ADOLESCENT.

I laid in the tall grass in the heat of the summer. Sun blazing onto my skin. I roll over covering my eyes as I can hear the annoying village girl running to her house. I stand up and see a corpse. Twelve years old looking at my first rotten corpse, smelling my first rotten corpse, touching my first rotten corpse. I can admit seeing it was experiencing, we had battled there often. The men would do two or three-day cleanups but sometimes missed bodies that sat out here in the field just looked at it. My mother tried to comfort me about the trauma. My father on the other hand was saying this about the time I saw my first dead man. I went to my room still thinking about how I fell into it with his guts open and the blood was every even in my mouth. I could still taste it.

The next day I woke up for school I noticed that I had one strand one white hair standing out from my natural black. I walked to the tiny school we had. We learned basic things like how to count and perform daily tasks. It wasn't organized or modern like in the west. There was one kid named Todo. He was bigger than the other kids. So he liked to do what he wanted to and the few educators we had were just a collection of female elders so they never stopped him. Aki, the annoying girl, happened to reject him and started talking to me. He walked over to us and looked Aki dead in the eyes. " I hate you!" Hitting her dead in the nose. Sending her stumbling back falling on herself. He had tears streaming down his face. Swinging again this time at me. My face crashing into the floor after my 90-pound body was hit by the full force of a six-foot fourteen-year-old. He kicked me twice before I grabbed dirt and pebbles and threw it in his eyes to make him stop. I stood up crying myself as he stuttered back, wiping his eyes. I tucked my chin and squared my stance raising my hands. Trying to imitate what my father did to the old man across the street when they had an argument. I hit him straight and hard not with everything I had but it was not hard enough to make him not keep attacking. POUNDING! My right first flies into his nose. It's cracked and has shards of bone poking out of it. I put my hands down to my fists and stared at him silently. He huffed and puffed and hyperventilated at a distance, finally calming down and just started crying about his nose. A few older kids came around to try to stop us but it was already over. I felt like I was still radioactive. Nothing could calm me down so I just left. They let me go.