Three hooded figures showed me no mercy as they shoved me through the dilapidated door. The name’s Clara, I’m seventeen years old, and I’m homeless.

As I lay there on the floor caked with mud I analyzed my injuries. I calculated how long they would take to heal before I could blow this joint. My head was throbbing, but I managed to pick it up slightly to take in my new surroundings. Of course, no windows, no trap doors, nothing. There never is. I somehow always come up with a creative way to distance myself from my protectors, but this time I’m not too sure. I’ve never been this wounded.
It all started around twenty years ago in the year 3011. The governments from around the world actually agreed on something for once, and decided to control the overpopulation problem that has been way out of hand since the turn of the millennia. NO, big strong government men hunt down the people deemed “excess.” The thing is, these bi g government guys always seem tot be obsessed with having a peaceful image, so instead of getting rid of us right on the spot, we are put into holding buildings. Why don’t the camera men from the governmental media organization, just for one day, show what it’s like to be stuffed into dark huts? How would they like to live with grimy flies and letha germs with only half of a piece of moldy bread and a teaspoon of water each day? Then we’ll see how peaceful they really are.

When I was five years old, my parents and two older sisters were taken away on a giant bolted crate-carriage device. Some extra awful protectors decided that it would be funny to leave me behind. Guess what Mr. Protector? It is twelve and a half years later and any day now I’m going to catch you. I’ll find out what happened to my family even if it’s the last thing I do on this earth. I can feel it rattling in my bones, they’re close, and I remember exactly what you look like. Mr. Protector, I will find you and your muddy green eyes, the eyes that have been conquered in all of my recent dreams.
“I’m not going, I refuse, I’m seventeen years old and you have no rights over my body.” I declared in triumph.
“I’m sorry miss, but we have to, it’s time for showers and you have been designated to share with Ms. Ehterlin, you have no choice,” the young protector said with a quivering voice.
I wondered how that protector got to where he is today. He seemed aobut my age, a little taller though, with an olive complexion and hazel eyes. He wasn’t half bad looking, and I probably could’ve gone for him too, if he wasn’t about to force me into a shower with some old lady against my will.
“I will not, and that’s the end of it! See, that’s the problem with you government guys, you always thing k that the excess respect you and eventually, you’ll get us to do what you want. However, I am no ordinary excess coward. I’m Clara Bourbian, and I am an individual! I’m not simply an item in the trash I exist don’t I? I believe it was the great philosopher Rousseau from the first millennia who said I think, therefore I am. I am. Iam! I am Clara and I shall not give in to your petty requests! I may seem like a vulnerable, orphaned, teenage nobody, but at least I have the strength to stand up for what I want in this world, unlike you protectors. You’re no more than a speck of dirt, a limb of the government instructed to do whatever they please.” I said, but as the words came out of my mouth, I knew it was too late. I had just defied every principle that the excess were to abide by, in conduct and in belief.
Then, the belt hit me so hard I was propelled through the confidence I had just declared, into a world where I did not exist. My heart burned in my chest and my ribs exploded out of my sides. My head split open and I had no idea what my name was, or what day it was. I gu3ess this was the new kind of belt. This was the lethal explosive whipping belt that hey only used on particularly dangerous prisoners and excess. Hot blood trickled from the welts across my face and my stomach. At first, I didn’t know what hit me; I thought it was more debris from the door that had been blasted down. I guess I will never meet the muddy green eyes of my family’s murderer, because the, I was gone.