Phoenix

Part One: The Shows

I watched silently as the curtain was lifted. The darkness that we dwelled in turned into the stage lights we hated. I looked into one of the lights and felt myself be pulled into a memory from the past.

My mother had told me the stories her mother had told her, of the world before this. Our world hadn’t been like this once, it had been beautiful. The sky had been blue and the ground had been green. Trees had leaves, and plants grew in the ground. Water had been blue, and the sun had shined. Lights had shined in the sky at night, instead of the cloudy darkness that now shrouded the time between dusk and dawn. But that world was not the one that existed anymore.

School had taught us the downfall of the last world. Money was the destruction of our world. The people and the old government had fought over it. Riots began, and fights escalated. Tension grew, and the old government closed the borders. Oblivious to the outside world, other countries became unhappy with our country. No one knows why, but one country fired a nuclear bomb at our country. We returned fire, and the resulting nuclear war destroyed most of the world. The Government grew from the ashes.

The Government gave us jobs and lives and purpose. They gave us everything we needed. But the world was not the same.

Mutations occurred because of the radiation in the air. Mutant children were taken by the Government. For years, mutants were killed in Government labs. Eventually, after mutations became more frequent, the people began the first Riot. Thousands were killed by the Government in crowd control. Afterwards, the Government stopped killing mutants. Instead, they were used as entertainment.

Mutants were still taken from their families, but then placed in the Shows. Shows like the one I was in.

“Do you want to see the freaks!?” the Ringmaster shouted at the jeering crowd.

The crowd roared, and the Ringmaster dragged Leslie by her hair onto the stage. Leslie screamed in pain, but it only made the crowd holler more. I winced, knowing how horrible it feels to be on the stage.

“See her face?!” the Ringmaster shouted, pulling her hair up, forcing her to look at the crowd. The crowd jeered, looking at her.

Leslie had a pig nose. I felt bad for her, because her mutation was always visible, unlike mine. I felt a tear escape my eye as I saw Leslie be throw offstage. She cried, curling into a ball as the First Guard threw her into the cage.

It was wrong to keep people in cages. But the only people who cared about people being in cages were the ones in the cages. We’re not considered people. Nothing we do matters.

The Second Guard walked over to Daniel’s tank. He rolled the cage out to where the Ringmaster stood in front of the crowd. “See the freak?” he yelled at the crowd. They jeered and I felt tears go down my face. Daniel was so alone. He couldn’t breathe outside water, and he couldn’t communicate with anyone. Daniel was alone.

“Do you want to see his pain?” the Ringmaster asked the crowd, sneering. When the crowd roared, the Ringmaster flipped the switch on the cage. It forced an electrical current through the water, electrocuting Daniel.

Daniel squirmed, his mouth opening to released bubbles of air that would have been screams. My ears, sharper than most people, faintly heard the high pitched screams.

The Ringmaster sneered before flipping the switch back, stopping the current. Daniel twitched once more before his eyes closed and he stopped moving.

The crowd booed, unhappy now that they couldn’t see his pain. The Ringmaster looked at the First Guard, and he rolled the tank away, placing it next to me. I looked through my tears at Daniel. His eyelids fluttered open and he looked at me with sad eyes. I reached my hand through the bars of my cage to place it on the cool surface of his tank.

He put his hand where mine was and smiled at me. Then I felt my cage being unlocked, and rough hands grabbed my shoulders. I was dragged out of the cage. I didn’t scream. Years of being in the Show had made me strong.

The First Guard held my shoulders as the Ringmaster grabbed my hair. The Ringmaster forced me to look into his face. His cold eyes were set in a face like a rat’s. “No funny business,” he said, looking me in the eyes.

I looked him in the eye and spat in his face. He slapped me and the crowd jeered. The Ringmaster wiped his face and looked at the crowd. He sneered. “This freak deserves pain, agreed?!” he yelled.

The crowd jeered and the First Guard dragged me over to the shackles. The stage always had manacles in the ground, to keep me from escaping. The Second Guard made me have my back to the crowd, then locked the manacles around my wrists, then the First Guard let go.

The First Guard lifted up the back of my shirt and the crowd awed. The Second Guard took the keys and took the braces off my back. I stretched my wings out, so they spanned their entire length.

Only once a night was I allowed to spread my wings, and it hurt like hell to keep them folded against my back all day.

The Ringmaster cracked his whip against the ground. “Who wants to see her hurt?!” he shouted at the crowd. When they jeered, I gritted my teeth, bracing myself for the pain that was coming.

The whip cracked and I felt it snap against my skin. The skin on my back split, and I felt blood begin to drip down my back. It was going to stain my Government Issue white pants and shirt, I knew. All of my clothes were light pink because of the bloodstains I got during shows.

“Scream if you want it to stop,” the Ringmaster whispered in my ear.

“Never,” I spat out through the pain. I may be in pain, but I will never stoop to doing what he tells me to.

The Ringmaster cracked the whip at my back again, and again. I bit my lip and tasted blood, but I didn’t scream.

After five more cracks of the whip, the Guards put the braces back on my wings and pulled my shirt down. They undid the manacles and threw me back into my cage.

I curled up into a ball, holding my knees against my chest. Tears went down my face and I cried because of the pain. I fell asleep crying.