Living Dead, Offer Reish [classic novels for teens .TXT] 📗

on this planet, I resolved as I stood at the doorway to the bedroom staring inside, is a mother who has lost her favorite child. For a single selfish moment before calling the police (my parents had been too devastated in expressing their grief to Ross's corpse that no call had been placed) I wondered if, were it my corpse lying lifeless and not my brother's, would it provoke the same level of despondency.

It wasn't long before cops and medics swarmed the house, bringing in with them piles of mud and practically flooding the entrance. I've not lived through a longer night, and yet when it was finally over we all wished it were dark again. I suppose the sunlight and generally the change in the stage of day bestowed a certain disillusioning finality to the events and to the gravity of what had been lost. The police never found the shooter, after investigations of my brother's disreputable connections turned up no solid suspicions. No fingerprints could be found on the gun but mine (which led me to believe that perhaps the shooter hadn't been as remiss as I thought by leaving it behind), and my suggestion that the boot prints on the first floor be scrutinized was rendered invalid by the creation of the dozens of prints that could no longer be identified separately.

And so my brother died right before my eyes in the hands of a man who would never pay for his crime. I'd failed not only to punish him but to stop him in the first place- after all I was there for minutes before the metal bullet that took Ross's life was discharged. Mother and father were never the same again, and neither was that house that was filled with so many magical memories. Only one thing didn't change after that fateful night: I still wasn't the favorite son.

 

 

Respite

 

Life is a gift. With the first breath of air we draw we are already indebted for receiving a wonderful privilege bestowed upon us through no virtue of our own, at least not in this life. Whether you believe in God, karma, in nothing at all or in everything together, you can surely recognize that you have been brought to life in exchange for no sacrifice or compensation on your part and may therefore be considered an investment. How you can repay it is open for interpretation. A Christian might claim you must worship God; a Buddhist that you must reduce the suffering of others. But all should agree that whatever the means you choose to repay your debt with, it must be founded upon a deep appreciation of your gift. I'm the last to contend this and the first to condemn any person who fails to show gratitude for anything that warrants it (if this weren't true I couldn’t presume to be an optimist, which I've professed to be and still do). I believe it's perfectly natural to do so, and it's one of the poor outcomes of the complexities of modern human life that some people have lost the ability for it though it's inherent in us all. But absolute laws exist only in civilization and not in nature, and thus don't extend to this requirement to express gratitude.

Fifteen years ago I lost quite a foolish bet to a group of friends. This loss entailed a month's work milking cows at a local dairy farm. It was the first time I'd come in contact with live dairy cows, and it was as repugnant as what we'd expected when setting the terms of the bet. But what I wasn't prepared to handle was the cows' misery. They were caged for the vast majority of their lives and were milked quite violently several times a day. It became evident to me after a few days that this caused them not only physical pain but tremendous emotional distress. They suffered greatly through every second of their miserable existence and their only chance of relief was when their produce decreased to a certain cutoff point that rendered them no more profitable for milking, at which point they were carried off the farm to a slaughterhouse. And if normally a mother should be able to find comfort for all the woes of the world in simple motherhood, for the cows the prospect of giving birth was perhaps the most terrible of all. You see, several hours after the dairy cows gave birth to their calves the latter would be taken away from them so they wouldn't consume from the milk their mothers produced for them. Mother and baby would never be reunited again, and I doubt a human mother's pain from being separated from her baby could be any more intense than that of the cows. Motherhood was no relief but the worst part of their hopeless lives. One would think that cows are dumb animals that have no self-consciousness and no ability to grasp the concept of their being a future that will eventually become the present. But while I'm no expert on the field and haven't a clue as to how they compare with other animals, I can say with complete certainty that they were very well aware of what they were going through and of the future that awaited them. Nature had designed them with a strong survival instinct, but they knew that their survival would only bring them endless pain. It took me about two weeks to first witness the solution a few of them came up with for their unimaginable plight.

All the cows were kept in a large shed in small spaces in which they had to carry out all their daily functions (mostly giving milk). They were crowded there by the hundreds, each held in her place by having her head wedged in between two vertical bars that held her by the neck. How the people get the cow's head through the narrow gap between the bars is beyond me, but it's all but impossible to get it back out without making some special maneuvers facilitated by the capable hands of someone who knows what they're doing. So the cows are stuck there, head between the bars, their bodies heavy and weakened by the accelerated production of milk. They are almost completely immobile, and they are released only to give birth and to be slaughtered (as mentioned, the first may very well be the one more dreaded by them). Most cows simply accepted their bleak fates and, having been confronted with the futility of resistance, went through the repeated cycle of suffering without any or with very little protest. It was a rather reasonable reaction, though very disheartening to see. One's heart always goes out to the underdog, to the oppressed and afflicted, to find light where there is only darkness (as was, literally, the case in the shed), but for the cows the darkness seemed to stretch on indefinitely. They knew it. They knew it through their own daily experience, through their witnessing of all the other cows in the shed, and not least of all through the abuse they suffered at the hands of the only beings they were allowed contact with (me and my colleagues). So a few of them would, without warning, occasionally turn to their last resort in an attempt to put an end to their suffering. A last resort must never be turned to lightly, but one must not be afraid to turn to it when the time is right. The cows' last resort was to force their head back out between the vertical bars. As mentioned before, this was an almost impossible thing to do without considerable outside help; but the cows were willing to make a great sacrifice to accomplish it. When one doesn't value one's life, a whole new range of possibilities is unfolded. This was precisely the case of our cows: for hours they would use the weight of their enormous bodies to force their heads to squeeze in a space that was narrower than the full width of their skulls. This was done not without the infliction of a great amount of pain, but what is a few hours' intense physical pain compared with a lifetime of gradual bodily and spiritual breakdown!

We called those bold cows that made these attempts 'Suicides', as they always entailed one of two consequences: either the cows were caught on time and forced to cease, or they would make it through the bars at the cost of severe head injuries that would require us to send them directly to slaughter. Could they anticipate these inevitable outcomes? Perhaps; especially the ones who'd witnessed others go through the process. But even if they didn't, there was nothing worse for them than to stay alive in the conditions they were being held. So they found relief in death.

What is better, life or death? It's of course a very popular answer, though only for those who haven't been subjected to more than a certain measure of suffering and hopelessness, that life is always the better of the two. They are the ones who appreciate life (or dread death), and on their side is the very obvious and always valid argument that life will always be followed by death, so why give up the first?

But what happens when every moment of one's life is beset with such suffering as can't be escaped or borne, and when respite can only be found in death? When the termination of the suffering is equivalent to the termination of life? Every bad thing comes to an end, but sometimes that end is death. Sometimes one's suffering is so great, and the hope of it ever coming to an end and giving way to some measure of joy so slim, that it becomes a mathematical error to choose life.

Do you think that you have never made such choices? We all have, we all do, and we all will whenever the circumstances so ask of us. How many times have you been in a tough spot and wished that time passed and the hardship be over with? How often do people bear through an entire week of hard work, wishing only for the arrival of the weekend? Anyone who has undergone a serious injury or the loss of a close one should know the feeling of wishing a significant amount of time to pass until relief can finally be found. Then why stop at a week, a month, or a few years? When life itself is the source of one's suffering, and respite can only be reasonably found in death, why not wish for it?

Only a fool doesn't do all in his power to fulfill his own wishes. What point was there for the cows in the farm to keep living? What's the point of me doing so?

 

 

Scathed

 

Don't cry for me just yet. Or if you are the cynical kind with a heart callous to the pain of others, hold your tirade; for my streak of misery hasn't yet been fully unraveled. In fact, by the time the most ancient of my misfortunes described above took place I was already victim of a particular injustice, which for others would alone constitute sufficient cause for significant distress. To me it eventually became the least of my worries, but you won't comprehend the full gravity of my plight until you've become thoroughly familiar with it.

Let me take you directly to the eye of the storm without loitering on the accumulation of the clouds or the early forecasts. It was a balmy day with perfectly clear skies and a great sense of celebration in the air. Yes, I used to have such days; not very long ago I was as jolly and bouncy as any man you've ever known. And I ask myself today, is that terrific sunny day the one that marked the transformation from dream life to the 23rd floor balcony? It all began when the boss, Mr. Croningen (a