Lost Ones

 

Taken

They came so quickly. So powerfully. My family had just finished feasting and were readying ourselves for sleep. We heard a languid silence before they burst into our domicile. They came like shadows, lying in wait for the sky orb to disappear. My familial unit were all ripped from their beds and thrown into a metal monster. They grasped my father and thrust him into a sack. Then did the same to the rest of my family. It was my turn. I clung to my bed like a paw-paw to a tree. I hoped they could not take me. I could see the whites of their eyes in the darkness as they darted around searching for more to thieve. My grip was cruelly severed. They spared no one.

They threw us in a cage inside the hollow metal cave. They hit my father in front of me and I could do nothing but scream. They screamed back at me. I did not understand their language. Then they took out a dagger. They pointed it at my father, who roared at them with all his power. They took away his finger. There was blood everywhere. Everyone was screaming except my father. He was silent and pulsating with pain. My mother was crying and bawling at them. They just laughed and pointed with that dagger. They made one last grimace at us, then swaggered away to the end of the steel hole, stepped out and slammed the door on us. We were alone now. There was a brief spluttering and everything started to wobble. A creaking noise ensued; it felt like we were moving. It was so bumpy, I felt as if I we had been caught in a river rapid.

After a short time, the tin juggernought climbed a small incline, followed by two metallic slaps and more creaking. The same thing happened again, only worse this time. The van started to move and shake and an unbearable thundering noise began to resonate. It was as if my stomach was getting pulled through my nostrils. I felt my ears ache. I screeched with fear. It felt as if branches were falling upon my shoulders. But there was nothing falling. Had the van slipped down a slope? Or were they outside doing this to us?

Time trudged past. Why had the sun not yet shown its beautiful warming glow? The cold lingered without it. This excruciating blackness was overwhelming. On occasions, there would be a sudden shudder, a side-to-side wobble.  There was a dull hum that seemed to never cease. The screaming had stopped though. My family were hunched over my father. He was so still, so peaceful, but not dead. He was just leaning against the wall, staring at the metal canopy above him. I was worried about my mother, she couldn’t cope without him. He was usually so bold, so powerful. He was the leader and protector of our clan. Everyone looked to him for guidance, to see him in this manner was harrowing for her. His burly profile was less imposing than before, slumped on against the cold wall.

Then that feeling came again, this time more intense. My stomach climbed up my oesophagus, threatening to burst through my mouth into the outside world. My ears began to throb. I was plummeting through branches that were weightless beneath me. It was prolonged this time, it seemed eternal. I heard a cranking, bending sound, proceeded by an incredible thud and whooshing reverberation.

Everything was quaking, then nothing. It stopped, it all stopped. No more pain. No humming. Nothing.

I heard a metallic grinding. We all looked to the end of the cavern fearfully. Then the light lurched upon us. Something wasn’t right, something was different. The sun. It wasn’t my sun, it looked the same but somehow it wasn’t. It was not my sun.

 

My Home and Here

It was so peaceful where I was before. Silence bullied everything into submission, darkness was the mighty ruler over light and everything was tranquil. I could be by myself; free to do whatever I pleased.

Not like now. Now I’m never alone. I’m never alone to feel myself take in the world beauties. I’m never free enough to forget that there is anything else besides myself and my surroundings. My dwelling was so beautiful, so picturesque. There are some that live in villages; they claimed it was an easy life, but not me. I lived in the great forest. Colour was not important to me before, now I long for the diversity it brings.

Lush greens created an ominous backdrop behind a deathly yellow.  Dashes of shocking scarlet and dazzling delphinium paraded through the canopy, the traffic was so intense, the continuing stop start life of the forest inhabitants never stood still. There was so much life there in the day, the sounds were incredible. Gentle cawing floundered from the top of the trees, slowly making its way through the thickly scented air. Whooping and roars exploded from within the heart of the bush, creating an echoing deliverance of supreme dominance to outsiders.

From inside the dense thicket and trees, light almost ceases to penetrate the canopy above. The few beams of golden warmth that did manage to break through carried debris with them, the air there was not clear of anything, it was always bustling with some form of being.

I remember the smells more than the visions of my home. The sumptuous smell of the mangoes wafting down from the trees, the aroma of the sweetly paw-paw lingering, as if teasing those below it into a feeling of ecstasy. But when a paw-paw is ripped from its abode, it rots. It decays from the inside out, agonisingly unhurried, trying fruitlessly to maintain its time on earth. This is me. Trying but failing not to become perturbed by my enforced dwelling. Here there is no beauty, I see colours no more, not in the true sense of the word. All I see now is a monotonous, rolling, grey present. There is no light, but not from the cause of the mighty canopy above. The smog engulfs all sparkling illumination within it, transforming it into a dreary expressionless haze. There are no primal noises here, only a dull drumming. There are strange calls endlessly throughout the day; I am not familiar with them. They are just there, not to impose themselves but just to be there. Its part of here I suppose, how could all this frenzy possibly cope without this incessant pointless sound?

The smells here are putrid, they provide an inoculation from the gloomy every day experience. The smell of burning and bad meat and ‘animals’ fills the air daily. Everything was sour and past its best. There were no trees here; perhaps I miss them more than most. To see those tall green towers impose themselves on such a beautiful surrounding was an exquisite sight, here, they would merely be sacrifices to be slain by the grey curse. I miss my home immensely, each sunrise I wish that I were there, but when my eyes and my ears and my nostrils unanimously begin together, I know that I am still imprisoned.

 

Now

That Night they ripped me from my home was the last night that I ever saw my father and brother.

The wrong sun beat down upon us. The cold air filtered through the hard metallic shell we were encapsulated in. The shadows returned to claim us. All my family were silent and frozen, this inexplicable chill had subdued us. First they came for my father. He fought them. They took away his ear and threw it towards us, mockingly. His screeches still penetrate my dreams. They showed no remorse. Once he was gone, there was no one to protect us. Without him, we were in disarray. They came for my brother, after witnessing my father’s battle he simply clung to my mother, hoping they could not pry him from her. They did. Then the light disappeared.

Why had they not taken me, to this day I cannot come to an answer. I was left with my mother and my sister, I was all they had. They were all I had.

Now, I live no better than a common beast. My mother is the same as I, perhaps worse. When my father left, a part her left. They keep my mother in a cage. The metal grates surround her, it seems to shrink in size every day, like an orange picked from the tree and drying out. She used to claw at the bars in vain. She could see freedom, but she couldn’t touch it. She could smell freedom, but she couldn’t taste it. Now her senses have withered away, she does not seek freedom.

They beat her with poles and she doesn’t even scream anymore. She just looks at me with her glassy tear-filled eyes.  Her warm blood is splattered over her face and drips to the floor. I want to help, but I can’t. I have failed as a protector. My father would have rather died then watch her suffer. He gave his life so that we could live on, but what kind of survival is this?

My sister died long ago. She would rather starve than see the pleasure of her suffering in their faces, and starve she did. Her body lies in the same place it has been since her last sigh. Even her decaying flesh smells sweeter than this vile air.

These things are disgusting. Cockroaches. Anything they say I must obey, they are my ‘masters’. But I will never listen. They plucked me from my paradise. They point a dagger at me threatening death, but they can’t kill me. I’m already dead. They see me as scum. But I’m not lower than they are, I would never commit such a horrifying crime. They call me names all the time, I don’t deserve such humiliation. They call me savage, but they are the beasts.

Now I’m rotting faster than before. My hair is falling out, I’m looking so dishevelled. Great clumps of it are appearing all over the stone yard. I can see my skinny frame in the ever-present puddles. This can’t be what I’ve turned into. My hands are coarse and bleeding from this labour they put me through. The nails I once had have gone. I’m wasting away

 

Me

They call me animal. But I am not. Men are the parasites. They are the scourges of all things great. They destroy homes and kill everything. Mankind is the greatest disease there is. Mankind feeds on the morale fibres of life and eradicates them. They shout at me ‘ooh ohh, ahh ahh’. Man evolved from me only to destroy me, to bite that hand that fed it. I am not an animal, men are the animals. I am not a beast, men are the beasts. I was ripped from my home and placed in this grey prison, I am not lost. They are the lost ones.