this," our mother replies, fear laced into her words.

"But it's not fair," Riviera complains. "It's not our fault that our money got robbed. It's not our fault at all. Shouldn't the government be able to do something to help?"

"The government is corrupt and we all know it." Our mother's voice is laced with resignation. "They do not have any morals. They do not care about what is fair and what isn't. All they care about is their own money and their own power."

"That's really unfair, mother," I speak. "What will we do now?"

"That's what I've been meaning to talk to you girls about," our mother starts. "These next six months will be extra tight. We won't be able to do all the things that we normally do."

"Like what?" Riviera asks. "What won't we be able to do?"

"We won't be able to spend anything," our mother replies. "We won't be able to buy new clothes, we won't be able to buy new shoes, no new technology, no new toys, no new video games, no new decorations or blankets or anything."

"Will we still be able to watch movies and shows on our streaming services?" Annabella asks.

"No," our mother responds. "In fact, we have to stop our subscriptions to all of our streaming services. And we will have to stop our connection to the internet itself."

"No internet?" Riviera echoes, an incredulous tone in her voice.

"Yes, I'm afraid," our mother answers. "No internet, nothing fun."

"I'm so sorry that we're all going through all of this," I speak to my family. "I'm sure that we'll make it through this. I'm sure we'll make it to the other side of this." I keep my voice calm, smooth, solemn, calming. I look around at the eyes of my entire family. They are all shocked, all full of dread, all full of a horrible anticipation and a dreadful resignation. I feel as though I'm the only one who's even a little bit calm. I feel as though I'm the only one with her head on even a little bit straight. And that means that I have to be the one that calms everyone down and makes everyone feel a bit better.

"Will we really make it to the other side of this?" Riviera asks worriedly.

"We will, I promise," I assure her. I assure them all. They have to have hope. Through this shocking event, I have to make sure that my family has hope.

"We will be able to get through to the other side of this," our mother echoes. "We're a strong family. We're a close family. We're a tight-knit family. We'll get through this."

"So what else will we have to go without?" Annabella questions.

"We won't be able to go out either," our mother answers. "We won't be able to go out to movies, or dances. We won't be able to go to night clubs, or restaurants, or theatres or performances. We won't be able to go to the museum or the art gallery or to any concerts. We'll just have to stay home. And we'll have to try to conserve money and gas."

"What on earth?" Annabella's voice is incredulous. "How will we survive that? How will we be able to live through all of that? This is an atrocity!"

"I agree!" Riviera exclaims. "You can't expect us to live like this. It's simply far, far too much! How will we live without anything fun? How will we live when life is so boring?!"

"I know it will be hard, girls. I know. But we have to deal with this. We have to play the cards that we've been dealt."

"Exactly," I echo. "We still have our big, pretty house. And we still have all the nice things and the pretty furniture in our house. We can also take walks. We can see all the other pretty houses in the community of the forest and we can see their pretty gardens. We can walk through the forest. That's free. And I know how much you all like to do that." I try to keep a positive attitude. I try to help my sisters keep as positive of an attitude as they can. The Universe knows that we will need it.

"Exactly," our mother agrees. "And besides, this is only six months. We will switch to a different bank. And when my paycheque comes again in six months, we will have as much money as we used to have before. We'll be able to pay for everything we used to be able to pay for before."

"Ugh, fine," Annabella conceded.

"What about all our debts?" Riviera asks. "How will we pay those? Will we be able to hold off on paying those? What will we do?"

"We will be able to hold off on paying most of our debts, until my next payday comes," our mother explains. At this, my sisters smile. I force a smile myself. "I talked to the bank. They said that they would pause payments on most debts."

"That's great!" Annabella exclaims. "That was really nice of them."

"So it was," I agree.

"Don't get your hopes up too high," our mother cautions us, "there are still some debts we have to pay off. Like our mortgage for example. The bank says that we have to pay that, even though we lost all our money."

"What?!" Annabella exclaims, exasperation and anger in her voice. "How will we do that?! Our house is so big. Our mortgage is so big."

"What will happen if we don't pay?" Riviera asks.

"Then our house will be gone. And if our house is gone, we'll be out on the streets, and my job will be gone too. Let's hope that doesn't happen."

"It won't happen," I assure my family. "We'll find a way to stop that from happening."

"We will," our mother presses. "And we'll find a way to pay for our heating and water bills too. Those are also bills we're not allowed to put on hold."

"This is horrible!" Riviera exclaims. "This is so, so, so horrible!"

"It happens," our mother explains. "These things, they just happen sometimes."

"So what else will we have to go without?" Annabella asks. "Don't tell us that we won't be able to eat either."

"That's the thing," our mother begins, "we might not be able to eat. The Universe knows that I don't have the money for food right now. But we'll find a way. I promise."

"What?!" Annabella and Riviera both exclaim together in a messy, off-time unison. They both begin talking at the same time. No, talking is the wrong word. They both begin almost screaming at the same time, speaking so fast and in such a panicked way. Even my calm exterior cracks. How on earth are we supposed to get through this? How on earth are we supposed to go six months with no food?

I try to keep my face neutral. I try to not let the fear that I'm feeling show. I have to stay calm for my family. I have to stay collected for my family. I think that I'm the only one who is holding everyone together. And I have to hold everyone together. It does not matter how much pure dread I am feeling inside me. It doesn't matter that inside me, there is a terrible, terrible foreboding. A feeling that something is going to go terribly, terribly wrong. Even more terribly wrong than what is happening right now.

"Girls, girls, calm down!" our mother yells, voice laced with love and with worry and concern. Even now, her voice is loving. Even in the midst of so much stress, she loves her children. She is such an amazing mother, despite everything that I so very irrationally feel inside.

My sisters do calm down, and we are left looking at each other with dread and hopelessness. I force myself to smile, just a little thing, a placating thing that offers perhaps a small bit of comfort.

"Girls," our mother begins, "I will make sure that our family has all the food that it can have. I will make sure that our family has all the food that it needs. I will make sure that we can continue paying our mortgage and that we can continue paying our electricity bills and our water bills and our car payments. I will make sure that we have enough to get by. Don't worry girls, I will make sure. I will continue to provide for my family."

"How will we do that?" Riviera asks.

"I will ask our friends and our family for help. They will help us in paying our mortgage. They will help us in paying our electricity bills and water bills. They will help us in paying for our food. We have many friends, many family members. They will pull through for us. They will give what they can."

"But don't they have their own bills to pay?" Riviera asks.

"They do, but they will spare what they can," our mother answers.

"Will that be enough?" Annabella asks.

"It will be what it is," our mother answers. "Whatever help we can get from them, whatever money we can get from them, we will make it stretch as much as we can make it stretch and we will do as much with the money as we can. We will get by."

"We will get by," I echo. "I have faith in mother and in her ability to help her family and her ability to make things work. She's so smart, so brilliant, so resourceful. She'll help us though this, I'm sure. She can do it. If she can't do it then no-one can."

"Thank you, Zia. I appreciate your brave and resilient outlook to this situation." Our mother smiles at me. It's a tiny thing. A fleeting thing. But something that gives me strength anyways. Something that gives me courage anyways. But still, I cannot get rid of this feeling in my heart that something truly terrible is about to happen, something far more terrible than this situation that we've found ourselves in, something intimately tied to this situation that we've found ourselves in.

"What about the debts?" Annabella asks. "If we ask for help from our friends and family, won't that mean that we have a debt to them? How will we pay that back?"

"They have a debt to us," our mother answers. "We have helped them many times in the past, and they have amassed quite a bit of debt to us. They will surely consider our ask for help as a way to pay back the debt that they have, not a way to extract debt from us."

"You are truly wise, momma!" Riviera declares with a hint of joy in her voice. "You can truly get us out of the worst situations. You have truly thought this through!"

"Thank you, my daughter," our mother responds. "Now if you will excuse me, I have many, many phone calls to make."

———

It's been three weeks since that terrible, terrible family talk when my mother told us what a situation we were in. It has been three weeks, and the food in our fridges and pantries are almost all out. Our food is almost all out, but my mother has spent so many hours calling people and calling people and getting whatever help she could from them. She has called everyone we know so far, and gotten many pledges of support. Let's just hope that it's enough.

It's Saturday now. It's Saturday, and my sisters are off at friends' houses, trying to make our food stretch by partaking in theirs. I don't really have any close friends, so I'm just sitting on the couch. It's a nice couch. It's a soft couch. It's a soft and nice couch and I kind of like sitting here, just thinking my thoughts.

As always, my thoughts run melancholy. My emotions run melancholy. Everything inside me runs melancholy, and there is very little that I can do about that, despite all my hardest efforts. But still, I don't feel as guilty for feeling sad right now, not as much as I usually do. Because the Universe knows that I have plenty good reason to be sad right now. We all do.

"Zia," my mother speaks to me, grabbing onto my forearm and leading me away to my room, "I need to talk to you."

She doesn't grab me like this very often. Her voice is urgent, is almost furtive, and her eyes are darkened. Her whole expression is darkened. Fear spikes in my heart. What is about to happen right now? It can surely be nothing good. But my mother wouldn't hurt me, would she? Of course she wouldn't hurt me. My mind is sure, but my guilty, traitorous heart is not so sure.

"What is it, mother?" I ask her, voice soft and conceding.

"I have to talk to you about our financial situation," she presses. "I'm sure you know how much trouble we're in."

"I do. Why?" This is not looking good. Is my family in more trouble than I thought? What are we going to do about this? Why is she telling only me? What can I do about this?

"Well, I talked to our friends and family. They are supporting us, but they do not have the money to support us fully."

"Oh no." My eyes go wide. "What will we do now?"

"That's what I meant to talk to you about," she starts. "We have enough money to pay off the mortgage, and that comes first. Because without the mortgage we'll be out on the street and I won't have a job."

"That's good."

"And we have enough money for food. But here's the thing, we don't have enough food for everyone."

"Oh no. What will we do?"

"I can feed your sisters. But I can't feed you more than one meal a day. You will have to eat your lunch at school and then just wait after you come home. Just wait for these few months to be over."

"Um ... excuse me?" I cannot believe what my own mother is saying.

"You will have to eat one meal a day, okay?"

"Okay." I reply. And really, it's the only thing that I can say. It's the only way I can reply. Because she's my mother. She's given me so much. How else could I possibly reply to her?

"You can do that, right? For your sisters and for me? So that we have enough to eat?" Her voice is almost pleading, but it also has a firm, pressing quality to it. And as always, I cannot deny her. I cannot deny her at all. Not even a bit.

"Of course, mother."

"I knew you would answer in this way. I knew that you would understand. You're a good girl. A righteous girl. You make the right decisions and do what is proper and decent and just."

"But mother ..." I begin.

"What is it, child?"

"If I said no, then what would you have done?"

"Then I still couldn't have given you food, I'm sorry. I have to make sure your two sisters get enough food."

I don't quite understand why she's singling me out to be the one that starves. I don't quite understand, but at the same time I do understand it. I understand it in the back of my mind, in the small, rebellious part of my heart that has been plaguing me since I was young. I almost cannot believe what's going on. But my worst fears are coming true.

"Mother," I begin, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

"What is it, my girl?"

"Why am I the one that has to go hungry?" I know I am not really supposed to ask this question. I know I am not really allowed to ask this question. I know I am only allowed to go along with what my mother wants. But I cannot help but to ask it anyways. I just ... I just have to know why.

"You know about debts and owing people, right?" There is a bit of forced, fake brightness in her voice. "You know that you must pay back the people who have helped you, right?"

"Yes, mother."

"We'll this is your way to pay me back, to pay this family back, for all that we have helped you over the years. See, we took you in and fed you and clothed you and sheltered you, and you need to pay us back for all that. You need to pay us back by making a sacrifice."

"Okay, mother."

"You're a good girl. I know that you can make sacrifices for what is good and right. And I know that you can pay back your debts."

This makes sense. What she's saying makes sense. She's not withholding food from me because she doesn't love me. She's not starving me because she doesn't love me. She does love me. She's just withholding food from me because it is the good, right, and just thing to do. She's only doing it because it's what's moral and proper to do. She's just following her morals, not her heart. And of course, she has to follow her morals, not her heart. She still loves me in her heart. She still does. But still ...

"Why do I owe you a debt and my sisters don't? You raised them as well." I know I am asking too many questions. I shouldn't be asking so many questions. I silently curse my traitorous mouth.

"I brought your sisters into the world," my mother explains. "And thus it is my job to take care of them and provide for them and raise them. It is not a debt that they're procuring, because it is simply my responsibility to take care of them, it is not something kind and generous that I am doing for them that I did not have to do.

"You on the other hand though, I didn't bring you into this world. You are not someone I have to have responsibility towards. And yet I took you in anyways. And yet I provided for you and helped you and fed you and sheltered you and raised you anyways, even though I didn't have to. And therefore everything I did for you was an act of kindness. An act of kindness that you have to repay somehow. You owe it to us. We had no obligation to give you a home, and yet we did. In fact, without me taking care of you when you were weak and helpless and defenceless, you might have died. And so you owe us your life."

"I understand," I tell my mother. But do I truly understand? I should understand. Everything that she said made perfect sense. She had to take care of my sisters. But she didn't have to take care of me. And so I absolutely do owe her, don't I? She's right. Of course she's right. She's wise and caring and kind and just, and of course she's always right.

"I'm glad you understand, my girl," my mother tells me. She smiles fondly at me, and I smile back at her. I love her smiles.

She leaves me in my room, and closes the door behind her. I hear the lock clicking shut from the outside, and my heart skips a beat in fear. I quickly calm myself down though, telling myself that my mother would of course have a good reason for locking the door. Of course she would. She has a good reason for all that she does. And the only reason that I am locked in is because I have a good reason to be.

I go to my soft bed, and I curl up. I hug my knees to my chest and lie against the pillow, on my side, looking at the forest outside the window. The trees are beautiful. They have always been beautiful. They try to soothe my soul as much as they can, and I wish they could succeed more than they are. But still, I am deeply thankful for these trees from the very centre of my core.

There is no-one here right now, so I allow myself to cry. I can allow myself to cry. And I can allow myself to miss the things that I have no right to miss.

My mother is right. She's so very right. She's very smart and wise and knowledgeable and learned. She is a pillar in the community, helping all the people around her. And she has so much knowledge from so many places. She knows very well how the world works and what each person's place is within it. She knows very well what roles we are all supposed to play and how we can all play these roles. She knows very well what roles I'm supposed to play and how I can play these roles. She knows what my place is and I must believe her, I must learn from her. I must believe her and I must learn from her so that I too know what my place in the world is and how to play the role that I am supposed to play, that I am obliged to play.

She's right. She didn't have to take me in. She didn't have to take care of me and protect me. And yet she did. She did take care of me and protect me for so long. She took care of me so well. And she will take care of me again once this emergency is over. She did not have to do any of this. She was not obliged to do any of this. And yet she did it anyways. She did it anyways out of the kindness of her heart because she is just such a kind person, and she is raising her children as well to be such kind people.

She didn't raise my sisters out of the kindness of her heart. She raised them because she was obliged to. Because she was obliged to take care of them. Because she was obliged to love them. A mother is obliged to love the babies that come out of her body. A mother cannot help but to love the babies that come out of her body. Annabella and Riviera are children that she is compelled to love, that she is obliged to love. So her loving them isn't a great act of kindness, it is simply expected.

Yet her love for me is not simply expected. It is something she chose to bestow upon me. And so I owe her. I owe it to her to help her. I owe it to her to help her family. I owe her in a way that my sisters don't. And so I am obligated to make sacrifices for this family, to go hungry for this family, so that my sisters can eat. Because they are not beholden to this family in the way that I am. They do not owe my mother in the way that I do.

So I curl in on myself tighter and I cry. For some strange, unfathonable reason, I feel so very betrayed. I cannot stop feeling this way.

———

I come home from school. It's been two months since that fateful day when my mother took me to my room and told me what I would have to do. It's been two months, and I have felt myself getting weaker and weaker and weaker. I don't know how I'll be able to hold on these many long months. I don't know how I'll be able to live through it. But I have to live through it. And so I force myself on.

I get to my room, being followed by my mother.

"How was school today?" she asks me with concern dripping through her voice. She loves me. Even now, when she's been forced to make such a horrible decision, she loves me. Yet why can I not make myself believe this?

"It was okay," I reply, exhaustion dripping through my voice. School wasn't actually okay. I was so, so hungry the whole time. As I always am.

"That's good." She closes the door, and I hear the telltale click of the lock.

I've mostly been locked in my room these past two months. It makes sense. I understand that I probably wouldn't be able to stop myself from going to the fridge if I could, so locking the door just ensures that I can't do that. It just ensures that I can't steal food.

I miss being able to interact with my family. I miss it so, so very much. I didn't know that I would miss it so much. I'm all alone now. There's no-one with me. No-one to share my time with. No-one to share my experiences with. No-one to listen to and talk to and interact with. Just me, alone with my thoughts in my own room in a house that doesn't feel like it's mine, that has never felt like it was mine.

Hunger claws in my gut like a vicious, hungry beast with sharp teeth and sharp claws. It bites and scratches at all my insides. My stomach hurts so much, my ribs hurt so much, my chest cavity hurts so much. My arms and legs hurt. My head feels light and dizzy. It all hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. It hurts unbearably and I feel like screaming in pain yet I am far too weak to scream. Not that it would make much of a difference anyways. All that would happen is that I would get in trouble.

I'm helpless. I'm helpless. I'm locked in this room and I'm helpless and I can't get out. I'm trapped. I'm trapped and there's nothing I can do. All I can do is claw desperately at my mind for an escape, for a release, for a relief and a salvation that I know is not coming. The beast inside of me and me myself are both trapped, are both hungering, are both begging to be let out. But the beast in me can eat my insides. I cannot.

Though actually, I am eating myself. My body has run out of fat to digest into carbohydrates, probably. It's probably digesting my muscles and my organs and my epithelial tissue now. Burning through my cells to extract precious, precious energy. A process which has been evolved into my bloodline over millions of years.

See, it's natural, what is happening to me. My hunger is natural. It is something that my body is ready for. Something that my body has been ready for for so many years. The biological processes that guide starvation are processes that have existed for eons. They are processes that have been building and developing within us since we were just single cells, since we were just prokaryotes. So, it's okay to starve sometimes. There is nothing wrong with starving sometimes.

And anyways, because I'm starving, that means that my mother and my sisters can eat. My sisters, especially, can eat. They need to be able to eat. They need to be able to get the calories they need. I love them. I really do love them a lot. And I need to do what I can do in order to help them. If that means not eating, then so be it. I will bear it, no matter what it takes from me, no matter how much it hurts.

But part of me doesn't love my family. Part of me holds it against them, what they are doing to me. Part of me is deeply, deeply betrayed. It is rueful, jealous, bitter. I am rueful, jealous, bitter. I am full of hatred and bitterness and part of me wants to get revenge, get revenge, get revenge for what they've put me through.

But I cannot get revenge. I am simply one person with no money, no power, no property, no abilities, no resources, no support, no help. There is nothing I can do about my situation. I'm a teenaged girl locked in a room, all by myself. There is nothing I can do. Perhaps this is why my mother was able to do this to me. Because she knew I was weaker than her. She knew I couldn't fight back.

But I feel so guilty for hating my family. I feel so guilty for wanting revenge. This simply proves that I am rotten inside. It simply proves that I am unholy, ungrateful, unworthy. I know that the good and right thing for me to do would be to be strong and silently bear the burden of my situation. But for some reason I am finding myself unable to do that. I am finding myself unable to do what I know is good and right. How on earth could I be so selfish? This just proves that I don't actually deserve to eat.

I lie in my bed, which is what I have found myself doing so very often, and I cry. I think about reading a book to try to take my mind away from the hunger. I think about it, but I know it won't work. I've tried reading before. I've tried thinking other thoughts and getting my mind off of the hunger. Nothing has worked. All the time, my emotions are consumed by the all-consuming ache of hunger. Even when my mind is distracted, it doesn't matter that my mind is distracted because my heart isn't.

It's all-consuming. It consumes every part of me, taking more and more and more until there is nothing left. All I am is a constant, insatiable need, an overarching and overwhelming ache. I am burning, burning, burning. Every part of me is burning. And yet at the same time I am freezing, freezing, freezing. Every part of me is freezing. The pain is a screaming sort of pain, and I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it. But bear it I must.

And, throughout this whole time, my emotional misery has not subsided. I'm still as sad as I was before. As torn and ripped and poisoned. The poison is still seeping through me. And my mind and my heart are swept away in the poison storm. Except now, along with the emotional pain, there is also physical pain. There is physical pain that is just as strong as the emotional pain and the two types of pain are interlaced throughout each other. As two sides of the same coin.

I breathe. And the breath comes ragged and jagged. Everything inside me is ragged and jagged. Everything about me is ragged and jagged. It has been for a long, long while. As long as I can remember. But it's worse now.

Now the parts of my mind that I could suppress somewhat before are more bold and loud than they ever have been. They tell me that I am not loved, I am not loved, I am not loved. I know that I'm loved, that I must be loved. But the feeling that I am not overcomes me. The feeling that no one in the universe truly cares for me overcomes me and overwhelms me. And I try so very very hard to not listen to it. But there is nothing that I can do but for listening to it. Despite all my best efforts. But still, I tell myself that I am wrong, I am wrong, I am wrong. I tell myself that I am loved. Now if only I could believe myself.

The hunger was terrible the first day. The first day when I had no food. When I had only one meal that day. The first day I starved. It was so terrible, so painful, so unbearable. It was such violence. Violence on my body, violence on my mind, violence on my heart, violence on my soul. There was so much violence and there was so much devastation. I did not think it could possibly get worse.

But get worse it did. Every day that I went without food, the pain built up and built up and built up. It was more unbearable each day. And each day all I could do was bear it. And each day I was pushed further and further and further past the limits of what my body could tolerate. Each day I was pushed further past the limits of what I though myself capable of tolerating.

It was and still is a small kindness that I was used to unbearable pain my whole life, despite that pain being not quite as physical. It was still physical. My past emotional pain, the pain that I've been dealing with my whole life, it still had a physical aspect to it. It just wasn't as ingrainedly physical as this hunger. Though of course the hunger affects my heart and my mind as well. Sadness and hunger are both deeply physical, they are both deeply emotional, they are both deeply unbearable.

I went to school each day and nobody noticed. Nobody notices what I'm going through. I'm always quiet. I'm always subdued. So my exhaustion is not really noticed. In a way I was always exhausted anyways. A couple of teachers asked me why I had lost so much weight. I guess they noticed. I simply told them that I wasn't as hungry as I used to be. A bold faced lie. But one they believed. They didn't pursue it any further. They simply let me be. So I ate my lunch at school and I went back home and got locked in my room.

Which is where I am now, lying in my soft bed, crying.

I think about screaming, yelling, banging against the door, begging for help and food and attention. But I know that it will be pointless. I know that no help will come. It will just be a waste of energy. And I have no energy to waste. I think about what could happen if I tried to fight my mother, if I tried to run to the fridge and get food before she could lock me in my room. I know that that would be pointless as well. In my weakened state, she is much stronger than me. And I couldn't fight my mother and my sisters at the same time anyways.

There is nothing I can do about my situation. There is literally nothing that I can do.

Not that I should struggle. Not that I should fight. My mother sacrificed so much to take care of me. She gave so much to take care of me. I owe it to her to sacrifice for her back. I know this. I know this, and I tell myself this, again and again and again. But it doesn't stop the pain. Actually, it just makes the pain so much worse. It makes all the pain so much worse in all its aspects. I tell myself that I shouldn't struggle against this, but each and every day that I go hungry, the struggling and desperate part of my mind gets louder and louder, harder and harder to ignore.

I don't know what will happen when I can't ignore it any longer.

———

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I have been here for three months. I have starved myself, I have been starved for three months. And I'm going to die. Desperation is banging its fists on my insides. Desperation is screaming its throat raw in every part inside me. Hunger gnaws at my bones, gnaws at my gut, gnaws at my flesh and at my blood. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this anymore.

My mind is screaming. Screaming at me to stop this. My mind is screaming at me to make this stop. Except I can't. I can't make this stop. I don't have that kind of power. I don't have any power. All I can do is let this happen to me, no matter how desperate, no matter how infuriated I am. And I am going to die. I just know that I'm going to die.

Death looms over me. It watches everything that I do. It is like a shadow over me. It is like my shadow, trailing behind my each and every thought, my each and every action. It is a dreadful presence, constantly pressing upon my mind, constantly pressing upon my heart. Death is my only companion these days, and I do not know whether I am grateful for this companion or not. I do not know whether I am grateful for this pressing presence or not.

Part of me wants to die. Part of me wants to just let this all go. To let this jagged, tearing, grating existence go. The Universe knows that there is nothing good about life. The Universe knows that there's nothing worthwhile in existing. I feel guilty for thinking this, because I know this train of thought is not really allowed. But still, it's true, it's true, it's true. And no amount of judgement will stop it from being so horribly, undeniably true,

But despite all this, despite how hard my life is, how hard it's always been, I just cannot bear to let my life go. There is something inside me, stronger than a thousand hurricanes, that wants to live, that wants so desperately to live. It won't let me let go of this life, no matter how much I want to, no matter how much I try. I don't know where this part of me came from. I don't know if it's new or if it's always been there. But it feels older than anything ever has felt before. It feels older than I am. It feels ancient.

The part of me that wants to live tells me that I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here, it doesn't matter how, but I need to get out of here. I have to find a way to leave this place. I have to find a way to get some food. No matter what it will cost me. No matter who I will end up having to betray. No matter what I will end up having to do.

But no, I can't think that. I can't let myself think that. I have to be loyal to my family. I have to be loyal to the people who took me in and took care of me and raised me. That means I have to listen to my mother and I have to do what she told me and I have to make the sacrifices she has called upon me to make. I owe her that much. I owe them all that much. No matter how unbearably much all of this hurts, no matter what I feel in my body and in my heart and in my mind and in my soul.

But as I am lying here, in my bed, cold despite the fact that it's summer, cold despite the fact that I'm under many blankets, I ache. I ache so much. My entire body aches, but it's more, it's so much more than just my body. My entire soul aches, my mind aches, my heart aches, every part of me aches. It's as if I have thousands of clawing nails in my chest, in my stomach, in my abdomen, in my back. It's as if I am being torn apart, being disintegrated from the inside out. It's as if there is fire in my limbs, fire in my core, fire all over me that is slowly, slowly burning me away.

I feel feint and weak and lightheaded and dizzy. I am so dizzy. So, so very dizzy. It's as if I am on the verge of unconsciousness. Though I suppose that I am. I'm not just of the verge of unconsciousness, I'm on the verge of death. I'm about to die. I'm about to die. It takes so much effort and concentration to keep myself here. It takes so much effort and concentration to keep myself holding onto my consciousness and my life. It's exhausting. So exhausting. I'm exhausted. So exhausted.

I almost want to give in. I almost want to let go of my tentative hold on life. I almost want to let death take me. And so I do. I do let go. My mind is falling, falling, falling. My entire consciousness is falling, falling, falling. This is liberation. It's freedom.

I bolt upright in bed, using a heaving bellow of energy I didn't know I had. I feel fear. I feel fear. I feel an incredible surge of fear pulsing through my body, blaring through my mind, ripping through my soul. All I can feel is this fear. I can't let myself die. I can't let myself die. I can't let myself die. I don't know why. Dying would honestly be better. But I can't let myself do that.

I want to die, I want to die, I so very much want to die. But the feeling that pushes through my body and pulls me to action is my desire to live. And my desire to live might not be stronger than my desire to die, but it's the desire that gives me energy, it's the desire that forces my actions, it's the desire that makes me act. It makes me act and no other action can push through my mind and manifest as action. I need to live.

I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. I'll die if I don't get out of here. They're trying to kill me. They're trying to kill me. It doesn't make sense why they're trying to kill me, but at the same time, it makes perfect sense. I'm not really a part of this family. I'm not really a part of these people. If they had to sacrifice anyone, they'd choose me. But it doesn't matter what the reason is. I won't let them do this.

I won't let them, I won't let them, I won't let them. They won't win, they won't win, they won't win. I can't let them win. But I wonder, will I lose?

I have to think of a plan to get out of here now. I have to get out of here now. Out of this locked room. Our of this false, sugary, heartless house. Out of this piece of land and maybe even out of this community. I have to get out, I have to get out, I have to get out. If I stay here then that will be it, I will be done. But if I get out, then that will be rebellion. That will be rebellion, that will be revolution, it will be mutually assured destruction. And I don't care. I don't care if I destroy myself. As long as I bring the plans of my not mother and my not sisters with me.

I step on my hard wooden desk. The window is as big as I am. I open the window to my room, and then step out onto the window sill, holding the edges of the frame in both hands. There is a large aspen tree brushing against the window. I reach out to grab it, and then climb it down. It feels like nothing I have ever felt before, being up in this tree. It feels like protection, like love, like comfort, like care.

The last ten feet or so I have to jump down, there are no tree branches here, only trunk. I feel fear wash over me. But I realize that if I don't jump, I will quite literally die in this tree, on my not mother's land. And so I do jump. And I hit the ground and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts so much. My arms and legs ache overwhelmingly, and I feel as if I have died.

But I haven't. I haven't died. And I won't die. Not if this desperation inside me has anything to say about it. I know that I have to get up. The thing that I have to do next is to get up and start walking. So, despite how weak and dizzy I am, despite how smothered and aching I am, I have to get up and I have to use the last remaining bits of my energy to start walking.

The last remaining bits of my energy. The last remaining bits of my energy. I know right now that my energy is slipping through my fingers. I know right now that I have barely any energy left. I don't know where my ability to move is even coming from at this point, but the point still stands that I have this ability. I have this ability still and I have to use it. I have to use it in order to get myself out of here.

So I push myself up. And I pray. I don't know who I pray to. All the gods of my past have come from the mouth of my not mother. All the gods of my past have been the gods that she believed in. And I cannot believe in those same gods. Not after everything she has done to me. Not after everything she has done to me year after year after year after year, for all of my life. But I know. I know there are better gods out there. I know there are deeper gods out there. Gods which she doesn't know about and which she will never understand. I don't know who they are, but I pray to them. I pray to them to give me strength and help me.

I start walk through the thick woods outside my bedroom window. The thick woods that are cover, for now. The woods that are help for now. The woods are strength. They have always been strength, and right now the strength they give me is pressing into me, is filling me with courage, is filling me with hope. The trees cover me, the shrubs and bushes cover me, the herbs and grasses cover me. The mosses and lichens cover me. And they all conceal my form, and give me their power, as I walk towards the thin, twisting road that connects the house to the main road.

I continue walking towards the end of the road connecting my mother's property to the main road. I do not get on this road, because I do not want to be seen. Instead, I follow the road, hiding in the tree cover beside it, in the thick tapestry of tall forest that will cover me. I thank the trees for their help, and I hear them thank me back. For what purpose I do not know why. They cover me. They protect me. They hide me from prying eyes. They are alive. They are alive. They are so very alive and they give me life. And for that I am awestruck.

I keep walking. It is beyond arduous, the simple act of walking. It is nearly impossible. But I push myself on. I push myself on and I push myself on and I push myself on. Through my exhaustion. Through my aching. Through everything inside me that is screaming at me to lay down and die. The part of me that is screaming at me to go on and live is more powerful. And so, even though each step requires tremendous effort, even though each step is an ache, each step is a feat of incredible strength, and each step requires immeasurable force, I go on.

I finally reach the place where the main road connects to the property. I am away from the little town that exists in the trees. I am on the highway now. I will miss the forest dearly but I won't miss the people who live in it. It felt like it took forever getting here. But here I am, and the next part of my journey is complete. I slip through the gate and look out at the road.

I have two choices in front of me now. I could go southwest to the city. Or I could go northeast to the highway. I think for a moment.

If I go to the city, it will be easier for me to find something to eat, some source of food, some helpful person, anything at all. It will be easier for me to beg or even dumpster dive for food. But, they'll all be expecting me to go to the city. When my mother inevitably calls the police, they will all think that I went to the city, for the aforementioned reasons. So they will search the city, not the highway. And if I take the highway, there's a lower chance of me being found. But still, there are a lot more places to hide in the city. There are many more streets, and there are many more alleys and nooks and crannies. In the highway, there is only one stretch of road.

I make a decision. I'll go to the city. Yes, maybe I'll be found. But maybe I'll find a way to live. My chances are much higher there. And there aren't really any good options. I just have to do what is the best option.

This is so unfair. It's so unfair that I have to be doing this. It's so unfair that I have to leave my whole life behind. I have to leave my home behind. And yet, yet my whole life has never truly been mine. And my home had never truly been mine either. It has only been the place I was forced to stay in, back when I didn't know any better and couldn't question what I'd been taught. I have never had a home. I have never had a life. I had only had survival and now I might not even have that. It's unfair. It's unfair. It's so very unfair.

I start crying. I know I'm wasting energy. I know I'm wasting water. But I can't help myself. It's all so very unfair, and the emotions inside me are swirling and whirling and completely maddening. I have to get these emotions out somehow. I have to communicate what I'm feeling somehow, even if I'm just communicating with the rows and rows of trees that line the road as it stretches towards the city.

I never had a way to communicate what I was feeling inside. I never had a way to communicate that, and I always had to keep it to myself. I always had to keep everything to myself. And that's so unfair. That is so deeply unfair. And I have to, I just have to let it out now. I have to tell the trees. I have to tell the grass, I have to tell the wind, I have to tell the sun, I have to tell the earth, I have to tell the sky.

The sun shines bright up above me and there are no clouds to be seen. And yet I'm so cold. I'm so cold. I'm so very deeply cold.

Yet despite that, the sky is blue above me. It is bright. It is brilliant. It is alive. And it gives me some of its energy, it gives me some of its vitality, it gives me some of its spirit, it gives me some of its life. The earth is firm and strong and full of life beneath me. It is life. It is death. It is life and death together as one. And it holds me. It supports me. It gives me strength. The sun is a fire and it fuels the fire inside me. It keeps the fire that is in me alive, so that I can stay alive. Each and every breath that I take connects me with the world, it connects me with the spirit of life that is in all of nature. And it is glorious, glorious, so much more glorious than anything I have ever experienced before.

I cry from the happiness just as much as I cry from the pain. I cry from the happiness that comes with the fact that this world loves me, this world loves me, this world loves me. The earth and the air and the fire and the water and the sun and the moon all love me, just as much, just as strongly, just as deeply as they love anyone else. And I realize this now. And, on the brink of death, I feel more alive than I have ever been.

And yet that doesn't change the fact that I have no shelter. I have no shelter. I have no food. I don't even have a jacket. I don't know how I'll get food, or shelter or warm clothes or anything else. I don't know how I'll get my needs met. I don't know how I'll crawl back from the brink of death. And all of that is unfair, it's unfair, it's so unfair. And that is part of what makes me cry. Because I have nothing. I have nothing. I have nothing to give anyone in exchange for food, for resources, for life.

But still, I find myself able to think about the injustices that plague me. I find myself able to call out the fact that I have nothing, even if it's in the silence of my mind. I find myself able to tell myself that I deserve equality, I deserve help, I deserve everything I need, I deserve life. I wonder why I'm able to tell myself this. Perhaps because I have come to the realization that I need to protect myself and provide for myself if I am to stay alive. Perhaps because I am desperate to stay alive, and I know that the only way I can do that is if I realize that I deserve life.

And yet I'm so tired. I'm so tired. I'm so tired. But, crying, I push myself to continue on through the pain and through the ardour and through the exhaustion.

In front of me a large truck is lumbering by. But, strangely enough, instead of going on down the road, it pulls over to the shoulder of the road, the strip of pavement that no vehicles can drive on. The truck pulls over a few yards in front of me. I wonder why, I know it's none of my business, but I can't help but to be curious.

A man gets out from the truck, and climbs down. His hair is dark like mine. His eyes are dark too. He looks straight at me, and starts coming towards me. Am I about to get kidnapped? Maybe. Fear pierces through my chest. What if he comes to capture me? I can't fight him off. I can't do anything. I'll just have to let him take me to wherever he takes me to. Dear universe, why does my life have to keep getting worse and worse?

The man stops a few paces away from me. He drops to his knees in front of me, and that makes him seem much less intimidating. The fear in my heart gets replaced by confusion.

"Are you crying?" he asks me with a soft and kind voice.

I nod my head.

"Okay. Do you want to come with me? I can drive you to the city, if that's where you're going. It's really not safe to be walking by the side of the highway like this."

I think about his offer. It will save me a lot of energy, if he drives me to the city. And I know that energy is very precious to me right now. He doesn't seem to be a dangerous man. He has a kind face and kind eyes. There is a deep sadness behind his eyes. There is a deep hope as well. I think I'm safe with him. And a free ride is probably the nicest offer I'm going to get in my life.

"Okay," I speak.

He holds my hand as we go to the truck. It's a rather large truck. He helps me to get on, into the passenger side, before getting on himself into the driver side. It's not much warmer in the truck than it is out in the road, but I get to sit down and lean against the seat and relax. And, I feel like I'll never be able to get up again, I am so deeply tired.

"My name is Shandro," the man tells me, as we drive in the direction of the city. "What's your name?"

"Zia," I tell him. "Or at least, that's what everybody calls me."

"It's great to meet you, Zia."

"It's great to meet you too."

"If you don't mind me asking, are you okay? You were walking by the side of the road, and you look so very thin."

"I ..." I wonder if I should answer honestly. I wonder if he'll turn me in if he knows. "I haven't been eating nearly enough for almost three months," I finally decide to say, truthfully.

"Almost three months? That's absolutely horrible, child. You're going to die." He reaches down and pulls out a small reusable grocery bag. "There's food in here. Tomato soup and a few sandwiches and chocolate milk. Eat it all. Please. I can't have you die."

"Isn't it your food, though?" I ask him. I will not take advantage of Shandro's generosity.

"Don't you need it?"

"I can go a few meals without eating," he replies to me, "you are going to die. You need to eat right now. Please, please eat."

"Thank you so much!" I exclaim, beyond myself in gratitude. I unscrew the lid for the flask of tomato soup and start eating it by the spoonful. I make sure to pace myself so that I don't go too fast, so that I can keep all of this precious food inside my body.

"If you don't mind me asking," he begins, "where are you going?"

"I'm running away from my home." I decide to tell him the truth. "My family, well, they're not really my family, they were starving me."

"Oh my gods, that's deeply horrible," Shandro exclaims. "I'm glad you escaped."

"You won't turn me in, will you?"

"Of course not. Do you have anywhere to go, though?"

"No." I deeply wish I could give him a different answer. But I can't.

"You could come live with me, if you wanted," he offers. "I'm on the road a lot, since I'm a truck driver. But my wife, she's a librarian, she can take care of you. We would treat you well, I promise."

"Really?" I cannot believe what I'm hearing. "But there's no way for me to make it up to you. I have nothing to pay you back with."

"It's okay," he responds. "We don't want anything in return. We don't want anything. We just want to make sure that you're okay, and that you have a home and food and people to take care of you."

"Thank you so much!"

"Think nothing of it. It's the least we could do. Anyways, we're in the city now. I can stop to get you some food. We have a few days of journey ahead of us and you need to eat and rebuild your body."

"Are you going to get some food for yourself, too?"

"I don't have the money to, right now. I didn't think to bring that much money. But I'll be fine. You're going to die if you don't eat. It's much more important that you eat."

"Are you sure?" I cannot believe what he is saying. Why would he put me, a stranger who he just met, above his own well-being? Why would he put my needs over his? Especially after he knows that there's nothing I could give him?

"Yes." His voice is pressing and absolutely certain, and I cannot say no to that.

I finish the tomato soup and bite into the sandwich. I am tired, so very tired. But it feels as if, for the first time that I can even remember, I am able to actually and truly rest.

If you like this piece check out my Mastodon my account is FSairuv@mas.to and I post about human rights, social justice, and the environment.

I'm twelve years old. I shouldn't be working in a factory. But here I am. Here I am with all the other twelve-year-olds, with all the people older than that, with people younger than me. There are even seven-year-olds here. They should be out playing. They should be having fun. But they need to make money so that they can eat, so that their families can eat, so that the whole community can eat. I remember when I was seven. How deafening and arduous the process of being at work was.

The seven-year-olds should be at school. I should be at school. But it's not like any of us could afford that luxury. Though I suppose it's not a luxury.

I have no idea how long I've been working for. My mind screams and my soul bleeds and everything in my world is whittled down to the sharp, piercing knife point of the present. I have to do it perfectly. I have to do everything perfectly. There is no room for any mistakes, not even small ones. If I make even the tiniest of mistakes, I don't get paid. If I don't get paid, my people starve.

Not that we aren't starving anyways.

I keep my eyes down on my work. And I keep my whole mind, my whole being, straining against my desires and pushing me forwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards. I do not have even a moment to take a breath. I do not have even a moment to rest. Not the smallest, tiniest, slightest of rests. I have to keep on going. Through all the pain, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

I sink each fabric in the glaring, screaming blue of the fabric dye in a vat in front of me. Fabric after fabric after fabric after fabric. Again and again and again and again. Until I am absolutely dizzy with it. I am already dizzy with the fumes coming off of the dye. I am dizzy and my head hurts from the noxious, poisonous smells.

I have to then swirl each piece of fabric in the fluid using my ladle. This part is a lot more technically difficult than I first thought it would be, since I have to make sure that all parts of each piece of fabric is getting soaked in the dye. I have to swirl it around fast, faster than humanly imaginable, because I have to get through all my gargantuas workload, a workload that never lets up no matter how inhumanly hard I work.

After the swirling, I have to take the fabrics out and go hang them on the drying rack, a contraption of curved metal beams with a drainage grate under it. This rack is enormous, and it is constantly bathed in dry air. This is the part that I hate the most. I have to hold the piece of fabric, the piece of fabric filled with stinging, toxic liquid, in my own hands. Sure, I'm wearing gloves, but the gloves are meagre protection as the dye seeps through them and makes my hands sting and burn in pain. I have to then walk, well actually, practically run, to the drying rack and place my load up absolutely perfectly.

My hands are always burning, always stinging, always in horrific pain throughout my whole time working. I'm not allowed to go to the one bathroom that we have in the building, that is far away, in order to wash them. It would take far too much time to walk there, not to mention it wouldn't even help if my hands are just going to get burned again the very next fabric that I have to hang up. Time is money. Literally. It's a meagre little bit of money for me and it's a whole lot of money for the people who own this factory.

I'm barely even allowed to go to the bathroom when I actually need to go to the bathroom. Because there aren't enough bathrooms. Because it's too far away. Because I have to work, work, work and work. I don't drink water, and I end up being so overheated and dehydrated, and that makes my head throb even more, makes my whole body strain. But it's not like I have a choice. This is the life that I am forced to live.

So through my aching, pounding head and my stinging I work on. I keep on working and I keep on working and it's so repetitive and monotonous that it feels like sandpaper on my brain. It feels like sandpaper on my brain and dry, waterless winds in my throat and a slow-acting poison in my heart. It feels as if my whole being is being slowly consumed by some eldritch beast that no-one has a name for. I am a ghost. I am a ghost and that is all I will ever be.

This is what life is for me. This is what I have to do twelve hours a day, six days a week. This is all that will happen to me for years and years and years and years. This is all that will happen to me until the day that I die. This is all that I have to look forwards to, all that I have to have hope for. There is no hope for me. There is no hope for any of my people. Just a fragile, faltering sort of survival that very definitely is not life.

I wish that I was dead.

———

I feel tired in my bones, tired in my blood, tired in my flesh. I feel tired in my mind, tired in my heart, tired in my soul. It's a tiredness beyond tiredness. An exhaustion beyond exhaustion. It's as if I have been hollowed out, as if all my insides have been scraped out, raw and bleeding, and all I am left with is a used-up, burnt-out shell of a person.

But I am a person. I am a person. I am a full, whole, and good person. I have to remember that. I have to remember it. For the sake of my family, my friends, my neighbours, my community, and all the people I have never met before, who toil and suffer just as I do, I have to remember it. I have to remember who I am. I have to remember who we all are.

I am walking home from the bus station, and all around me there are masses of people just like me, masses of people who are all walking home as well. It makes me feel seen, feel known, to be among them all. It makes me feel as if I belong somewhere, as if I belong with someone. And belonging is the best feeling in the world. It gives me a sweet, bright, secret sort of victory tucked away deep in my soul where no malevolent forces will be able to find it, where no malevolent forces will be able to snuff it out.

"How was work today?" an older man who lives a few blocks away, Yoshi, asks me. His eyes are full of darkness. His eyes are full of exhaustion. His eyes are full of concern. His eyes are full of love. And looking into his eyes, looking into the endlessly deep, dark pool of his brown eyes, it absolutely breaks my heart into so many pieces but it also makes me feel more whole and more seen than I could ever hope to convey.

"Oh, you know, horrible," I reply to him. Because it's the truth. And even though it's horrid, even though it's heartbreaking, he needs the truth. He deserves the truth. Of course there are a lot of places and situations where lying is the best thing to do, where it's the kindest thing to do, but this is not one of those situations. He can see the hurt, the devastation, the desecration, deep in my eyes, and no matter how much I try to hide it, he will still be able to see it.

"I'm so sorry, Miri," he replies, voice heavy. "You deserve better. You deserve so much better." There is kindness in his words. And despondence in them. I knew he was expecting my answer. But still, he grieves for me, I know he grieves for me, I know he grieves for all of us. I grieve for him too, and I grieve for all the people, for all of my people, everywhere. We all grieve for each other.

"How was your work day?" My words come out with a deeply sorrowful edge to them. An edge that cuts into both of our souls, an edge that heals us both.

"Difficult. Very difficult. I had to lug bricks up so many flights of stairs, again and again and again for hours and hours at a time." His words are haunted. But I knew that this is more or less how he would answer. I could see the devastation within him the whole time. I can see the devastation within him now.

"Try to get something to eat after you go home," I suggest to him. I know it's not a very powerful suggestion. There might not be food at his little hut. And even if there is, it might need to be cooked first. And that takes time. But still, I know how hungry people are after they come home from work. I know it because I have felt it, day in and day out, for years on end. Although, I'm hungry all the time. We all are. The hunger never really ends.

"I'll try," he responds, "but I'll have to cook first. And I have to make sure there's enough food for all of us. I have to make sure there's enough food for the kids." His voice carries so much love in it. So much selflessness. Self-sacrifice. It's incredible, it's beautiful, it's terrible how much self-sacrifice we all need to have. How much self-sacrifice we all need to have all the time.

"Of course," I answer. And what other answer could I have possibly given. Of course he needs to look after the kids first. We all do. I suppose I'm lucky, for now, since I am a kid myself and that means that everyone looks after me. But still, I try to make sure that the younger kids get to eat before I get to eat. I try to make sure that the younger kids don't go hungry, or at least not more hungry than they have to.

"You should wash your hands right after you get home," Yoshi advises me.

"I will," I tell him. And it's the truth. Thankfully, water is not as expensive as food is. Well, good clean drinking water is expensive but nobody uses that. Nobody washes with that or drinks from that. The tap water that I have at home is connected directly to the river, and I can wash away all the stinging chemicals from my hands using that water.

Suddenly I hear a baby crying. It's an incredibly mournful, desperate sound. So young and innocent and searching. It pulls at my heartstrings, pulling me towards its direction. Who is leaving a baby to cry like that? I suppose maybe their caretaker is busy.

"Do you hear that?" I ask Yoshi. He looks at me questioningly.

"Do I hear what?"

"The baby?" I respond, "do you hear the baby crying?"

"I don't hear a baby crying."

"Huh. That's weird. I'm sure I can hear it." This is strange. Very strange. I absolutely have to investigate.

I twist and squeeze my way through the crowd that moves around me, finding any path I can through the dense crowd. I let the sounds of the baby crying guide me. They keep crying and crying and crying on. Strangely enough, for some reason nobody seems to be able to hear them. Or if they do hear the baby, they are showing no signs of it. Which is absolutely impossible, since anyone would go to a crying baby.

My mind thrums with confusion and curiosity. What is happening here? I don't know. But I feel something calling me, I feel something pulling me. Something that feels like the hint of smoke that is in the evening air. Something that feels like the gray-blue clouds of the twilight sky. Something that I can't explain, that is tugging at my heart, tugging at my heart, tugging at my heart. It's beautiful and calming yet deeply melancholy at the same time. I don't know why it's happening but this feeling feels familiar, it feels familiar, it feels so so very familiar.

I find myself in front of a dark alley between two lines of huts. The space is tiny. It is so tiny. I can barely squeeze myself into it. But the crying here in front of the alley is louder than it has been anywhere else. And I can see a tiny basket inside the alley. It must be the baby. Who left a baby in here? Why did they leave a baby in here? This strange mystery is only deepening.

I squeeze myself through the alley, and it's dark in here, so dark. A warm sort of dark. A shielding sort of dark. A protective sort of dark. I have felt this sort of darkness before. But still, there is something strange and unknowable about this dark. As if it is the stillness of life waiting to happen, before the universe was created. The darkness that preceded all life. That preceded and gave birth to the spark in all of our souls.

The crying gets closer as I near the basket. So I was right, the baby is in there. The basket is a worn-out thing, with holes and bits of wood sticking out here and there. It is practically falling apart. So whoever left this baby here, it's unlikely that they were rich or middle class. It's unlikely that they had a better basket to leave their child in. They must be one of us. And more than that, they're probably not mentally well. I don't think a reasonable person could do this, though of course I don't know the whole story. And I must find them so that I can give their baby back and help them with whatever they need so that this doesn't happen again.

Finally, I reach the baby. They are wrapped in a worn-down, threadbare blanket. Poor thing. I pick them up into my arms. The second I do, the entire world seems to shift around me. It seems to grow sharper and more plunging, more aching with life. The whole world seems to be calling out for me, welcoming me, needing me. Of course, I have always felt this way before. I have always felt this way so deeply before. But this is so much deeper, so much more ever-reaching than anything I have felt before. I feel as though I have become one with all the suffering and all the hope the whole world over.

The baby is so sweet. So, so very sweet. Like all children are. Their little tiny face is poking out of the blanket that they are wrapped in. And I look at that face. I look at that face with every part of my mind, my heart, my soul. Because something inside me is singing. Something inside me is telling me that this is very, very important. Of course, all babies are very, very important.

For some reason I cannot make out the facial features of the baby at all. Their face seems to be changing, shifting in front of my eyes. Not in an unsettling sort of way. Just in an inexplicable sort of way. They look like they have the face of every baby in the world, simultaneously. They look like they have the face of every baby that has ever been in the world, the face of every person that has ever been a baby, the face of every baby that will ever be in the world. All at once. All at the same time. I know, I know that as I am looking at this baby, I am truly looking at every baby that is, has been, or ever will be.

And it's inexplicable. It's so inexplicable. It's so very inexplicable. I don't understand it at all, and yet I understand it completely at the same time. I understand that I understand it, I understand that I don't understand it, and I don't understand that I understand it as well. I am feeling emotions that I never thought myself capable of feeling, and that is saying a lot, considering how many emotions I have felt in my life.

"Baby?" I coo softly at the child, who looks up at me with big eyes that are all the colours that eyes can be, simultaneously. "How are you baby?"

The baby smiles at me. And it's such a bright, sweet, saccharine thing. I am beyond amazed by it.

"What do you want, little one?" I smile back at the baby. They look at me. And I get the feeling that they are looking deep into me, deep into me, deep into my very soul.

"Noww, nooow, noww," the baby babbles again and again. In this sweet little baby voice. In their sweet little baby voice that is all at once the voice of every baby in the world. Of course, I know the baby is not really saying "now." The baby is just babbling in baby talk. But that's what it sounds like the baby is saying to me. And these words, these words that are not words, seep into the centre of my very being. I don't know what is happening. I don't know what is happening but at the same time, a strange part of me does.

"Come on, let's get you out of here," I say to the baby as cutely as possible.

I walk towards the end of the alley, the little bundle in my arms. I don't know what I'm going to do with this child. Previously, my plan was to track down their parent or parents and ask why they had been left in the alley. But now. Now, I'm not sure the child even has parents. Unless of course you count every parent that's in the world, that ever was in the world, that ever will be in the world. But still, a baby is a baby is a baby, and they need some sort of caretakers to take care of them.

I emerge out of the alley and onto the dusty road. My arms feel strangely light, though. I look down, and there is no baby there. Just air.

———

I lie on my mat on the floor, my dad on one side of me, my three younger siblings on the other side of me, and my papa behind them. There are more people against the other wall. It's cramped here. Like it always is. But some houses are even more cramped. My aunt died a year ago, so we have a bit of space. But still, she died. She died and she was my aunt. She was practically my mother. And she died too young, too early, like all people do. And I'm still not over it. I'm not over it. I'm not over it at all. I don't think I ever will be over it.

The night is dark and hot around me. Silent, save for the blowing of the wind outside. It almost seems eerie. It almost seems otherworldly. Night is always this way. That's part of why I love it. There is no work at night. No demands. Just rest. A person gets to exist as just themselves, they get to exist just as a person and not as a work machine. Whatever else the rich took away from us, they couldn't take away the night time. It's a time that is just for us.

In this atmosphere, the thoughts of the baby return to my mind. I had pushed that experience away, thinking of it just as some sort of psychosis, as I was talking with my neighbours, with my friends. I had pushed the experience away as I was talking with my family. And I had tried to tell myself that it was nothing, it was nothing, I was just going crazy. Lord knows that many people go crazy in this world. Lord knows that there are a lot of things to go crazy about.

But in the stillness of the nighttime, I realize. The air all around me waits with promise. And I realize. That it was not a hallucination. It could not have been a hallucination. It was too real, too definite, too undeniable. No matter how strange it was, no matter how much it made no sense, there is no denying that it was amazing, and there is no denying that it's undeniable. Because I know what my feelings were at that moment. I know how strong my feelings were, how sure my feelings were. And everyone always says that if your heart is adamant about something, you better follow your heart.

So I'm going to listen to to my heart and I'm going to listen to my feelings and I'm going to let my feelings guide me in the right direction. I am going to let them guide me towards the truth, whatever it is. Because I know there is so much more to this world than what makes sense. I know there is so much more to this world than what can be understood and explained rationally. And this seems to be like one of those things.

But still, knowing that what happened did actually happen and knowing what that means are two very different things. I can't figure out what it means, though I know that it definitely does mean something. Why was the baby there? Who is the baby? How did the baby get created? Why - and how - did the baby choose to reveal themselves to me, if they did choose to reveal themselves to me? Why were they saying what they were saying?

The more I think about these questions, the more I think about my situation, the more questions I have. And the more questions I have, the more I wonder what the answers to those questions could possibly be. Everything happened but nothing was explained. I have to find out for myself what all of this means. And I have no clues to go off of.

Actually, that's untrue. I do have clues. And there are certain things that I do know. I know for example that the baby represents all of us. The baby represents all the people, past and present, and all of the struggles we are faced with. They represent all the love shared between us and all the ways, big and small, that we resist our exploitation and that we hope to resist our exploitation. That much is apparent. But what now? Why did they show themselves to me in this moment and what does that mean?

Despite my confusion, the pulse of hope thrums in me. A pulse of hope that is so much stronger than hope has ever been before. Because I know that this means something. I know that this has to mean something. And it means something profound. It means that things are happening. Things are finally, finally happening. And maybe we will finally, finally get free.

I try to stay up late thinking. I want to stay up late thinking. But exhaustion and drowsiness settles over me and I cannot fight it anymore as I am pulled down into sleep. Though I suppose that is for the best. I have work tomorrow, and if I am sleepy at work, it will be even more hellish than it already is.

———

I am surrounded by friends both old and new. People I've known for a while and people I've just met. We are all together, gathering after work. We are all crowded together, sitting on the floor of Karlium'a hut. And I'm aching with tiredness. As I always am after work. I'm aching with hurt. And, like always, the steady gnaw of hunger twists in my gut. Twists in all of our guts. But, surrounded by people, surrounded by my people, all of that is soothed. And I feel, I feel at home here. I feel like I belong here. And being a part of this milieu makes me feel like my life is returning back to me, at least a little bit.

There is Daria here, a woman in her mid thirties I haven't met before. She has skin the colour of river clay and hair the colour of darkness. There is Hadashi, and I know him. He's in his twenties and he has thick, curly hair that shines like a halo when the light hits it.

There's Valimem, and they're in their twenties too, and they have the darkest, largest eyes I have ever seen on an adult. Arili is in her early thirties, yet she looks so much older. Her eyes do at least. Cambri is in their forties, and they have wrinkles around the edges of their eyes. Mallee is a teenager and she has a beautiful broad nose and round eyes. The two other children that are here are Kallari, aged seven, and Amori, aged five. They're both so incredibly cute. Amori cannot pronounce his Ks and he loves monsters and fantasy creatures. Kallari always tries to make sure that everything is fair, though she's so young. And of course there's little baby Rosalee, with her big eyes and bright babbling, whose face I saw in that mysterious baby.

"If you could talk to any of our ancestors, who would it be?" Mallee asks.

"I want to talk to the people from before. Before the place got all bad." Amori's voice is so sweet.

"Ooh that's cool," Valimem pipes up, "why would you want to do that?"

"Because," the child starts, drawing out the word, "then I could know how everything was!"

"That's nice!" Cambri cheers. "I would love to know that too. Sometimes it feels like this life is all there is."

"Aww don't say that," Daria presses, "there's so much good stuff that we will have one day. I promise."

"How about you, Kallari," Hadashi asks, "who would you want to talk to?"

"I think maybe someone who made the bad people scared." There is something dark and sharp in her words. She is far too young to be thinking that way but she is thinking that way anyways.

"Ooh that's a good answer," Arili exclaims, "we could learn some tips and tricks from them!"

"What tricks?" Mallee asks.

"Like maybe how to steal!" Amori exclaims, "I would love to know how to steal!"

"Ooh, that's a good one!" Valimem's words are bright, with an exhausted undertone to them.

"I wanna learn to break thinks!" Kallari exclaims.

"Breaking things is fun," Hadashi agrees, "but if you do it you'll get in trouble."

"Hey un ... guys," I begin, not knowing how to start. My voice is cautious and fearful. It makes everyone's eyes turn to me.

"What is it?" Cambri asks. "Are you okay, sweet Miri?"

"I think I'm okay. At least, I hope so. But something really strange happened on my way home from work yesterday."

"What was it?" Arili questions, "tell us so that maybe we can help you,"

"Well," I begin, "I heard the sound of a baby crying from an alley. So I go there and pick the baby up, right?"

"Yeah," she responds.

"Well, the baby had the face of like, millions of different babies, all at the same time. I could tell, I knew in my heart that this baby was, it was all the babies ever. I don't know how I knew. I just knew."

"Trust your intuition child," Daria tells me, "it's there for a reason. It's saved us all before."

"Yep. I will," I reply. "So, I start to leave the alley with the baby. To maybe find out where they came from. But, the second I leave the alley, the baby is gone."

Everyone is silent for a while. Well, except the kids, who are talking to each other.

"Do you know the story of how the universe was invented?" Mallee asks me, voice dead serious, laced with awe.

"Of course I do," I tell her, "everyone does."

"But do you really remember it?" she asks.

"What are you talking about?" My voice has a slightly incredulous tint to it.

"Miri. Your name." Valimem's voice is dead serious.

"What about my name?"

"You were named after the Mother of All," they answer.

"Yeah, Mama Miria, what about her?"

"Your Aunt June named you, didn't she?" Daria asks.

"Yeah she did, what about that?"

"I wonder why she named you that way."

"Anyways," Cambri commences, "I think things will become more apparent if we refresh the story.

"Once upon a time there were no people. No animals. No plants. There was no earth, no sky, no fire, no water. There was only Mama Miria, and within Her She held infinite possibilities." I know the story that Cambri is telling. I know it well. But it's always nice to hear it again.

"Miria was lonely," they continued, "She was incredibly lonely. So She thought to Herself that She would create a being that could keep Her company. So She looked deep within Herself and saw the endless possibility that was laid in there. And She became pregnant with a child. She waited many long months before She gave birth to that baby. And who was the baby?" Cambri's voice has a light edge to it.

"The universe!" the children both exclaim joyfully. I smile.

"Yes, the universe," Cambri agrees. "And what was the universe? It was everything that has ever been created, everything that is created, everything that was created. It is everything that will have the Spark of Life within it. And everything ever was coalesced into one thing, into one sweet, precious baby that was every baby ever to come, all together, all at once.

"And Mama Miria, of course, took care of the baby, protecting it and nurturing it and doing everything to help the baby grow up big and strong."

"Like my mama!" Kallari exclaims.

"Yes," I tell her, "just like your mama."

"But all was not well," Cambri continues, "for evil forces found the baby and took it away from Mama Miria's arms. But She spends every moment desperately searching for Her sweet child."

There is silence again after this.

"I think," Hadashi starts, "Mama Maria found her child."

So ... what in the world am I supposed to do now? Now that I have to be the Mother of All? I'm only twelve.

———

I'm in a Resistance meeting. Because this is exactly what I need to do as a mother who wants to protect her child. This is exactly where I need to be. All around me are people who want to bring down the rich, who want to fix the world. People who are hungry, people who are tired, people who are over-worked. People who are angry about it all and would do anything to take a stand. And I have to fix the world. I have to fix the world. I have to heal my child.

"We have rights. Our rights go so far beyond merely staying alive. They encompass everything that is necessary for a good life, one of dignity and respect." The passion in Remini's voice is intoxicating. Her eyes are dark and her eyelashes even darker. She's in her twenties, like most resistance members, and she puts so much thought into everything she says.

"Exactly," Kalavi echoes, "they think that they do so much by giving us not enough food, and not enough water, but dear universe, they're the ones who should be grateful. Grateful that we haven't fucking killed them yet." His dark lips purse in disgust as he finishes talking. There are cheers all around us and I join in. It feels rebellious. But it feels wrong, somehow. Incomplete, somehow.

"They should be grateful that we fucking do everything for them!" Kalkiti softly exclaims, "we grow their food, we cut and sort and process and package their food, we make all their fancy clothes and pretty jewelry and nice furniture. We make their books and their toys and their big, big houses. And their televisions and music players and everything else. It's all us. We do all the work." Her skin is light, her face is round like the moon, and her broad nose crinkles in disgust.

"They never look at it that way though," Cakvi states ruefully, "they only see who is getting all the money for all the work that we do. And then that person gets all the credit. That's how it works, for the rich. They see a rich dirt stain in a position of power over everyone and suddenly that rich dirt stain is responsible for all the work their thousands of workers do." Cakvi's tone is dark from their harsh life. Their skin is dark from the harsh sun. And I can relate. I can relate so well.

The conversation swirls around me for a while. People try to get me to talk. I don't want to talk right now. I just want to hear what everyone has to say. There is so much anger all around me. Of course, there is always anger all around me but this anger is so much more flaming, so much more tangible. There is also deep insight all around me. Also not new, but it's all so concentrated, undiluted, all together at once. I don't know if I can take it all or not.

But there is one big problem. For all the insight and analysis and explanation of all that's happening, there aren't any actual plans for how to stop everything that's happening. I knew I wouldn't walk into a revolution on its way to being planned. But damn, there seems to be no hope here. No hope of things getting better. No plans of how to make things better.

"What should we do about all this?" I pipe up. "I know it's not fair. All of it is very much not fair. But how do we change it? Any plans for that?"

"We don't have enough power yet, to start a revolution," Diani explains to me, kindness in his eyes, "we couldn't face them and win. We plan crimes, heists, stuff like that. But all that is pretty small time. It mostly just keeps people alive, it doesn't really change the game."

"We have to lay the emotional and intellectual foundation for a revolution before actually doing it," Favi explains, a hand reaching up to her thick hair. "Revolution can't happen unless people want it, unless people know we deserve it, unless people know that what's happening needs to be stood up against. We have to build anger within people. We have to build rage and resentment and, most importantly, hope."

"What you're doing is very important," I acquiesce, "It's very important and good. We do need to lay the groundwork for a revolution first. But do you guys have hope?" I ask. "Do you guys thinks revolution is actually going to happen?"

"It will." Jai answers, "but we're not sure when."

"I think ... I think the revolution needs to happen now. Or soon. I think that we're powerful enough. That we have what it takes. Right now."

"Why do you think that?" Cakvi asks.

I explain to them what happened to me on that fateful day, coming home from work. I explain the baby. I explain the late night I had thinking it all over. I explain the conversation I had with my friends and neighbours. And I explain the horror and glory of the realization, and of the time I spent going over and over in my mind what this all could mean. They stare at me with awe, with joy, with hope in their eyes. And when I'm done, there is a spontaneous round of cheering echoing through the whole room.

"The Mother found Her baby!" Diani exclaims.

"But what do we do next?" Remini asks.

"We get more people," Favi states. "We get them to join us."

———

"The world will be better only if we all try to make it better," I speak out into the room of people gathered around me. They all heard my story already. And they generally agreed that the experience means something, that it means something important, and that right now is the time when great things will happen.

"Things can only happen if we work for them," an older woman named Ravi speaks out to the crowd, the children looking up at us wide-eyed and the babies crying or cooing from the arms of the people holding them. "We have a chance right now. We have a chance to set things right. But we have to go for it. We have to use this chance and not let it slip away."

"We have to fight!" little Alixi exclaims, their young voice dead serious, "and defeat the bad guys!"

"We have to defeat the bad guys!" I echo, "you're so right!"

"But how are we supposed to do anything?" Maliki asks, his dark curls shining in the dim candlelight lighting up the room. "There's no logical, practical reason for us to have power."

"There doesn't have to be one," I reply. "We will find our power if we all look. If we all have faith. If we all create opportunities out of what we have. Sure, we might not know how we'll win right now. But if we keep looking, if we all work together, we'll find a way to win."

"Exactly," Navai agrees, "we have to try. Because the Mother found Her child again. The Mother found Her child. And we're all the Mother. And we're all the child. We have to do what any mother would do and help the child, help each other, by any means necessary."

"We have to be a good mama," young Jini agrees, "so that all the kids can be happy."

"What's so loving about all getting ourselves killed in a failed revolution?" Balvi asks, his voice tinged with morose darkness but also with repressed hope.

"The future," eleven-year-old Clari explains, "the future people will live a better life. The universe will go back to being good, being fair, being the way it's supposed to be. We'll do it for the future and we will win."

"Yeah," Ravi echoes, "we need the future generations to have better lives than us. The universe will be hurting, will be wanting, will be wrong, if things go on the way that they do. If we can make things better for future generations, if we can get rid of the evil in the world, that would be good."

"Besides," Maliki adds in, "it's better to die on your feet that it is to live on your knees. Standing up against the rich, even if it kills us, is so much better than this desperate, aching sort of life that we're all living."

"Exactly," I agree, "And we will win. I know we'll win."

"And how will joining the resistance help?" A young woman named Nellin asks.

"Because," I answer, "if we're all in the resistance, we can all communicate with each other. We can all plan together, share ideas, share knowledge, and build ourselves up into a force to be reckoned with."

———

I stand on the corner of the narrow, dust-paved road, scores of people passing me by. I have lookouts who can tell me if any cops are coming by. But right now I'm safe.

"Would you like to join the resistance?" I ask the weary travellers as they pass by, "we meet at every house number ending in 4, from 7-9 on Saturdays."

People look at me. They smile. Like I'm a sweet child selling flowers on the roadside. I guess I am a young child. But I don't feel like one. I haven't felt like a child in years. There is a weariness about me and a darkness. My life has never been my own. Of course, I don't want it to be my own. But I don't want to belong to the rich either.

Hopefully I will be able to give my life to the people I want to. Soon.

"Would you like to join the resistance?" I ask.

"Sure," an older woman with wrinkles around her kind eyes tells me, "but only if you tell me why a kid as young as you is out here doing something so dangerous."

"I'm fine, ma'am. I chose to be out here."

"You be careful, though. You're too young to find yourself in trouble."

"Thanks for the concern." I smile at her, and she smiles back, ruffling my hair before she leaves.

I keep on telling people about the resistance meetings. I know that this is dangerous. But I also know that no-one will turn us in. No-one will tell the authorities about us. Because there is a loyalty among all the poor people here, among the people who have to sell their days and and their life's blood in order to put not enough food on the table. We all would die for each other.

The authorities likely won't torture us anytime soon either. Not before we plan our our next action. When the weapons are in our hands, the high-caliber, lethal weapons that can bring the end of the whole system as we know it, then we will be free. We will be free to rebuild a world of sibling hood. And the baby will finally be safe.

"Will you come to a resistance meeting?" I ask the person passing by in front of me. "We meet from 7-9 on Saturdays, in each hut ending with a four. We're going to change the whole world."

"How are you planning to change the whole world, little girl?" they ask me.

"We are planning to bring it all down."

"Bring it all down? But how will we do that? We have no power."

"We have more power than you think. A miracle has happened. Come to the resistance meeting and you will find out what it is."

"Okay, okay. I'll go to the meeting. But you guys better have the strength to back up your words."

"We'll be able to back up our words, just you see."

"Okay. I really hope it's time to finally change things. But I don't think we'll be able to, unfortunately."

"I know how you feel. I've felt that way before. We've all felt that way before. But you have to have hope."

"Hope is good," they agree, "but recklessness is not. I would advise you to be careful and to know what you're doing before you try anything dangerous."

"We will be careful, I swear. We know what the stakes are. We know what the consequences of failure are. We know all the lives that are on the line."

"I want to join you. I really do."

"Then do it. Then join us."

"I will."

They shoot me a tired, enamoured sort of smile, and I shoot them a strong, confident smile back. This day is going well.

"Do you want to join the resistance?" I ask the next passers-by. "We are planning something huge, and we need for everyone to get involved."

———

I'm coming home from work again. I am beyond exhausted. I do not feel like a human anymore. I never feel like a human after work. All I feel like is an empty vessel, a hollowed-out, spectre-thin thing that exists to suffer and for nothing more. I smile at the people around me. And they smile back. But all of our smiles are harrowed. All of our smiles are haunted.

All at once I hear the same sort of crying that I heard before. Many-voiced and woeful. Young and fragile. I follow the sound through the twisting alleyways again, just as I had done before. And once again I find the world baby, the baby which is everyone and and all of nature, all at the same time. The baby which is beautiful, beautiful, so infinitely beautiful. The baby which I want to give everything to.

Immediately, my heart is overcome with more love than I can fit into my body. It seeps out of me, and into this baby, this baby with so many features, so many faces, who I take into my arms and cradle gently. I feel as though my entire being is exploding out into the entire universe, and I am becoming one with everything everywhere. I want to protect this child. I want to protect this child.

I so very desperately want to protect this child. But I can't.

Not yet at least.

I cradle the small being close to me, until they stop crying. They are much quieter now, at peace since I picked them up, since I held them close, since I let my love and my proximity and my intimacy seep into their tiny, needy form.

They were lonely, so lonely out here in the alley, uncared for by the world, left on their own to suffer. But now they have me. Now they have all my family, all my neighbours, all my friends, all my coworkers, everyone in this world. Now we will all look out for them.

The young one is in my arms, and reaches up to grasp my nose with their tiny little fingers, with their tiny little hand. This is so infinitely adorable. I cannot help but laugh. It's sweet. It's so very infinitely sweet. Sweeter than anything could ever be and my heart is soaked through with glory, is heavy from my joy. Just looking at this child gives me so much joy.

"Are you going to stay with us?" I ask softly, looking at the bundle of joy my arms. "Or are you going to disappear the moment I walk out of this alley again?"

The baby flaps their hands in response.

"Stay with us," I plead with them, my voice gentle and full of love. "Stay with us, and let me show you to everyone, so that we all can see you and believe."

The baby makes an "aah" sound in response. I don't know how much they are understanding, but the big, round eyes look solemn, look thoughtful, look sad.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's go." I get up from the ground I am kneeling on, slowly standing up and making my way to the sunlight of the streets. The baby is playing in my arms, babbling some adorable nonsense. I hope they'll be here when I leave the alleyway.

I take the final, tentative step into the main street. And still there is a light heaviness in my arms. And still the baby is cooing close to my heart. I break out into a beaming smile, and I go to the nearest person I can find.

"Do you see this baby?!" I exclaim in joy. And his ghost-like features light up in awe, and in hope.

——-

"Look at this child!" I proclaim to the resistance fighters gathered around me. I am not in the resistance meeting that I am usually in, the one in my neighbourhood. Instead, I am two neighbourhoods over, telling the people there of what I heard, what I witnessed, and what I experienced in my life.

The baby is in my arms now. But I pass the child on to Amine, who will pas them on to other people. It is important that everyone sees the child, that everyone holds the child. Not just the people in the resistance, but all of the people of the world. I realize that it will probably take about a year of constant travelling, a year of tired hunger, of new faces, in order to give everyone a chance to interact with the child. But it will be worth it. It will be so very worth it.

There aren't even that many people anyways. I'll be able to come home to my family after each day of travelling. And my family is okay with my "decision" to not work, even though that means that my whole community will be hungrier than they would have been if I did work, because they know that right now, everything is changing. The whole world is changing.

"I ... I'm amazed," a person named Davelo tells me.

"I am too, believe me, so am I," I respond.

"This is a sign. It has to be." Teenaged Arcadia's voice is full of joy, full of passion. She's holding her own baby, but looking at both the babies in this room, babies which are actually the same baby.

"So ... what does this mean? Does it mean that we will win?" Fig asks. He is trying to not get overly excited. He knows how dangerous that can be. But he can't help himself.

"Well," Amari starts, "we all know the legend. We all know that when the baby and the mother are reunited, it means that the world will go back to being fair again, being together and being free and being equal."

"Are you the mother, Miri?" Biri asks me, eyes full of wonder. "You are named after Mama Miria after all."

"I used to think that," I reply to him, "but I don't think so anymore. These past few weeks, I've been going around and seeing everyone. And the way everyone interacts with this child, the way that everyone loves them, I'm starting to think we're all the mother."

"That's very poetic," Davelo speaks out to us. "We are all the mother are we are all the child. And now that we are reunited with ourselves, now that the mother is reunited with the child, a new age will come."

"Are we sure, though?" Kamima asks, eyes darker than storm clouds and more solemn than the twilight. "Are we sure that we are on the verge of a prophecy?"

"We all know the stories," Manoni tells us, wrinkled eyes gazing into our souls.

"We all know how they come to fruition."

"But how?" Mamon asks. "How are we going to take on the whole system?"

"With effort," Arcadia answers. "By trying our best and doing everything that we possibly can in order to create change. We all have to try our best. All of us. Because the prophecy can only come to fruition if we work towards it."

"How right you are," Biri pronounces.

———

I am with my family. My dad, Amerni, my three little sisters, Cala, Rashi, Tessa, my papa Yonas, my "aunts" Marvi, and Carla, my three younger "cousins" Sali, Baro, and Lai, and my twin brother Davi. We are all sitting close together, on the floor of our hut, sharing in each other's warmth. We are passing the baby around, the baby that the community has taken to calling Uni. They are reaching their arms out, wanting to be held by all of us. It's cozy. Really cozy. It's sweet. Really sweet. I can almost forget about how hungry I am, how aching I am, or how my throat hurts.

"Are we going to be able to fight, too?" Sali asks.

"You can if you want to," my dad replies. "But it will be difficult. It will be beyond difficult. War is no place for a child."

"But why can Davi and Miri go?" Cala asks.

"Because," I reply, "We're much older than you guys."

"You can fight if you want to," Aunt Marvi tells the younger kids, "but war is not fun. It's not fun at all."

"But I want to fight!" Lai whines.

I think about how horrifying it would be if my younger siblings and cousins, and all the little kids all around actually, fought. They're just babies, really. They don't belong in a war. They don't belong in all the horror and danger that accompanies war. They don't deserve to die, they don't deserve to have to kill people, they don't deserve any of the brutality of war.

But then again, none of us deserve the brutality of war. And yet, we're all getting ready for it anyways. We're all looking forwards to it even, despite the fact that we're dreading it also. We are all anxiously awaiting the day when the pot finally boils over.

Why?

Because it's a chance to stand up against the rich.

They've been working us to death for years, giving us not enough to survive, making us waste all of our precious energy at their precarious jobs. I have seen so many deaths over the years. My aunt. My neighbours. My baby brother. People at work, who get into accidents. Unhoused people who freeze in the cold winters. I'm sick of it. I'm so sick of all of it.

But now, here, we have a chance to make the rich finally, finally see us. We have a chance to make them finally, finally fear us, instead of us just fearing them. We have a chance to show them that we are human beings, we always were human beings, and we are far more human than they will ever be. We have a chance to show them that we are much stronger than they ever thought we were.

And we have a chance to create a better future. A future where all of this suffering will not happen. A future where nobody has to suffer anymore. We can create a future where each child grows up healthy, grows up strong, grows up well-educated, and with time to play and have fun. We can create a future where everyone looks forward to happiness and peace in their lives. Where no child or adult has to work like a slave. Where we all take care of each other, we all really and truly take care of each other no matter what.

And that's worth fighting for. It's worth killing for. It's worth dying for. It's worth anything and I understand why I want to join the war. I understand why the children want to join the war.

"It's important to have people who live, who take care of the new generations," my papa tells the kids. "It's just as important for you guys to save yourselves so that you can create the future."

"I'll miss you guys!" Tessa moves to hug me, and I cry as I hug her back. It's horrific, how much sacrifice this is going to take.

———

I'm walking along the streets, streets only occupied by young children, by toddlers, by a couple of babies. Everyone else is at work. The adults. The teenagers. The older children. There's no-one left to take care of the young ones. They have to take care of themselves. It's horrifying. But it's a horror that we've all been forced to grow used to, over the years. It's a horror we are forced to deal with.

I carry baby Uni. And their weight is not heavy in my arms. Their weight is never heavy in my arms. I say hello to the groups of children who I pass by. They say hello to me back. I'm going to the far end of the city, where the agricultural workers have their huts. I'm taking baby Uni to them, so that they can spend time with the baby and see what the child is like. Uni is sucking their thumb.

I think as I walk. More specifically, I think about how I haven't seen a single police officer during the whole year that I've been with Uni. Why is this the case? Usually I see police officers here and there as I walk through the streets, as I go on with my life. Usually it's a terrifying experience, but an experience that I am accustomed to dealing with nonetheless, as anxiety-inducing as it always is.

But there have been none anywhere near me this past year. While I cannot help but be grateful, I also wonder, why is this the case? What is going on?

"Hi," I sing-sing kindly to a five-year-old boy. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. How are you?"

"I'm good. I have a question though. Did you happen to see any police officers here?"

"A time ago there was a police, but there's none now."

"Okay. Thank you. How long ago?"

"Maybe ... more than 15 minutes?"

"Okay, thanks so much. Good luck, buddy."

"Good luck!"

Okay, so, fifteen minutes or more ago there was a cop. But not right now. So, there was a cop before I showed up here, before Uni showed up here. But they left just as I came to this area. Interesting.

———

I take baby Uni to scrap yards. It's a horrible place for a baby, filled with so much garbage and jagged metal. But then again, what isn't a horrible place for a baby? I make these trips daily, and I am always accompanied by different kids. We have heaps of blankets with us, blankets borrowed from neighbours. We are confident that no guards will be after us. Because Uni is just such a loud baby and the guards can't stand their loudness.

We can also get through the gates of the scrap yard easily, gates that are otherwise closed to all the public, because the people who stand vigil by the gates leave once they hear the baby for too long. The child is our key. Our key to anything. And for this we are incredibly grateful to them. For this we thank them everyday.

In the scrap yard, we find pieces of metal that are shiny, that are new, that are not rusted. More importantly, we look for pieces of metal that have sharp edges and could be easy to cut. These will make our weapons. Weapons that the rich do not want us to have. Weapons that we make from the garbage that they throw away, from the incredible waste that they generate.

We wrap these medium-sized pieces of metal, usually about the length and width of my forearm, in the blankets that we borrowed. We understand that it looks suspicious, walking through the city with a bunch of blankets wrapped up in our arms. But we also know that as long as baby Uni is with us, no guards will accost us, for they'll all be too afraid.

Day after day after day after day, this plan works. We build up piles and piles of metal sheets. We find stronger bits of metal, with sharp edges. We cut the sheets of metal with the pieces of stronger metal, after using precious candles to soften the spots we want to cut along. We bend the newly-cut pieces. And we distribute them as spears for the people to use and get good at.

——-

Now is the moment of truth. I am walking towards the armoury, with a handful of other children. Cassi is seven, Racha is nine, Amio is six, Lai is eleven, and Olem is thirteen like me and has baby Uni in his arms. I have baby Clara in my arms. Nobody will suspect a group of children like us. Of course, the rich hate poor children like us, they suspect poor children like us, but they do not think us capable of of any great deception, or anything that requires a lot of thinking. And of course, they don't know about the World Baby. They don't know the power that the baby has. The power that all babies have.

I am fizzing with excitement. It is bubbling up hot and sweet in my chest, in my belly, in all parts of me. My mind is racing with equal parts anxiety and anticipation. Anxiety is a cold stone in my insides. Anticipation is making my soul light and in flight like a bird. And I feel as though I have the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. Though I guess I do. We all have the weight of the entire world on our shoulders. But we all have each other. And we can carry the load together. We can share the load together. And that makes the heavy weight so much lighter.

I am buzzing. I am buzzing. Everything inside of me is buzzing. I am overjoyed. There is so much that could go right. This might be the beginning. The beginning of the end. The beginning of the start. The end of our poverty, our brutal, degrading, dehumanizing work. This could be the start of true freedom, a freedom that we could all share together, that we could all share with each other. It could be the start of a world where all people are seen as equal, are treated as equal, are seen as one. We all hide in each other.

And yet. Yet. There is so much that could go wrong. We could fail. We could be killed. We could all be killed in punishment of our actions, in punishment of our rebellion. This could be the end of our people as we know them. This could be the end of everyone who's lived and died and worked and yearned and loved and hurt and cried and smiled and laughed under the heel of the rich. This could mean the end of our whole class as we know it. And with it, the end of all of our stories, the end of all of our songs, the end of all of our teachings and our histories and everything we pass on to the new generations. It all might be gone. The new generations might be gone.

Yet I don't think that will happen. I don't think we will fail. None of us think that we will fail, though the possibility looms in each of our minds, pressing us to make sure we put our full effort into this plan. I have faith. I have faith in baby Uni, I have faith in myself, and I have faith in all my people. All my people have faith in the baby, all my people have faith in each other. We have seen the signs, and we know that the time is now. The time to rise up. The time to change everything.

The children all around me have determination hidden deep in their eyes. They have rage. They have hate. And they have love. They all have a deep, untethered, primal, and all-reaching love in their eyes. A love that encapsulates themselves and is so much bigger than themselves at the same time. A love that has existed for as long as their souls have existed in the place beyond life, which is to say time without beginning. A love that will exist for as long as their souls will exist in the place beyond life, which is to say a time without end.

I look into their eyes and that gives me strength. I look into their eyes and it gives me hope. If soothes the sharpest edges of my cutting fear and leaves me able to go on, able to do all that I am meant to do, all that we are meant to do together. They are so determined. So determined. And I echo their determination. And I echo the power that they have. The power that we all collectively have, within ourselves, shared amongst ourselves. The power that will set us free.

The babies coo in our arms. They are adorable. And, looking at them, it makes the whole thing worth it. It makes our whole mission worth it. Because if these babies can have a better life, then that's all that we need, then that's all that we need from anyone. And it will make everything worth it. Besides the babies cooing, there is no sound from any of us. We all communicate in looks, in long-held eye contact, in the dead set of our mouths. Because we cannot give our plan away. We cannot let anyone know what it is that we are up to, besides all the people who already know and will keep the secret with us. We cannot let any of the rich, any of the guards, anyone with power in this society that we live in know what we are really up to. So we keep our silence, we keep our silence like a promise, and we walk together to the armoury.

We stop a slight bit aways from the armoury, away from the guards on all the many watch stations of the armoury. We sit down on the road, the dusty road that is unoccupied at the moment, except for us. It's not suspicious. It's not suspicious at all. Many children play in the road. It's the one place we have that is outside and under the sky. Even adults gather in unused roads often, gossiping and chatting about small things, things that the guards would not be suspicious upon hearing. It's slightly strange that we're doing this in the evening, when most children are much closer to the residential part of town. But there are huts near us. We're not straying too far away.

We sit down on the road, our worn, dirty clothes sitting on the dust. And we pass the babies around to each other. They giggle and coo, happy at being given attention and cuddles. And this is good. This is very good. We smile at them, and coo back. And, seeing our smiles, they giggle even more. It's adorable. It's so adorable. And it's so purposeful. So incredibly purposeful. These kids are helping us fulfill our destiny.

"Peek-a-boo!" Amio exclaims, and the babies scream in delight. We all join Amio in their peek-a-boo game. We each take turns covering our faces and uncovering them. The babies absolutely love it. They have no sense of object permanence yet, so they literally think our faces are disappearing and coming back into existence. This is adorable. Clara copies is, putting her face in her hands and then moving her hands away. Uni sees this and squeals. Perfect. This is so very perfect.

We continue playing our game for a while. It feels like it has been forever. Because the pressure digs into us, grates against us. It feels like it has been forever but I know that realistically, it probably has been only a few minutes. As the minutes go on, the babies get louder and louder. They get more and more excited. And I don't know if they're doing this on purpose or not. I don't know if they understand the gravity of this situation, I don't know if they understand the importance of what they are doing. But, looking at their faces, I think they probably understand, in their own, special, childish baby type of way.

I look around, as if in mild interest, at the scene all around me. The guards are getting increasingly agitated. All of them. I can see it in their faces. The growing trepidation. The discomfort. The way they adjust the expensive collars of their expensive black guard suits. The way that they look at each other as if wanting an explanation. They way that they fidget with their hands and pace in front of the doors that they're supposed to be protecting, getting up from their chairs.

They'll be gone soon. They'll be gone so very soon. And so will all the guards resting inside, where the windows carry in the sounds of our merrymaking.

Lai takes baby Clara and lifts her high in the air, and then brings her back down in a swift motion. Oh my gosh, it must be exhausting doing that. She's hungry. She's tired. She doesn't have the energy for all this. But anyways she does it, because babies love it, because nothing can make a baby scream like doing this. She goes to baby Uni afterwards, and lifts them up in the air and brings them backdown. The young child screams so loudly.

At this moment, the guards all walk away hastily. They do not say a word to anyone. They do not even look each other in the eyes. They simply speed away as fast as a walking feet can carry them, looks of deep disturbance in their faces. Lai is still lifting the babies. I don't look at the guards straight on. That would be too suspicious. But I do keep track of them through the corner of my eye. We all do, trying to keep it all as down-low as possible.

I take over Lai's job. She must be exhausted by now. She needs her strength for the battle to come. I play with the babies and yes, yes it is very tiring. But also, it's very rewarding. Seeing the babies happy, seeing them so full of life, so full of life despite the fact that they're immersed in death, it's beyond joyous. It's beyond worth it. And I understand, now, how parents put so much effort into their children even after being bone-weary from their long days of work. I understand now how seeing your child smile is worth anything and everything.

The guards inside the building now also leave. I don't see how many of them go, since I'm still busy with the babies. But I trust that the other children are looking into it, that they're seeing how many guards left and are ensuring that there are probably none left inside the building. I trust my friends. I trust my people. All of them. The guards on the roof also climb down and walk away.

I pass the babies to Olem, and he plays with them as well, making them scream and laugh and giggle and coo. All the other kids keep a lookout for any of the guards coming back. Right now we are all not even trying to hide the fact that we're looking. Cassi and Racha get up and walk all around the building, peering down all the streets surrounding the building.

"They're gone," the two young children tell us.

Amio then whistles, a sharp, piercing sound. A sound that is not too out of place in the busy, chaotic world that we inhabit. If any of the guards heard it they would simply attribute it to a child being loud. Which is exactly what this is. It's a child being loud. But the people lined up in the huts all around, who are standing close to each other, crowded and awaiting, they know what this whistle means. They know the many layers of deep, simple, complex symbolism behind it. They know that this is our signal, the one we all agreed upon for its simplicity and unassumingness.

The first thing that happens is that people hang up blankets to dry in front of all the streets, a few blocks away from the the armoury, blocking off sight of the armoury from the streets on all sides. Hanging up laundry in and of itself is not suspicious. But this is suspicious, to have so much laundry handing up at the same time, at such a precise location. Fortunately for us, if any of the guards who patrol the streets try to investigate this strange occurance, they will get too close and hear baby Uni, and then they will go away. Of course, they could call for backup. But we all doubt that they would do it, because then they would have to report to their superiors that they were afraid to go investigate because they heard a baby. They would not do that, because it makes no sense, because of the embarrassment, because of the blow to their ego. They would probably rather save their own skins and ignore it. That's the hope we're all hedging everything on anyways.

People flood out of the huts that encircle the armoury. It was really rather stupid of the rich people to make their armoury right within the poor neighbourhood. Well, what's stupid on their part is a godsend on our part. Perhaps literally a godsend, by the way. The Mother of All has been sending us a lot of blessings as of late. Blessings that we would do well to make the most out of. Blessings that we are making the most out of.

All of us kids keep on playing with the babies, making them be as loud as possible, as the adults and teenagers around us are walking up to the armoury. The strong doors are locked with strong, sturdy locks. But my people have a secret. The art of lock-picking has been passed down through the resistance for generations. And now, everyone who is in the resistance has their piece of wire, and has unfettered access to the locks, no worries of guards coming to arrest them.

When they finally get the doors open, there is an audible sigh of relief from everyone. So far the plan is working. So far the plan is working perfectly. I dreamed that we would get this far. I dreamed that we would win. But there was always a part of my mind that always told me that no, we would not make it. We would not make it. We would not make it. Now, that part of my mind is weaker than it has ever been. It is more quiet than it has ever been. And centuries of oppression which hammered into me that I am nothing are being lifted right in front of my eyes.

The kids and I continue with our jobs as the older people around us continue with their jobs. They grab gun after gun after gun from the many racks. They grab bulletproof armour and shove it on. They grab crates full of ammunition and tie them to their backs. They prepare for the war that will be started within moments. And they succeed. They succeed. They keep on succeeding until there are almost two thousand armed people, scattered within the armoury. I can see them through the windows. There are also many people scattered around the armoury as well, on the streets and in huts.

They move silently. They work silently. They load their guns silently and make sure that Uni's voice can be heard all around, so that no guards come near us in this moment of truth. And no guards do come near us. They hear Uni's childish voice, as faint and distant as it is, and it strikes fear into their hearts. They think that the armoury guards are already seeing to this part of the city, they don't need to go there as well. And they leave us all alone.

We are armed. About two thousand of us are armed. That's about three percent of the population. But at the same time, we have as many guns as the guards have. We have as many guns as them, we have as many bulletproof vests, and we have way more people than they have. Everything is working towards our advantage. The rest of the people have spears. Spears carefully crafted of scrap metal that the people stole out of the scrap yard and cut with the resistance's stolen factory equipment and expensive candles. We have been practicing with them in secret.

The war has begun. The war that I never thought I would live to see in my lifetime. The war that I have dreamed of all my lifetime. The war that I will fight in.

The older kids take the younger ones to the safety of the huts. The safety of the special dug-out huts that we prepared to help the especially young shelter and stay safe during the war. And we go get ready.

———

The street is covered in bodies. The bodies of the people. The bodies of the guards. There are far more bodies of guards than there are bodies of people who fought. So many people who fought. Some of them are decked in armour, that they stole from the armoury, that fits them in a ramshackle kind of way. Some are decked in the common rags that my people wear, worn and thin and like the earth. They all are covered in blood, are dark with it. Some of the blood is new, fresh, red. I imagine that it would be warm to the touch. Some of the blood is old and darkened.

It's a horrific sight, one that makes me deeply sick to my stomach. I've known death. I've known death. I've seen so many loved ones pass away. But death of this caliber, thousands of people in the span of a few hours, bodies paving the streets, it's beyond anything I've ever known before. And it's gory. It's so, so gory.

Yet I'm not mourning the murdered martyrs the way I've mourned other people who left this world. Everyone who died here, everyone who died like this, they died on their feet. They died fighting for a better world. They didn't die because of neglect, because of poverty. They didn't die due to horrific working conditions or prejudice against their class. They died because they stood up. They stood up for what they believed in, they stood up for future generations, they stood up for a better world. And at the end of the day, that is so, so, so incredibly much better than dying quietly, than accepting your fate as a lesser person and letting death take you on the floor or at work.

Everyone who is dying here will be able to walk into the afterlife with their heads held high. They will be heralded as heroes, and they will be able to tell all their ancestors that they did not go down passively. They went down fighting, with their teeth bared, looking their oppressors dead in the eyes. And oh how deeply, deeply glorious that will be. And how deeply cathartic too, how satisfying to be able to come to the end of your life's story and to have it end with such bloody, bloody triumph.

Not that they deserve to die. Not that any of them deserve to die. Besides the guards of course. Just because they got murdered for standing up for what they believe in doesn't change the fact that they got murdered. It doesn't change the fact that each loss is a horrific loss. Each person on the ground had friends, had family, had neighbours. They had children in their lives. Children who will miss them to no end.

But the future generations will never again have to know the loss of their loved ones. And they will never again have to live lives worse than death, where their only hope is death. That is why all these people are fighting, all these people are giving up everything. And that is why I'm fighting too.

I've been lucky so far. My dark skin hides in the night, a night that is only illuminated by the glaring yet dispersed street lights. I'm young, so people are protecting me. And I've been able to get my hands on a gun, since I was so close to the epicentre of the robbery. But still, my heart thuds in my chest and fear flows in the rush of my veins, coating each molecule of my blood. I am more awake than I have ever been in my life. I am more alert than I have ever been in my life. And I am terrified.

There are gunshots all around me. From friends, from enemies, from unknown sources. The guns all sound the same but the shouts of the people do not. There are those shouting in rage, the sort of rage that only comes after living your whole life under the heels of those who think of you as less than an insect, who don't think of you as a living thing at all. There are other people also shouting in rage. The rage that comes with living your whole life thinking other people are beneath you. There are people screaming in pain, wailing in grief, and even laughing in victory. It's a cacophony of chaos and I hate it and I love it. But more than anything, it makes me feel alive.

I get shot in the chest. But my bulletproof vest protects me. It's a close call nonetheless. I've been shot many times before. Each time has sent a jolt of fear racing through me. I shoot back in the direction of the black-clad soldier whose gun the shot came from. I can tell that he's a guard from the superiority glinting sharply in his eyes. The bulletproof glass on his helmet has long since been shattered. But he's still heavily armed. But my bullet hits him right in the jaw, horrifically disfiguring his face. He gives off a garbled scream. I shoot him again, in the head to make sure that he's really, properly dead. And then I cheer loudly. This is my second kill tonight.

But it's a broken sort of cheer. As much a scream of anguish as it is a cheer of joy. This is my second kill tonight. I'm only thirteen.

I guess I shouldn't have done that though. A hail of bullets comes flying at me from the right. I run to go duck behind a hut. And, thank the gods, my armour got everything. I thank the Mother and Her Child for just a moment before I scan my surroundings. I cannot ever let my guard down, even a bit. Because they're out to kill me. They're out to kill all of us. And I cannot let them. There is chaos all around me. Bodies falling. People screaming. I look for who to shoot next. I'm half cold blooded killer, half screaming child. But I do not know which half is which.

I see a guard shoot at an unarmed man. I guess he lost all his spears. The man falls to the ground, a fountain of blood gushing out from his thigh. I almost throw up. I do not even know this man. I do not know him, but I have to avenge him. I shoot at the guard. It doesn't pierce through his armour, but it does get his attention. Which is not good for me. I duck back behind the wall, catching my breath. If I go after him again I might die. Is that worth it? Of course it is. I cannot be a coward. Not now. Not after we have collectively done so much. I whisper a short prayer before leaning back out to shower him in a hail of billets.

Unfortunately this leads me to be showered in my own hail of bullets, which he fired as soon as he saw me. My armour holds strong, but it doesn't protect me this time as a sharp, burning, tearing bullet digs into the bottom of my rib cage, between two of my right ribs. I scream. I burns. It burns. It burns so much. White hot, searing pain that flows from my wound out to my whole body. I look at the man who shot me. He looks smug. None of my bullets pierced through his armour.

But right before I pass out, I see a woman impaling the guard with her spear, from behind. His face flashes with surprise, then horror. I guess I distracted him enough for her to be able to sneak up on him. I smile, and that's the last thing I ever do. And the last emotion I feel in this life is a sweet, hot, darkened sort of vengeance. A vengeance borne of pain. A vengeance bearing victory. It was worth it, it was worth it, it was all so very worth it. We will be free. We will all be equal.

———

I awaken to a realm made up completely of something intangible, something untouchable, something deeply intimate, something intimately beautiful. I wake up and this is the first time in my life where I have felt at peace, felt free from the horrors plaguing me. I am holding baby Universe close in my arms. They are infinitely beautiful, as they always are. In their eyes I see each person, each creature, each plant and rock and piece of soil. I see the sky and the water and the ground and the fire. And I see love. Universe is happy in my arms. Happier than I have ever seen them. They smile, and there is no brokenness behind that smile. They are happy. Everything is right. And I am about to enter a new beginning, along with the world.