• When I was little, I was always told about how life was always a challenge. And that you should accept that challenge in life. Education, Home, Life…it was always a challenge. I would read many stories with my mother about heroes and heroines who had faced many of those challenges just to end up succeeding, but those books are just the things in the past. Those times are fading away so slowly, like that water that would drain itself down on the cracks of the sidewalk; forgotten. I am no longer a child with a luxurious home with dolls, along with a Mommy & Daddy, and maybe a bed with a blanket to give me that dreamy, comforting feeling.

    All that warmth has been taken away by all of the cold, windy days that never gave me the time to keep my body temperature up. I can only imagine the past while my body curled into a ball, so tight and ever-lasting. My bare-feet were as numb as it could be, with disgusting bumps on the muddy ground. I felt that dirt go between my toes, while my feet tried to twitch. It worked hard to stay active, but my body could never get movin’. Gathering up all my strength, I got up; wobbling over to the other people who suffered just like me. They were all tattered up like I was, with their faces filled with dark patches, and their wide, penetrating eyes; staring at me hungrily with their skin all pale like the color of clouds. Clouds used to soothe me oh so very much if I was not so sickly thin, desperate for food.

    Chicago was not as nice as it used to be. And the Month of April just made it worse here. I barely remembered the lights that used to glare at me when the night skies took over, with up-beat music and people with fancy clothes walking down the streets with their suits on. They would look at many shops and restaurants that would fill the air with the aroma of products and food…food. The taste of food was now fading off like the memories with my Mom & Dad. I don’t even know what bread & milk tasted like. It all made my mouth water and my stomach grumble so hard, that it hurts. I admit…I would actually kill to be filled and satisfied, but my heart always won through my needs and it keeps telling me ‘don’t do it’, and ‘don’t be a monster’.

    I shake my head violently, returning to the state I am in, and where I was. I turn my head around back and forth to examine the houses that appear to be small shacks. Walls were a bunch of boxes with ads of so much luxurious products, roofs were often those boxes too; torn apart to make them flat. Or if you’re lucky, you can find tin which did a much better job on protecting you from the rain and snow. To go inside that shack though, you would have to tear an opening on the box, which was mostly done by men that still have their strength left within them. I remember the village being called ‘Hooverville’ or something around there, the air was filled by the soft song of ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’ and the cracklings of the fire, roasting meat that used to be the family’s cat. I can only cover my nose & mouth to protect my little humanity from that cannibal meat. I trudged ahead, passing the meat without twitching with all my might before I can get to my ‘close’ friend’s home. He was at least 30 or younger, at least 20 years older than me for sure.

    He was a Negro, or a niggar if you want to be a Southern White b*stard. But anyway, his name was Calvin. He and his wife were oh so very nice to me, unlike the white people that yell at me like a wild animal. Even one tried to shoot me with their handgun because I got too close to their home. I cried, seeing that people who were like me will not hesitate to kill me. Calvin was the one who helped me after my close encounter with that same white man. The white man accused me for ‘stealing’ when he saw me pick up an apple which was very rare around these parts. Calvin was able to get the man away from me, plus he led me to his house for awhile. And that is where I am going.

    I jumped down from the rocks where the Negro neighborhood is. Like us, they had shacks with at least one bed and a small kitchen. The bathrooms, I guessed, were outside in the bushes. I shrugged at that thought, while walking toward that familiar shack. Only to see that the door was swinging back and forth by the wind like a cradle letting the motherly-being rock it. I went upstairs, on those very creaky, weak wooden steps to get inside the shack which felt more eerie than I thought it would be. The rooms seem to be much darker, and the floor was now red instead of that wooden brown color. That floor seemed to be wet like it recently came here, with my feet now soaked in dirty red. I was now deeply afraid to look up from the floor; I had that great, deep, dark feeling that there was something wrong. My lips quivered and eyes were wide like the moon which was one of the memories that faded away as I had to take a glance up at the window.

    But I soon regretted that; a scream emitted from my throat, but it was shaky due to the lack of energy as I stared at the body hanging on the tree with a rope around its neck. It swung back and forth like a tire swing I used to ride on before Mom would call me back in the house for dinner. Dinner: that word was now as foreign like the words ‘living’ and ‘warmth’. I didn’t know whenever Mrs. Calvin was alive or not, but I had my gut tell me that the red paint on the walls, floor, and a few pieces of furniture in the shack. Not to mention that the lynched ‘man’ I used to know convinced me that she was gone too.

    My crying moans and whimpers were now taken over by the shouts & screams of the many children like me whom paraded down the streets of Chicago to the Board of Education. Their dull voices and small pleads for food was no match, and they knew it; but they kept on going. Their echoes vibrated the shacks & Hooverville homes, drowning my prayers down the deep, dark shaft in my heart. I cried until my tears stung my cheeks, turning it all red before silence now filled the air in my imagination. The shouts are now distant to me when I found a weapon underneath the table that was covered in that red paint.

    The gun was warm; someone used it to kill my friends in this shack. It was a shotgun, colored in black with that splatter of red on the top. I hesitantly had the gun pointed towards me, with my memories playing like a movie in such a fast motion, adding noises in the background that just grew louder and louder until I could no longer hear Death crying out to me. I sniffled, trying to remember the last moments with my family before everything went into a hellhole.

    “Momma…Papa…I’m home.” I whimpered before a big explosion rang through my ears. Everything went black; by body shredded one last tear before everything that was around me faded away into a black hole.