Life is a Joke
by Sarah Black
Suddenly there was a loud explosion. Tom wasn't very disturbed by it. He could see some of the other orphans cringe, perhaps in fear, perhaps it was only the loud sound that unhinged them.
There were a lot of new faces in the crowd that inhabited the basement of the old orphanage. Tom's eyes swept over each of the unfamiliar faces and he thought of how sorry he should be for them. He wasn't. He felt nothing for them. Well, maybe he felt a little better at seeing them. Knowing that he was not the only one who had to suffer.
Tom had been in the orphanage for a very long time. In fact, he'd been there ever since he was born. He was even one of the older boys there. He'd never gotten adopted. But that didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered.
He noticed that the new kids were disturbingly young. Disturbing to other people, that is. There wasn't much in the world that would disturb Tom. He was one of those people who lost their humanity, their ability to be empathic. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt sorry for another being. He wondered if he'd ever felt sorry at all. There had been plenty of times when he should have felt sorry. But he hadn't. Guilt was an unfamiliar concept to Tom's head.
It was war time. Tom found that he didn't care at all. He didn't care about all the people dying. He didn't care about all the children losing their parents. He didn't care.
Let the German air crafts come! Tom hoped they would bomb his father while they were at it. They had bombed most of the new children's mothers and the fathers too... or maybe the fathers were off fighting in the war. Crawling on the filthy muddy ground, elbowing themselves through the corpses of their friends, knowing that every gunfire they heard could be the last sound audible to them.
Tom's father wasn't fighting in the war. Tom's mother hadn't died in a bombing. His mother had died soon after giving birth to him. Living only long enough to name him. He knew that his first name, "Tom" was also his father's first name. He hated the name. And he hated his father. His father who hadn't wanted him. Hadn't been able to give him a roof over his head. Tom had to live with the other kids calling him a whore's son. They thought that Tom's father hadn't wanted him because his mother was a whore. Tom didn't know what to think. So he just concentrated on detesting his father with all the hatred in his heart.
It was all his father's fault. If he hadn't refused to take Tom in, Tom wouldn't have had to live for many long years in a dirty old orphanage. Yes, Tom hoped that his father would be bombed. He wanted nothing more than for his father to be bombed. Bombed so badly that they would never manage to find all the pieces.
Tom didn't wince, he didn't even blink when another loud explosion was heard. The earth shook.
The whine of sirens had become to Tom an obscure lullaby. He wondered idly if he'd be able to fall into a slumber without the sounds of the ongoing war raging outside.
A little girl with curly blond hair began to blubber miserably. He glared at her angrily.
"Shut up you stupid little girl." He hissed at her spitefully. She didn't heed his words, she seemed to cry harder after his reprimand. Tears leaked out of her eyes uncontrollably and her sobs became unbearably loud. The sounds sank into his brain, echoing inside his scull. He couldn't see anything but her round ugly face, contorted into a mask of fear and pain. He wished she would just drop dead.
But of course, wishes don't come true, do they? The world was an unfair, violent zoo of a place. There was no order. Only chaos.
The despair hung in the air on every corner. The Angel of Death trudged down the street, swinging his scythe around like an awful mockery of a walking stick. They walked hand in hand, almost jumping with joy. Despair and Death, war time was their time.
No one knew the difference between heaven and hell anymore. Always the same. Everything was alike.
Lucifer Morningstar was on the loose. The men that were crawling all over the earth, like a cancer on the planet, were too busy burning each other's countries down to even notice him.
And Lucifer laughed at their ignorance and God would do absolutely nothing. What could he do? He was nailed to a stick.
Tom laughed silently, smiling to himself. Life was a twisted sick joke that wasn't appreciated by many.
The End.