Sentient

Sentient

adjective sen·tient ˈsen(t)-sh("-)ənt, ˈsen-t"-ənt

: able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste

1:  responsive to or conscious of sense impressions <sentient beings>

2:  aware

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient

 

I can remember a time where I was able to breathe fresh air. It was an October day. The kind that chills you from the inside whenever you inhale. This time of year used to be my favorite. I remember being a child and peering out the window watching long willowy legs stride over colorful leaves across neighborhood yards on Halloween. Lanky young boys and girls with glowing porcelain-like skin. I would always look out my window wishing I could venture past the guards and the electric fence and join the children on the other side.

            But this day in October I was afraid. For once when I looked out my window people like us were crowded around the exit gate. It was not of their own accord. They were being herded into large trailers. Each of them had their wrists twist tied together. I knew something like this was inevitable one day but that did not stop my head from swimming and my heart from quickening. Before I could imagine what my fate may have been, I saw my mother standing in the doorway. Her face was completely pale and her lips quivered the way that they did when my father was killed. She grasped at the collar of her plain grey uniform dress, her chest heaving with sobs. I went to her and gave my mom the longest hug I ever had. I could feel her body sinking in surrender. It wasn’t because we didn’t have the drive to run or hide. We were just beginning to recognize that resisting at this point would be useless. It was the fact that we had been “relocated” so many times. Each place worse than the last. Our current apartment had been infested with disease over and over again. The men that we had come to detest would barge in and force needles into our arms, pumping antibiotics. We called them the Macros. They seemed to be at every corner of our lives, controlling every moment we experienced. With all the torture that we’d taken from them I had always wondered what they were doing keeping us alive.

Our homes could be compared to shoe boxes, without doors or any type of privacy. They were built skyward with hallways and staircases so narrow that you felt like someone was vacuum sealing everything around you the further you transcended. That day I remember when they came for us and shoved us down the staircase. We stumbled and flailed for something solid to hang on to. I lost my footing and crashed onto my knees. I was on the ground outside now and I could smell the earth. One of the macros was screaming at me in his language. When I didn’t get up another man ceased my leg from behind me and dragged me like I weighed nothing over to the trailers. Still I hugged the earth. A foot jammed into my side. Like a coward I rose to my feet. I left with them.

The trailer was cold and metal with small windows and every now and then there would be faces staring. I wasn’t sure if they could see inside but I sat there and wondered if they knew exactly what would become of us. I couldn’t find my mom anywhere. My only guess is that she was forced onto a different trailer. Our journey ended with a warehouse. It stretched far out over the land and at that moment I figured they’d done this many times before.

I am now confined in a space not even big enough to let me move an inch. There are people on either side of me and the boy on my right sobs all through the night every night. I try not to show the pain I’ve endured. I know that the macros that handle us only laugh at our fear. When I first came here they held me down and cut out my finger nails. It was the most excruciating pain I’d ever endured. From what I’ve seen this is a regular procedure. I listen to the screams with a helplessness that cannot be described. My human instinct to help them is thwarted by the cold cement walls on either side of me. They hurt us because they don’t want us to have the power to use our most basic human weapons. Our teeth and nails. 

The macros are devoid of any hair on their bodies. They stand longer and taller than us. They are faster, more agile. No human has ever succeeded in learning their language. I don’t know what they do to the ones who are taken away. Every morning like clockwork more are gone. Some of the women here are pregnant and sometimes they give birth in the dark of their cells. The macros drag their babies away. You can hear the mothers screaming and begging in a language the macros can’t understand. The babies end up in the same kinds of small cells where they cannot move. People are beaten every day. Kicked into bloody heaps and thrown to the side like trash.

I think I know what happens when someone is taken away from here. There is no doubt in my mind that it is something horrible. I realize that creatures that have no mercy do not think twice when given the opportunity to hurt us. In my cell I am cold and most days I feel completely alone. But there are people everywhere. They are always bringing more into this place and everyday it reeks more of sweat and blood. I miss my mother and I want to reach out for the little boy next to me. To anyone really. But I am weak and my fingers hurt from trying to budge the steel bars around me.