I'm A Monster, Right?

• Cory Holmes-Sanderson, Grade 12, The Henry Lawson High School
• Short Story
• 2013

Excellence Award in the 'Dream Big 2013' competition

For so long, I had asked to go to school, so that I could learn how to read, write, and work. I wanted to make a difference in my family. I wanted us to survive, not wither and die. Again and again, I was kept out of school.
Was that my fault? No.
My parents and grandparents were poor, so how would they have the money to send me to school. How could I learn the skills of life when the only people who could teach me didn’t have the skills themselves?
That’s not the only thing that was keeping me from school though.
When you've had leprosy for your whole life, people become afraid of you.
We have to live in a camp outside of town, and we can’t enter the town unless there is something urgent, but how do you define urgent? The officials don’t care if one of us dies. And there are hundreds of us.
We are, to them, filthy animals and monsters.
When we can enter the town, we have to make sure everyone knows we’re coming.
I mean everyone, the whole town.
We scream from the top of our lungs, “Beware.”
They say that life is there to be enjoyed.
How can you enjoy your life, when there’s nothing to enjoy?
We dream, that’s how.
We dream of lives in luxury.
We dream of having friends.
We dream of living.