Life Sentence Read Free Page A

like words, but all harsh
and wrong—just raspy, wheezing sounds. It sounded a lot like the
moaning I heard all around me.
    Even though I couldn’t understand what the moaning
meant, I was speaking the same as everyone around me, and that made
me feel better, though I was disappointed that I couldn’t
communicate with anyone. I still feel bad about that, like I’m
missing something much more important than my intestines or my
liver, whose absence I really haven’t noticed over the years.
    I now live in this group of buildings with the other
people like me. They can’t talk either. I must have known how to
type very well before, since I can still do it, even though I don’t
remember how to speak. The typing came easily, even if it still
seems slow and none of the other people here know how to read it. I
suppose I must have known lots of ideas and problems and questions
before, because even though I don’t breathe or sleep or talk, I can
still think of a lot of things, and I wanted to write some of them
down since I can’t say them out loud anymore, and I thought other
people might be interested in them.
    The older man, the one who makes me feel uneasy and
scared, he put us here not too long ago. The other people who can’t
talk must also feel scared and uneasy around him because, like me,
they walk slowly away whenever he gets near. At the time, I didn’t
know why he put us here, as we were fine where we were, I thought.
Maybe it was to punish us, as I heard later that he was going to
put us in a prison. He can talk. He spoke to us loudly, but with
kind-sounding words, so I didn’t mind going where he wanted, if it
made him happy and he thought it was best for us.
    The older man led us out of the city after he found
us there. He had two dogs to help move us in the direction he
wanted. It was funny, but as we walked, I wondered why I hadn’t
thought of it on my own, to leave the city where I had been at
first, and I couldn’t really tell why. It just hadn’t occurred to
me.
    I made a note that I’ve tried to remember since
then, not to sit around doing nothing, though sometimes it’s so
difficult, and the urge is almost overwhelming, just to sit down
and forget all the things that need to be done. But giving in to
that urge just doesn’t seem right, because I remember as we walked
away from the city that it felt so good to see different things,
all the fields and trees and flowers and other things. There is a
whole world out here, and we should feel good about it. “Good”
isn’t the right word. “Grateful”—we should feel grateful for it, I
think.
    We walked out of the city, about twenty of us, and a
younger man joined the older man. The young man didn’t make us feel
uneasy or scared the way the older man did, just by his presence,
though as soon as I heard him, I felt a little scared; he seemed
harsher and angrier than the older man.
    As he talked with the older man, a lot of people in
my group tried to get close to him, to attack him. They felt
threatened by him, I think, and so did I. They also felt hungry,
I’m sure, because I know I did, but I didn’t want to attack
him—partly because the kinder, older man seemed to be his friend,
and also because I remembered back when I was first in the city,
years before the man took us out, I had been with some other people
who couldn’t talk and they were all battering on a door to a big
building. The door gave way and we all rushed in. There was
screaming, and blood everywhere.
    I felt hungry, so hungry. It gnawed and tore at me,
the hunger. I had been hungry for as long as I could remember,
since waking up days before. So when I saw someone on the floor,
with other people tearing her apart, I took some. I even punched
and clawed at others to get them out of the way so I could tear off
a bloody piece of the woman. I just wanted the hunger to go away,
but it was a cruel joke on us as much as on her.
    When I ate some, it burned my mouth, literally.