Ten years ago,

A sandstorm brewing in a remote desert.

A lone person is walking through the deadly storm without any hint of reluctance written on his face.

Screams of people and crumbling concrete can be heard all around him.

His eyes are bloodshot but his legs do not falter despite the raging winds and sand.

“Ple-Please”, a person in army uniform screams.

But before he knows it, his body is cleaved right through the chest and the sandstorm separates into two wings.

Several army outposts dotting the borders of a faraway country were reduced to the desert sand that week, not one personnel escaped death.

                                                                   ###

December 5, 1999

A frail looking young boy tries hard to open his eyelids.

Then suddenly he is jolted to his senses as he feels a searing pain cut through his left hand.

He immediately cocks his head to the direction and grunts and delivers a jab to the

“You motherfucker, shitty cur. Do I look like food to you?”

A dog had bit into his hand and held fast to it in his canines.

The boy grabs for something with his right hand and hits the dog at the head with an open metal canister.

The dog yelps in pain and runs off.

“Shitty bastard.”

He looks at his left arm, to find a deep groove running along its length and fresh blood coming out.

He looks around and finds himself sitting in a pile of something. A trash can.

He grits his teeth, “Those cunts left me here, as if I was a refused corpse. I will BURY you myself, sons of bitches.”

He moves his legs and finally jumps off from there and walks forward a little distance and stoops down.

He takes his palm and scoops up a little water from a muddy puddle and applies it horizontally over the wound, washing off grit.

He takes some wet mud and covers the wound.

“How did I end up like this?”, he thinks walking back and sits leaning at the trash can.

He closed his eyes to see where things went wrong down the road. He wasn’t this close to death one week ago.

“Haha”, he laughed to himself, “ ‘this close’ perhaps it was true that I was never just ‘this’  terrible.”

A week ago,

In a house, made out of steel asbestos, and untidy ropes and collected refuse,

Thirteen year-old Ryan sat in a corner of the room silently.

His drunk father was ransacking the place and stood amidst several beer bottles.

“Da Fuck you mean, cunt. She has a good body. She has to earn money. Do you want us to go extinct, hah?”

“Look at you.  *cough Speaking about selling your own daughter for money that you spend drinking in the middle *cough of day. Have you no shame? *cough”

“What do you know, bitch. I spend my earnt money on my booze, you have no fucking rights over what I do to myself. But to live, she must be taken to the club today. I will take her. Even if Vivy is a slum rat, she will get a good night rate unlike your old bones.”, he said before downing another gulp of his cheap beer.

Ryan was trembling in a corner, there was no crying however, because all his tears had dried up in these years of abuse.

His sick mother took Vivy’s head in her arms and pulled the weeping girl to her embrace, and whispered something, “..God…help..strength…”

Ryan’s mother was not very religious but in a life like hers, one had to hold onto whatever thin thread of hope one could find.

“Hah, what are you blabbering about?”

“..I will.. *cough NOT let you take Vivy away.”

Ryan looked up to cast a glance. His mother’s voice was not exactly firm, but it wasn’t weak and feeble, like paying obeisance to her husband’s whims and cries as it had been all these years.

She had looked him in the eye for the first time.

“Hahahaha. Do you think our life is a fucking drama, whore?”, his father burst out laughing.

She did not look down or lower her chin and instead held onto Vivy’s dress more firmly.

He saw that and continued, “Fine, Fine. I will not take her out today. But then I have another solution to this-“

He said these words and cast a dangerous glance at Ryan.

“We have to reduce the number of mouths to feed. This fucking good-for-nothing will die soon anyways.”

He walked to Ryan and lifted him up by the collar and walked towards the door, if it could be called a door.

He was tumbling, unable to walk steadily in a straight line, clearly under the effects of alcohol.

Just as he was about to fling him out, he heard a nearby cracking sound of glass.

Ryan’s mom was holding a beer bottle smashed at the bottom,

“I think I have a better solution… Get. Out.!”

He dropped Ryan on the hard ground and turned back.

 “Fucking cunt, my beer! You!”.

Just as he finished speaking these words, a glass bottle smashed right next to his face on a wall. A piece of glass hit his face in the cheek and he bled.

“.. I am serious. Get Out!”

“…Arghh fucker. All of you will die. DIE without me”, he swore and ran out, falling several times to the ground.

Ryan’s mother collapsed on the floor, with Vivy holding her tight to her chest.

Three Days Later,

Ryan sat in the porch of his house. His stomach grumbling.

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His father had been right.

Even if he was a drunkard, he was the only one in the house who had a real job, as crappy and menial it was.

He searched in his pocket and found a single mouthful of rice. It was made two days ago.

He quickly gulped it down his throat and rose up.

He needed to get some food today. He had to.

In this country of Farista, beggars were looked down upon poorly. A person could report them as being harassing to a public official.

And thus, Ryan had to be cautious of where to look for food, and hastily retreat if someone eyed him for too long.

He went from the slums and crossed the rail lines, into the suburbs.

He couldn’t go too close to the city as the guards would shove him away.

A pod with a capacity of four people flew over him.

What time was it? 8 am? 9 am?

Probably some rich kid went to school in that.

Ryan had only heard of school from his sister Vivy.

She told him, before Ryan was born, they were not in such a sorry state and could afford primary education for Vivy as a child.

The school had teachers, and other students who sat in the same room and learnt lots of things, sometimes there were even tests. But most of all, there were people you could call friends and play together.

These were like fairy tales to Ryan, who did not have confidence if he could really tolerate other unrelated, seemingly strangers so close to him. He never had time to play, life was a constant neverending struggle to just keep living.

He had never went to school, and did not know to even spell his name, but the way his sister described it to him, he thought it was a beautiful place and maybe he would like to go once too.

However, the rumbling of his hungry stomach made him return to reality, this was not time for him to be daydreaming about such things.. he had arrived at a street.

***

2 pm

The sun was blistering hot. The fact that it was winter, didn’t help one bit.

Walking under the hot waves barefoot with barely anything to cover your head, it was only a matter of time until your body gave in.

But Ryan still went from door to door, knocking and asking for food and money.

However, in over six hours, what he had collected could hardly suffice himself for a day.

‘…What about Mother? And Vivy?’, he thought.

‘Maybe Dad was right. Maybe, if I had left the house then…’

He shook his head.

‘No, Mom did that for me. I have to do this.’

He went over to the last house in the street. He banged on the sweltering hot iron gate for over ten minutes. His palms were red, and his desperate face was redder, but no one responded.

“Fuck you, people.”

He got angry and hit the gate especially hard, pushing the gate backwards and sending an echo in the area.

He bit his lower lip.

Suddenly, he felt something extremely hot washing over him.

“Ahh Ah Argh.”

Someone poured boiling water over his skin from a window.

“Motherfucking bitch. I pray you and your entire family dies tragically!!”

He did not stay any longer to look at the woman and made an escape, lest he should be reported.

Even if he was just a child, he knew the rights and wrongs. And he knew he wasn’t entitled to any rights because he was poor. He was weak. He was insignificant. And hence he was undeserving of what he deserved.

It was soon evening and he returned to his dwelling. He had clearly failed to bring enough food back to the family. He was disgusted at himself.

“Oi, Ryan! Do you want to sneak in tonight?”, three kids standing at the opposite end of the lane called out to him.

Ryan stared at them for a few seconds and replied, “No, go without me.”

‘These fools, they were going to rob someone tonight. Doesn’t he remember how his father ended up?’.

After having their meals, if it could be called a meal, he and Vivy sat to the side of their mother’s bed – the only one in their home, holding her palms while she rested.

“..God.. Strength… Please, if not me.. my children *cough”

‘God? Did a God really exist? And if he did, wouldn’t it be better to call him the Devil? What God that these people preach, of love and compassion would allow people like us suffer this bad?’

Ryan did not know if a God existed, but he was sure the Devil existed, and he walked the lands, in the face of man. Ryan had seen a lot of these ‘Devils’ – his father, the man who chased him with a bat, the cops who beat him for no rhyme or reason.

But even through all this, he was fascinated by his mother. Believing in something so farfetched and imaginary was not something he could do.

This was truly his mother. Everyday, they would listen to her saying this. Even if their entire day had gone awfully bad, even if they had to coax their stomach to sleep without any morsel of food, seeing someone so close being able to hope for light was extraordinary.

Maybe.. if she wasn’t there, Ryan might have given up a long time ago.

Through her prayers, she coughed especially badly that day.

“Sister, did you give her the medicines yet?”

She shook her head, “..There is none left.”

He grit his teeth but it was a reality he could do nothing about.

His mother’s breathing grew quiet for a while but then she said something unusual,

“…In all my life, through forty years, I have never experienced a full stomach..”

Tears ran down her cheeks and both the siblings could feel them moisten their hands.

Soon, she fell asleep.

About half an hour later, Vivy rose up.

“Sister, going to sleep?”, Ryan asked.

Vivy stood at the edge of the room and nodded without looking back.

Soon after, Ryan rose and went to his room.

He cast a final glance at his mother,

 “Tomorrow, I swear I will bring you more food, I promise.”

***

The next day,

Ryan found Vivy’s dead body.

Those three brats he found the previous day were giggling, “Bitch, she really tried stealing bread from us.”

“Right, she was so frail, it’s not our fault if a few punches killed her.”

Ryan flew into a rage seeing this.

“You motherfucking bastards, I will rend you bone from flesh right now”, and he charged at them.

However, he was only a frail, thirteen year old. Those three quickly overpowered him.

The next thing Ryan remembered – was waking up inside a trash can.

***

Ryan stood up.

He walked over to his house.

He saw his mother was sleeping in the same posture as he had seen two days ago.

Her body was cold.

Ryan bit the inner side of his lower lip so hard that blood flowed out.

‘I could not feed my mother.’

‘I could not save my sister.’

‘I could not even look out for myself.’

‘What the fuck is wrong with me?’

‘What is WRONG with US!?’ , he pulled at his hair.

‘When did we wrong anyone!?’

Ryan slumped to a corner.

He remembered his grandfather saying to him, “This.. we are shackled by fate. We cannot simply end our misery by wishing it to end”

These words were meant to him as encouragement, but where did those words ever get anywhere?

His grandfather was poor. He couldn’t escape.

His father was poor. He couldn’t escape.

He was poor. He-

‘Maybe there was no escape’, he thought to himself.

“No, there is one.”, Ryan suddenly blurted out.

“There is a way to end my misery by simply wishing it to end.”

He glanced at a rusted knife across the room.

***

.

He held the knife up to his face and was hyperventilating.

“I can simply wish for the misery to end!”

‘It’s not going to hurt’

‘It’s not going to hurt’

‘It’s not going to hurt’

“It’s not going to hurt if I bring down the knife cleanly”

‘Nobody is going to hear my shouts though, even if I couldn’t finish myself in one swipe’.

It was true, he was going to die, either way.

And no one could or would try to stop him.

In the end, it was all going to be same – whether he felt pain or not.

‘I am going to do it.’

‘I am going to do it.’

‘JUST DO IT.’

“HA-AH!!”

The knife inched closer and closer to his neck.

He saw his vision go fuzzy.

He saw his vision replaced by complete light.

‘Uh? Am I seeing my life flash before me? Is this the way to afterlife?’

And from that sea of light, he heard some indistinguishable words, “St- don- -it”

‘Huh?’

 It was a sweet voice, a female voice, a melodious voice that momentarily engulfed Ryan’s consciousness.

And then, Ryan lost consciousness.