The older kids say that the world used to have colour.

They whispered about an ocean sprawling across the horizon, glimmering gold underneath the afternoon sunlight. They told us that, before the war we used to have houses --- Real houses, not the four walls of empty space we have to share with four other children.

They said the crooked roof was usually bright blue or sunshine yellow, and the bricks holding up the ceiling were always painted red. Red, like roses. Before they were dyed white and put in jars.

I know what red looks like.

Everyone does.

Whenever one of the kids did or said something wrong, everyone would be called to the living room, where the scary metal guns strapped to the walls would be carefully unzipped by a gloved hand. And before anyone knew it, a scream would echo around the walls, ricocheting around the chairs and tables and then stabbing us in the chest, almost as if we were the ones being shot at.

One shot in the leg if we forgot to do our studies.

One shot in the arm if we refused to do our chores.

Six shots in the neck if we were caught planning revolution.

One of my roommates, the pretty brunette twice my age, told me that they showed us the blood, the crying, the torture on purpose, so that we would be afraid. She said that fear can control you, that fear is a legcuff keeping you walking in a straight line. Because everyone that dares take one step out of line, never meets a happy end.

She also said that I am very, very lucky.

Lucky, because I don't have an old world to mourn. Lucky, because my parents became corpses before I even got to see them. Lucky, because if I close my eyes and try hard enough, I can almost accept this as my reality.

The older kids always have a sense of grief to them. The way they walk, the way their cotton slippers drag along the ground, trying to find familiar soil. The way their eyes are always a little darker, a little deeper. It's the expression of loss, the hollow shells of people that used to have something other than void in their bodies.

They promised a better world outside these walls that are our home.

And even if I become a red brick with six bullets through my neck, I will give my friends the old world back.