scenes from my past, some accurate, some exaggerated, seized my mind and shook me. Each faded into the next so quickly I felt as if waves of pain after pain after pain were breaking on me, pushing me under, drowning me.
A young boy, Manu Chang, stared trustingly at me as I led him into danger. Images washed over his face. Swirling clouds of gas. Lobo roaring in. Guards firing rifles. Manu screaming for help, and I couldn’t find him or Jack, the man to whom I’d entrusted him.
Benny, who was first a friend, and then the one who trained me to kill, and finally, at the end, my friend again and my savior, perched on a rock ledge above me, screaming at me from his cart, pushing me harder and harder. One boy tackled me, forcing me face first into the sand. Another jumped on my back, pinning my arms. Benny screamed as they hit me that I had to fight back to save myself, but they were my friends, and I didn’t want to hurt them, I didn’t want to hurt them any more.
Those same boys falling to the guards of the shuttle we were hijacking, each wearing a stunned expression as if unable to believe that this was no longer training, that he really was dying.
A boy, Nagy, tall and emaciated from living with rebels in the jungle, infected with the violence he’d seen and done as a soldier when he was still a young teenager. He rushed a column of armed troops, brandishing a branch as if it were a weapon. The soldiers fired into his body, killing him instantly. His only friend, a young, smaller boy I knew only as Bony, screaming and crying and watching as he lost the one person he believed cared about him.
Leading a squad of my fellow Saw soldiers into a clearing in the middle of a village on Nana’s Curse, seeing the bodies of more than a dozen dead children spread here and there like so much trash, all of them cut, broken, bleeding.
I screamed at the scenes to stop and sat upright, soaked in sweat, as I came awake in a rush. My jaw ached with the effort of stopping myself from screaming. So many children, so much senseless death and suffering, and I’d been unable to stop it. I’d managed to get Manu and Bony to groups that promised to protect them, but that was it; the others died, and I had been unable to do anything to save them.
Lobo wondered why we had to keep going, keep trying, keep doing our best to save every child we could. Nothing would bring back those I’d lost, but I could do my best to stop any more from suffering. The need shoved me forward faster and harder than the wind from the sandsurfer’s motor had taken me across the desert far below. If I could save enough of them, stop those using children as soldiers, stop the abusers, the kidnappers, the defilers—stop them all, then maybe one day it would be enough, enough to balance my failures. Enough to let me sleep and not dream, not remember.
I had to try. If Lobo didn’t understand, he could either support me or leave. No one else had to walk this path with me. I’d been alone for the vast majority of my many decades of life, and I was fully prepared to be alone again, if that’s what it took.
I stood and shook my head to clear it. I started doing slow squats, a twenty-count on the way down, all the way down until I was sitting as low as I could, and then another twenty-count back up. Repeat. Over and over. Easy at first, then my legs feeling it, eventually burning, sweat rolling off me, my eyes open but seeing nothing, just the count and, finally, the pain, the freeing pain filling me.
I have no idea how long I did them nor how many times I squatted, but eventually I switched to push-ups. A five-count down, almost but not quite touching the floor, and a five-count up. Over and over, not even trying to count them, my body a machine that ultimately brought me again the shaking and the pain that consumed me, filled me, cleansed me.
When I finally could do no more, I stopped, rolled over for a few seconds, and stood. I showered for a long time as I used
A young boy, Manu Chang, stared trustingly at me as I led him into danger. Images washed over his face. Swirling clouds of gas. Lobo roaring in. Guards firing rifles. Manu screaming for help, and I couldn’t find him or Jack, the man to whom I’d entrusted him.
Benny, who was first a friend, and then the one who trained me to kill, and finally, at the end, my friend again and my savior, perched on a rock ledge above me, screaming at me from his cart, pushing me harder and harder. One boy tackled me, forcing me face first into the sand. Another jumped on my back, pinning my arms. Benny screamed as they hit me that I had to fight back to save myself, but they were my friends, and I didn’t want to hurt them, I didn’t want to hurt them any more.
Those same boys falling to the guards of the shuttle we were hijacking, each wearing a stunned expression as if unable to believe that this was no longer training, that he really was dying.
A boy, Nagy, tall and emaciated from living with rebels in the jungle, infected with the violence he’d seen and done as a soldier when he was still a young teenager. He rushed a column of armed troops, brandishing a branch as if it were a weapon. The soldiers fired into his body, killing him instantly. His only friend, a young, smaller boy I knew only as Bony, screaming and crying and watching as he lost the one person he believed cared about him.
Leading a squad of my fellow Saw soldiers into a clearing in the middle of a village on Nana’s Curse, seeing the bodies of more than a dozen dead children spread here and there like so much trash, all of them cut, broken, bleeding.
I screamed at the scenes to stop and sat upright, soaked in sweat, as I came awake in a rush. My jaw ached with the effort of stopping myself from screaming. So many children, so much senseless death and suffering, and I’d been unable to stop it. I’d managed to get Manu and Bony to groups that promised to protect them, but that was it; the others died, and I had been unable to do anything to save them.
Lobo wondered why we had to keep going, keep trying, keep doing our best to save every child we could. Nothing would bring back those I’d lost, but I could do my best to stop any more from suffering. The need shoved me forward faster and harder than the wind from the sandsurfer’s motor had taken me across the desert far below. If I could save enough of them, stop those using children as soldiers, stop the abusers, the kidnappers, the defilers—stop them all, then maybe one day it would be enough, enough to balance my failures. Enough to let me sleep and not dream, not remember.
I had to try. If Lobo didn’t understand, he could either support me or leave. No one else had to walk this path with me. I’d been alone for the vast majority of my many decades of life, and I was fully prepared to be alone again, if that’s what it took.
I stood and shook my head to clear it. I started doing slow squats, a twenty-count on the way down, all the way down until I was sitting as low as I could, and then another twenty-count back up. Repeat. Over and over. Easy at first, then my legs feeling it, eventually burning, sweat rolling off me, my eyes open but seeing nothing, just the count and, finally, the pain, the freeing pain filling me.
I have no idea how long I did them nor how many times I squatted, but eventually I switched to push-ups. A five-count down, almost but not quite touching the floor, and a five-count up. Over and over, not even trying to count them, my body a machine that ultimately brought me again the shaking and the pain that consumed me, filled me, cleansed me.
When I finally could do no more, I stopped, rolled over for a few seconds, and stood. I showered for a long time as I used
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