Tiny Village

A Short, Short Story

—Warning: This story contains graphic material and violence.

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That first day Guard One kicked me in the face, blood spilled to the floor. Then they left me for days, locked inside a chamber of the local 610 office.

When the guards returned, they wasted no time. Guard Four fastened a metal spittoon to my head. He used a rusty chicken wire for a tie. It carved deeply into the sides of my face.

Guard Two swiped some of my blood—made jokes about my crown of thorns—and flicked driblets into my eyes. The guards took turns missing the spittoon, defecating and urinating in my lap.

As my heart grew into a mountain, it did not harden. Instead, it fostered life.

Small sheep and a herd of goats pilgrimaged up its side. A tiny village of kind-hearted people was born near the mountain’s foot. A sun shone on the village during day. A moon poked through mist and clouds to hover its nights.

When the guards beat me, I watched over the tiny village and witnessed how good people behave.

The villagers moved with grace, never hurried. They spoke with crisp smiles and few words. They stepped carefully over that mountain landscape as if they were laying toes atop their own children’s spines.

When I spoke, I always looked the guards in the eye. I never forgot they started out as human. I informed each of them, “You, too, were once kind.”

A beautiful snow leopard made a home on the eastern side of my mountain. He evolved from a cave of wonders. There was a fresh spring that emerged from the cave that carried silvery water to a pool in front of the leopard’s den. The water continued flowing down jags and cracks until it emptied beside the village into a cool azure pond.

I learned how to smile on the inside. On the outside, physical pains came and went. My suffering was just like a storm that washed over the mountain. With it came a darkness that shrouded the day. But in time, it managed to cleanse and renew the terrain.

The CCP covered these guards’ faces with dark masks. The guards’ limbs were their own, but they did not control them with their will. They were ignorant of their own possession.

But the human spark does not burn out completely until the end.

When the evil was at its peak, the guards locked me in a cage for two months. My neck was bent out of shape. They cuffed my hands to the upper bars, my feet to the lower bars. Once a day they fed me water and slop through a wide-mouthed straw.

On some days, half-consciously, I felt the villagers’ journey from their world to mine. They gently cleaned the blistered rings of flesh underneath my cuffs. I was too weak; I could not turn my head to see them. But I could feel their tiny hands at work.

I was happy when the snow leopard finally found a mate. Two overgrown kittens at play.

One day, as the leopards pounced on a patch of grass, sending ospreys and egrets into flight, the Division Chief entered the chamber and said, “If he dies, tell his family it was suicide. Then burn the body.”

After the guards released me from the cage, I was free to move within the confines of the persecution room. But I sat in only one place. My body was at its frailest. Yet my mountain was in the midst of a glorious spring.

Around that time, the guards started to experience alterations.

As they spent their hours begging me to give up my belief, they took on a new look: like street children. Hungry and disheveled.

By this time, wild horses had come to my mountain. So had many other species of animals. The villagers were perfectly content with what they had. Not one villager wanted more than the land and sky provided.

Each day I watched the villagers live their lives, harvest crops, bathe in rivers and streams. It seemed they not only lived on a philosophy of kindness, but managed without a hierarchal structure at all.

After nine months of imprisonment, the guards began to resemble wild animals, but not happy beasts. Sometimes they stopped their circling long enough to crawl in close. Sometimes they spoke.

Guard Four’s wife was divorcing him. He was on many medicines but could not find relief.

He had strange bodily sensations; he said his dreams were invaded by shapes and colors that stung his eyes and tormented his ears.

Guards One and Two developed some kind of disease of the mouth. Guard Two was sent to a hospital in Shenyang. I was later told he could no longer eat or drink.

Guard One endured a panic attack that never ceased.

Every once in a while, as if in a fever, he would kneel down in a sweat, pleading he was sorry. His flesh was spotty, and he drooled from the ailment encompassing his tongue.

Other times, he’d start circling again—try to convince me to sign the paper, shaking it before my face.

Guard Three since repented. He vowed to his family and friends he would no longer hurt me.

He still came to work but started sneaking me fresh biscuits and tea. He wiped my body clean of odorous waste.

Days before my release, as he sat in front of me sponging off my arms and legs, I shared with him some stories.

I told him about the leopards and their litter of cubs. About how the egrets on my mountain were whiter than any bird living on earth.

“From a mile away,” I said, “you can still see a bright speck, like a star in our night sky.”  

As he listened, joyfully, the dark mask—the false skin—the CCP had covered him with shed without his ever knowing.

I knew it disappeared completely. For as I spoke to him, inside the village, at least three dozen villagers carried the giant mask above their heads.

Like ants they hauled it down a dirt path, where they eventually fed it into a great fire.

Smoke streamed upward from the fire until it billowed and curled at the top of the sky. Then it moved on into a different realm altogether.

It was known throughout the village the great fire turned bad things good.

Already pleased, the sun smiled down. The moon sighed.

The mountain itself, as if upon waking, stretched out gallantly in all ten directions.

Then it released. Exhaled in one long, easy breath, the aroma of flowers and spring fragrance throughout the village.

Quickly, before the essence could diffuse into the ether, the villagers opened their windows and doors—walked outside.

The villagers wanted nothing more. They would receive no less.

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—Dedicated to all who have suffered persecution under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.