Lost Center

Chapter One

Today, I woke up very early. Morning is no different from the others. The sun always rises, and it always showers life to every organism green and holy. The sky is already a blue blanket, and the ends are quite black and gray. I always see this view every morning. When the birds start to flutter in the sky, you know that it's time to enter another door of uncertainty. But what makes it the same is the feeling inside that you cannot fathom and you fail to identify. Dad said every time the sky wakes you up, you never have to be jittery. But I don't really believe that for the past days. It's like the nervousness punches your body, until you find out that nervousness itself will kill you. It will destroy you. It will make you disqualified.

I walk along the meadow of Cree, waiting for him to come out of their house. I'm very early for our morning conversations, and I know he's still sleeping on his soiled bed while hugging the seventeen-year old cushions around. We do this every morning, the conversations. We always talk about our future, or at least every time we see each other. Future is very important. It's specifically important in our society which our lives are surrendered and sacrificed to even before we knew it.

I always tell Cree that I might not make it. I might be buried alive by the Jabs just as how they buried Allie, my seventeen year-old friend who I met at the Center. Knowing Allie in television, he's a strong, scholastic, and great murderer. He was one of those people whose hands you don't want to shake when he offers them. That day at the Center, he showed us his agility and knack in killing. First, the Jabs released a scrawny and bearded prisoner in orange jumpsuit and cuffed hands placed on his behind. His name is Michael Crows. He had been in jail for six years since the day they caught him plotting a sinister detonation in the Center. Our mayor then decided that Michael alias Sammy, along with his oiled-face comrades, would be a toy for the rookies of the Center. That only means death.

The day of Michael's death was the day when the officials decided the sixteens to come to the Center and get registered. Of course, that's not the point of that. They want us to watch how to slaughter someone with finesse. They want us to cheer while someone is flogged by our citizen, who is too young to do so. They want to desensitize us.

Michael's face was blank. He was led to the center like a lost sheep by this buffy man whose hands were around Michael's nape. Maybe he had accepted his fate that day for obeying like a child to a bully neighbor. Allie was sharpening his double-edged knife, and all of us are looking at him, perusing his moves. Or maybe all of them, because I was looking at Michael's face. I kept on asking myself what it feels like. What's the feeling of dying in front of many people with wide beams on the face? What's the feeling of being watched nationally for intruding the country? What's the feeling of getting killed by a youngster who's twenty years younger than him?

And then Allie spitted onto the shining sharpness of his knife, and mopped it on his left arm. He then circled Michael who did not show him any gesture of bravery but a dissipating faith and body. Allie went to Michael's back, roughly twenty-five centimeters away, and gawked at the audience with a very flashy smile. "Do you want me to kill this Sammy guy?" His voice reverberated in the Center. The audience gave loud growls of agreement and excitement. They were all amped up to see Michael dead. A minute later, Allie squinted and finally threw the razor-edged knife into Michael's head. All of the audience had burst into ascending claps in unison. Michael's body collapsed heard first, then the crowd all the more burst into claps and adulation to Allie the Herculean slaughterer.

A year after, Allie was televised being buried alive. I wonder how the mayor looked at him with so much waste for he could have been a great asset to the country. He could have been the epitome of the society's intelligentsias, braves, and greats. But no. He was killed because they said he's got the grippe from other country we are supposed to feud against. That meant he had compassion. That meant he had detached himself from the society. That meant he was a rebel after all.