MULATTO SINEW

BY GRANT FOXON

Kraven Verez looked out at the idyllic sunlight from behind his sunglasses. The night
before he had consumed a vast quantity of alcohol. So much so that in the morning
sunlight Verez’s head had transformed into a migraine.
Verez lit up a cigarette as he stood outside his luxury chateau. Down in the
centre of the forest below stood the colonies most productive extermination camp.
Since being established a little over a year ago over half a million dissidents had been
gassed to death. Their remains were crushed and used as fertiliser. The planet’s
greatest exports were its food supplies which thanks to the new Freedom Party it grew
in abundance.
Verez knew he’d have to venture into the camp today. He had good staff but it
was so easy to get into a slacking habit, and this would not go down well with the
party.

To explain the rise of the Freedom Party is the same story regardless of the human
colony even now long gone Ancient Earth had similar groups. It is human nature to
bully and destroy. And therefore we do it. Dissidents seek only to destroy the party
and thus poison the growth of the human experience. Every child was taught this
lesson. Of course there was a time before, when alliances were built without atomics
or war. But this was to distracting. Like religion it was quashed and replaced with the
party. Of course the party began by solely seeking equal rights for the people and
liberation from oppression. This idea caught on rather quickly and the membership
grew like a venereal disease. In a perverted sense they had brought equality to all
humans. It had transcended religion, ethnicity and class and united them all in fear of
the party.

Verez sensed no guilt over the extermination camp. This was not because he was a
particularly cruel man or that he believed the party’s rhetoric it was simply survival. If
Verez stopped to accept the horror he was committing he would go mad and no doubt
be killed for it. Like so many people with mental illness had been before. Instead he
viewed the dissidents as broken objects, which could not be repaired and so were
disposed of. He even stopped feeling emotion for the children that were being killed.
Of course that did not mean he didn’t need assistance. He drank like so many
of the part workers in the camp excessively. It was needed to pacify certain
“emotional responses”. And indeed the party recognised this and dispatched plenty of
alcohol with the regular shipments of food. The party recognised the psychological
need for drink especially in the camps.

Verez gathered that the camps had been set up on pretty much every planet in the
New Earth Empire. Which might as well be called the Freedom Empire. There was
still a galactic war going on at the fringe of the empire but this was inevitable. Verez
knew the party would win by their sheer ruthlessness and efficiency. I mean the
human race looked on the borderline of extinction with over population until the party
came up with a scheme which although utterly morally wrong worked very well
indeed.
Another long drag on the cigarette and Verez heard the far off sound of
gunfire. Clearly a dissident was trying to escape or attacked a guard. Once again the
party answer was simple- If you break the rules, you die, a very effective warning.
Even petty crimes were dealt with in this way, and it worked. The Party could boast of
massive drops in crime. Of course they could also say that they have systematically
killed more people than any other cause in human history. But that wasn’t good for
social moral.

With the cigarette dead Verez yawned. He outstretched his arms and pondered
breakfast. His wife Jane was still in bed. This was typical. She contributed little in
Verez’s life except her amazing looks and their sexual relationship. He knew exactly
what she would do today. She would get up in the afternoon, smoke then eventually
go down to the camp and pick some items to add to her collection taken from the
dissidents as they entered the camp. Usually this wasn’t much but there had been the
odd pieces of jewellery that caught her eye. Although once she returned with a
shrunken head that had been converted into a paperweight.

The journey to the camp wasn’t long. Upon arrival he was saluted and saluted back.
There were the usual exchanges of “Bless the party!” then he headed into his office.
Inside he began to check how the day’s exterminations were progressing. It
seemed to be going well although perhaps could be better. There seemed to be more
children being sent these days, which was good in that it allowed the engineers to be
more economical with the gas supplies. Happy everything was in order Verez gave
the document his stamp of approval.

The screams of the dissidents didn’t last long. The psychological impression they
gave was beginning to die down with the workers at the camp. Like Verez they
accepted that the victims were not people but objects. The next generation of workers
would find it even easier. It was now being taught at schools that dissidents were sub
human monsters who felt little pain and in fact deep down regardless of their lies
craved death, for life gave them little existence. Digging another cigarette out of his
pocket he headed outside the building to smoke in the sunshine. It tasted good. A few
muffled shouts could be heard but it wouldn’t last long. Then Verez saw something
that really did leave an emotional wound in his mind. A small little girls shoe left
behind by one of the dissidents. Then he felt pain and he started to cry. Verez could
not fight it the image of the girl broke some form of mental conditioning. He decided
to return to his car immediately and hope he hadn’t been seen.

Back at the château he did indeed weep uncontrollably. In that instance the atrocity
was burning in his mind like some inferno out of control. He reached for the bottle
and then drank and drank. Slowly the depressant state of the alcohol soaked up his
guilt. Bless the party! Bless the party! The words kept echoing around his mind. He
forced them. It was the only way. A sense of fear crept up on Verez. What if Jane saw
me? What could he do? He was sure she might report him. There could only be so
many people left to kill before they ran out then what? Had he witnessed too much?
He decided he couldn’t risk it; Verez pulled a kitchen knife out of the draw and
headed upstairs. Jane was getting dressed. She was awake? What if she saw? Taking
no risk Verez plunged the knife repeatedly into his wife. He had never killed anyone
first hand before he thought it would be easy. She fought back he hadn’t anticipated
this. She scratched his face. He stabbed her more and more until she resembled a pile
of viscera more than a human being. He then dropped the knife in disgust. What now?
He asked himself. There was no answer. There never is. It was survival no matter the
cost that was the terrifying thing about the human experience.

He contemplated suicide but why? What was the point? He had to live with the death
and report her as a dissident. If she were one of those then it would be ok. Maybe she
was a dissident after all? Verez tried to make himself believe it then maybe her death
would be easier to accept.