Life 1 If only… At the end of the street I see a line of shields and batons, sub-machine guns behind of the backs of the soldiers that the government calls police. They are described as “keepers of the peace” and “dispensers of justice”, but what is the price of peace? Who are the people who actually receive justice? Not the people who rent apartments or live on the streets. Not the real people. Instead, the safety and ignorant happiness is given to the aristocrats, the politicians and the middle class. The government protects them from our ideals, what they have named “violent and destructive”. The men ahead stand firm as we make our final advance, their diplomatic dictator on a podium behind them, ranting on about how dangerous we are. I hear a helicopter approaching, and I expect it to be from the evening news so that they can litter the media with stereotypes and lies. Instead, we are met with a black aircraft occupied by a man holding a rifle. We keep walking. We have spent too much time behind closed doors, trying to make a change from afar. It is our time to attack, to fight back. The shield wall starts looking more and more like it’s made of bricks. The soldiers holding it up have their faces covered, but I can tell that they are beginning to doubt their leader, this man in a suit that stands in their protective shadow. He slams his fist on the podium, making blind accusations and hypocritical threats. I am not afraid, if I die, I will become a symbol. We have too many followers to be ignored, swept under the rug and forgotten about. We may perish, but ideas never die. As we get closer to him, I see the wall shift and barrels or guns stick out from the gaps between the shields. We all stop, realizing that the hesitation that showed before has been washed away by the charismatic words of the enemy. Everyone in the street stands still, not sure what to do, unsure of how this will end. Then, I see a glass bottle fly overhead at the wall. It smashes into pieces upon impact, and a shout roars from my crowd. A barrage of miscellaneous garbage soars through the polluted air at the soldiers, accompanied by a great harmonious shout. I find myself joining in, a lead pipe in my hand as we all charge forward towards the shields. Then we hear the first shot fire. It comes from the sniper in the helicopter above. The bullet zips past my head and into the shoulder of the woman behind me. She was unarmed. She wanted only equality. She was pregnant. I can’t help looking at her body laying on the tarseal. She’s not quite dead, but there’s nothing that any of us can do, and she knows it. She just looks at me. Her eyes talk to me. They tell me to avenge her unborn child, to make a change. I turn back to the monster hiding behind his shielded minions. An immense rage fills my body and I grip the pipe firmly. I target one of the men ahead and sprint towards him, and he raises his gun to face me. The crack of the sub-machine gun is only just louder than the crowd. I’m not struck by any lead, but I can’t call it a miracle, since the same didn’t happen for my comrades. I don’t stop running, and I meet the wall with a furious swing of my weapon. The metal bounces off the shield leaving a decent crack but slipping out of my grip with the recoil. I feel the hard shaft of a baton hit me in the head, and I fall to the ground. Lying there, now with the barrel of a gun in my face, I lock eyes with the man at the podium. He stops his speech and an expression of shock plasters his face. This is the last thing I see before the bullets enter my skull and kill me, is the face of my old friend. If only…
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 12:10:43 +0000
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