text: Everyone’s different. My parents loved drilling that into my head, any time I mentioned feeling out of place. Different languages, skin tones and personalities. All accepted as human, equal in the eyes of most. Anything I did, they were always quick to try to make excuses for, they saw my ‘rebellious’ stage as just a fad that I’d soon grow out of. More loving people, I’ll never meet. Not in this place. But in a way, I can’t help but blame them sometimes. I guess it’s just human nature, blaming others for your own shortcomings, always trying to be the ‘alpha’ of the pack. Especially when you were kicked around, laughed at by the other kids over something I didn’t have control over. My eyes. No the colour of them wasn’t anything special, not a deep blue or a wacky shade of green. Just a dull, boring brown. It was what I could see with them, which made them unique. And we as humans, don’t accept unique. Unique is another word for special, another word for different. Different is bad, different isn’t normal. The digits that flickered over the heads of everyone I came across, they weren’t real. Not to the other kids, not to my parents. But to me they were a constant reminder growing up that I wasn’t the same, I was different. Different in a way that I would truly understand a few days after my twelfth birthday. My twelfth had been a quiet affair. Just the three of us, the other kids would rather literally have killed themselves, than commit social suicide by hanging out with me. ‘Number Boy’ was all I was known as back then, and even now I’m just a number. Life didn’t change all that much, just the way I perceived things. Just three days after the twelfth, I finally worked out what the numbers meant. I was on my way back from school, trying to ignore the laughs of the other kids. They were all fours and fives, their numbers only decreasing when we were in class and the teacher was talking. Sometimes even that didn’t stop it, the number would jump back to four seconds before they threw a paper aeroplane at my head. It didn’t take me long to learn to fear the fours and fives, to avoid them at all costs. I ran into the nearby store, unaware of the situation on the inside. Unaware of the man with a pistol aimed directly at the cashier. My eyes were fixed on only one thing, as the man shouted at me to get on the ground, the barrel threatening to end my life at any second with just the slightest pull of a trigger. It was the nine, the nine hovering over his head that captured all my attention. I had never seen a nine before, and my brain went into overdrive. I awoke in the hospital, apparently the shock had been too much and I had fainted. I think it was more the shock of finally understanding the numbers, the danger the numbers symbolised. The fours and fives, my tormentors. The nine, a man who was seconds away from killing me. I’d love to be able to say that upon returning to school the next day, I was given a hero’s welcome. That my tormentors begged for forgiveness and became my best friends, and I even eventually married one of them. But no, this is reality. It only got worse, me fainting in the store was the talk of the school for months after. Soon my tormentors weren’t content with verbal abuse alone, they quite literally kicked things up a notch. They became sixes and sevens. A year of kickboxing classes and a will of steel changed things. I wasn’t the one getting bullied anymore, I was the bully. Eric, an ex-seven was now nothing more than a shell of himself. He barely even registered as a two, to say I had beat the fight out of him would be an understatement. It got to the point where I actually had friends, threes that feared me and what I would do to them if I didn’t like them. For a few years, life was actually good. I mean sure I got into trouble a lot, but people respected me, they didn’t mock me anymore. The teachers themselves had long given up on me, they had no solid proof of my wrongdoing so they continued as if nothing was going on. I practically ran the school, and I’ve got to admit I still use what I learnt all the way back then about intimidation. With great power, comes no responsibility. If they fear you, they hear you. Every word you say is important to them, every move you make, every breath you take. For the few moments you’re speaking with them, you become the absolute centre of their universe. My school career would’ve continued like that indefinitely if I didn’t meet him. He was the new kid, a tall, shaggy-haired stick insect. The look of indifference he gave me shocked me, he was a mere one. A pathetic one. He barely even registered on the scale, but when I approached him to get him to pay his playground rent, he just brushed me off. I’d grown so accustomed to getting my way, that it actually threw me off. Not for long though, soon I had him on the ground, blood dribbling from his lip. It was his turn to shock me for a second time. The number over his head, just for a second it flashed as a ten. Just for a moment, gone as quickly as I had seen it. But I knew it was there. He was the one. The one who finally told the teachers what I was doing, spurring the others to jump on the bandwagon. I expected to get away with just a slap on the wrist, maybe being suspended for a few days. Sixteen year olds aren’t exactly the brightest. Instead I was permanently expelled, and soon even my parents couldn’t stand me. My alcohol habit was rather expensive, and they couldn’t stand the sight of their only son, reduced to a drunken slob. The next few months were spent on the streets, my desperation for money growing as my appearance grow more rugged. What started out with a few drug deals here and there, became an around the clock venture for me. If any of clients needed it, I would find it. For a price, of course. My reputation began to grow and as it did, I came into contact with more sevens and eights. Sevens and eights who wanted the goods I offered, but without the premium. Three gunshots and two corpses later, I found myself in my new home. It’s not too bad in here. Three meals a day, an area to work out and scout the competition. My gift comes in useful all the time, just two days ago I avoided a nine carrying a shiv he’d fashioned from the workshop. I attack the weak, to impress the strong. I know who to befriend, and who to target. Prison isn’t really that different from the playground.