Page 50 of Sage Haven

Too restless.

Too focused on finishing the job and getting the body in the ground before the weight of everything pressed in too tight.

But it was already pressing in, and the pressure hadn’t let up.

The anger. The exhaustion. The endless fucking questions.

They piled up inside me like a sickness I couldn’t purge no matter how deep I dug.

I paused for a moment, staring at the line of trees ahead.

My grip on the shovel tightened, the handle slick with sweat.

I was shaking.

Not from the work.

From everything else. From how I ended up in this fucking mess in the first place.

They say life is all about your choices.

But not for all of us.

Some of us were born into losing hands and told to play them anyway.

Some of us didn’t get to choose anything.

And if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d understand.

The innocent ones stripped of their dignity.

The futures stolen right out of their hands.

The screams…the ones from children are what haunt me the most.

Their voices are sharp, unrelenting echoes that slice and rip through my nights like broken glass on thin sheets.

Some sounds you can’t unhear, but I tried to bury those thoughts the same way I buried these sick men.

Deep.

Forcefully.

Making sure they never claw their way back up to find any form of forgiveness.

Not like forgiveness or salvation exists for men like this, or hell even men like me.

I had stopped believing in that a long time ago.

The day Castor and I were branded like cattle and handed over to the ENA like property.

We were trained, broken, rebuilt into something they felt useful.

Weapons that didn’t ask questions, didn’t feel and didn’t think beyond the job.

We weren’t men anymore.

We were tools and yet… some part of me still asked how it got to this.