Volume 11: Part 1- Moenia Prima: Monday, September 19th, 11:15 P.M.


Monday, September 19th, 11:15 P.M.
I don't know how to describe what happened today.  I don't.  I hesitate to begin doing so.  However, it's important for there to be a record of what happened, who did it, and how it was done.  I write this in the hopes that somebody finds this.  Somebody who will do something about this.  Somebody who cares.
I started my workday doing my usual rounds.  Taking out garbage, filling the toilet paper rolls, making sure the teachers had enough magic markers and erasers, usual shit.  As I did so, I noticed something about the students of Moenia Prima Elementary School #1.  A lot of the children of verbrecher are gone.  Where before, on the blacktop outside the school there was an even amount of children who's skin tone matched the blacktop and those who's skin tone didn't.  Now nearly all the children resemble the blacktop.  I do not consider this a good sign.
At lunchtime, I made the rounds again, taking the opportunity to empty the trashcans of the individual classrooms while the kids were out at lunch.  I could say that I do this to make my job easier at the end of the day, but that's not true.  Cleaning out the trashcans in the middle of the day gives me an opportunity to talk to Valerie, an opportunity I relish.  When I got to Valerie's classroom, she was looking out the window facing the playground.  I'd make a comment about Valerie's figure but I'm not up for it right now.  I was replacing the liner in the trashcan and leering at Valerie's ass when she noticed I was there.
"Oh, hello Hato."
"Hello Miss Membantu."
"You know, if you keep on calling me Miss Membantu, I'll have to start calling you Mr. Shurtleff."  Valerie said this with this kind of flirty smile that I'd never seen on her face before.  I found this smile to be strange yet intriguing, but I didn't want to acknowledge it as such.
"What are you looking at?"
"I was looking at the kids playing outside.  I'd like to be out there, but since Allen got hit in the head with that kickball, all us teachers have been pulled off the playground."
"Oh really?  It's a shame that happened then."  When I said this, I smiled in the way people do when they're lying.  Valerie recognized this smile.
"You threw that kickball at Allen, didn't you?"
"No.  I'm just saying that whoever did it, probably someone young and semi-good looking, must really, really regret throwing that kickball at Furficer's head, then getting away with it."  Valerie then punched me in the shoulder in a way that was more playful than violent.  After hitting me, Valerie's attention went back to the playground.
"Have you noticed the amount of absent students lately, Hato?"
"Yeah, I noticed that today.  Is there something going on that I don't know about?  Some kind of verbrecher holiday or something?"
"Not that I know of, but this does remind me of something I heard about on VBNS."
"VBNS?  What's that?"
"The Velas Broadcast News Service.  It's this big, highly respected international news service.  I heard a story about a phenomenon called verbrecher flight going on in Amcan.  Supposedly, in areas where once there was a pretty even mix between races, many families of verbrecher descent have been leaving their homes for areas with a higher predominance of verbrechers.  I wonder if that's what's going on here."  What Valerie said had gone completely over my head, so I said what I usually say when that happens.
"Hmmm.  Intriguing."  Then my eye caught something on the playground.  "Hey, what's going on there?"  What I saw was a group of verbrecher kids swarming on an opfer child.  There was easily five or six verbrecher children kicking, punching, and spitting on a single opfer child.  Valerie opened the window to yell at them.
"Hey!  You kids knock that off!  Hato, go out there and break that up."
Then I saw something else that caught my attention.  "Looks like Mr. Furcifer's on his way to do that."
Mr. Furcifer was walking toward the situation like a man with a purpose, tapping a wooden pointing stick he was carrying on the ground as he did so.  When Mr. Furcifer got to the group of attacking children, he shoved them aside.  Mr. Furcifer ordered the verbrecher children to stop attacking the lone opfer child.  Mr. Furcifer then began addressing the verbrecher children.  Thanks to Valerie opening the window, we could hear what he said clear as a bell.
"What do you kids think you're doing?  Attacking this child, kicking and punching him in a swarm like that.  Is this what you were taught at home?  Is this how you were taught to deal with a situation like this?"  Mr. Furcifer then took his wooden pointing stick and held it high in the air.  "This is how you deal with rancid, filthy, grotesque, freton trash."  Then he whipped the opfer boy, who was laying on the blacktop in obvious pain, across the face with his wooden pointing stick.  Then he whipped him again.  Again and again and again.  Mr. Furcifer whipped the boy untill he drew blood.  Then he just continued to whip the boy.
Valerie could hardly watch what Mr. Furcifer was doing.  She turned away and started muttering to herself.  I couldn't turn away.  I was in shock.  It felt like some sort of surreal absurd nightmare.  I kept on blinking, hoping that what I was watching wasn't real, that it wasn't happening.
Mr. Furcifer continued to whip the boy.  Slowly his wooden pointing stick became stained with the blood he was drawing with every strike.  As he continued on in his brutality, Mr. Furcifer began teaching.  "You see this boys?  The way that I'm focusing on this freton's head?  There are two reasons I do this.  First of all, it disorients the victim.  The multiple strikes to the head causes a dizzying sensation, an effect amplified by the loss of blood.  Secondly, notice the amount of blood being lost, much more than a simple cut on the knee or forearm.  A cut to the head causes more blood to spill forth than on any other location on the body.  Other than the obvious effects that blood loss can have, this has a visual effect to it.  The people who view this attack, either during or after it's completion, will feel a sense of disgust.  Therefore, not only do you rid the world of another piece of freton opfer filth, but you also send a message to others in a very impactful way."
The boy being attacked had long since stopped moving before Mr. Furcifer ended his lesson.  I don't know what point Mr. Furcifer was trying to make with his actions, and I don't care to figure it out.
After recess ended, and all the kids had gone back to learning, it was my task to clean the playground.  This now included cleaning up the boy.  I set out to do this before the school nurse could attend to him, remembering my Dad's experience with his arm.  A light drizzle began as I stepped onto the blacktop.  As I approached him with my cleaning supplies in tow, I turned the child over and saw his face.  It was Sakoshi.
I've spent the hours since thinking endlessly about what happened.  I think about it, over and over, every detail of it, every second that elapsed, all of it just playing out on an endless loop in my mind.  I don't just think of what Allen did, what the swarm of kids did, what Valerie did, I think about what I did.  I think about how I did nothing.  How?  How could I just do that?  How could I fucking do that?  How could I just stand by and watch as that motherfucker killed my brother?
As I looked down on my brother, laying still as still can be on the blacktop, I didn't know what to do.  My first instinct was to call the cops, but knowing their blatant bias, I was sure they'd blame me, arrest me, and throw me in jail, never again to see the light of day.  I thought of calling Dad at work, but all that would accomplish is to pass off the problem to another person.  I knew Mom was at home but I didn't want her to go to school to find out her baby boy was dead.  If Mr. Furcifer whipped a boy to death as a teaching exercise, what would he do to a woman who'd attack him because she sought revenge?
I did the best thing I thought to do.  I didn't feel completely comfortable with it, but I didn't feel comfortable with anything I thought to do.  I gingerly picked up by brother, held him in my arms like I was carrying the most fragile thing in the world, then began walking home.  Walking home in a slowly intensifying rainstorm.  As I walked home, what I encountered made me feel more uncomfortable.
Every home I passed had one person in it if not more.  Each person came out of their home to see me carrying my brother home.  Each person, either silently or vocally, condemned me for what I was doing.  "Oh my God."  "I can't believe that."  "How can he be so garish?"  "Parading his kill like that?"  "I'm surprised he didn't kill a verbrecher."  "Such typical opfer behavior."  Each of those comments hurt me.  This hurt me not just because of what they were saying but who was saying them.  These people claim to be such moral, upstanding people and yet they readily and easily hurl condemnation.  Doesn't their religion teach them not to be judgmental, to not hold that kind of hatred in their hearts, to have compassion for others, to have infinite love?  This experience was made only worse by the fact that I was walking home in a heavy downpour.
Mom was talking on the phone when I arrived at home.  I don't blame her for her reaction, no one can.  She spent the time it took for Dad to get home crying while she held Sakoshi in her arms.  Mom continued crying after Dad got home, but him arriving gave Mom somebody who was capable of consoling her.  I couldn't console Mom.  I was too busy trying to shut out the world with death metal.
Dad gave me the task of calling the churches to arrange services for Sakoshi.  Not knowing exactly what to do, I just called up Father Goodman.  "Hello, is Father Goodman there?"
"This is he."
"Hello Father, this is Hato Shurtleff."
"Ah, yes my son.  How can I help you?"
"Well, I- I think we're, my family that is, is going to be- um- needing the church building place soon."
"Hato-"
"Cause my brother, Sakoshi- um- Shurtleff, is-"
"Hato, I don't think the church house is going to be available for a while."
"What?"
"I just ran out of the church trying to escape a group of verbrechers with weapons.  I'm not hurt, but I don't want to think of what they're doing in the house of God."
"O- Okay."
"I'll make sure to get with your father once we've set up a place of worship.  May God's blessing fall upon you and your brother, Sakoshi,.  God bless."
Click.
After that I called around to several other faiths to see if they could help.  The people who I talked to either in a round about way told me to go fuck myself or directly told me to go fuck myself.  These calls were bad, but at least they were better than the conversation I had with Father Goodman.
Mom eventually cried herself to sleep, which left Dad and I sitting in the kitchen, occasionally glancing at Sakoshi's body in the living room.  When I told Dad I couldn't find a church to provide a proper burial for Sakoshi, Dad just sighed and put his head in his hands.  Dad looked as exhausted and unsure of what to do as I was.  He sat in that position for a long time before saying to me, "Come on, we'll deal with this ourselves."  Dad told me to go out to the garage and get a pair of shovels and some of the ground tarp that we laid down when we built Mom's garden.  Dad picked out a place near the edge of the property, about as far away from the house as you can get, where I began to dig as Dad wrapped Sakoshi in the ground tarp.  Once he was done, Dad joined me in slowly and carefully carving a place for Sakoshi to lie in, a space that slowly filled with the still falling rain.  Not a word was spoken as we did this.
I'm sitting beside Sakoshi's bed as I make this entry.  I can see Sakoshi just as he was on Friday, trying to get to sleep as the noise continued around him, noises emulated by the soft pelting of the continuing rain.  I'm remembering all the times I gave my brother shit about anything and am beating myself up for it.  I'm such a shitty brother.  How could I do all those things to him?  Oh shit.  I ditched Sakoshi this morning to swing by Valerie's house.  What if this is my fault?  Goddamn it.
There's something else that's bothering me, something that I might actually be able to resolve.  What did Father Goodman mean when he said he had just escaped from a gang of verbrechers with weapons?
Goodnight, if that is as all possible.
Hato Shurtleff

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