VOID by Taylor Pinderson (little red riding hood read aloud .txt) 📕

Today is matching day. Just an ordinary day, except of course, we’re matched. I feel nothing as I get out of my cot, the old springs squeaking, and throw on my gray tunic. The collar tickles the underside of my chin and the bottom brushes just under my knee. It’s getting shorter. I must remember to save ration tickets for a longer one. I swiftly wrap my gray scarf around my head to hide my wavy blonde hair. It is getting long too, reaching just below my belly button. I hope cutting comes soon. A few strand poke out from underneath the gray scarf material and I hurriedly tuck them away. As I bend down to slip on my leather moccasins, I let my eyes flicker around my surroundings.
All the girls in my sector are doing the same. They all wear the same blank expression, same trancelike postures as they get ready for the ceremony. I can’t tell by any of their slow methodical movements as they get dressed if any of them are as nervous as I am. I stand up in silence as I walk the beings I have lived with for half my life as they get ready for the ceremony without a trace of nerves.
Our sector master walks in. She is a short woman in a tunic that reaches the floor, the same pale, blue grey color as ours. Her nose is beaky, like she could stab someone with it, she glares around the room, looking down the bumpy slope of it in what I guess is her most intimidating stare. That’s easier said than done when you’re approximately four feet tall. She walks down the rows of cots making sure all forty-one of us leaves our cots as neat as before we got in them. I look around again and swallow hard. No signs of nerves from anyone except me.
We line up to go wash. The administrators told us that we would need to be clean for the test. I swallow again. I’m scared, which scares me even more. Can someone tell if you’re scared from the outside? I have slowly been learning to control my emotions. I know enough that if I let someone else see them I will be reported and hauled off to the government to “protect society.” We need to be informed enough so we know what not to do wrong, but not enough that it makes it hard to control us.
We march orderly to the wash room. When we get there one of the boy sectors is leaving. The sector master leads their line as they march down the gleaming white hall we just came out of. One of the boys, Tall, thin, his cap messily stuck on his head, looks at me brushing his hair in a way that hides the fading brand tickling the edge of his brow. Because it’s fading, he’s obviously been around much longer than most of us have, maybe a life span of three to four hundred years. It’s how they tell us apart, since we are not allowed to have personalities.
It makes me self-conscience, looking at his brand and I put my hand to my forehead to cover my own. I see a flicker of something in his eyes, another emotion, one I’m not familiar with. Could this be fear, of another form or shape, as many emotions come in? But his eyes seem softer, gentle, his pupils not the harsh slits of one scared out of his wits. Oh, god no, was that love, admiration? I recognize the softer pupils, relaxed irises of one of the gentler emotions we study in our self-protection classes. The most dangerous of emotions are the gentle ones, the ones that lure people into their traps by seeming fun, and pleasurable. These are the ones we are taught to recognize so we can haul the portrayers to the government. But I know I could never haul someone off like that. I hate these sentimental feelings inside of me. They’re dangerous I know, but there…indescribable.
I sigh and I instantly want to slap myself. I could be mistaken for returning that emotion. Am I? Our line is moving quickly, get in, wash, get out. I lay down on one of the silver tables and let the gleaming tools rinse and scrub and shave me till I’m shining.
I wince as hot wax is poured on my legs and all the hair painfully stripped away. Another shining tool with a coarse pad strapped on the metal plate serving as hand rubs away my skin in circles as soap foams around it. When my skin is covered in soap suds, and my body hairless retractable shower heads poke out of the ceiling. They whir, instantly turning themselves on and I keep my eyes open, though the scalding water burns my eyes. I watch as the water pools in my collarbones and the hollow of my stomach where it caves in from the limited food portions we are given.
When my body is clean I am put in an upright position and my gray head scarf is removed and hung on the same rack were my tunic was previously put. My long blonde hair falls down to my shoulders and I blow a stay wavelet out of my face. The shower head whir again and my hair is doused as I stand naked on the gleaming steel floor. I hear the other odd tools behind me as they pour products and lather my hair till it feels thick with synthetic cleaning solutions. I’m doused again and my hair lays uncomfortably on my face, flattened by the weight of the water. Again it’s lathered on top of my head, this time with conditioner. And once again that is wash from my long locks. For a moment I’m left standing, naked and freezing, on the cold floor as the tools retract and giant metal fans take their places. I shiver as a drop of water rolls down my back.
The fans start themselves and the long narrow wash room is filled with the monotone harmony of a hundred giant fans spinning at alternate speeds, according to the alternating wetness of their victims. Mine are blowing loud and strong and I shiver in the cold. After about five minutes my body is desert dry and shining.
I step to the rack where my clothes hang and readorn my tunic and head scarf. The girls around me are doing the same, but I’m different. We move in the same automatic fashion but none of these porcelain figures has a tornado of emotions making their head spin.
We leave in the same trance like fashion we entered in, and another sector of boys walk in. I look each one of them in the eye but I don’t see any other flickers of emotion, any acknowledgement that any of these beings could be considered human. Each eye is perfectly blank it’s almost scary, like a row of robots, brainwashed and ready to carry out the governments every command. I’m not surprised. Emotions are illegal. Same as expressing yourself through art, writing, and music is illegal. Exploiting the government is not an activity commonly practiced.
Our mentors once told us that long ago, a race called Destroyers ruled the earth. They were allowed to express themselves freely in a government called democracy. Art was freely practiced and in one of their twisted games called politics,they openly fought with each other, bashing each other’s opinions. Sometimes this expression caused others to be mad, most often resulting in the death of the opponent in this politics game. The losers would get angry and destroy things (hence the name) and that would cause others to get mad and destroy things and so on until eventually the world was consumed by war. This consumption of war eventually led to the destruction of that race and the birth of what we are today: emotionless, cultureless beings. But we haven’t seen war since the destroyers. After all it is for our own good.
We reach the sector room again, and the sector master faintly traces the scan pad next to the room identification number. It’s one my eyes have glazed over my entire life span of 113 years: A237. We march in and sit to the left side of our bunk, pillow on the left, folded night clothes on the right. She takes out the slate gray clipboard, issued to all sector masters by the government mentors and starts calling out our identification numbers, to make sure no one made a dash for it. My knees are so weak I’m starting to wish I did, but government guards surely would catch me. I’d be lucky to make it five minutes.
“Y237, Y628, Y283…” her monotone voice drags out the syllables of each of our numbers. Our sector is known as YF, Y sector, feminine gender. I’m shaking so hard it’s hard to hide my fear. Some of my robotic like sector maters are starting to glance sideways at me now.
I desperately try to control my shaking teeth and my knocking knees, failing miserably. I bite my cheek hard and focus on the pain and the warm liquid trailing into my mouth.
She finishes and we get up, form our numerical order line and once again march out of the gray cinderblock room. I hear the synchronized slap of the 1,278 sector rooms emptying and feet slowly and surely padding down the hall. Everyone breathing and thinking the same things. Everyone except me and one other. He’s beside me again. I hear his harsh breathing, little puffs not completely synchronized with the swelling mass of voids behind me. Voids. The word rolls over my tongue, to harsh, to blatant. It’s what they call us. It’s true. Emotionless, empty, monotone, vague. Barely human. Voids. Nameless, mindless voids.
…
The matching room is vast and empty. Rows and rows and rows of chairs await us. We file in, sitting down from A to Z, 1 to 1,278. Females on the left, Males on the right. In the corner of the room is a tiny door way. Slowly all of us will be called to enter the room. First a girl, then a boy. Then we will exit another door, matched. The matching begins. My sector sits in the back, giving my anxiety plenty of time to twist its way up my body filling my mind with “what ifs.”
I wonder what calling I will be matched to. There are many callings available in today’s society, many very preferable to be matched to. I list a few in my mind, preference order. Law, psychology, information. Nothing to demanding, or involving a backbone. Another list pops into my mind, this one of things I do not want to be called as. Healthcare, law enforcement, punishment… weeks before we studied all the callings, alphabetical order, and what they skills and personality traits they involved. Of course everything is written in euphemism before being sent to the public information department. I struggled to get a clear picture on most callings.
My stomach is tying itself in knots by the time the matching proceeds to the Y sector. For the 583 matching’s it takes to get to me is enough for me to be practically vomiting by the time I am called. Everyone knows what happens outside of the little room in the corner of the matching room, that they teach us. It’s what goes on inside the matching room that isn’t common knowledge.
The door to the little room is swung open and an incredibly short woman in a smart black suit