Sick Bastards

by Matt Shaw

a gentle flame licking away at the darkness of the room.

It hasn’t always been like this. It used to be different.

That’s as much as I remember. As much of what I remember of the old world anyway.

I held her tight, clinging to the memory of how it felt to cuddle her when she was human.

Without society here dictating what was right and wrong, things have changed quickly.

Who was it (in the first place) who deemed the difference between rights and wrongs anyway? Who was

to say they were right in what they initially said?

I welcome death, yes, but I’m too afraid to run towards it with open arms; the ever hopeful belief lingering that - soon - a group may come by and help us.

I wanted to tell him. My tongue didn’t move. Clearly it had more sense than my tired brain.

I still can’t cry. My mind is still too poisoned for that.

Instead I just stared at his face. His pale face. A look of horror in his expression that I’ll never forget despite wishing I could.

A sound I had grown accustomed to hearing even though I wish I hadn’t.

“The God you pray to... he hears you,”

“God isn’t sending these people to us,” she told Father, “it’s not in his control anymore. The Devil won. The Devil and his minions...Humans in disguise...People like us. They’ve broken the world. They’ve made God blind to us. All we can do now is beg for his forgiveness. That’s what I do every day when we eat. I ask for his forgiveness. You should too.”

The man was visibly quaking. And he should be. He knew he was in the wrong. He knew they were all in the wrong. What they were doing was criminal but they got away with it because they hid behind government

badges.

But you’re not human anymore. They took your humanity away from you. They’re to blame. Not you. You are the victim.

You can’t leave. Where will you go? You’re broken. You don’t belong in normal society anymore. You’re damaged goods now. You’re a murderer.

Foggy eyesight prevented me from seeing who was man-handling me into what felt to be some kind of transport. They were putting a seat belt on me and trying to get my head to stay back but, despite my own efforts to keep it level too, it kept slumping forward as though the muscles in my neck were mush.

I tried to speak but felt myself dribble instead.

I was trying to make sense of what was being said around me but couldn’t. I heard the words but they meant nothing to my confused brain. I’d felt as though I’d been hit by a sledgehammer or a bus. A throbbing in my head, arms and legs which refused to work and eyesight which refused to focus upon anything despite my best efforts and concentration.

Someone was approaching from my right. Or was it my left? I couldn’t tell. Everything sounded as though I was underwater. Wishy washy.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp stabbing in my neck before a weird sensation of a cold fluid spreading through my body at the source of the injection(?). Eyes heavy. Voices becoming more distant. Blackness.