Try as I might, I could not overcome the intense feeling I had in the pit of my stomach, it wrapped around my insides and clenched like an iron fist, threatening to break me entirely. There was nothing I would love to do more than turn and run far away, so far away no one would ever find me, and the memory of me would fade like a photograph left in the bottom of a trunk in the back of an attic. If I did run, my name would never be spoken of in this town again, for the shame of a runner was worse than the news of a suicide. I sat next to Jillian, the deathly-looking blonde haired girl who tried to run away last year, her family disowned her the moment the patrol had brought her back to their doorstep. She worked constantly just to stay alive without the support of her parents. You could see wariness in her. Her blue eyes were dull, and glazed over, and her hair was limp and greasy. Her body lacked any type of nutrition at all, while her nails were cracked and broken with dirt caked under them. I felt naseated from the smell that rose off her.
The stench was foul, it smelled strongly of cleaners and sweat. You think they would have cleaned her up before putting her in here with the rest of us. Then again this would all be fixed after the procedure, she would come out looking bright and happy, although she was nothing of the sort. They tell us the coming of age was nothing to be tampered with, you could not run, you could not hide, it was destiny, fate even. If fate had brought me here today, to this dark and dismal underground hiding place that smelled of human body odors and wet soil, that was dimly lit, and hardly fit for any human living conditions, I was seriously doubting what fate was determined by anyone but your higher superiors. For those who are becoming, there is no fate, there is just this: You are tucked away from the already become, and the yet to be. This disgusting little hole, that we will now call our home, atleast, until they come for us, and unfortunatley, they will.
Perfection. That was the one word that everyone used to describe the people who have become. Your parents would come fetch you after you spent the night in the hospital that can only be described asthetic. It was clean down to its core, with ever-joyful nurses walking in and out of the always brightly-lit and white rooms, their shoes sqeaking. You see, they don't just alter your face in this procedure, they take away all feeling whatsoever. After you change, you can never feel the pain of love, or cry tears of joy. Actually, you won't cry at all. You walk around carrying out the job you are assigned to and then, when you become too old for Them, too old for perfection, you retire and within a week, you die peacefully, or so I've heard. No one has ever actually witnessed the death of a loved one, the government, who we call 'Them', say it is too traumatic for our delicate brains.
Meanwhile, while you wait for this so-called perfection, you work in this cavern, scraping and clawing for crystals, the main source of money nowadays. We are covered in dirt from head to toe in a matter of days, and soon all of us look -and smell- like Jillian; after a while, you get used to the stench. There is no way to keep track of time here, and some have desperately tried marking the walls, clawing until they have no nails and the tips of their fingers bleed. But, without fail, every morning they wake up and the deep scratches have disappeared, and all they have in memory are blood-caked fingertips and potentially infection. Then they lose track all over again. Many people have stopped trying, others just opted to never try. They want to break us, they want us to know that our only option is the procedure. The only option..
So here we are worn down and worked to the bone, literally. These people, the ones that run our lives, the ones we are supposed to trust, they broke us beyond our own repair.. There is no freedom here. We wake up, have a breakfast consisting of some stale, over-toasted bread and then head off for work. Work hours are 15 hours long, not a minute less. Any word of rebellion, and everyone works another three hours. We may talk freely, but most are too scared to even talk at all. There are punishments for those who have a lose tongue. Last week -well i think it was last week- a small red-haired boy, or atleast what looked like red hair. You never knew whether someones hair was actually the colored it seemed or if it was the soft, reddish clay, the oily dribble from the ceiling or the jet black dirt from the ground on which we slept every night. Attempting to help my sight, I scrape back my sweat plastered hair into a messy ponytail, feeling the weight of the strands that refused to join the rest of my hair.
I feel along the length of my hair. It had grown a few inches since the last time I even took notice to it. I pulled it closer to my face to examine it and what I saw wasn't what I had hoped. It oozed with grime, like a wound would ooze while it was healing. I could see dry clay and could feel the dampness from the dirty water that would drip repeatedly from the ceiling. I could barely remember the color it used to be. While I was examining my hair I failed to notice the faint light in the caverns growing brighter and brighter. I didn't completely understand until a government employee was standing over me shining his flashlight in my eyes and asking,
"You Vila Mossatro?", in a gruff and brief voice. All I could do was nod.
My only critiques had to do with grammar and punctuation and sentence flow. For example:
