Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

Tsetse didn’t reply immediately, but he didn’t look away. The boy was thinking about something.

“I personally searched every house,” he finally said. “There was no more food.”

“You sure?” the General asked.

“Yes,” Tsetse replied without hesitation.

“You absolutely sure about that?” the General pressed on.

“Absolutely. We’ve brought all the food we’ve found.”

“…I see,” The General let go of the boy and took a few steps back. He was thinking furiously about something, and with each passing moment his face was becoming more and more intense.

But Puppy Slayer wasn’t looking at their leader anymore. His eyes were locked on the figure of their captain, who took it upon himself to protect them from the General’s fury. Whether or not he was doing it for himself to cover his own negligence or to protect the boys, didn’t matter to Puppy Slayer—he was just glad that it was over.

Thank you, Tsetse. Thank you, the boy thought to himself, feeling genuine gratitude that their captain was so brave. Had the General asked him where all the food was, the boy wouldn’t have been able to resist the pressure and he would have spilled the beans.

But the next words hollered by their leader made his guts go cold: “I’ll be teaching you how it’s done for as long as I’m alive, it seems. If they don’t want to share what they have willingly…” The man puffed his chest and sneered, his nostrils flaring. Puppy Slayer recognized that in a second the man was going to explode with anger, and he braced for the impact. “If they hide their food from us! If they don’t support their liberators, then they are traitors to our cause! Gather the troops! We’ll have to make an example out of them.”

“Gooonnaaaa shooooot them uuup,” the Death Herald slowly said, drawing out every syllable. His eyes were completely expressionless, without any spark of thought in them. “Gonna shoot them up,” the boy repeated, and his face started stretching into grin—very slowly. Now his eyes looked surprised, as if he had just only realized the meaning of his words. “Gonna shoot them up!” he cheerfully exclaimed, loud enough to make Homewrecker wince. “Hey, Homewrecker, we’re going to shoot them up!”

“I heard you, kid,” Homewrecker replied without any enthusiasm. The smaller boy jumped in place, giggling. “Right?” he asked, before turning around and walking toward a group of adults. Upon reaching them, he stretched out his hand and hollered as loud as he could (“Gonna shoot them up!”), startling a few of them. The other adults burst into laughter, and one of them pushed the boy’s hand aside, smiling: “You’ve had enough for now.”

Homewrecker didn’t pity Death Herald like the others did. Sure, he was only ten years old—the second youngest in their brigade—and his mind wasn’t quite there. The adults had found that giving the boy any drugs they could find was a great way to spend their time. So the boy’s brain was rotting alive, cooked up in crack and heroin knockoffs. But the things that the boy was doing on the battlefield and afterward—the violence and madness that were seeping from the boy—were too much for Homewrecker to overlook. To him, the kid was a lost cause, a symbol of what they were all destined to become, raised to an absolute. He didn’t make Homewrecker feel sorry for him. He made Homewrecker feel bitter.

The General exited his tent, his face and biceps covered in war paint. Despite it not being a real battle, the man was ready to go all out, which indicated how mad and serious he was.

“Troops! Get ready to take back what is ours!” he screamed, and dozens of voices responded with a shout. Homewrecker found himself shouting as well.

“This is going to be a bloodbath” He heard Corpse Eater’s voice; the boy approached him, also sporting some sort of war paint on his face. Homewrecker glanced at his friend, looking to see if he was distraught, but Corpse Eater was just staring into the horizon in the direction where the village was. He wasn’t calm; he was resigned to what was coming. The resignation had been injected into him (like a vaccine against the world’s cruelty) back during the initiation trial, when the boy first received his new name.

Homewrecker himself didn’t feel so resigned to his fate; the face of the man he’d shot was still fresh in his mind, down to the slightest details, like the wrinkles under his eyes and the red vessels in them. He had been secretly hoping that the man was still alive, that he hadn’t exchanged his life for a plastic bag of food. But now that hope could be abandoned: it didn’t matter in the end. The boy looked at Death Herald, who was having the time of his life, basking in the attention of the adults, and scowled.

“We have to tell the General.” The boys heard the quiet whisper behind them. Puppy Slayer was trembling in fear, and his eyes were frantically rolling in their orbits. “We have to tell him the truth. I don’t want those people to die because of us.”

“We have no choice,” Corpse Eater replied before Homewrecker had a chance. “If you want, you can go and tell him. But he will kill you for that. And if he won’t kill you, he’ll kill someone else. Are you ready for that?”

Puppy Slayer looked down and shook his head. “Good,” Corpse Eater continued. “Because it’s not up to us. It never was and never will be. If those people are smart enough they will have abandoned the village by now. If not… they’ll be killed by someone sooner or later. And there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Throughout his speech Homewrecker was nodding in agreement, but his friend’s words weren’t reassuring. If anything, they were only making him more desperate. But he also knew that they were true—and that was only making it worse.

“Line up! Line up here!” One of the adults called them over, and the boys obeyed. It was time to take their medicine.

“Take it.” The adult handed the three of them a blunt and a lighter. “Gotta light up that righteous flame, right?” He grinned at them.

Corpse Eater was not in a rush to light it up, so Homewrecker took it away from him. “Give it here.” He grabbed it and lit it up. He knew what drugs could do to him, but at that moment hesitation was gnawing at him, and he wanted it to go away. The time for regrets would come later.

He took a long hit. After that, he took another deep breath through his nose, pushing the smoke deeper into his lungs. Only after that did he exhale and, along with the smoke, his body was getting rid of all the sadness, fear, anxiety, and doubts.

“So what’s in it?” He heard his friend asking him through the smoke. Homewrecker smiled; he thought to himself that he should be more like his friend. Distant and uncaring.

“Feels like heroin,” he pushed the words through his lips, taking another hit. The high was just kicking in. But even though he was already feeling pretty careless, he felt like making sure that feeling would last. He wouldn’t want for it to disappear in the middle of the battle.

Corpse Eater took a hit as well, and a few moments later his face stretched into a grin: “Yes, yes, feels like it. This one’s good.” He took another puff and raised his head to look into the dark, starry sky.

Their assault was quick and ruthless. In a battle, it would allow them to catch their opponent off-guard and demoralize him, and in their urban fights where no one was moving in formations breaking the enemy’s spirit was already a guaranteed victory. But that night their opponent was not some other brigade or militia: that night they were civilians, and the word “opponent” was not appropriate either. They were prey.