They say we are what we eat and we eat the poor, the young,
the elderly and the needy. What does that make us, if not human? Monsters? What
do we call a man who pushes his burdens on another, if not clever? A murderer?
Here among our numbers walk the thieves, the liars and the greedy. They steal,
legally, making the poor poorer and themselves whiter. They “fix” themselves,
breaking the broken unfortunates in the process. Worthless amalgamations of commodities,
all of them -- all of us. You too, in fact.
You are a
factory worker, lower middle class, brown skinned. You think you do alright for
yourself. You’re simple and you like that, but secretly you dream of glamor.
You’ve been saving your extra money for over a year, nearly starving yourself
on days where you don’t have work. Today, you wish to graduate from your brown
skinned cage and see how the whites live. You take one last look at your apartment.
The beige walls are dripping with brown and black garbage. Your mattress doesn’t
have any sheets to cover the stains. Soon you won’t have to worry about any of
that. Soon you’ll have your own wall-paper, white, to cover yourself in. You
take the money you’ve saved and head for the door, which creaks open
before you even touch it. You can’t afford locks. You walk down the garbage
filled streets, trying your best to ignore your neighbors. Soon you won’t have
to see any of their dirty faces anymore. It’s
their own fault, you think to yourself, they
could save their money like I did, if they wanted. Dirty parents with dirty
children, you’re glad you never married.
The Albus is within eyesight. You approach.
The familiar screams of a damned man
greet you. This one’s slightly darker than you. He’s being dragged towards the Albus to be punished. He’s younger than
you, maybe sixteen.
The white pillars tower over you,
dousing the perimeter in shadow. You enter.
You pay your dues to the woman in the
blouse. Her blouse is beige like your walls, but her skin is alabaster. Her
hair, too, is bright white. She doesn’t show any signs of age. She greets you
with the indifference you’re accustomed to and directs you towards a chamber on
her right. You enter.
The chamber is translucent. Looking
through out, you see her figure is distorted and strange. The curved glass
bends her face. An angel, you think. You
look to your left and see the young, dark-skinned man. He’s been stripped. You
close your eyes, it’ll be over soon. You won’t have to think about him or
anyone like him ever again. The Albus shutters.
You sleep.
Here in our world, there are no prisons.
We are our own cells and we hold our own keys. Most of us never try to escape. The
security is too comforting; the unknown is too unconditioned.
You wake up from your dreamless
slumber. You feel the same, a little lighter on your feet, but the same.
Bringing your hand up to your face, you see it is now white. You admire the
back of your hand and your pink palms. The woman is smiling at you, blinding
you with her marble teeth. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the
dark-skinned man. He’s shorter now, emaciated, older and covered in black
sludge. Your blackness, age and disease has left you and been transferred onto
him. You watch as he’s dragged from the Albus
and thrown into the street like a leather sack of nothing. You feel nothing.
That man’s life is over, we all knew
it. He’s too black to provide for his family, too old to go to school and too
poor to live. In contrast, you have everything. You’ll never go back to your
factory job. With your blackness, age and disease gone, you are truly free. Any
employer would hire you and any woman would want you. Do you enjoy this power,
or have you realized the disease you lost was your humanity? Weakness, empathy, you think, useless -- human. Now, you’re your own
man and you’re free.
Points: 341
Reviews: 2
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