The rifle, though it was meant to make Anders feel secure, also murmured to Anders a quiet but insistent question, which was how much did he want to live, and he could not deny in the interminable afternoons and in the late tree-swaying nights hearing the rifle’s question, and he knew that it would be straightforward to end himself, and maybe that was the point, the point of it was to break him, to break all of them, all of us, yes us, how strange to be forced into such an us, and Anders wondered what was happening to other dark people, and how they were coping, and whether they were killing
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