I finally have it, it’s mine!

ITS ALL MINE

The shock collar hugs my skin with its cold embrace, an embrace I have longed for since the day my mother passed from the smog poison when I was a boy, like so many others who dwell in this fetid abyss with me.

The factory halls have accepted me and my very soul dances to clanging pipes in rejoice, but my body will not dance, will not waste the resources to do so, therefore I will be still.

My suffering was agreeable and I have earned purpose.

Those hordes of people in the undercity are now beneath me. I finally have a job in the factory after all those days of slaving away in the pits, they have chosen me. Decided that i have worth to the company and I can be used.

Now I will be fed, be given a uniform and ever closer to the surface.

Now I will be more than trembling bones, rags and dirt.

I’m sure on some day in the future I will finally see sunlight. Yes, that strange light that falls from the sky, I will find out if it really does feel warm. Like the stories passed down to me from my fathers, father’s father. I will be the one to bask in that golden hue as my ancestors did. But names wont help in the dark, only purpose. My adversary is one that gains headway from any slither of life that can be consumed. If the beat in your veins is to loud, your lungs breathe too deep, your will to live too eager, you will be found and you will be food. Therefore I will be silent

Only if they understood, if they could grasp the essence of suffering they would rise with me.

I’ve tried to help them, to offer advice and set the example. Show them there is more to life than the mines and the smog. But they wouldn’t listen.

At first I thought they were scared or worse their souls crushed and dead. Broken under the hard cogs of this wretched machine that renders both a man’s spirit and his flesh. But no, i have realised it’s something different. Different in myself which is my ability to suffer.

Whichever illusive force that animates my husk, a sinewy decrepid thing that barely retains the strength to stumble, something beckons to it. For all I know it could be hope itself, a fleeting stranger to us denizens of the undercity, however it calls all the same. pain and suffering does not seem a fearful beast to me but an exchange, a price.

If a man has nothing left to spend but his blood then I am surely rich.

To spend frivolously would bring suspicion and ruin, therefore I will be patient