This Jail

• Chaithrali Bhat, Grade 7, Lyndale Secondary College
• Short Story
• 2011

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

I don’t know why I am writing this, I highly doubt anyone would bother to read this, but still, it is written proof that I have lived on this planet. Not that it makes much of a difference.

If I have learnt anything during the past thirteen years of my life it is that humans can be the cruellest creatures. It’s not the guns that kill, no; the true murderer is the finger of the possessed animal that pulls the trigger.

First the bombings. Now this. I wonder if they feel any guilt at all, for all the destruction, and grief they have caused. Do they care at all for shooting a child? A child that hasn’t even really lived a life and has done nothing wrong? Do they even stop to think about the life they are snatching away? The pieces of our hearts that they are shattering and crushing? No, they do not deserve to live on this earth, they are monsters and they are roaming free underneath every human. But only the weakest give in and let the monster within possess them and make them the coldest and darkest of evils.

My baby sister and mother were sent to the gas chambers and they’re lives ended in a most horrible way when we first arrived here and my father has the plague. I feel like a thousand burning swords are tearing my heart out, slowly and painfully. A lot of us are like this. Every one of us is Suffering or dying and for what? So that someone gets more land? So that we can have a new leader? Because someone doesn’t agree with a religion or race? None of these are appropriate reasons to start a mass killing. In fact there is never going to be a reason to kill. But people still do. Humans will end the life of everything on the planet if they don’t stop.

I am a slave. I have never seen a life out of labour and hunger. Another death, another face to add to the grey reminisces of unforgettable people.

Some times when I’m working I hear the ghastly screams and moans of the people in the gas chambers. I hate it. I feel like tearing my hair out. I’m so empty now, it’s like I’m in a state past death. There is nothing in my world. My life is a jail. I am trapped, suffocating in a bleak blur of torture.

I know I’m growing weaker and weaker by the day and I also know the fate of a weak worker. They either shoot us or send us to the chambers. For me, it will soon be my end. The day is very close. The day I will finally be able to break out of this jail.