Asclepias curassavica

The woman's face was illuminated by the glittering sparks off the revolving wheel of stone. The mask she wore was an old one, black and covering half of her face, and tied in the back with a black ribbon. Her blonde hair was clean, and her hands weren't delicate at all, but calloused and cruel. The Englishman in front of her lolled his head; he was just coming to.

Face cold and grim, she pulled the deadly blade from the sharpener, and all light in the dank room vanished like a breath of air. The room was stony, and very, very cold; small jewels of ice glittered on the metal cuffs that bound the guilty man to the Rack.

Disgusted by the official in front of her, she slapped the man's face, the man gasping and realizing he wasn't home with his wife, whom was at the bottom of the Thames. The woman walked around the man's chair, placing her cruel hands around the man's shoulders, the man indignant about being bound.

"What am I doing here?"

To which the woman replied with a slash of the thirsty blade, and began the long, arduous process of questioning her captive.

"Why did your master accept the bribe from Nancy Eleanore?"

Nancy Eleanore was the woman who was heavily devoted to the belief that every child in England should be used for Science, laboratory rats and genetic war machines. The governor of the English Embassy was considering Eleanore's offer, and the official who would not survive the night was the governor's right hand.

The official blanched and sputtered, vehemently denying any acceptance of a large sum of pounds. The woman cruelly smiled, her smile the only discernible thing among her masked face, though there were no lights to see her with. She cut the man again, his arm this time, and the pain forced the official to be truthful.

The official told her everything he knew; the governor needed the money to bring the country out of utter poverty, though it meant sacrificing children. Ever since the War between the psychopathic Gasmask Killer and his unknown accomplice, every country has suffered massive debt, some countries banding together to pool their precious resources; oil was a rarity and traveling by foot was the most efficient way of getting anywhere.

The accomplice was never found, and the occasional death that fit the killer's methods suggested that it was still alive. The woman accused him of wanting death to every generation of children. The official said that it was a measure only even considered by desperation.

They debated hotly, until the woman grew weary of the childish bickering. She ended his life slowly, soothing herself with his cries of pain.

As she rinsed her hands of blood and gore she began humming a song that her father taught her long ago. Her eyes welled with tears, for she missed her father very much. He was taken from her when she was eight years old, teaching her his craft so that one day, when she was ready, she'd continue his legacy. Instead she had to teach herself how to survive. She realised that her father was sick in the head in the sense that he didn't punish with purpose. He took too much and left wounds to fester. The woman learned that some people deserved to live when an elderly man saved her starving self, similar to how her father adopted her. She had felt once more the love of a father.

Now, no one felt love. This was a time of survival. A time where to eat, you had to find anything that wasn't poisoned by wasted rivers and acid dust. A time where cannibalism was a necessary evil.

She'd stop at nothing to save children from a fate worse than her father. She'd  be to them as her father was to her.

Screar stared at the broken latex gas mask in her hand. Glass eye protectors, shattered. Mouth piece, torn away. Blood staining the inside. She held the only thing she had of her father to her chest and sang: 

It's every man for himself, and chaos will rain

Down on the people below

There's only pain

All the people know

that chaos will reign

Who will save us all

from the new fall

of once civilised people

Out of the ashes

one must go on

to be the one with hope

Blood will spill

and it shall fill

the empty lakes of old

As the rage descends upon the land

we fall through cracks

and return again 

to the great sea

where we will be

again, hateful people.