Inhuman

It's not human. I don't know what it is but I know it isn't human. It almost looks human, but it never talks, it never walks, it's skin is hardened and coarse, more scar than flesh. Worst of all their faces, hardened and never wavering from their path, like they don't see us at all. They're always there, crawling on what look like hands and knees but so calloused and worn I swear I can see bone in places.

Us girls? The mine slaves chipping our lives away at this rock? We grunt, we strain, we cry, while that thing just pulls like it was built for that and that alone. When the whip strikes our backs we yelp, we scream. Even the older ones grunt, some acknowledgment of the pain that not one of us deserves but is forced on us anyways. But that... thing? It takes whips harder than we ever get with no reaction, no acknowledgement, almost like it needs it, like it's as natural to it as breathing is for us.

When I first got here, I used to care. I used to pity those things, lighten their load a little in whatever tiny way I could. But I used to care about a lot of things, and my sisters picking away at this wall, they deserve my care, and that thing does not. Even animals cry out, look at you in sadness when you beat them. I'm sure even these overseers who treat us so cruelly would hold their whip if a mule brayed out in pain at their onslaught, but these crawling cart creatures just take it in stride and the overseers beat them accordingly.

We could lighten their load. The overseers only want gems and we could break the gems out of the rubble if we wanted, but what's the point? They barely notice and it takes up time we could be spending making our quotas. Even after the quotas been made any second wasted on those things is a second I could rest my weary muscles for tomorrow's work, and never once have I ever seen even the slightest glance of acknowledgment from one of these things, not a single sign that it's not a waste of effort to help them and I've long since stopped looking.

I know they were once like us, I'm not stupid. Once in a while one of them dies so they take one of us. It takes months before we see them again, but it's never really them. They look different, they act different, they even move different. Everything they once were has been truly crushed. I once tried to get one I recognized to remember, I touched her shoulder, I broke out the gems from the gravel to lighten her load, but nothing, not a glance or nod or anything, just hauling on and on like the rest.

I don't know how they do it, how they turn a girl into that, but that thing is not a person, that thing is not like me. I don't know what that thing is, but I do know I don't ever want to become it.

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My name is Sydney. They treat me worse than an animal, worse than any retched creature I've ever seen. Worse than a tool, worse than a piece of machinery, worse than the rejected gravel they pull their gems from, but I am Sydney. I tell myself that every day, I'm not a beast, I'm not filth, and I don't deserve this. I am a person and my name is Sydney.

Every inch is suffering. Every. Inch. There is no time in this hole. Just the stretch between when they whip me awake, expected to immediately start pulling the moment the whip breaks my shallow aching slumber, to when they let me drop right where I'm walking and sleep. In between those two points I crawl on the hard rocky ground, my knees and feet and hands long since worn out by the mine floor I'm forced to crawl on, hauling this unforgiving load. The weight varies, but only from heavy to unbearably heavy, a cart freshly emptied still strains my body to pull and the moment the first shovelfull is dropped inside it only gets worse. I can't even remember what it's like being untethered, not hauling this weight with every desperate step. Sometimes, rarely, in my fitful sleep I dream that if they ever unchained me from this load my battered body would fly away, up and out of this mine, never again touching the ground, but usually by this point even in my dreams i can only move by crawling with my heavy cart, my body incapable of remembering what it was like to stand or move unanchored.

I don't know how my body is still able to handle this, but I know I can keep going. Death is too merciful, they will not allow me that rest, that end to my pain, if they can help it and whatever slop they feed me will keep me going for some time, I can feel it.

Even more than that though, I don't understand how they can treat me this way, look at me like that. Not just the overseers but the girls, my fellow slaves! My shoulders ache, my muscles strain, my load is full and ive got so much firther to crawl, but they dont spare a stone. They make sure every piece of gravel they've mined ends up in my cart when they don't even get punished if they divide it between us.

Every day they beat me so hard, even when I work as hard as I can, trying so hard to just spare my body the whip for a moment even when it means my muscles are screaming at me for making them struggle even harder, the whip is never far behind, waiting for even a half second of hesitation, of struggle, or even just the appearance of maybe. I don't even have the choice of how hard I work. If they beat me either way I only have one unyielding path, move at their pace and be beaten. And so I move at the same pace I do every hour of every day regardless of the load or the incline or how rocky this area of the mine is and they beat me, over and over without end. And yet my sisters don't care. I want them to care so badly even if they won't make my life easier I just want anyone to even think about me, to have sympathy for me. I want to just look up at them, let them see me, I'm human too! I'm your slave sister and I hurt so badly! But the overseers beat me if I even move my eyes off the ground in front of me, I am a thing that pulls and the slightest, tiniest deviation from that is swiftly and harshly punished.

I've lived years without a break. Without an inch of leniency. Could any one of them live the way I do for a day? An hour? And yet not one of them cares. No kind touches, no words of encouragement. Not even a look to say 'I see you, you are like us and you don't deserve this pain'. The only people that could ever understand a fraction of what I'm going through, and they treat me like an object built to haul and be whipped onward. Every single one of them could be my replacement if I die tomorrow and yet every single one of them would rather watch me suffer twice as much than have a girl three stations down work half a second harder. Why!?

My name is Sydney! I'm a person! I am!

...why cant they see that...