Provinces & Kingdoms

Part 1: Where I Began

"I can't breathe.

If I don't I'll die, but then would that be a bad thing?"

The name's Ryan, I'm 16 years old and I'm a Darkheart.

When my parents found out this latest fact, they sent me to the BlackHouse.
It was for my fourth birthday.

The BlackHouse is like a mental school, you live there 'till you die.

You have to survive the halls, staff and other Darkhearts that rome about the grounds.

There is no real freedom for us.

No sunny beaches.
No rain on the hills.

No nothing but pain.

My bedroom walls were once whitewashed, but are now no longer.
I painted them with my own blood.

I didn't want to.
I was forced to.

I'm writing this now, and my pen is one of those old fashioned ones, y'know, that you have to dip into the ink.
'cept the ink is blood.
Probably Billy's.

We are forced to look for our own food. It's often a part of someone's or something's body.

We have to cook it ourselves.
We try to guess what it is that we're going to eat, I think it was brains last night...

We get appointed 'chores' here.

Mine is to hack up the bodies of those who didn't last long, like Billy.
I have to cut them up carefully, keep the organs safe, not loose the blood.

Certain parts will be used for the Lightheart hospitals.

Other parts are used for resources inside BlackHouses, like my ink.

I keep the eyes for playing with, like you'd play with marbles.
I draw them sometimes.

After the eyes are clean and dry, I dip them into melted wax or plastic. I polish them off when they harden.

The hearts though...
I have to drain the blood first.
We can save that.

The actual heart must be burnt.
Then they get placed under The Glass.

The Glass is a place, a bit like a cemetery, where all the Blackheart hearts are put.
The only thing is, they are boxes in the ground (you put the hearts in there) and a sheet of glass is fastened in place on top so you can see inside.

There is always a name carved into the glass. Not carefully or prettily like the Lighthearts' but still there.

If the person is lucky enough or did something that got noticed you will see the dates on his or her glass.

Billy won't get the dates, even though he was the son of a very high up Lightheart.

If a Lightheart couple have a Darkheart child they are considered unclean, and if they, by any chance, wish to or do keep the child, they are considered a disgrace to the whole community.

The couple can only be 'cleansed' if they send the child to the DarkHouse or kill them.

I was lucky to be sent here.
My sister was killed.

I saw my parents kill her.
They wore protective full bodied suits. She was screaming, she was only two.

The kill that is performed by the Lighthearts on their Darkheart children is simple for them.

Painful for the Darkhearts.

I wish is was just a bullet to the head, but it's not.

No, you get pulled, limb from limb.
Your arms get pulled out of their sockets, your legs too.
Then every bone is broken.

Special chemicals get poured over you that eats away at your skin and flesh. It feels like you're burning to death but there's no flames. Just white-hot pain.

Only then do you get burnt.

Alive.

When your body has disintegrated, your heart (which was pretected) gets removed and placed under The Glass.

As you can see, I was quite lucky.