The Fledgling

ONE

I delicately balanced three pills in the palm of my hand, plucked from my father’s designated 'medicine' stash. These tiny, white ovals held the weight of finality, the last substance my father consumed before his heart surrendered its rhythm. It was called suicide, but for me, it is called cruelty. How could a father choose to leave behind a son to nourish and a wife to cherish? I was merely six, engulfed in a storm of anger and tears, struggling to grasp why he had departed in such a way. I am now sixteen. The alarm just blare and I almost choked up to death by my own breathe when I learned that the sound blaring is caused by my father’s death.

Here in our Quarter, perhaps in every Quarter, included the Prestigious Manor, the blaring sound of alarm is harbinger of death. When it persisted, it signified an even greater loss. The sound pierced through our bones, a haunting echo confirming someone's departure, instilling an enigmatic terror that seeped into our very core. It wasn't just a signal; it was an amalgamation of fear and the unknown, a chilling reminder that someone had slipped beyond our grasp into the realm of mystery.

I took a deep breathe before I decided to add another three pills until I discovered that there’s been a last piece of pills remaining, so I added the last remaining pill on my hand, overall having seven pills laying in my hand before I swallowed them, chasing them down with water from the faucet in our bathroom. I am not planning on self-annihilation, I still have a mother to take care of, even knowing that her breathe might be last in a every moment she spends. Drinking these pills only means that I am jeopardizing my chances becoming a participant tomorrow for the Curnest, since I’ll be sick, my health would degrade, my stamina would go low, I won’t pass the test of healthiness that is a requirement to be part of the program called ‘A cure nest.’ where the leaders in the Manor, or also called as the Bailiff would choose 4 randomly young people, two boys, and two girls in each Quarter once they found that you are healthy enough to become a window of hope that you can be the cure that the Manor is looking for, a cure that will cure the virus, the sickness that is spreading and killing every adult in this world, after ninety-nine years ago when a nuclear bomb exploded during an apocalyptic war that causes our present to be like this. Our world, the Capital, divided into seven, six quarter, one Manor, the highly-advance Metropolis who takes control all over the Quarter, who rule our country, from the Far off-City of Captial.

Tomorrow is my first day as a tribute as I just turned sixteen four months ago. Sixteen years old is the solitary age requirement to be part of this experiment that they are doing, Sixteen to Nineteen, since when you turn twenty, you can be lucky enough that you won’t feel the symptoms of the sickness, but mostly, when you turn twenty, the virus starts to attack your system until you become ill, until you become unqualified to be called as healthy. The longest age you can have is forty. Fifty is lucky, but forty is your death sentence. All kids are immune to the virus, but no one can still explain behind that scientific sickness that came from that chemical of the atomic bomb that happened 99 years ago, but lasted up until today. I remember that there has been a rumor that the starting age of the experiment is eleven, but something happened years before I am born that it changed into sixteen.

Every year, they do this, forcefully make the four kid participate to their program to find a cure, we don’t even know if they really are looking for a cure or what… Because no one is coming back to the Quarter, once become a participant, once left the Quarter to go to Manor. No one knows what is happening outside the Quarter, the Jade, or also called as the Peacemaker make sure everyone is doing their own job, have their own life and does not care about the other people in other Quarter, that no one is leaving. What is so cruel about this society? Is when you start to have semen, it is either they force you to reproduce in an early age, in your teenage years, so that in an early age of life, another young will be born, and another young can be hope, hope that they are the cure for this illness, or you, on your own fall in love and horny enough to want a baby, or you either die from loneliness, or sometimes from being hanged on the so called ‘hanging tree’.

That is the requirement. To remind that this society, needs youth, to progress and work. Because when the sickness started to attack your system, you can never reproduce again.

I took a deep breathe before I threw the container of the pills that I drank onto the wooden trash and hoping that my plan would work. My dad died because of these pills, means it killed his healthy system, he took the whole container, containing forty-six tablet, I took seven, maybe enough for me to be sick. I don’t want to go, earliest age to be a tribute means more possibility to become a participant, I am not overthinking it, I am thinking it because I am right. My co-farmer, Harold, he turned sixteen and he believed that he wouldn’t be chosen since there were a lot of sixteen years old last year and only two boys will be chosen, he had this audacity to joke around until he was chosen, and I had never seen him again.

Ever.

I put on my denim pants and a gray shirt to be ready for my work. I wipe the dirt on my boots so I won’t walk around the Quarter looking like an amateur young farmer who couldn’t even afford to clean his own boots. Even though everyone is a farmer here, I want to make difference, sorry, I want to be different from them. I do not want to look like a farmer, because I do not want to be a farmer in the first place, I want to be a hunter, I am good at hunting, but I belong here, in this Quarter, Quarter number 2, where farmer lives, Quarter number five is where the hunters are. But I have no choice but to follow, once you’re a farmer, you will die a farmer. You can’t change or trade your skills to be transport to other quarter, that is life, no freedom.

I remember the history, it was said that when we got divided, people adjusted for where they ended up, and since the people in Quarter two ended up in a place full of grass, full of soil, full of land, full of life that can grow rice and grain, the people had to adjust and become a farmer.

I walked onto where my mother is lying down. Her breathe is grasping for air… The sound of her feels death, it sounded death. She is sleeping, her face is wrinkled, her hair turns white, her skin become tighter and wrinklier, her eyes are surrounded by blackened. She is only 41 years old. Her death days is coming and I am preparing for when that time comes.

I am in between waking her up to tell her that she has to eat or that I’ll be leaving for work, to farm, to trade, and that I’ll promise that I will bring her, her favorite food meat, before her days goes into the bizarre ending of darkness, or I would just let her rest and just let her know that I’m gone for work. I always do this, always in between, wondering what to do next to my mother, especially knowing that they can’t do anymore beside wait for their death. Sometimes, I am thankful that my dad died earlier, that I do not have to take care of him too today, because taking care of my mother is already hard for me especially that I do not have any sibling like the others, what comes if two adult dying ended up into my arm, into becoming my responsibility?