A Gray Life: a novel Read Online Free PDF

a word. Finally, she led me to her bedroll where she pulled out a small paring knife from the folds of her blankets.
    Possession of a weapon was against His rules, and punishable by death. Everyone knew it, and few disputed the rule. She held the knife out to me, but I wouldn’t take it.
    “Why do you have that?” I stared at the knife as if it were alive, and it seemed that way. Just having it out in the open made me nervous, and it upset Erin too.
    “He didn’t notice I took it, one time, after…” elaborating on ‘one time’ was unnecessary, and Erin continued, “I took it for me! I thought I might need it. I didn’t want to end up like Mom, but I couldn’t go on like I was either. Then--,” she gestured at the unmoving roll of tarp at the foot of the stairs, “I saw that poor bastard, dead, and I’m not ready. Not ready to die like that, or like Seth, or like Mom, or Dad.” There, she seemed like she might cry. Later that night, I heard sniffles from her, but nothing more. She’ll be okay now, I hope.
    The knife stayed in her bedroll. There’s no where else for us to keep it. Such a small thing, but it’s burning under the blanket, a red siren hidden in plain sight.
    A sickening thought, but I’m glad the dead man served a purpose, if only to make Erin want to live. An even sicker thought, but I’m glad she wants to live, because it means I won’t be alone. Rolling the dead man in tarp was like second nature, but it made me think more on our first days here.
    I can remember my parents huddling with me and Erin in a corner. They tried to shield us kids from the Man’s view. He laughed before taking Erin to the kill room for the first time. Dad tried to stop him, but got punched in the jaw.
    I didn’t know what he was doing with my sister, couldn’t imagine. Mostly I wanted to know why. Was he questioning her? Was he taking her away forever?
    Thirty minutes later, He came out and dragged my mother into the room too. Screaming, moaning, and grunting. They must have been going through rigorous training, or an obstacle course from the sound of it. The noises really bothered my father, who covered his ears with his hands the way I used to do during scary movies. It was funny, but really, too strange to be truly funny.
    Later, but not much later, my mother and Erin stumbled from the Kill room, wiping away tears. Bruises bloomed on their arms and necks. No wonder they had been screaming; he hurt them. I couldn’t have known everything then, not when the gist of my sexual education consisted of glimpses at my mom’s fashion magazines.
    The Man exited the kill room after them, a big smile on his face. He nonchalantly zipped up his pants and headed back up the basement stairs.
    To His back, my father was screaming curses, pleading with him.
    “Let us go!”
    * * * *  
    July 21st
    I woke up today with a boner. Dad explained to me the basics of what to expect as “a man”, and he told me to look out for morning wood. The term made me laugh back then, and it still sounds funny, but not as funny as Gary’s term for it: a hard-pecker sunrise.
    Getting a sunrise woody is a big deal down here because there’s no goshdarn way to hide it. At home, I could wake up, marvel at my hardened gizmo, and it would go away after my morning pee. Here, it’s hard (haha, pun totally intended) to make it to the bathroom first, and to get there, I have to walk past everyone. Before I get out of my bedroll, I have to conjure up the most heinous images I can to get my guy to wilt. Usually, I give a good long (pun again intended) look at the Wasters, and it goes away. Today, it worked like always, but not before my sister whispered,
    “Jeez, bout to poke some eyes out, brother?”
    I covered up best I could, but I couldn’t cover up my deep humiliation.
    The one thing to take the stink off of me was the news.
    Newbies. A buzz is going around the basement about the newbies The Man brought home last night. We knew He had gone