The Gay Gene

We do not kill ourselves because we are sad or angry at the world. We kill ourselves because moving past that sadness and anger is impossibly worse. Did our pain even matter if it didn’t last? Sometimes all we have left is our anger and we can’t risk losing that too.

I told myself that was the reason why she was swinging by the tree. We had escaped Sherman with our lives and freedom. That had been our hope for years. When the gene test came out and we tested positive we were not surprised. Being locked away from our family and friends was hard. I did not have as much to lose as she did though.

My parents never looked back when the trucks pulled out to take us away where the misfits go. Hers did. Her mother ran after the truck and was promptly shot down. At least I could hold her close as the blood spilt from her mother’s head. I could hold back her fists as they went to try and break the bars that were holding us inside.

The next death I was not so close to her for. When we reached the working lands, we were divided into different groups or work parties. That meant once a day when we went to eat, I could see her face and brush my hand against hers. Unfortunately, once a day had not been enough. She had nothing. I was lucky to have the gold locket around my neck that held a picture of the two of us together.

I would open it up and stare at it while in the radio room. They allowed us to listen to the news. To hear the governments next restriction. Gays were the first to go, but surely not the last group to get tortured. The straight people were getting hurt in their own way. I couldn’t be happier to be out of society than when I would hear about the straight people getting played with like puppets.

A new girl off one of the shipments once told me that she saw a girl wearing pants taken away even though she didn’t have the gene. Dresses were the only proper clothes for a young girl. She was only thirteen and so was the girl that had worn pants.

The shipments had begun to have younger children in it and we soon started to care for some as young as six. We had to get them to follow the rules as to not risk their own lives. When her brother showed up, I did everything in my power to show him the rules. He had been in my group and not hers. I got to watch her stare at us from a far with fear in her eyes.

Unfortunately, like her he was a free spirit and did not want to follow the rules. A six-year-old child does not have the capacity to do everything he is told. When he stole an extra piece of bread when I wasn’t looking, I had to watch him get shot in the head in front of me. She was across the room at the time. She could not receive a hug or any type of comfort.

He sat on the floor for a while until I asked the officers if I could carry him to the pile. He had grown stiff with his mouth stuck open from when he was reaching for his last breath of air. I tried to pick him up nicely but the fluid coming out of his mouth caused me to toss him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I didn’t look back at her.

Maybe that was the breaking point. I should have looked back. It could have been that pain that was too hard. Did she really care of her brother’s death if she could be happy without him? That or her mothers. Maybe it was the pain of the torture as a whole.

When the girl that had slipped passed the gene test had begun the uprising the whole camp wanted to help. We would listen to the radio for as long as they would let us to see if we could find out the government’s secrets. She ignored the radio during that time. Instead she admired the wall.

That was until there was word of her father. He was one of the most wanted at the time. The radio described him repeatedly for citizens to look for. He had been a founder in the movement when he had been killed. He helped save us all. That didn’t matter much when he could never hold her again.

That is when it just became me that she had left. Sherman was burnt to the ground and we were finally allowed to live in peace. Or so I thought it was peace. The one that passed the gene test had made the world safe for us. That did not bring back what we lost. She lost too much. I was not enough.

I stared at her swinging in the tree and opened my locket. The two girls there had not existed for a long time. So, while she escaped the problem plagued by uncontrollable genes, she could never let go of her anger until the rope around her neck released it. Her spirt hung from the tree and around my neck for the rest of eternity.