Dead Men Walking

Sterling (One)

I was born a dead man; walking the earth considered nothing more then a corpse.

Without a death date I have no rights, I am dead. The heart beat in my chest means nothing to them, for there is no date tattooed to my bare skin.

There's blood in my veins and it runs like theirs, it's red just like theirs, trust me, I've seen it.

I can hear the slurs whispered around me, and I can feel their judging stares. They called us stills just because we were born dead in their eyes.

I can see the invisible scars on my skin left from their sharp tongues and their cruel words.

I can still feel.

I can still feel.

I was less then a month old when I was sold into the black market.

I was stuck in a steel cage, and left to my own devices, rarely being fed, and always abused.

I can still feel the cartilage fracturing as my fist crashes into my handlers face.

And I can still feel the lashes I got for it.

I can still feel.

Every moment I can feel the cage, it's rough bars pressing into my bare skin.

I can still feel the chilling silence of the prisoners around me, scared to act out in fear of punishment.

I can still feel the moment rough fingers ripped me from my cage and threw me to the ring.

I can still feel the loose dirt under my fingers, and looking up I can still see the greedy men passing crumpled bills to and fro.

I can still feel the much larger and more experienced men beating me to the ground covered in bruises and blood.

I can still feel.

That's the thing though, I could still feel, so I learned to fight back, and I became the best.

I was eleven when my handlers threw me to the ground in front of a well dressed man and woman.

I didn't know what to do.

Years in the ring taught me to never underestimate someone, but the tender and soft look in the woman's eyes threw me off.

The single tear that fell down her slim cheek startled me. I stood slowly and waited.

When she wrapped her arms around me I was shocked. And she whispered that from then on, in her arms I would safe.

For the first in a long time, I cried.

Because I can still feel.

I later found out that they had bought me. I was sold as property. My price was most of their fortune.

I grew to love them. I grew to accept them as my mother and father.

And they accepted me.

When I was fifteen my father died.

When I was sixteen my mother became ill, and to pay for her medication I had to rejoin the ring.

I was still the best.

After years of not stepping foot to the ring, the primal urge was still there, the survival instinct still intact.

The worst part was part I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the challenge and the soreness of my body afterwards.

And it sickened me because a part of me was addicted to it. A part of me would never leave the ring.

A part of me would forever be embedded in the loose bloodstained dirt.

Sometimes I had to kill them. Sometimes I couldn't stop.

It was just a rushing in my head and a foggieness clouding my better judgements.

It was these moments that scared me the most.

Sometimes it was unavoidable, but the deaths took their toll on me. Their begs for mercy will echo in my vacant mind.

And their blood that stains my hands, though long ago washed off, will forever be etched into my memory.

Their deaths though, they will be forgotten, because to everyone else, they were already dead.

They were like me, and I killed them.

I took their lives mercilessly in order to preserve mine.

They begged me to stop as their blood spilled onto the dirt and they looked at me with pained eyes.

But I could always see just a little relief in their eyes.

They knew they were already dead, and the sweet release from this world brought a little happiness.

I dreamed about that release sometimes too. Leaving this world would be a gift. I was already dead wasn't I?

There was no death date for me, that meant I wasn't alive.

There was no date my life would end.

They think of people with no dates as wild cards, people they can't control.

So they degrade us, label us less then human.

I think thats why so many of us go rogue, actually.

If you keep telling someone that they are something wrong and horrible, then eventually they begin to believe the cruel words spoken.

I am a dead man walking, but that doesn't mean I have to live into the peoples stereotypes.