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The team was divided into two groups, one to enter from the front and the other from the back, and upon my signal, we were to enter the interior. I led the team from the front and we broke into the court. We kicked our way through every room of the two-story building, which literally could be called a "court," and immediately shot and killed anyone who jumped out. We fired every bullet before even thinking about who it was, before we could think about anything else. It was truly what one would call "dirty work.โ Bodies piled up one after another, and screams and whitish dust filled the building. A short time later, a short radio call came in.
"Target down, congressman dead."
We were searching a hidden room in the back of the bedroom. It was a small room with various miscellaneous objects. Suddenly, a small figure jumped out from the shadows.
I shouted, but it was too late. A bullet fired by one of my men shot the figure through the head, and it fell down. I rushed over. It was a girl who appeared to be no more than 10 years old. Her eyes were wide open and she had died, and there was a mark on her forehead where she had been shot from the front. Blood poured from it, spreading to the cold floor. Then I noticed that there was someone else breathing in the shadows toward where she had jumped out. I looked and saw it was a boy about her age and he was staring at the girl with a rigid expression on his face.
โWhat do we do with him?โ
One of my men overheard me.
โTake him away. I'll ask my client for instructions.โ
I couldn't just leave him here. At my direction, my men walked up to the boy, grabbed his arms, and tried to stand him up. The boy suddenly came to himself and shook off their hands.
The boy shouted something. His eyes were on me, right in front of him. Then he repeated the words over and over again, as if he were spitting something hard. I knew what it meant, partly because I had been in this country too long.
No, maybe anyone could see it in this situation and in the look of hatred on his face. He was shouting, "I'm gonna kill you.โ
I approached the boy, who was throwing anything nearby, and quickly grabbed him by the arm and twisted him up. The boy groaned in pain and fell to his knees. Perhaps realizing that he could not win, the boy stopped resisting and weakly repeated the curse, tears welling up from both eyes.
Old memories flashed bitterly and vividly in my mind. A child so helpless to do anything to give even the tiniest bit of recompense to a world so horrifying. How much that reality had shattered and damaged my self-esteem. I hated my helplessness with all my heart. I even gave up my name - Eli - to bury even that memory.
I watched as the boy was packed into a transport vehicle and sent off to a detention facility. After I saw him off, I remembered that I had never asked his name. If I ever saw his face again, it would be when he came to take revenge on me. Before I knew it, I had become the one who had given him the curse that I had hated so much.