Side Story: Hell on Earth
Chapter 101
The Second Stronghold
The victims of genocide were countless, and no one asks any more questions. No one noticed that Dang Khong was looking up at the moonlight... except... Aunt Favor Grace.
That saturnine fellow gazed at the moon, yearning for someone from the past. The moonlight in his eyes reflected a scene of scarcity; it was a memory of hunger and thirst that grew more severe day by day.
The Hive deliberately withheld food from the remote evacuation villages back then. At that time, what people ate wasn't enough to fill their stomachs, let alone provide nutrition. Parents could only watch as their children became skin and bones, weak and sickly due to mistreatment, weeping in indignant despair day after day.
The evacuees were afraid of starving to death and were forced to scavenge for anything edible around the village: sweet potato vines, cassava leaves, bamboo shoots, wild spinach—they didn't even spare the unblossomed cotton buds.
In the beginning, there were many toads and frogs in the village. Maria stuffed all the living creatures she caught during the day into cloth bags and tied them tightly, letting them struggle to death inside.
At night, she pulled them out, chopped off their heads, and boiled them after a simple cleaning. Soon, before these toads and frogs could mate and reproduce, the evacuees had eaten them all.
Hunger robbed people of their strength and brought unjust treatment. Rations were always calculated per household. During registration, the village elder forcibly combined Pear and Maria into one household. Thus, Maria's family could only receive one portion of rations instead of two.
At that time, the rations received by the old citizens were twice those of the new citizens. During the weeks of the Great Famine, the old citizens guarded their stockpiles and mocked the new citizens triumphantly:
"Serves you hungry ghosts right for being greedy! You fools who do not store up grain!"
The saturnine fellow with the scar sat to the right of the crude man, poured wine into a large bowl, downed it in one go, and cursed loudly:
- After the three-month harvest, rations were doubled. Back then, the new citizens were given two tins of rice, and the old citizens were given four. They treated this as the principle of fairness. Principle my ass! The bitch that gave birth to them! Fuck it, at that time a new citizen had one bowl of rice while an old citizen had two. The new citizens could only drink porridge so thin you could see the bottom, while the old citizens and those mongrel soldiers ate until their faces were slick with grease. If a new citizen wanted to eat their fill, they had to trade valuables. Originally, every family brought a lot of things, but at every checkpoint, those rebels stole a little. In just one month, my family's fortune was plundered clean.
It was all an endless cycle, imprisoning the evacuees until death. After two or three months, Maria's family had almost nothing left, save for a blanket, a mosquito net (precious beyond measure with mosquitoes buzzing all night), and a few essentials like clothes and dishes. With no more valuables left to barter, the challenges ahead became increasingly brutal and cruel.
A series of thorny issues greatly exacerbated the famine, the worst of which was hygiene. Maria's family no longer had soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, or toothpaste to care for their bodies.
The whole family had to scrub their teeth with salt or sand. Returning from work in the evening, the evacuees went to the river to bathe and wash the filth from their clothes. Maria only had two skirts and two shirts dyed black; she had no underwear.
Aunt Favor Grace picked up a stalk of rice from the ground, pinched off the remaining grains, and snapped the stem with a firm press of her fingertips:
- November was the season when the rice harvest began. Every woman had to participate in reaping the paddy; for those from the city, learning those chores was not easy...
During their days on the island, Favor Grace, Maria, and Le used to toil in the corn, cassava, and sweet potato fields, their faces pressed to the soil and their backs to the sky, drying tobacco and pipe tobacco. On scorching days, they labored so hard in the paddy fields that it reached a point where they "sold their backs to the heavens."
It wasn't long before she witnessed whips searing skin and tearing flesh, and they themselves suffered numerous injuries across their bodies. The rulers even forced everyone to watch as they used knives, scissors, swords... and sickles—sharp blades—to cut off the tongues and fingers of those who dared to break the rules again.
This phobia left the three women terrified of sharp objects. They were lost, their hands trembling as they gripped their sickles, frequently cutting their own fingers. They had to grit their teeth and swallow their tears, not daring to cry out, enduring the pain of sliced skin and stinging flesh.
All five fingers were riddled with wounds, and their palms were covered in thick layers of scars. Their fear gradually turned stone-cold, and they became more proficient in using the sickles.
Aunt Favor Grace frowns and says:
- The most disgusting and terrifying challenge was the swarms of leeches. In every field of the Floating Kingdom, besides fish, crabs, and river snails, there were countless leeches. If you weren't careful, these horrific, filthy creatures would quickly attach themselves to your feet, calves, and even sensitive areas like the genitals. Without lime, fire, or natural predators, they would suck blood until their bellies were gorged, only then dropping off on their own. Their smug appearance back then was exactly like those rulers who carried out genocide. All of them were nothing but monsters.
At that time, Maria and her sisters were terrified of leeches clinging to their legs in thick, swarming layers—or even crawling into their groins—so they dared not step into the flooded fields. The soldiers barked ferociously:
"Hey! You two old whores, if you refuse to get in the water, your rations get cut tonight! Anyone who hesitates to enter the fields meets the same fate!"
Seeing Maria and her sister looking utterly bewildered, Favor Grace—an "old citizen"—showed them how to fight the leeches:
"Roll your pant legs up to your knees and tie them tight with rattan strings. That way, the leeches only stick to your wrists or lower legs and can't crawl any higher."
The two sisters did as they were told. Closing their eyes, they waded into the fields. The roiling hunger in their bellies urged them on; despite the terror of having their blood sucked dry by leeches, they still strained through the hard labor to bring home precious food for their families. When the work was done, the three wretched souls climbed onto the bank, their arms and ankles covered in slimy, greenish-black creatures.
Aunt Favor Grace frowns, waving her hand to drive away the smell of smoke on the man's breath:
- Pressing a lit cigarette against the leeches, or smearing them with lime, would make them let go. But back then, there was not always lime or fire, and cigarettes became an almost unattainable luxury. We could only use sickles to pry them off until the leeches split open, leaving behind bleeding bite marks and stinging skin.
The woman who had been soothing her child watches the little one now fast asleep, her heart aching as she remembers her firstborn who had perished young in those ill-fated years:
- I vaguely remember that once or twice a month, the village elder would distribute small pieces of palm sugar. Mothers like me would guard those precious bits of food as if guarding life itself, preserving them with the utmost care. They became treasures we never let out of our sight. We carried them while bathing, sleeping, working, even when going to the latrine, afraid they would be stolen and leave the children with nothing but plain water to keep them alive. Back then, the children were not old enough to work. The 'Hive' only gave them half rations, so we could only save from our own rations to let them eat a little more. Yet they still remained pale and frail.
The woman gazes tenderly at her second husband. Her first husband was gravely ill; before he passed, he urged her to remarry the man who became her second husband, entrusting him with the care of his wife and child.
It was he who had sustained her will during those harrowing days. Throughout that time of hardship, he had devoted himself to helping the mother and daughter, yet he could not save her firstborn. The little girl perished from the wasting sickness of starvation.
- The risk of the children succumbing to the long famine, and the dread that... tomorrow... there would be no morsel of food to sustain their ebbing lives... haunted our bewildered minds. Thirst and hunger exhausted every fleeting second of our strength, yet we had to strive to revive our flagging will, which remained ever on the brink of collapse.
The child in her arms suddenly bursts into a loud cry, startling her; she lowers her head to look at the little face dampened by a mother's tears. The mother apologizes repeatedly, hurriedly wiping the child's face and singing a lullaby as she carries the babe into the house.
Everyone not only remembered those sorrowful memories but also held onto some stories that could make one laugh and cry. The most typical was that people had to learn all sorts of unfamiliar and novel things in the countryside.
If small fish and crabs were kept together, the crabs would eat all the fish. Le, like many others, did not know this, so one day when they were transplanting rice seedlings, she caught crabs and fish and stuffed them all into one basket.
The next day, all the fish had disappeared, and Le nearly shouted that her fish had been stolen. If Maria had not explained in time, the soldiers would have punished her for disturbing order and undermining unity. Such crimes carried extremely severe and terrifying punishments: offenders would have their tongues cut out and be despised and ostracized by everyone.
Le had never farmed before, so she did not know that rice grains had to be processed and milled into rice before they could be eaten. On the first day when the village lacked rice, the soldiers distributed paddy to the evacuees, and she thought it could simply be boiled and eaten.
At that time, Maria was working on the other side of the hill, so Le could not ask her sister-in-law. She put the paddy into a pot, poured in water, and set it on the stove. After two hours of burning firewood, the grains remained intact. The landlady passed by, saw it, and grew furious, saying harsh words:
"City people really are so 'talented.' Up until now, you've always eaten ready-made like pigs. Pigs eat so much rice, yet they never ask where rice comes from."
She scolded Le until her face turned pale, but in the end she still taught her how to mill rice without breaking the grains, how to winnow, and how to separate husks, bran, and polished rice. Later, when gleaning in the fields, Le also learned how to husk paddy and extract the rice grains inside.
From that day on, they assigned Maria to do the laundry. Le asked to mill rice. Though it was hard work, she could at least claim some bran. Soldiers fed bran to pigs, but for the evacuees, bran or any food was precious. With bran, they could eat more fully. Not to mention, bran was rich in vitamins, and Maria believed that thanks to it, her hair had not fallen out and her teeth remained strong.
Eating too much bran had negative effects on the stomach, and Maria's family all suffered diarrhea. The soldiers still forced them to work as usual; the sick had stomach cramps and could not reach the latrine in time, causing a stench to spread immediately.
They deliberately played tricks, laughing and insulting Maria's family like madmen, even letting dogs lick the excrement stuck to the victims' trousers. Only after satisfying their perverse pleasure did the soldiers allow the victims to wash their clothes.
All that day, not only the soldiers and old residents, but even some new citizens in the same plight all joined in the mocking. The old citizens did not sympathize with the victims, nor did they grow angry on their behalf; instead, they revealed a kind of condescending pity, despising the sufferers for a disaster they claimed was caused solely by the victims' own gluttony.
The victims endured humiliation, striving to conceal the tears of rage streaming down their faces, while pain and hatred reached their peak.
Every morning at five o'clock, rice milling began. Five groups of people milled twenty sacks of rice to feed fifty families. When not harvesting or milling, the evacuees were permitted to "fish"—in reality, carrying double-handled baskets into the fields to search for food. They sifted through the baskets: tadpoles, crabs, small fish, river snails, occasionally a few water snakes, and, of course, leeches.
Except for the leeches, the evacuees took everything; even a tiny shrimp was a precious source of protein. Hunger left no room for choice: they ate whatever could be eaten, drank whatever could be drunk. To be picky meant only one outcome—starvation.
Meat was extremely rare, and the rulers only doled out a little on special days. The evacuees were so hungry they even ate rotten meat crawling with maggots. Once, the rulers buried three diseased cows. Maria, Le, and Favor Grace secretly dug up the carcasses.
One cow bore strange markings, which they dared not touch. The other two had already begun to rot, their flesh greenish, reeking sourly, crawling with maggots. The three women disregarded filth and the risk of disease, only to lull the hunger that tormented their family's spirit.
At first the whole family vomited, but gradually their taste and smell grew accustomed to that mixture of stench and nausea. Some with weaker stomachs suffered acute diarrhea, their faces pale, never daring to touch it again.
They thought that by pleasing the landlady—Favor Grace slipping her things, and Maria and Le simply obeying her orders—she would not betray them.
At that moment, everyone was shocked to realize that the landlady — that treacherous bitch — was in fact a spy. She pretended to be friendly and sweet, helping the people against leeches, but in reality she was greedy for personal gain, serving as the eyes and ears of the village elder, secretly reporting matters to gain rewards from her superiors.
The crowd hated her deeply but dared not denounce her. If they accused her of taking bribes, they themselves would be guilty of offering them, and the punishment would be even harsher.
The victims could only blame themselves for carelessness and foolishness; hunger sometimes clouded the mind. Now they had no choice but to bow their heads and accept punishment from the "Hive." This time, the old man did not whip them, but instead sneered and said:
"From tomorrow on, violators will have their labor doubled, for one week!"
The normal workload already drained all strength; doubling it was nothing less than cruel torture. Yet no one dared to plead. All accepted the fate of being trampled and degraded like ants.
Hunger blurred their vision, and the last scraps of food in their stomachs turned into energy for hard labor. Fish, water spinach, and other reserves were exhausted, and the evacuees had to catch cockroaches to eat.
Each evening after work, the hungry searched the cracks in the walls. The house had once been full of cockroaches, but their numbers dwindled rapidly until, in those desperate mouths, they became extinct.
The "Hive" did not care at all. These genocidal masters wished nothing more than for the filthy slaves to die of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and disease. The evacuees had almost no medicine, not even a single aspirin.
The rulers felt smug about this low-cost method of killing. From the moment they were imprisoned, the evacuees were prisoners of war. The "Hive" had no money to waste bullets on shooting them in the head. They wanted these people to die in the most "natural" way—slowly, through toil.
In January, when the harvest ended, the soldiers were ordered to distribute the rice. They plundered the vast majority, leaving only meager rations barely enough to sustain life until the next harvest.
In February, the evacuees were forced to dig ponds to store scarce rainwater. Without any mechanical aid, they struggled to hoe the scorched earth, which was as hard as rock due to the drought. Everyone labored in silence, unaware they were digging their own graves.
In March, rumors spread that the "Hive" would repatriate all evacuees to the city. Maria no longer believed such trickery. Every evening, while attending the "Morale Sublimation and Indoctrination" rallies, the rulers always shouted:
"Comrades must sever the obsessed thought of returning to the capital. No one can return home. Besides, since the 'Hive' has promised to grant you glory far exceeding your current suffering and humiliation, why be sad?"
Thereafter, they once again forced the evacuees to migrate, but not back to the city. People were permitted to carry only a plate, a bowl or a spoon, two long skirts, two dark shirts for changing, a straw mat, and a mosquito net against malaria. Another nightmare was lying in wait for these wretched souls.
Just as Maria had expected, around March, the "Hive" forced all residents of the villages at the foot of the hills to evacuate. This was first because the water sources had dried up, and second because the war was worsening day by day.
Their prediction of the water shortage was extremely accurate. Until the rainy season arrived in June or July, the weather remained scorching and dry. In March, people went to great lengths just to obtain a bucket of yellow mud-water as murky as cocoa. Day after day, Maria and her emaciated daughter had to trek three kilometers to the pond.
Buffaloes and oxen rested there, and men and women bathed there, yet they remained tightly wrapped in their clothes under the blazing sun. As soon as the clothes dried, they were covered in filth accumulated from the turbid water.
After a hurried wash, Maria and Ange returned with two buckets of water. Maria carried one bucket in her right hand, while with her left, she held the second one together with her daughter. The mother and daughter tossed a few grains of coarse salt into the water; once the mud and sand settled, they took the clear part to boil. The water tasted bitter and salty, but if they did not drink, they would die of thirst—there was no choice.
Countless physical and mental agonies were like maggots in the bone, deeply engraved in the hearts of the evacuees. Everyone asked themselves: who could escape this hell on earth? Those genocidal masters were forcing the survivors into a slow death. This method bore no outward appearance of violence, yet it was extremely sinister and cost the "Hive" nothing.
A new evacuation order completely shattered any hope of returning to the city:
"Comrades are going to the Great Lake (Danau-Besar)" - The village elder said - "The site is located on the banks of the Danau River."
The villagers immerse themselves in pouring out their hearts to one another; no one notices the saturnine fellow. Everyone silently avoids this pitiable man, trapped in a crossfire of grief and rage… when… he hears them recounting how Maria was humiliated by those soulless monsters, treated as less than a beast.
He walks slowly toward the darkness, letting the night shroud his body as it trembles with every convulsion. He angrily faces those shrill, laughing, invisible ghosts as they mock an unyielding spirit transformed from a mere ant… becoming… a messenger from hell who holds the power over life and death…
"Hahaha… failing to protect one's own family. What kind of piece of shit is a 'domineering messenger from hell'? Everything is meaningless…"
"What a pity… a filial child… 'growing up'… too late…"
"Oh, did I forget to congratulate you on once returning to your birthplace? My god, so warm, so intense… hahaha…"
The ghosts linger and taunt, but he cannot annihilate them… because… they are merely phantoms born from that night of "fate."