Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

Something inside him squirmed as he watched her struggle to get up, but he suppressed that feeling. She was not worthy of his mercy.

“Shhh, don’t sweat it, girl.” He kneeled near her, wiping sweat from her forehead and chuckling internally at his cunning pun. He cupped her hot cheek with his hand and made her look him in the eye: “I’m your daddy now.”

Something in her eyes faded and, pushing his hand away, she put her head down on the pillow and turned to face the wall.

“Don’t be like that,” Desecrator said, annoyed. For some reason, her anticlimactic reaction didn’t satisfy him. “He’s outside, squirming in the dust. He’ll live.” He paused for a second, and then added: “For now. Tell me where the food is and I might let him go.”

“It’s under his bed,” she quietly whispered. “We don’t have much.”

“I’ll decide what’s much and what’s not,” Desecrator said, heading for the other bed. Kneeling in front of it, he pulled out a simple carton box, inside of which, wrapped in a plastic bag, were two fishes and bread.

Not satisfied with his catch, Desecrator nevertheless grabbed what he could and started shoving it into the bag. The bag wasn’t very big, but there wasn’t that much to take. Grabbing the bag, he headed outside.

Before stepping under the sky, he leaned over the bag and sniffed it. The smell was good, and it was making his empty stomach churn.

Other boys were also coming out of the houses. Some of them had handfuls of food, others were empty-handed. Women were crying and men were desperate.

Across the street, a young man in his twenties crossed the path of Homewrecker, preventing him from leaving the house.

“Please, leave it here!” the man was shouting, moving back and forth. He wanted to grab a cheap plastic bag out of the boy’s hands, but as soon as he’d take a step forward he’d take one back, intimidated by the boy’s fearsome weapon. He was scared to approach him but, at the same time, he was too agitated to let it go.

“Stand back!” Homewrecker screamed, his voice trembling with fear. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll shoot!” He was aiming his rifle with one hand, the other one occupied with his catch, and his aim was wondering around—from both the strain and his fear.

“Leave the food! Leave it!” the man shouted at him again, swinging his hands up and down. When Homewrecker would try to walk around him, the man would cut him off. Neither had the courage to do something about their situation and they continued their weird dance.

The man acted first: he kicked up the dust from the road, making the boy involuntarily flinch and cover his face with his aiming hand. The man made a rush for the plastic bag, grabbing it and pulling it back. But to his surprise, the boy didn’t let it go. They both froze in fear, looking each other in the eye. A second later the boy threw up his gun—just for a second, before its weight pulled his hand back down—and pulled the trigger, shooting the man in the chest.

People screamed. Both of them fell down: the man struck down by a bullet and the boy knocked down by the recoil. The boy quickly scrambled to his feet, throwing a look full of horror at the body bleeding at his feet, before dashing out of there in the direction of General’s camp.

Seeing the dead body, the villagers stopped resisting. Some of them were weeping.

“Curse all of you!” one of the women was screaming, with tears in her eyes. “You scum should never have been born!”

“Gather up,” Tsetse commanded the boys. Out of all of them, only he and Desecrator were not showing any distress. Tsetse’s eyes were as indifferent to the chaos and misery around them as always.

The captain looked over his troops, taking a glance at everyone’s catch. He patted Puppy Slayer on the head. Clicked his tongue at Corpse Eater’s catch of one loaf of bread. Glanced over Desecrator’s bag.

“The General will not be satisfied,” he said.

“This is all these people have,” Puppy Slayer replied.

Tsetse shook his head and approached Desecrator. The boy tensed up, thinking that Tsetse was up to something no good, but the captain simply grabbed a single fish from him and headed for Corpse Eater.

Desecrator started seeing red.

“Hey, that’s mine!” he protested. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s not yours, it’s General’s” Tsetse calmly replied, handing the fish to Corpse Eater. “I don’t want him to look empty-handed.”

“That’s his problem that he didn’t find anything!” Desecrator cried out, taking a step forward. “I’m not going to—”

“You will do as I tell you,” Tsetse cut him off without raising his tone. “When I tell you to do something—you do it in the blink of an eye. I was put in charge by the general,” Captain reminded him, turning around to face him. “Do you have something against that?”

“Yes I do,” was what Desecrator wanted to say, but the sight of Tsetse’s calm and confident gaze suddenly stopped him. Under the stare of those somber, serious eyes he suddenly found himself deflated and powerless, and the rage that was burning within him couldn’t break through to the surface, through whatever was holding him back.

His lack of reply seemed to satisfy Tsetse; the captain turned around and headed for the camp. Once again, Desecrator found himself staring at the captain’s back and yet unable to do anything about it.

The sun was already halfway over the horizon. Puppy Slayer was walking toward the camp along with everybody else. The camp full of terrors of war, of people who called themselves soldiers and who committed—and forced him to commit—the most atrocious things. Yet, at that moment, he wasn’t thinking about them; he wasn’t dreading the moment he’d be among them again. The only thing he could think about was the smell of food he was carrying. The one that was making his stomach churn.

He’d had his meal in the morning, but there was a reason why the General sent them all to that village for supplies: they didn’t have a steady supply of food rations. Sometimes they would fish or hunt, but generally they were quite the opportunists—they’d always take what they could.

Puppy Slayer looked down at the food in his hands. A dried fish, a crusty loaf of bread, and a corn pancake. It wouldn’t be enough to fully feed one man, and he was supposed to give it all away. And for what? So that the General and his men could feel themselves kings of the world once more? Robbing the villages was never a steady supply of food, and yet his men kept doing that. Taking away from the people who they were said to protect.

I am also one of the General’s men, Puppy Slayer caught himself thinking. He knew where he was heading with that thought, but no matter how much he wanted to ignore it, he continued to go with it. The General always says so. That we are men, and not children, and that we should act like men. Shouldn’t it mean that this food is also ours?

The boy looked down at the fish in his hands, and its salty smell developed his thought further, luring it out of his scared subconsciousness.

Wouldn’t taking something that is for someone else be considered a manly action by the G eneral?

The smell was getting unbearable. Whoever cooked that fish did a good job: Puppy Slayer hadn’t smelled anything so delicious in months. He swallowed his spit, but he knew that more would be coming, and his stomach was overflowing with juices. He caught himself guessing: How would that fish taste? Was it as good as it smelled? Was it one of those things that smelled like one thing but tasted like something different?