With The Lights Out

Introduction I

There is confusion. There is dust kicked up by the flailing legs of other girls. There is the understanding that I am alone. I understand I will have very little time to look around me before the men put me to sleep again.

I do not spend most days awake. When I am, it is in places like this. Big mouthed crates filled with girls; like we are fruits about to be shipped out across the ocean.

The little memory I have before my new life— sleeping and waking only to watch other girls shout and trip and fall —is of my mother. Her face doesn't come back to me right, nothing does. I remember her hair, red like mine, longer. I remember her hands on my shoulders during bath time, and how they would be so cold. I remember walking to market with her, where the big ships like the ones from storybooks arrived with bellies full of treasure.

My head feels light, and my knees wobble as I stand. I look down, my legs are purple in spots, I have playground scrapes but deeper, and no one to patch them up.

    Shouting of unfamiliar men overtakes the wild, animal screams of girls. I am ushered from one large, metal shed to another. A small hand, like mine, grabs at my shirt. Before I can turn to find the face of the girl she is gone.

    My stomach hurts, it is dark, I don't know where I am. A dog barks, someone bumps into me. I fall to my hands and knees, I think I might throw up. For a second I hear nothing but a high ringing, like the sound of a phone left off the hook. Like the sound the tv makes when you have to slap it to make the cartoons start up again.

    A hand big around as my neck pulls me up roughly, "move!" I do, blindly.

    One girl, older than me, maybe a middle schooler, breaks off from the group and sprints away from the blacktop and the little neighborhood of shriek filled crates.

    She is running, dark hair loose, legs working like a deers, small and driven. And then she is laying on the ground. I do not see what happens to her next. I am lifted off the ground by the thick arms of man in a metal mask.

    I kick and bite, the thick weight of dust and caked mud meets my tongue. I spit, cough.

The ground shakes as if we are not on solid land, the man's arms loosen around me, as he struggles to gesture to the other suit wearers. It's enough for me to slip from his arms.

In my momentary freedom I am stunned. I don't pick a direction or even choose to run, but I am running.

There is confusion. There is cold. There is rain and sweeping lights and the sounds of bangs and rapid fire 'pop pop pop's that come from every direction.

There is confusion and then there is nothing.

Dimly, dimly I feel metal walls and the disembodied arms and legs of other girls. And then I feel nothing