My Writing
Do Seventh Graders Need Laptops?
Sleep comes rarely, my head too often filled with random thoughts and memories and other such things of that same sort. I do not need sleep, my body being used to the lack thereof by now. I have not had much sleep for many years. That is why I was awake when my cell phone beeped. Twice. I had a new message. A new assignment. No one else had that number. Another double-beep, this one announcing the arrival of a photo. Whoever they were, they were already dead.
As I got out of bed I did not smile, nor did I frown. I have been blessed to be shrouded under the veil of indifference. My heart tells me that what I do is wrong, yet my brain says the world is better off with one less person to smother it. The two feelings invariably cancel the other, and I am left feeling yet more hollow. The void growing ever wider. Though what does it all matter to me? I have not been built to care.
The light from the cell phone display is glaringly bright in the dark room, my eyes too sensitive to handle it. I move over to my workbench and light a candle, the smell of Hell lay over me like a mantle, and let my eyes adjust before I read it:
Davin II, William P.
Copley Square, 3.30PM
Boston, 27.06.08
I delete the message, already put to memory with one read, and open the accompanying photo. Brown hair, green eyes. Hitler would disapprove, and apparently so do they. Well, that would be their prerogative, I guess. It does not matter one way or the other. It is still too early to bother getting ready, so I lay back down.
It was like this when they came for me so many years ago. Dark. Silent. Not even a breath of wind outside the window.
My parents stayed huddled together in the corner as they led me out of my room, with nothing but the clothes I slept in and the Teddy I slept with. I cried once I realized they were taking me, to where I did not know, but away from my bed, away from my house, away from my parents. I cried out to my parents, begging for their help, spewed out apologies for things I couldn’t remember doing but must have done. My father’s mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. My mother buried her face deeper into my father’s chest. They dragged me out the door, their hands wrapped firmly around my wrists and their arms around my waist, the door slamming shut behind me with such finality I knew I would never see my parents again. I stopped crying. All was lost.
I cried often in my youth, so much so that I fear I have no more tears left to shed. I will never cry again, not until the day I die and I am overwhelmed by the knowledge that I will be forever leaving this place, my own personal hell. Whether or not I go to Heaven or Hell is of no consequence, there is no worse punishment God or the Devil could do to me in my afterlife that has not already been done to me in my present.