Electrum

Casual Warnings

  Blood laps against my lace up boots coating it in a sickening glossy sheen. I wipe away the sweat from my forehead, peeling the stray strands of hair as I do so. My cheeks feel wet from the tears I cried as I watched the task I had to do. I rub them away pressing down hard on my skin with my wrist until all the evidence of my weakness is gone.

I stare around at their bodies and how their limbs are twisted in odd directions. There is already blood pooling around them staining their clothes red. I did this. I allowed them to choke on their own gore and sick while I stood there, motionless.

 I feel so nauseated that all I want to do is lie down on a bed and fall into a never-ending sleep; everything seems much more peaceful there. But I don't deserve rest; monsters don't sleep on a bed they wait under it.

 And that was me waiting after they placed me in a bland room and told me to shoot the other fourteens before me, maybe if I didn't know what I do now I would have hesitated but no matter what I say to try and justify my actions I know that I am the monster they have framed me to be, if that wasn’t true before then it is now.

 And as if my inhumanity hasn’t been proven enough in less than thirty minutes I will be taken and placed in a simulated test of strengths and weakness'. I’ve been waiting for this my whole life and now, now I feel sick to my stomach picturing myself seeing others dying over and over, being the reason they die over and over. The worst thing was I was relieved that it wasn’t anyone I knew; just faces that meant nothing. But I was happy they meant nothing, they weren’t Alana and Jerome, they weren’t my only friends. My only friends who don’t know who I am. My only friends who still think I’m human.

I shudder as I walk out the room closing the metal door behind me but even then the blood thins out to a small trickle under the doorway.

“it’s done I presume?"

The guard looks at me expectantly pursing her alert red lips. Her voice laced with a tone of impatience as she leans against the grey wall looking at the trickle of blood like children’s lives bleeding away was the easiest thing in the world to look at but then again she’s seen this act every year that she’s been here. It’s a tradition and now I see that it’s a sick one.

I give her a feeble nod trying to keep my last meal down while simultaneously attempting to look cool and collected about what I’ve just done

 But I’m not.

“It was a bit messier then expected but it gives for me… ah… symbolism" the guard says pushing herself off the wall in one quick movement.

Symbolism. That’s why I had to kill them all the under twenty five’s-those who received only twenty five percent for life expectancy in the trials. But I had to kill them, that’s how it goes.  The strongest kills the weakest just like the new world killed the old one and just like the adrenaline killed the old world’s people. Now all the fourteen year olds and under stay in the remains of a broken world nestled into the ashes of the now dead people. Symbolism and rules, that’s why,  and even though I understand what it means I’ll never understand why I had to stand there and hear ten of my former peers beg for mercy.

Somehow the guard has managed to glide effortlessly to my side and is escorting me through the twisting and turning halls of the facilities. I watch as the featureless walls loom up. My grey skin tight combat suite blends in with the scenery much unlike the black uniforms the guards must wear, they are always noticeable in a crowd; Always there, always watching.

We turn more corners further and further away from all the other and further and further away from where I want to be.

“Isn’t the half hour before the trials reserved for goodbyes?" My voice still wavers slightly but I say it with as much force as I can muster. They chose me as the strongest and now I must present myself that way no matter what I have seen or done. I am the strongest and I always will be.