Sin: Path of Poison

Chapter 6 (Sin's Past)

The memory of my parents was brief, hardly even worth remembering. My parents ran, along with all the other villagers, fleeing down the single road of our small town. Strangers chased them down and slaughtered them like helpless babies. They didn't even try to fight back, none of them. I stood in front of our hut, made of straw with a dirt floor, watching as my mom and dad fell among the dead bodies.

"Gather all the children under the age of five. Kill the others." A large man yelled. His bare chest was covered in red. Blood dripped down his stomach, soaking into his pants which were heavily stained. He carried two short swords, both coated in a thick bloody layer. The orders sounded casual, as if he'd said the same thing a hundred times and continued to repeat the phrase. No longer caring for the meaning or the results that followed.

Picked up as if we were something detestable, we were tossed into a cage on wheels along with the other children from our village. In front of me I could see similar cages filled with unfamiliar children. The following day a woman wearing scraps of cloth and missing most of her teeth walked along the carts, tossing in a couple stale pieces of bread through the crude gaps of the cage.

Even if anyone were capable of receiving the entire ration, it wasn't enough to feed one belly. Don't even mention all the empty bellies present in each cage. Following after her, another woman stopped briefly. Grabbing a bucket of water from a cart, she threw the contents at us. The first two days we were too shocked to think about it. From the carriages in front I could hear crying and screams, but that stopped quickly. They no longer had the water to waste on tears nor the energy to waste on screams.

By the third day our stomachs were twisting in pain and we began fighting for those small hard pieces of food, if it could even be considered that. As the water splashed across us we fought for a spot to hold our cupped hands out, hoping to catch even a mouthful of precious liquid.

As the days progressed several of the youngest kids died in their respective carts. The adults didn't remove their bodies though. After a few more days another line of cages met up with our line. For the first time I saw kids both in front and behind me, all strangers, all desperate, all dying. Days and nights passed slowly, we finally stopped. The cage doors opened, letting us out for the first time. I turned back to look, able to see the long line of cages in their full horror. Here were the remnants of the slaughtered villages. The bloodlines quickly approached extinction as I noted the amount of small mounds that didn't emerge from the cages.