(I'm just posting this to ask of those who have the guts to critizise people. I love writing, so here is a taste of a story I just recently started, but I don't know if I should get my hopes high with novel writing. I don't wish to become famous or even get published, but I would like to honestly know if I even have some quality.)
The jail door slammed shut in front of Iyabo’s grease-streaked face. The bars, themselves, were grimy and dirt ridden, the cracks in the walls infested with tiny creatures that had soft bodies and no eyes. Iyabo crossed her eyes and stared at her nose with mild fascination, intriguing herself with trying to keep the rest of the world in focus despite the blurriness that would surely ensue on the outer edges of her vision as soon as her eyes turned toward the center. As she delighted herself with this, snorting laughter, she rubbed her back against the hard walls of the jail cell. A few insects were brushed aside or crushed in the process, their mangled bodies falling to the floor in a mesh of spidery limbs and soft, cockroach-like bodies. Iyabo stamped aside those that still tossed and turned and set herself to touch the tip of her tongue with her nose.
Tomorrow her goal was to be to lick her elbow. Or spend all day trying.
Iyabo did not get her own cell, of course. She was one of five stuffed in a five-by-four cramped area. She knew this world well – where bodies overlapped in sleep, the tall ones with their knees pulled up so that they wouldn’t get their feet stuck in between the bars as they slept. Iyabo was just short enough so that her feet came short of the bars with no tucking in of her limbs. Meanwhile, she sat against the wall, bodies pressing close to her. The other women in there coughed and spat into their hands, chewing on their fingernails.
They were not much different from Iyabo.
Iyabo was facing two lifetimes in prison. Again. The sentence had been given on account of Iyabo’s blood. Iyabo’s great-great-grandmother had stolen something in the marketplace. This had earned her six lifetimes in prison. So her daughter, when one was finally conceived after constant sequential raping sessions at age twelve, was born, she was sent immediately to an infancy jail section. So had been the lives of her ancestors thereafter. After giving birth her great-great-grandmother was locked away in a huge pit of sinful, naked bodies, all piled atop of each other, all screaming and moaning in pain. Food was thrown in, and the scramble for it caused the death of many prisoners. Even if you did survive like this, the pile up of bodies would kill you eventually. After all, they never cleaned that place out.
Iyabo was around fifty seven seasons old and had already undergone many raping sessions. But they had ceased around eight months ago. Iyabo ran her fingers down to her stomach where she felt a large bulge. At least when she was pregnant they had fed her more, but her baby was still starving and still sentenced to the same fate as Iyabo. It could be some small condolence, perhaps, that Iyabo’s granddaughter would be a free woman.
Freedom. The word rang with angel’s voices and golden bells in her mind. A taste of freedom, it was said, was much like a taste of a cloud – momentary, ethereal and impossible.
Her jailers took fun at embarrassing the people with the sin still in their blood – they would poke and prod, which, out of all things, was the most annoying. They would also whip some, especially if they caught them “thinking of sin”. Iyabo had only been whipped twice – once when she was five, and again when she was seven. Everybody was whipped at least once. If you cried, you were whipped more often; if you begged, you were whipped constantly. It was more for the jailer’s delight than anything, but they still claimed the whippings were to beat the sin of sadness out of you.
Whipping, of course, is not the worse they could do to you. There were various torture devices, and just the other day the jailer on duty for Iyabo’s floor had taken fun in making five women run back and forth naked, and undergo many other humiliations. Iyabo was never chosen to be part of such punishments because she was quiet and never begged or cried when whipped or tortured. Occasionally she had to endure some punishments, but all because of the jailer’s foul day.
There was a new jailer everyday – all citizens had to serve at least one day of jailing service in a year. The jail was the largest building on the world, besides the palace that was for those who were Pure. Needless to say, there were only a handful of occupants left – around twenty. Even the “Pure” ones were said to have sinned, but were protected by the high reputations. What any innocent with sinner’s blood would do to have been forgiven their sins….
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