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
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment