A Little Less Empty

Chapter One

Chapter One – This is where I stab a kid in the eye with a pencil and get rewarded for it.

My name is Poet Riley; it’s nice to meet you.

For some reason at the Institute, they’re really hard-ass on manners. So there is an ingrained sense to say please when you should say please and say thank you when you should say thank you. There should be a class on how to help old ladies across the street.

As for the name… it’s a mystery. I’m an eighteen year old girl named Poet, which just screams dramatic, if you ask me.

Right now, I’m sitting at my desk in English class, composing a sonnet about the gum stuck under my chair.

There is a rainbow of stickiness hidden in the shadows.

Should touch it?

I think not.

As you can see, my name is just a name and not really a calling.

Not anymore anyway.

I’m holding an orange HB pencil, and it’s a good pencil. It’s easy to write with, and has a good grip, and I’m thinking about how it’s such a terrific pencil, when the guy sitting next to me, stands up and growls at me like he wants to eat my face.

The thing is… I like my face.

More so than the pencil.

So when he lunges at me, my first instinct is to stab him in the eye with the pencil, and I do that almost forlornly. It was such a good pencil.

Blood splatters everywhere, on my desk, my chair and on my standard issue white t-shirt that I wear almost like a dress, because the Institute ran out of my size at the beginning of the year.

He’s gripping his face and wailing like an animal and that’s when I realise that he’s Damaged.

When you’re one of the Docile, your life hangs in the balance. Life is unstable. You could die tomorrow. You could get Damaged and become what this boy has become.

Mindless. Bloodthirsty.

He’s fallen to his knees and I can’t help but wish I hadn’t gotten up this morning. I stand behind him, place my hands on the sides of his head.

You’ve heard of civil duty. Here at the Institute, it’s be or be killed. It’s the first lesson they teach, because in the end it’s either you or them.

I close my eyes and chant to myself that this is what I have to do. This is what I have to do. After this, life won’t be worth living – for either of us, and I try not to think about my sister. I try so hard.

Once in I.T. class, someone hacked the school’s main frame. Every computer screen lit up with the words, Would you rather die? Or get Damaged? We had to click one or the other. The results came back a while later and they had come to the conclusion that 95% of the student body would rather die than become Damaged.

I hope this boy wasn’t a part of the other 5%.

I find a handhold in his thick hair, and yank his head to the side. There is a sickening snap as his neck breaks, but I underestimate my strength, and end up removing his head from the rest of his body completely.

His body falls forward onto the scuffed linoleum floor with a thud. I still hold his head in my hands. It takes me a while to drop it and when I do, I close my eyes and feel the fresh blood on my face, the way it soaks into the grey fingerless gloves I always wear.