I Am Death

Fifty-four

That morning, just like every morning since Squirm had been taken into captivity, ‘The Monster’ unlocked the door to the kid’s cell at exactly 5:45 a.m. Squirm had been feeling ill all night. His dinner the night before had been his own vomit, eaten from the floor in the projection room upstairs — and ‘The Monster’ had made him eat every last scrap. Squirm had puked again, but not until he’d made it back to his cell, away from the man’s eyes. This time, shrouded by the fear of what could happen if he dirtied the floor one more time, he did it into his latrine bucket.

‘Rise and shine, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ said from the doorway, his voice bright and jovial. ‘It’s a quarter to six. Time for your chores.’

Squirm had barely slept. His left eye remained badly swollen and the pains in his stomach felt like knife stabs. They were a combination of hunger pains and the result of heaving for so long on a completely empty stomach. His head also hurt with a deadly purpose, as if somehow thorns had found their way into his skull, lodging themselves just behind his eyeballs and were now digging at them like crazed woodpeckers. There also came a point during the night when he wasn’t sure if he’d gone delirious, or ‘The Monster’ had brought a new victim home, because he was certain that he could hear a woman’s screams.

‘I know you’ve heard me, Squirm. So get your lazy ass out of bed. Don’t make me come over there.’

Squirm was curled up into a ball, lying down sideways on his dirty mattress, facing the wall. As he heard the man’s voice, he felt the will to carry on living desert him.

And Squirm didn’t fight it.

What was the point in living if he had to go through another day at the hands of this monster?

Squirm knew exactly what was coming because every day always played out the same. He would be beaten up, sodomized, starved, then beaten up some more — most days, until he passed out and was thrown back into his cell, ready for the whole process to repeat itself the next day.

‘Get up, Squirm.’

Maybe if Squirm didn’t move... maybe if he didn’t respond... maybe if he disobeyed the man’s orders, this would all end? Maybe the man would get angry enough to dish out a beating so severe the boy’s fragile body and internal organs would finally give up, and life would at last abandon him.

Was it wrong for an eleven-year-old to want to die?

Squirm didn’t think so, because in his mind what was wrong was for an eleven-year-old to live in this way.

Squirm had also given up praying, because he simply didn’t know to whom he was praying anymore. If there was a God, he had no idea what he had done to piss him off so badly.

Once again, tears came to the boy’s eyes. He was tired of them. He was tired of all the pain, and the hunger, and the darkness, and the fear. But most of all, Squirm was tired of living.

As he heard the man take his first heavy step into the cell, the young boy began shivering. Instinctively, his body curled up into an even tighter ball, readying itself for the inevitable.

But Squirm didn’t care anymore. In fact, he would rather be dead.

All I have to do, Squirm thought, is piss him off enough that he won’t stop beating me when I pass out. Yes, that’s it. I just need to make him angry and that won’t take much doing.

‘The Monster’ took another step toward the boy.

Squirm drew in a deep breath, as if he was breathing in courage, rolled his body over on the mattress to face his captor and looked him straight in the eye.

It was time to die.

‘Fuck you, you sick piece of shit.’