The Boy

The second I see that boy hit the ground, I just lose it.

    Absolutely lose it.

    Alexa, Cara and I are in the center square, going about our usual Street-Rat business, (scrounging for food, swiping People's medicine tablets, taking contacts and hair dye from those better-than-thou People stores), when my ears are filled with the sound of a child's scream. Oh my god. I shoot a look at Alexa, who shakes her head at me. She says that I am too eager to help other rats, and that it will hurt me for good one day, but I just can't stand on the sidelines and watch. Now I see a boy, only seven or eight by the looks of it, and a solemn looking official stands over his trembling, malnourished form.

"Sir, I-I'm sorry!" The kid stammers helplessly, but the official holds up a gloved hand. He extends his other to a Person-looking woman, her doughy face contorted in selfish anger.

"Rat, I received a complaint from this cousin. You have been stealing her medicine, and we all know it. Such behavior from street filth cannot go unpunished."

"Ma'am, please, ma'am!" The child cries to the overweight Person, grabbing at her raspberry-colored skirt. She grunts in disgust and kicks him away with a black heel. "My sister, ma'am, she needs those. She's only two, please! She will die if she can't take that medicine! I swear, I only need one." He's pleading, now, tears creating shiny rivers on his dirt-streaked face.

"Alexa-"

"No, Ryder." She hisses. Cara places a bandaged hand on my shoulder comfortingly. I cry with the boy, having seen this particular scene too many times to cope. The official keeps a calm tone when condemning the terrified child, but no voice, no matter how soothing, can mask the cruelty of the punishment the kid has to endure.

The sentence is...money.

Lots of it.

The official herds the boy into a glass cage, a dome of sorts. He brings out the dreaded control panel from his crisp white pocket, and presses a button. There is a buzzing sound of the high-tech kind, and a table slowly emerges from beneath the white floor within. The kid's eyes widen with wonder as piles and piles of thousand slips come into view.

The people that govern the war-torn country that I had the misfortune to be born in may lack knowledge in a lot of things, but there is one thing that they've managed to master: mind control. They know what I want. What that horrible lady wants. Even what the official in the clean white uniform wants, but no way would they ever  punish him like  this kid. A bent mind is no longer a sharp mind, they say. It's true, too. All the innocent street-rats I've seen go in there come out worse. Wary. Like the whole world is black and white and they're a shade of gray.

The kid reaches for the nearest stack of slips, neatly stacked and without defect.

"No, no." The official mutters, a sick smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He presses another button on his device, and the menacing sound of gas can be heard from small holes drilled in the top of the dome. This is hydrogen cyanide, I know. Lethal. Long ago, our ancestors used this gas to kill those they looked down on in one of the earlier world wars, which one I don't know. If this kid doesn't let go of the money clenched in his fist soon, his sister won't have anybody to fetch her medicine. He knows this, of course. The officials aren't so cruel as to kill a completely unaware child. I wait, urging the boy to let go, but his grip is iron as he inhales the noxious fumes in the chamber. The Person who is responsible for all of this gazes at him with wide eyes, but I know she feels no remorse. Why would she? She is an actual Person, while the little kid dying in that dome is nothing but a street rat, vermin that needs exterminating.

In the last few seconds, time seems to slow down. No one ever had died in that chamber. No one. But this child, this little, innocent kid, has only known hunger and sadness all of his life. Unlike most of the others that go in there, this boy is young and doesn't know how to deal with it. Oh my god. oh my god. He locks eyes with me in that last second of life, tiny fist still clenching the money. Those eyes, pale and sad, hold one last request: Remember me.   

Then he collapses, folding inward, protecting the bundle of money that was his life and death.

The second I see that boy hit the ground, I just lose it.

Absolutely lose it.

A/N: dang I just realized I wrote this all the way back in fifth grade, time sure flies