Sold

The van pulls up the driveway to a massive wear house. There are multiple men in black uniforms walking around the warehouse. They are all armed to the teeth with fully automatic weapons. "Gary, we got four tonight." So says the boss out his window to one of the guards in front of the door.

He signals the men to open the door and let the men inside, nodding his head.

The massive doors swing open, and the men are greeted by hundreds of cages full of kids from all over the country. They keep driving until some men in white coats stop them.

"Bring them over to that cage.' Says the man.

Nodding, he moves about 40 feet to an empty cage." Alright, boys, grab the kids and put them on the blankets, make sure not to wake them." The men nod as they open their doors and grab the kids.

They bring them over to the cage and set them on a pile of many blankets. 'Alright, our job is done, lets's get the hell out of here."

As the men leave, a man can be seen wearing an expensive suit; he has short red hair and a very sun-tanned complexion. He looks over the cages and starts counting in his head the worth of the kids in the cells. He clicks his tongue in displeasure.

"Only about half a billion, the men are getting slower, or people are starting to be better parents." Finally, the man speaks out loud. A very tall bald man sitting in the corner raises his head from the magazine he was reading in a leather chair.

"The men have not been slower, boss. They are just as good as always. It's that are starting to grow enough balls to raise their kids." the red-haired man glances at his right-hand man and comes to a decision.

"I have received a deal recently that might benefit us." The red hair man speaks as he turns on his heels and starts to pace back and forth.

"Some men from Russia have been selling a new drug that has no withdrawal effect no matter how long you are on it, even though there is no withdraw effect the people that take it still get addicted fast."

Says the man as he looks up and stares at his right-hand man. "Starting next month, I want the drug in circulation; I'll supply the men with it. You send it out among the people. You need to send it to the right spot."

"The bald man shows no reaction. "yes, boss," he says as he starts to look at the magazine again. The man walks back to the large window.

"This is why I like you so much, jack, you just do as I say with no complaint. Starting tomorrow, you are getting a raise." The bald man looks up, nods, and gets back to reading. This time, he has a smile on his face. At the same time, the redhead man smiles as he looks out among the cages.

***

Hearing the sounds of heavy machinery, the boy's eyes flutter open. At first, he is disoriented and confused by the bright lights and the loud sounds. Finally, he sits up and looks around. He sees cages upon cages of kids also peering out of them. Their faces show everything from crying to deadpan.

Not understanding what is going on due to his age, he sits down and waits for his mother. Since she was still probably he had no reason to think otherwise, there was no reason for her to be anywhere else.

Soon some men in white showed up. They opened the cage and brought him with them. "Where is my mommy?" The boy asked with a soft voice.

"She has decided to leave you in our care for a while." So says the one to the right. "She isn't feeling well and needs us to look after you for a long while."

"Okay." the boy says with a smile, happy since these men know his mother, everything should be okay.

After a while of walking in the prominent place, they stop at the door. The door swings open with a creak allowing the men to get inside.

As soon as they step inside, they are greeted with the smells and sounds of chemicals and children crying. Some of them have wounds that are currently being taken care of by men in white.

"Why are they hurt." The boys askes the man on the right.

"They were naughty, and they were punished."Oh." Traces of a frown appear on the boy's face as the man on the right picks him up and places him down on a hospital bed.

"Since your mother was in such a hurry to leave, she didn't give us your name. Can you tell us what it is?" The man on the left asked. With a deadpan face.

"My mother just called me boy. I have never been called anything else."

"Oh." Both men look at the kid pondering and then look at the charts. They go to a nearby computer and start clicking away. Eventually, they stop looking at the screen and turn back with a smile on their faces.

"Your birth certificate has said some weird stuff, mate, and according to the state, your name is Inut. It's a weird name, but we will just start calling you that, okay?" The boy ponders over the new word he just learned were his name.

"Hmm, okay, you can call me that. I don't mind." The men smile and say.

"Okay, inut, after we do a check-up, we are going to have you stand in line with those kids in line over there like at school." They point to the kids standing by a door.

"I have never been to a school before." inut says with a strange look on his face.

For a brief moment, the men have something akin to sadness pass over their faces.

"Okay." They say in unison as they begin to check his pulse. After they are done making sure he is a healthy boy, they urge him over to the line.

Looking back at the men, he thinks of something. After the thought, he looks at the other kids and all the foreign men walking around shooing kids into place and checking their vital signs.

He looks back at the men in white. "My mommy isn't coming, is she?" A terrifying light of enlightenment passes over his eyes. Hot tears start to fall down his cheeks. The men in white look at him.

"No." The boy bites his lip and looks down. After this, he goes mute. Having no more energy to say anything,

***

After the inut realized that his mother wasn't coming and that he was most likely abandoned. He goes in a daze, mostly out of shock and fear. Days pass with him barely noticing. Abruptly he is brought back to his senses by a shouting man.

"10,000, 12,000 do see 13,000? The man looked around and slammed his hammer down. "SOLD TO THE GENTLEMAN IN THE BACK FOR 12,000."

The people around him clap their hands with enthusiasm. The chains around his hands led him away from the stage after the man stopped shouting. He is brought outside to a truck. After a slight sting, his vision goes dark.

The boy's eyes open, he rolls over and bumps his head on a pair of feet. He looks up. There is another boy there.

They don't say anything. The boy merely glances at everyone in the truck. He counts on his fingers and comes up with the number nine, nine kids either sleeping or looking at the ground.

As soon as he wakes up, the truck comes to an abrupt stop. Skidding on the dirt outside for a few seconds to the momentum. Soon the truck doors open. Men with large guns usher the kids outside.

Made to march single file, the kids are brought to a hole in the ground, where you can hear the clanging and loud sounds of rock breaking.

Men shout and holler instructions. They are met with two doors inside the hole going to two different rooms. Led inside the rooms, the men hand the boys' thick clothes,

"Put them on. It gets cold around here at night." The boys listen, not being able to do anything, they rush to put them on.

"Alright, follow me." The boys nod and say okay. "Since you're too young yet to mine for diamonds yourself, you are going to be carrying the random rocks and other stuff that gets chipped off the mining operation."

The boys start to cry, realizing that they are going to do nothing but work. *Bang* The boys hear a loud sound, slightly disoriented, with their ears buzzing. They stopped crying, fearing that the loud sound would happen again.

They pick up the baskets and sacks around them with nothing else to do. The lucky ones got a wheelbarrow.

They went deeper into the mines where the clanking and the sound of breaking rock were happing. They got there. Multiple men with large pickaxes were sweating hard, breaking the stone.

The boys already knew what they needed to do started picking up rocks and bringing them up to other boys that would just toss them into trucks.

****

Months passed, then years, and time moved very fast for inut. Following a rhythm that lasted years, his mind went somewhere else.

He kept himself occupied by counting rocks. After he got bored of that, he counted the boys that would leave and never be seen again and the new boys that started to come in.

At first, after the first couple months, the number was only in the forties, but after the men decided to expand the business and start digging another hole, the boys coming was increased to a hundred a month on average.

One day the boy was carrying rocks. He brought them up to the trucks. His appearance was gaunt, barely being able to eat for the last five years was detrimental to his growing-up period and stunted his growth.

He wasn't much taller than when he came. He drops the bag and looks around. His eye catches something. On the edge of one of the many overhangs, he sees a man with a boy that looks to be around the same age as him.

The boy is quite fat and has a smile on his face. The man standing next to the boy was pointing all over the mine. Inut was watching this and felt an emotion come over him that he hadn't felt before.

Anger is what he felt, he did not know why he was angry. Being underfed, his brain never managed to develop properly. He was still a five-year-old boy inside, a smart five-year-old but five nonetheless.

"Unfair that you get to stand there while I stand here." Were his thoughts as he collapsed to the ground."

The work had finally caught up with him, and the boy that had nothing lost the last thing he never knew he had. As he is dying, all that surfaces in his mind is the act of carrying rocks and working nonstop.

Until one final memory pops into his head, it's of his mother. He starts to laugh while he is passing. "She sold me like cattle, am I worth nothing? I cannot accept this to be all I am worth."

Inut glared at the boy with redding eyes. "I hate you, I hate this world, but more than anything else I hate being weak." Inut raged.

Then death came and it was cold, but his heart was warm with hate.