My name is Ingrid, and l am a woman. l have been the bearer of life, and the care giver of a son and a husband. I have whispered lullabies to a fretful child and harnessed the passions of a stubborn man. I have breathed the soul into a home. I am a woman. In the world I live in, women are no longer required. there is no purpose for emotion or compassion. Life has been manufactured, and the womb has become merely an accessory.
The first cloned human was revered and embraced by the world. Here was the answer to disease, and here was the cure to infertility. Women who could not reproduce became whole in the pale blue eyes of their newborn child, but the happiness and celebration would not last. It can never last. I was a mother and a wife when it happened: I was changing the diaper of my fragile, young son when the news was announced over the radio. They say that thousands of women took their lives that very moment.
The strongest of us persevered with grim determination to right a wrong. For it was, indeed, a wrong. It was wrong for the men to decide that women were not only a burden to the world, but that they were now obsolete. Without us, there would be less conflict, and the race of men would finally excel. The next morning, there was a massive call for all women to report to holding centers that had already been built. The move had been underway without our even realizing it. I stood, shivering in line with only a thin dress on, in front and behind me hundreds of other women, all of them the same as I. Mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. All silent. All waiting for what was to come. And all I could think of was my son at home, with my husband. A man I'd loved and cherished, who’d known my fate all along.

Standing in line, I see a woman next to me, her skinny, pale legs bare in the wind and a shawl wrapped around her tiny face. Her head is tilted back, her eyes closed and streaming tears. I can see her lips moving as she prays silently.
"There is no point anymore," I whisper to her. She stops what she is doing and looks at me gravely, her cheeks red and blotchy.
"God will answer my prayers, ''she says desperately, more to herself than to me. "God will answer, if I pray,''
"But, God is a man," I say quietly, "and man has betrayed us all."
The woman returns her eyes to the heavens, which are clouding over with a stormy net of cosmic waste.
"I must keep my faith,' she says. "If I lose any faith, then I have nothing.''
My reflection of her Words, however, is harshly interrupted by a loud cry at the front of the line, followed by gunshots and panic. A riot has begun. We start to run. There are hundreds of women, some too slow and trampled by the herd. We run anywhere with a false conception that we can be saved.

There are, perhaps, a few who manage to escape, who hide away in friends basements and closets. The rest of us are gathered up and beaten back to the Women’s Center, where, bruised and forlorn, we are segregated into bare cells. We are tired and hungry, and we have realized that there is no hope. I fall asleep curled on the cold, damp floor, the last of my tears shed.

I no longer have a name. I, like the rest of the women residing in the holding cells, are known only as Betty. There is no confusion, as there are no identities. Every day we are fed the same, tasteless, colourless slop, and we are outfitted in thin, scratchy gowns. All the same, always the same. Our cries for help go unanswered, and prayers for salvation fall upon deaf ears. We are prisoners, each and every one of us. The youngest women, those with slight waists and curvaceous breast are hired out as harlots to entertain the self-pleasing men. Painted with makeup, they return broken and empty to this hell we call the Pit.
The rest of us are made use of in a different fashion. To kill us all would be wrong, but it costs money to keep a pit of walking dead alive. So, they have starting holding the fights. Every night, two of us go into the ring, and only one returns to the Pits. Sisters in torture, we are forced to claw and scratch and beat each other just to breathe for another day. Another day in hopes that we will be freed to hold our loved ones once more.

I fight in the ring tonight. The bright sky lights blind me as a sea of must smelling suits shout and cheer in blood-lust. I am dizzy and high from a needle that pricked me before I stumbled out here. The soft dirt crumbles beneath my bare feet, and across from me I see her. My opponent, the praying woman I met that first day in line. She has lost weight, like all of us here, and her cheeks are gaunt and skeletal. Her eyes are focused on me. Her lips are still. She no longer prays.
I have no choice but to kill or be killed, and I will not be humiliated in front of these sweaty pigs who sit and watch us die in sport. I kill her quickly and return her to the one to whom she once fervently whispered for aid. I am now a murderer. The raucous cheers flood my head as I stand speechless in shock, the woman's limp body at my feet.

My name is. My name is Betty. Betty. Perhaps I no longer have a name, now that I no longer exist. Every morning less women wake up in the Pit. Every night a woman dies under the bright lights and leering eyes of her colleagues, her friends, her brothers. We count down the days until we, too, do not return from the stadium. Sometimes I do not eat the sludge I am served from nameless, faceless, entities. Some Betties drop just from malnutrition and starvation. They have given up hope, but I haven’t. I have discovered a way out.
I am now in my own cell, as one by one my fellow Betties left and never returned. I stopped shedding tears for these women who were my friends. These women I killed. I will not die here, I will not meet my end as a prisoner, as a Betty. Dinner is here, delivered by a young woman draped with a burlap hood. A harlot, she will be here in the cells when the rest of us die out and she becomes too old. Without a word, she lays the bowl of slop before me. I grab her by the throat before she can react.
"Look at me,'' I say. I tear off her hood and try to catch her eye. Staring at the floor, frightened tears roll down her cheeks.
"My name is Ingrid,'' I whisper, then I slam her head against the bars, knocking her out cold. As she lies unconscious on the ground, I place her hood over my own head and wiggle her into my torn and ragged gown. As if sleeping, her lips curl into a relaxed smile, the first I've seen in years.
Attempting a composed walk, I head through the corridors, ignoring the listless stares attacking me from every cell. My sisters, all of them, and I know that each will perish in turn, yet I move onward. The bottoms of my feet are cut and bruised, and each step is an agony that has been ever-present. My heart pounds as I view the exit, as I glimpse true light again.
Suddenly, I realize that the compound is obviously guarded. Two brawny brutes stand by the door. They've noticed me, shocked still in the hallway, realizing the crucial flaw in my plan.
''Is there a problem, wench?'' the larger one asks. He has a close-shaved head and oddly fashioned facial hair. I stutter for a moment, searching my weary mind for something, anything to save me. "A Betty attacked me,'' I stammer, "she tried to fight as if she were in the ring. I was so frightened, I hit her over the head and ran. She is unconscious now, but she may awaken. I... left open the cell,” I admit. This isn't a lie, I completely forgot to look her in. My legs shake in seeming dramatic effect, but in reality I am petrified.
"Let's check it out," the man says to his partner, sighing in annoyance. "You may return to your quarters," he continues bluntly as he and his partner rush down the hall. I don't waste a moment, and I flee out the door.
The smell of fresh air shocks my lungs and I struggle to breathe and see and hear as I stumble away from the compound. After a moment, I collect my bearings and I run. I run until my chest is burning and my legs are shaking and I can’t help but laugh as my tears pour like torrential rain. I am in the woods now, and for the moment I am safe. Finally it hits me. I've done it, I've escaped hell and made my way to... a wasteland of jungle. I am in the middle of nowhere.
I Keep running. I Keep running in hopes that l might one day hold my son again, or at least catch a glimpse of him, one last time. But my weary body Cannot handle this exertion much longer. The sun peeks its way through the treetops and gently caresses my pale, sagging skin. I know that I will die out here, yet as I run and grieve for what has happened l am comforted by an eerie solace.
l will not die caged like an animal, I will not die in vain. I will die free, not as a Betty, but as a woman.


** This is my first attempt at using my new Flypen. (Pen that digitizes writing and uploads to a computer.) There may be typos. Comments and Crit greatly appreciated!

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