The Diary of Zartoon

ENTRY 16

ENTRY 16

24.03.63.15.58

I have been here for four days now. I have been poked, prodded, questioned and tortured. The worst of the torture was being paraded through the street, naked and with a collar around my neck. They placed me with a group of Zartoon and some other Humans. We were spat at, hit, and were pelted with rocks as we walked. A few younger Humans ran out and struck with sticks in the legs and groins. Then they would run back to their parents and stand there laughing. There was no way that this was the behavior of Humans I remembered back on Earth... at least I thought that until flashbacks came of our history. The Civil War, Nazis, The Atomic Bomb, Mass murders in the Soviet Union, Poland's Ethnic Cleansing, Pol Pot, and barbarians like Attila The Hun.

Now in my Zartoon Human prison, the most painful torture was my solitude. There was not one time that anyone spoke to me or even looked at me. It was as if I was a non-person. I could hear the Zartoon prisoners or maybe they were slaves talking to each other, and I could hear the guards and the people walking passed my cell. They spoke a kind of diluted American language, but it was enough for me to understand, but they treated me like nothing more than an inarticulate animal who wasn't worth their time.

When I was allowed out to stretch, outside, through the rock wall, I could see one of the streets. There were many Humans walking around. Not all of them, but a large number of them had Zartoon on leashes following close behind them as if they were puppies.

I was in a lot of pain, due to the beatings I had received. It felt like my skin and muscles were on fire, but I lived through it. On the night of my fourth day, I was dragged to the city gates, beaten viciously once again and left for dead. Fortunately, they did leave my clothes and this notepad, which was still in my back trouser pocket, luckily I have it and can record all I went through while a prisoner of the Humans living in their Human Zartoon City. The one thing they didn't give me was my traveler, so I now I have to walk to finish my quest.

Before I left that diabolical city, I spread my arms as if I was on a cross, drew in as much air as I could and screamed, "Where did all of the Humanity go?" I didn't get an answer, but I did get a pot of water poured on me. After all, I had experienced, how could have I ever expected any better?

I started out once again to the south. As I walked, I could hear darts fired from the city wall. A few of them did hit me in the back and on my legs. It was painful, but I just ignored them until I was out of their range, then I sat down and gently pulled all of them out one by one. I know they had thrown me away to die, But I was the Zartoon's warrior, and after my fellow Humans' treatment of me, nothing was going to stop me helping the Zartoon, after all, I was the "Chosen one."

My journey that day was a little over twenty miles, and when I finally decided to sleep it was on a pile of small rocks. Hell, that was the only ground around that wasn't a marsh of some kind. So, I drank from the marsh. The water was bitter, but it was what I needed so I drank it, and I ate some weeds that grew along its banks. So, after I ate and drank, I looked at the stars, gazed down on blue star Yartook with a desire to be there once more, despite what might have happened there, and finally fell asleep.