Fight to Survive

A sturdy, solid desk sits towards the back of the room. A single light bulb illuminates the harsh brown of the solid desk – looking as though it has seen far better days in the past, but has never lost any of what made it so sturdy in the first place. The wood stain has long since faded, and faded unevenly, while the handles on the drawers have long since fallen off.

Upon the inner legs of the desk, two shackles secure feeble legs. The color has left the skin, partly due to dehydration and partly due to the extreme pressure ensuring the man cannot move. The chair the man sits within is significantly weathered as well, and while it has a back it looks as though it would fall apart the moment someone applied any real force onto it. For the better, then, the man's wrists were also shackled to the top of the desk – a bit wider than shoulder width, and far enough forward that it forced the man to hunch over the dulled, rock solid desk. The mans head twists back and forth as he tries to find rest, but his hunger and his thirst combined with the awkward seating position make it impossible.

A bowl scrapes across the table. That's when the man noticed the texture. The wood had dried out so much that the wood grain created an actual texture upon the surface of the desk, and with each groove the bowl slid across there was an audible scrrrr that followed. He had noticed, but long since forgot, that the grooves were making an imprint on whichever part of his face was touching the table at the time, all the while covering his entire forearms.

The man lifts his head as high as he can, which is only an inch or so above the bowl, while the bowl continues under his face. It is just water. Clear, clean looking water, but there was no food. The mans face tumbles slightly towards the water, and he begins to lick it up as though he was a dog.

“This is what it feels like to be poor,” a voice says with firm conviction. “You wouldn't know anything about that. Not yet.”

The man is too stuck in the moment of how amazing the taste of water is, but just as he begins to feel a calm set in he hears a trickle. The trickle then turns into a full stream and the water turns warm where it once was cold.

“I should rephrase – this is what it feels like to be poor.”

The smell of piss fills his nose before the taste sets in. He had drank just enough pure water to survive a bit longer, but the taste of piss makes his spit out the remnants of what is in his mouth.

The man looks up to see another man standing before him. He is a tall, skinny man with a well trimmed beard and slightly long hair, pulled behind his ears. The new man is wearing a nicer pair of jeans – not the kind you'd spend hundreds of dollars on, but a good pair of solid built and comfortable jeans, along with a button up shirt that looks like a person would buy if they didn't know what the best button up shirts were, yet still good enough to make an impression.

“For the sake of conversation, you can call me Y,” The man's face has now entered into the light. His face was a bit worn, but not terribly so. The man strapped to the desk thought for a moment and realized that they had to have been roughly the same age, but Y looked more exhausted than he imagined himself. “I am going to call you B.”

“W...Wh...Why?” The word came out slow, light, airy almost, and scratchy.

“Yes. That's right. Y is what you will call me.”

Y took a plate and slid it, just as slow and screeching as the bowl, across the desk and in front of B's face. It was a piece of bread. Plain, simple, white bread. B looks it over for a brief period of time and for a second thinks to himself about how he despises white bread, but then the pang of hunger sets in. He lowers his head just enough to take the first bite of the bread and nearly chokes on how the bleached bread tastes. He doesn't stop eating, though.

Y snatches the plate from in front of B and takes the remaining bread from his mouth. A feeling of absolute defeat sets into B as he begins to realize how his entire life is in the control of this man – one he feels doesn't even know how to dress properly.

“Don't worry. You'll get the bread back. It just looked like you weren't enjoying it very much so I wanted to make it... more tolerable for you.” B can't make out what Y is doing to the bread, but it resembles what he remembers it looking like when he would spread cream over the top of his bagels. Yes, he was putting a spread of some sort over the top of his bread.

“Here you go, B.”

Be took another bite as the plate arrived in front of his face. It did taste better, but the taste was only vaguely familiar to him. It definitely didn't taste healthy as best as he could tell, but his hunger was more than he had ever felt before.

“When I was a child, B. When I was a child, my father would tell me a story about how 'bread, butter, and water' was all a human needed to live off of.” There was a bit of anger in Y's voice, but it was suppressed in a way that B could never imagine a person using. “You see, I would complain to him about how hungry I was while eating bread and butter. I would complain because I would see all the food in the grocery store, yet we would be lucky to be getting eggs with our bread and butter.”

“Bull... shit.” B stammered to say.

“Bullshit? Yes, B. It is bullshit. See, it is bullshit that someone would have to live their life in such a way. It is bullshit that a child would be forced to eat bread and butter for their meals.”

“No... yo..ur... story... is... bull... shit.”

“Oh, no, B. No, B, it is absolutely not bullshit. And this is just the start of my story, you see.”

Y takes the bowl of pissy water and throws it to the side before walking away. B's mouth was an odd mixture of being dry from the dehydration and the little bit of moisture from the butter and pissy water he was able to drink.

A bowl slides across the table again – pure water again, but this time tasting as though it came from a tap. B notices at this point that the previous water – before it got pissed in, at least – had to have been bottled water. B is too busy drinking the water and trying to finish off the piece of bread to notice that Y walked away once again.

The screech of a metal chair sliding across a concrete floor rattles B away from the food and drink long enough for him to see Y approaching again.

“Now, B, I am going to tell you a bit more about my childhood.”

“But... why?” B's voice was more firm now – still very weak, but his mouth was now hydrated enough to not crack as he was speaking.

“Well, B, that's a good question and we'll get there. Eventually. First, however, I feel we need to get to a deeper understanding of one another.” Y pauses, takes a deep breathe as he looks at his watch – B being able to tell immediate that it is a cheap watch of maybe a hundred dollars or so and definitely not something that would be flaunted at the parties he'd frequent.

“Oh, you like this watch? I love this watch.”

“No. It looks like a cheap knock-off.”

“Well, it isn't a Rolex, but it is the best I could afford.” Y puts his feet at the edge of the desk in front of B, leans back in the metal chair, and folds his arms. “My mother walked out of my family when I was five. I don't remember it much because I was too young, but can you imagine being a five year old and not having a mother? That's not the important part, though. The important part was my father. You see, he worked as a mechanic. Long days. Very long days, and not really any money in it, either.”

“The mechanics I know... they make good money.”

“Oh, yes. The mechanics at Audi dealers. I'm sure they do, but you're missing the point of where I grew up. I grew up in a place where the average household income is so low that you could go years without even seeing an entry level Audi, and when you did you knew that it would only be for them to stop and ask for directions. Where did you grow up? You don't have to answer, I already know you grew up in one of the richest counties of the state you were born in. I also know it is one of the wealthiest states in the country, even though it is one of the smallest states as well.”

“What's your point?”

“My point is simple – we can't control where we are born, or what family we are born into, and in order for someone like me to reach where you start at financially, or with the connections you have, I have to work ten times harder than you will ever have to work.”

“You're fucking crazy. Everyone is born with nothing.”

Y lunges forward with speed and precision that B had never seen in his life. A flicker of the light reflects off of something metal, but it happens so quickly that it simply can't register what happened. Until the pain set in, and B notices a blade that rests right behind where his left hand used to be. B screams out in total pain and misery, but the shackles are still too tight for him to be able to move his arms or legs to get away. Y lifts the blade out of the table, wipes it off with a cloth, and the grabs a portable blow torch and begins heating the blade. B is losing blood fast, and his already weak body and frame cause him to pass out. The color begins to escape, not just the points that are so tightly shackled to the deck, but also his face and body. As the blade begins to glow red, Y slams it onto the open wound. B wakes to the pain of his wound being cauterized and yells a blood curdling scream that seemingly comes from a world far beyond that of our own. Y has no reaction, as though he was expecting this all along.

“Well, since you're not really grasping the very simplistic concepts I'm laying down before you, I guess I'm going to have to give you a more physical representation. This hand you just lost, while it is your left hand - and you're right handed – it still puts you at a disadvantage for pretty much everything you will do for the rest of your life. That's pretty much what being born poor is.”

“See, things you take for granted – buying nice shoes to go with your dress pants and fitted shirt – driving in nice, luxurious cars – being able to even afford a car payment, no matter how big or how small – these are the things people born poor will have to slave away for just to get a glimpse at. You were born with the ability to explore those options pretty much immediately. Have you ever tried getting a job using clothes you had to buy at a thrift store? Let me tell you, even the nicest ones you'll find won't fit right, and when you're competing for a job who has fitted everything then it doesn't matter if better qualified. The better looking person gets the job nine times out of ten.”

B, while panting and still catching his breath, says, “Maybe... Maybe you're just... not as qualified... as... you think....”

“Heh,” with a pause, seemingly contemplating what he is about to say, Y looks B dead in the eyes. “I have more practical experience than you. I scored higher on the job's evaluation exam. I have more education than you do. My whole life was riding on that job. Now...” The pause is followed by a calm in Y's voice. “You're still not getting it.”

“What's there to get?” B says, still panting between every word with tears running down his agonized face. “You're a fucking psychopath.”

“Yeah... maybe I am. Or maybe I just broke the moment I lost everything I had ever worked so hard for in my life while I watched someone like you cruise through life without any real hardships.”

“Oh, I've got hardships. I can barely afford my house payment right now because my wife lost her job.”

“Your house payment you can barely afford is more than all the bills I have combined, and thanks to not getting this job we both applied for, I'm losing all of that, too. My student loan bills have to get paid. I have medical bills to pay. Those are both things you had paid for before you were even born. Those are two things you've never had to deal with in your life.”

“Maybe you should have worked harder.” B's voice was weak, but self assured.

“Worked harder?” Y pauses again, lost in thought again. “When I was a six year old child, I had to learn how to make food for my siblings and myself so we could eat. I was the oldest, so at six I learned how to mix baby formula for my youngest sister. For our middle brother and myself, I learned how to make grilled cheeses and instant type noodles just to ensure we would survive. By the time I was eight, I was also cleaning the house on top of those things and all while maintaining my grades in school. I was working plenty hard enough, it is just that all my work was to survive.”

B interjects. “I wanted a dirt bike when I was ten. You know what I did? I mowed my lawn and my parents paid me twenty dollars every time. By the end of the summer, I had my dirt bike.” B's voice was still crackling and weak, but he was still cock sure.

“B, do you know why I mowed my lawn? I mowed my lawn because if I didn't, we'd have gotten kicked out of our rental. My dad wasn't around to mow the lawn because he was working over twelve hours a day just to give me the money so buy groceries for my family and so he could pay the bills. Let me ask you this, B – can you even begin to understand what it is like to not have money floating around?”

“You could have mowed other people's lawns.”

“With what time, B? You have a kid, between the ages of 8 and all the way into his teens, doing all the cooking, cleaning, mowing the lawn, and still going to school. There was no extra time to make money on the side.” For the first time, it appears that B is starting to grasp concepts that Y is putting on the table for him. “I have never asked for a handout,” B says with conviction.

“Neither have I, but the difference between us is that you without a handout still equaled far, far, far more than what I could have ever obtained without a handout.”

“People who don't work hard enough don't deserve an education. People who don't work hard enough don't deserve healthcare. I shouldn't have to be the one who pays for lazy pieces of shit to survive.”

“From where I am sitting, you're the lazy piece of shit. You see, we went to college together. We were in the same programs together. While I was out doing internships and busting my ass in the field to get experiences, you were getting drunk and raping women. Of course, daddy's money paid lawyers to get you off those charges. Those women, though.. those women were my friends, the women who I admired, yet looked at me as someone beneath them. Maybe I am, I never held their perspectives against them – not everyone is right for everyone else and that's all a part of growing up and discovering who we are. They all adored you, though, and you drugged them and made a game out of them.” Y looks deeply into B's face again, seeing a wash of shame come over his eyes as B's eyes fall to the table, unable to look Y eye to eye. “From where I am sitting, you're the lazy one. While I was working fast food and retail jobs, using my breaks from those jobs to cram for tests and do homework, you could be heard talking about how you'd never work retail or fast food because it was beneath you. So self absorbed that you couldn't even acknowledge that those jobs are harder than any job you've ever had mowing lawns or working for daddy dearest.”

B is silent. Y can't tell if he is hearing what he is saying or if something he has already said has struck a chord and gotten lost inside him, but Y can't find a means to stop himself any longer.

“It is people like you, people who've never sacrificed anything in their lives to survive. People who've never had to worry about a single fucking thing, yet believe they are somehow more entitled to living a good life that makes this world such a shitty place to live for people like me. People who like you who believe that a dollar is more valuable than a human life. It is people like you that make people like me commit suicide in record numbers today.”

B, still looking into the table for answers, hears the metal chair being shoved away from the two of them. Y sits on the ground in front of the desk, his chin level with the top of the desk, reaches over and slaps B across the face. “Pay attention now, because this is how you survive.” B's eyes line up with Y's. “I'm going to put a gun in your right hand. It has one bullet in it. One. You are going to blow my fucking brains out onto the floor, and when that happens you'll be set free from these shackles.” B closes his eyes as tightly as he can as the driest tears he can muster form in the corners. He feels the handle of a gun slide into his grasp and he tries to turn his wrist towards himself; however, there is not enough give in the shackle. B weeps as he feels the gun push back into his hand. “Do it.” B's finger tightens on the trigger as he thinks of a way to get out of this situation, but he knows there isn't one. He knows his life is forever changed whether he dies in these shackles or pulls the trigger – he must live with the choices he has made, even when he knew not of the consequences of his actions as he was making those choices. Would he be able to ever go back to his life, living as though none of this ever happened? Would he be able to blind to how his actions impact those he'll never meet? Will he ever be able to walk past another homeless person and look down on them for where they are in life?

He knew his life would never be the same, but he pulled the trigger anyway. For the first time in his life, he had to fight to survive.

-Dustin S. Stover