The Lands of the Rising Sun

Part One: The Burden of a Man

A rock smashed into the boulder beside me sending fragments of dirt into my face. "Back to it!" The guard yelled. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gripped the pickax. Swing after swing; day after day.

The days were becoming longer, it seemed as though the sun would never set. But it did. The walk back to camp was always depressing. Passing the groups of miners and cart pushers that still had quite a workload to finish. Watching them almost made me want to help. Almost.

Most days the coyotes watched us from a distance, the growls they laid forth hummed in tune with our stomachs. Their presence acted like the walls inside camp. The difference being that walls never reminded me of death, only of misery, the acceptance that life will be no more than those walls and no further than those coyotes.

The guards fed those hellhounds every other day or so to keep the packs around but also to keep them hungry. One night someone managed to escape only to be returned in the morning with the sight of the coyotes picking their teeth with bones on the hills overlooking the mining fields. They were so calm that day. "Long my he reign!" a man had gathered a torn piece of clothing waving the cloth in the air until the butt of a gun shut him up; he was carried off to the back of the pits and I haven't seen him since.

The sand crunching beneath my feet reminded me of how brittle we all were. There were many of us; we doubled the guards in number. However, that's exactly what we were, the sand beneath their boots.

"Where were you today?" asked Mur'ring in his ever so charming sarcastic tone. "What you mean man? The damn mining fields."

"The fields again, huh?" he asked knowing damn well I work in the fields everyday. "Eat this." Mur'ring passed me my dinner.

"What is this?" I held it up and inspected the green sphere.

"That's an apple... apparently a whole bunch of them were given to the Master as some sort of present? But he doesn't like em' so we get em'."

I took a bite. The juices and crunchy texture were so refreshing. "That's the best damn thing they've ever gave me," I said. Mur'ring laughed, "I said the same thing."

The cell door swung open, welcoming Ra'dok back.

"How the fuck are you?!" Mur'ring greeted him, "You smell like shit." Ra'dok seemed relieved to be done for the day. "Yeah well, you try cleaning toilets and shit all day and then smell good." Mur'ring shrugged, "fair enough."

Ra'dok sat on the end of my cot and examined my food. "What the hell are you eating?" Talking with a mouth full I mumbled, "It's called an apple."

"An apple?"

"Yeah... An apple."

Mur'ring threw one at Ra'dok. "Merry Christmas." He said sarcastically.

"Why do you keep saying that? Merry Christmas?"

Mur'ring laughed. "I read it in a book once."

"What the hell's a book, Mur'ring?" Ra'dok always asked this question, though Mur'ring would usually just laugh and not answer, or every now and then he'd say, "I'll show you one day."

Mur'ring turned to face him with the last bit of sunlight escaping over the walls and creeping across his face to reveal his shit-eating grin. "They really should've let you two grow up a bit before they sent you hear, maybe then we'd have something good to talk about." He paused to think. "Makes sense though, you don't want a smart slave, that might be trouble."