Deviator

Diversity

2038
Magnus

As I leave the bedroom, I can feel her eyes burning into my neck. It sends shivers down my spine, and not the good kind.

In the dining room I begin to prepare the table for her breakfast. She has a very specific idea to how everything must be, and If I don't follow it to the letter, I will be punished. Yet still, she isn't the worst wife I've worked for. During my unfortunate rehabilitation, I experienced a lot worse. A part of me still believes that it was very intentional, that my educators put me through that. Hoping I would give up or mess up so they could fail me. Get me banished, but I powered through it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be alive today.

I shake my head to clear it from the memories and make my way to the main entrance. It should be time for our daily rations to have been delivered, and sure enough just outside the door is a brown paper bag with the groceries for today. Before I pick up the bag, I squint my eyes to try and see the Great Wall that surrounds the city, but even though is massive, I can't see it from here. I can see the wall surrounding Section A, but that's it.

The City is divided into Sections, and depending on how important a person's job is, you get located in one of those sections. There are three main sections. A, B and C. In addition, there is the Protectors training Section, The Houseservant Facility Section and the Square. The most important people in The City, such as the Councilmen, the scientists, engineers and the doctors are living in section A, where everything is well-groomed and cared for. Not a single leaf is out of place. The streets are clean, the people polite and the children are to be seen and not heard. Every home in Section A is a mansion, where the family has a handful of servants to make their life more pleasurable. Section B is those who has less crucial jobs, but still important for The City. There, the homes are normal "white picket fence" houses. Its still idyllic and the homes usually has one or two servants in their household. Section C however, are the commoners. A simple life for the simple man. There, people live in apartment buildings. A way to be able to house a lot of people in as little space as possible. Sections C is overcrowded. Making it difficult to maintain distance. But people get by. They know how much worse everything is outside The Great Wall, so they manage.

And speaking of The Great Wall, from Section C, you can see it. That section is the one closest to The Great Wall. Section A is in the middle of the island, where it is safest. That way should the Infected get through The Great Wall, they would have to eat their way through section C and B first, giving the people in Section A time to escape through the underground tunnels. Or so I have heard.

Another place where you can see the wall up close is The City Square. Before The Outbreak, the area where The City Square is now, was called Christiania. It was well-known for being the one place in Denmark where you could ditch all of the responsibilities. And now it's the place, where people get punished, thrown into solitary or banished to the Wasteland. How ironic.

The City Square is always crawling with Protectors. The people dressed in grey uniforms, who are said to be protecting us. From what, I don't really know, because it doesn't seem like it's from the infected. In my opinion, they should be called the punishers instead. Because that's all we see them do. Maybe the intention of the Protectors was something else, when the City was first build. I guess I'll never know. All I know is that the Protectors are trained in the Section where the Copenhagen Airport once were. Not that I have ever seen the place. The Protector Training Section is one of the top guarded places on the island.

I was trained on the other side of the Airport. On the south part of the island. And that was a completely dreadful experience. We were sorted into dorms based on gender, time of arrival and compliance. And then we were tormented until we barely remembered our own identities anymore.

As I stand there, lost in thoughts, I hear a throat clearing. It's the gardener. I smile and nod at him and he nods back. It's all the human connection we get besides being barked orders at. And well, the illegal act with the Wife, that no one will ever know about. But that's just me. I think. Anyway, we don't get to communicate with others, so when we have a chance, a small acknowledgement of each other can mean a lot for someone like us.

I pick up the bag, and head inside where I begin to unpack the groceries. The Wife joins me in the kitchen. She doesn't speak, she just watches me. It makes my skin crawl. I think she loves to observe the shame and humiliation that I know is clear on my face as my body is still affected by the act from earlier that morning. Sometimes I think she enjoys this part much more than the act itself. The power she has.

Once I've unpacked the groceries, I begin to make her breakfast. It includes some scrambled eggs, a piece of bacon and a glass of orange juice. It isn't much, but still a lot more than some places. I place it on a tray and carry it to the table in the dining room. As she sits down, she looks at me with disgust.

"You stink terribly... you are making me lose my appetite. Go wash yourself of. Thoroughly. Or I'll turn you in for not upholding the obligations!"

I quickly bow and retreat to the kitchen. I know she isn't just threatening. She would do it. She would turn me in, in a heartbeat. I grab some clean clothes in my small chamber that is located right next to the kitchen, and head towards the servant's bathroom. I sigh as I begin to remove my clothes, which truly does stink of sweat.

This obligation is the one that makes the most sense to me. Good hygiene is critical in reducing the risk of infection. At least that's what my mom always said. She was a nurse before the world went to hell. I'll never understand how she could put up with my father who was this disgusting excuse of a human being. He rarely showered or cleaned his surroundings. But my sister and I, we did anything we could, to follow my mom's rules.

I can still remember how our everyday life changed when the first pandemic began in 2020. My mom was overly cautious and at times she stayed at the hospital so she wouldn't risk infecting us with anything. Those were the worst nights. The ones where mom wasn't home. Because then my father had to much freedom to beat us or something worse.

But as the pandemic continued for longer than anybody had expected, she couldn't keep staying at the hospital. She wanted to give us some sense of a normal life. And she wasn't the only one. The longer the pandemic continued, the more people began to ignore the restrictions. Our government lost their power over the people and that's when a new government took its place. And for a while everything seemed to work out. The pandemic seemed to disappear. We didn't hear about people dying or being infected anymore, and the world went back to normal.

That's when my mom come home from work, completely terrified. She told us that the number of infected people had skyrocketed and that they were starting to show new symptoms. These people suffered from blackouts and loss of language. She also told us that if we met someone who mentioned blacking out, we should stay away from them. Far away, because the blackouts and loss of language was just stage one. Stage two was violent attacks at random people. Unprovoked.

I remember looking over at my dad who was sitting on the couch, half asleep with a beer in his hand, and I wondered if he was infected. If maybe that was the reason, he treated us the way he did. But it wasn't. He was just an alcoholic sadist.

That day was the last time I saw my mom. I wanted to warn my best friend, because I knew he didn't have someone who could tell him about these things and he was the only one who always had my back, so naturally I wanted to have his too. And since the government didn't inform people about the disease, and his parents didn't work in a hospital, there was no one else who could warn him.

And for me, that kind of worked out great too, because he had texted me the day before, that he needed to talk to me, but my dad had caught me as I tried to climb out of my window. He had beaten me up pretty bad. So bad, that I knew I couldn't climb out the window.

The next day after class, I rode my bike over to the fancy private school he went to.

That's when everything went to hell.