Double Dutch

Double Dutch


"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche

Life. What is a life when it is expected to die at eighteen? Is it nothing but trash, wasted litter thrown on the ground to be swept up in later years? Forgotten, lost, and vulnerable.

The Ministry no longer cares for age. The Ministry no longer cares for experience. The Ministry no longer cares for anything that doesn’t have two arms and two legs with full working fingers that can point a wand and dutifully chant a spell. The Wizarding world has fallen to ruin, the pearly marble floor is cracked and it’s pure water drained.

There are no more statues of heroes with chivalry in mind, no more heroes with a kind smile and a brave hand. The only heroes in this world are those willing to live long enough to die.

It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always murder and mayhem; it wasn’t always such a gamble. There wasn’t always so much carelessness.

It all happened the moment Harry Potter died. Our great savior died. Not by Voldemort’s hand, not by some wayward magical spell. A car. That was all, a car and an unloving family who passed it off as a flesh wound. A very extensive flesh wound that cut into the very souls of every man and woman who controlled magic.

I tell my children that I wish they were never born. I give them candy and tell them to enjoy it while they can. I repeat my best friend’s last words –

‘Don't take life too seriously. You'll never escape it alive anyway..’

Susan Bones was an extraordinary woman. She grew into her mother, powerful and intelligent with enough loyalty to disobey the Ministry. For whoever is loyal to the Ministry is loyal to their own demise and self-destruction.

Now, on a grand scale of fifteen to one, I have finally found my death. Twenty-one years of age, longer than any of my family had hoped. I had replaced the healthy people around me with the deathly ill. I had hoped that I would die of disease, famine, or what have you. Nothing at all like the death that was going to take place, the death that happens every day. Not here. Not in front of the children.

Their whimpers wrap my mind in guilt, the sweat that glistens on their foreheads tells me the shame I have put them through by merely birthing them. Their tired, fearful eyes gaze at me with a glimmer of hope that I cannot dare to nurture and bring to life.

Their lives were useless and meaningless. The drivel on an empty page were their lives, little as they are, and they will be wiped out forever. As will mine the moment my head touches the ground beneath me, the moment I hear my children scream in agony and hostile disbelief.

I was cruel to shelter them from the hate this world has turned to. The Ministry cares not for the people who do their dirty work, the people who lose their lives over a futile war for worthless meanings.

‘The truly great creations are those their creators hate.’

The Ministry hates its creation. The Ministry hates the people who walk with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, the people that sit at desks in front of them with lifeless fingers and cold faces with vacant eyes. They hate them, but they love them for they are their saviors.

‘When everything you've been told is a lie nothing hurts more than the truth.’

The truth is that the Ministry is nothing but a lap dog that follows their dead people. They rely on us as if we were a broken crutch, as if we were their shining God that’s dirtied with congealed blood.

My children will never know the Ministry. My children will never know the hatred that radiates like acid in the air, hatred that will coat their lungs like a sick disease. They will never find themselves lost. Never will their eyes seem like a corpse with sunken sockets, their faces never will be taut and wrinkled at twenty.

They will die today, and I only wish that I could watch them die a happy death. A happy death free of hatred and misguided loyalty, free of the collar and leash that the Ministry will attach them to when they turn eight.

Candra is merely four years old, her blonde hair held tight by a red rubber band, her wide blue eyes filled with tears of sadness and fear. Her plump little cheeks reddened and blotchy with tears, her body shakes as she hiccups forcibly and stares at me with her round, glistening eyes. She was my baby, my love and hope. Now she is merely a weak child crying for her mother, but what can I do but be proud of her. There are no people left in this world that would look twice at me now.

Amani is seven. He has his father’s soft hair and my eyes. He watches with a clenched mouth, white spittle covering the soft corners. His – my - hard eyes are lined with unshed tears as his gaze never wavers from the towering men that stand before us, their leering faces dancing ever so near. His fingernails cut into his own hands as he clenches them into tight fists, turning his knuckles white. He asks me ‘why, mommy, why?’

‘You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.’

It’s the way of the world, darling. It’s the way of the world, and it’s for the best. Don’t worry, child, for better things will come with sleep. So rest your eyes and dream your next dream of bigger and better things.

I can only hope that ‘Death is the next big adventure.’

Hannah Elizabeth Abbot
1980 April 20 – 2002, August 28
‘To Rest in Peace is to Rest in my Grave.’