The Trade

I knew a man on the coast. I wasn’t the mastermind behind the treacherous acts. They were inhumane. But I was a part of it. Here’s how it goes. He’d bring them into the shore onto the docks overlooking the Gulf of Maine. There they would become part of the system, a scheme or mechanism if you will, that was and is: the trade. Skip was the seaman’s name. Then again no one knew him that well. His real name and birthplace weren’t known. People spoke about him. And under hushed voices they said, “killer,” “baby-eater,” as well as many other things. He was a man no one would dare cross. He had a grizzly smile with rotting yellow teeth. He was short and stout and had the accent of the coast. He talked about clam chowder yet never pronounced the –er at the end of chowder. He wore rubber boots with his tight jeans tucked into them. His hands were always wet and cold, but they were what examined the trade. The trade— it was popular all over the world. There are often many aspects of the trade that people practice in which all sense of the word: are illegal. There have been laws in some places where certain parts of the practice no longer exist. Long ago the young ones were taken, and with them their mothers. They were loaded into a cramped setting on a boat. They were taken from their native homes and inflicted with the utmost pain. But it depends on how one defines pain, and if these creatures could feel it. For this is what this is about. And a creature is what they were called. The humanity that is sometimes hard to find within the purest of souls, the primitive side of man is what haunts my dreams. It makes me cringe to see what has happened through history and what is happening now. Oh how I loathe the world! Yet then again, my hands are not clean in these deeds—and I am not an innocent man. I have been guilt stricken and loathe the most inner parts of my heart with such contempt, that I write these lines as my last words.

Skip was wicked. He took them all. No matter where they came from they were forced into the rules of his vessel. Entire families were stripped of any value they had, and they became his capital. His hands that examined each individual had shaken the hands of countless businessmen. Mothers were of lesser value for they couldn’t provide the elite with what they wanted. The children were simply appetizers in the cruel entrée of the trade. It was the men who had the most value. They were the ones most sought after and through their absence—societies abroad lost their patriarchal influence. Women and children were left to fend for themselves. Populations would slowly decline, as there was no way of reproducing. Reproduction was done out of necessity. Their once fiery existence of lust and love—were extinguished with drops of seawater from the hands of Skip. He took them. He took them all. Men were sold to the highest bidder. Next came women that would be forced into a similar fate as their companions. And the children were to live lonesome unimaginative lives—until they like those before them—grew into their death of torture.

How wicked I am. How wicked we all are to allow such things to exist! For when does one not look for love in the eyes of a companion? Do we search strictly for the short satisfaction, the planting of the seed, the continuation of a species? It should all be ended. These lives we live and world we live in should be wiped clean from the universe. Like a star we should simply pop out of existence. And though there would no longer be such things as love and poetry—neither would there be such hurt and suffering. Alas, my part of the story comes into motion. And as I write these words they are like the wick of a candle. Each minute that goes by the wax drips slowly. Yet when the wax, like my words is finished—I will be snuffed out. I am trying to prolong this for I have decided already what must be done with the last stroke of my pen. I will die by these words like martyrs for their causes have died before me. And there is no turning back now. This is the end for me. I will die a death much more pleasant than those I mention. I know this because I was responsible. I killed hundreds if not thousands. I could have been a difference. I could have said, “No!” Yet I went along with what I was told to do. And I will suffer the consequences by the violence of my own hand and the judgment before my Lord.

Skip came to me through all those that practice the trade. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was young and inexperienced and was quickly taught how to be merciless. I took the ones I thought would sell and threw them violently. They lived in a cramped sitting. Misery floated through their existence. Drenched in an abyss of suffering they changed. Their eyes were dark before yet changed when their time came. Oh their eyes! Such beautiful things I marveled at— never fully understanding what I was doing. I knew deep inside somewhere within my heart that what I was doing was wrong. But I continued for society deemed it necessary. Even the government supported these intolerable crimes of hatred—inspired by an appetite of unmentionable prose. Yet their eyes looked at me with such indifference: as if they had known from when they were born that their fate was to be filled with such misery. Their eyes were darker than any other man’s I have seen. They had eyes so black that they were darker than the night skies. Thunder and lightening would run to back to Zeus screaming how the darkness of these eyes scared them. I looked at those eyes each time. I took them from their cells—their holding tanks and began the procedure. I weighed them up for those that would make them their purchase. They often commented bitterly. They yelled at how weak they looked. They were astonished that I even picked up a dead one—one that had died from sadness. They wanted the greatest survivors. They wanted the gladiators of the mix. Large and masculine they were. They had massive arms that could crush me and cause a great deal of pain. I prepared them to be sent away and each one I sent away took a piece of my soul with them.

Yet it was the act that I must now begin to sharpen this knife. This knife I hold is clutched with my own sense of justice—for the injustice that I have caused this world. It will reach my heart shortly and spilling upon this page will be my tears for a world God lost and the blood that I have been drenched in for long enough. It was this act that I repeated over and over again that I must face my convictions of what I have done and realize my guilt. I took them: all of them. Sometimes they were alone and sometimes they were together in massive clumps. I opened up a door and began to fill it with water. When the water reached its mark—I brought them into submission. I was like Skip in doing so. Their hands were tied and they couldn’t fight me. They extended their bodies inward and outward—silently condemning me. I shut them inside the chamber and turned a switch. Fifteen minutes later I opened the chamber as steam rolled out. The smell of death filled my nostrils and there was my guilt. I bagged them and gave them away to their investors. They would take them home and feed them to their children. And now, I die.