"While my hope was born from destruction, my destruction was not born from hope. It was born from revenge."
I lie on the brittle ground, my side pressed against the filth of my own piss. My flat palms serve as my only pillow. The stench of death and smeared excrement fills my nostrils. The night has passed. Perhaps longer, perhaps shorter, but it was the worst I have ever endured.
My brother was dragged upstairs. It should have been me.
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I make no effort to wipe them away. They mix with the urine pooling beneath me. My gaze is empty, fixed on the closed hatch that separates us from the surface. My eyes remain unblinking. I heard everything. My brother's screams. His pleas. But they only laughed. I don't know what they did to him, but the sound of bones breaking had become routine. His cries still echo in my ears. I wanted to sleep. I couldn't. I had to listen. I prayed it would end quickly. I wept as I prayed, but no one answered.
Heartbeats blurred into breaths, and those into my brother's screams. I counted them. Never blinked. Five hundred and eighty-one. That's how many times he was hurt before he fell silent. His last thirty-four cries grew steadily weaker. Perhaps he screamed for the same wound more than once.
My eyes are dry, bloodshot. Not a single blink, not a moment of rest. Only tears dampen my face. The others in my cell have already distanced themselves from me. Everyone is silent. I stare at the hatch. A slit. Likely from a knife. The blade remains lodged in it, casting a thin line of blue light. Not even a centimeter wide.
My body does not tremble. I am still. I am bitter. Angry. But I do not show it. I remain silent. Alone with myself. I am I. My own spirit.
He is in my head. Golden curls over a mocking, pointed mustache. A sharp face bathed in blue light. Brighter than the others, but still blue. His rhyme. The melody of his vocal cords. I will rip them out. Snap his arms and legs. Twist his spine and tear it free. I will shatter their skulls and scrape out their brains. Pull their entrails from their bellies with their own knives. Kill them. I will kill them. For Ren. For my little brother.
My gaze shifts to the narrow beam of falling light, steady like a single raindrop that never reaches the ground. In the distance, people sit huddled in their cells, bodies trembling with fear. I hear the breath of the little girl beside me as she sleeps. It is fast and uneven. A nightmare, perhaps of her parents. Ren had them, too. I would go to him, sixteen years old, while he was only thirteen, and run my fingers through his messy hair.
Tears rise again, but I remain motionless in my own filth. Everything I see, hear, or feel reminds me of him. A toddler, younger even than the girl beside me. How proud I once felt, walking him home from kindergarten while I was in primary school. He looked up to me. And now, he likely rests on the ocean floor, sharks feasting on him as their final course.
That these wretched beings—these lustful creatures who only watch as others suffer—are allowed to live. They are all the same.
Once more, my gaze locks onto the hatch. It moves. Is it time again? Another victim for their twisted desires? I remain still, my iris capturing the silhouettes of three figures descending the creaking stairs. Their boots, ice-blue, gleam like models basking in the sunlight. It's not difficult to shine when surrounded by nothing but filth and human waste. Including me.
My fingers trace the uneven ground, splinters embedding themselves into my skin. But I only look at their lips, once blue, now red, stained with my brother's blood. Their yellowed teeth sneer at me. I want to drive my fist into their mouths. Rip out their blue tongues, the ones that savored my brother's insides.
But I do nothing. With all my strength, I lift my arm only to shoulder height. My hand shakes, but my body is numb, drenched in crimson blood. Rust-red. Did Ren feel ? How did he fight that colossal beast? My arm falls to the ground, my fingers stopping just a centimeter before the electrified bars.
I stare at my hands. My bones are visible, my fingers darkened, purpling. They look like they are rotting. I gag but do not vomit. I have already emptied myself through the night. My eyelids slowly fall and rise.
Above the hatch, several of them wait. Blue. All of them. They are dressed like fishermen—sturdy boots, long shirts like tunics, wide trousers. Some wear caps, some do not. But everything is blue. Like their skin. Like the sun that passes them by.
The three descending figures seem enormous. They look down on the others. On me. My rage flares, but I remain still. I cannot move.
My dry lips part. They crack. Yesterday, I could fight. Now, I cannot even lift my arm.
The three go their separate ways. One is lanky, stretched like he was pulled too far. Another smokes a cigar, reminding me of the fat bastard my brother killed. But he is not as large, not as strong. He is short, perhaps a head smaller than me.
The last one walks toward us. Toward me. Toward the cell.
He looks down at us. A pointed chin. Rabbit teeth. A nose like a banana. It enrages me that he looks down at me. He is thin. His clothes resemble a coat, while the others' seem tailored. He grips a key in his bare, slender hand and approaches the bars.
The key slips. His hand touches the bars.
A sharp hiss. He jerks back.
Laughter erupts from above, the light casting an eerie glow around the voice. "Lucky you weren't first, rabbit."
The rabbit-toothed man pulls dark blue gloves from the inner pocket of his pale blue tunic. He crouches, unlocking the gate.
His fingers move to his side, drawing a weapon.
The other two in the distance do the same.
I lie before him. He towers over me. The cell is silent. The others retreat the few inches they have left. I do not move.
The rabbit steps inside.
They all step back, retreating over the old, over the long-dead children and women. Over those they themselves have killed when food was scarce. Even the little girl has moved away, torn from her nightmare. She whimpers so innocently.
The rabbit steps on my throat. His mere fifty kilograms press down on me—but it feels like so much more. My head flushes red, veins bursting beneath my skin. Ten breaths, and he lets up. I gasp greedily, though my windpipe feels as if I'm breathing through a constricted straw. My eyes roll upward, as if trying to peer into my own brain.