Castration 
In 1313 a Franciscan monk committed to 

God those parts of himself sacrosanct by most 
men, the knife was sharp and both his fear 
and pain faded away with his new found 
purity. 

Tell you about myself? Well I'm twenty-six 
years old, worked in the Chambers for the last 
ten years and of course I'm a Celeb. My job? 
I sweep the ashes out of the Chamber after 
every run. No, I wasn't forced, chose Celeb 
status of my own free will. Why? There're a lot 
of reasons. I never liked other men, wasn't 
high enough on the merit list for Hetero status, 
the government does provide every Celeb with 
a job and you know how hard those are to 
come by. besides, we Celebs are guaranteed to 
stay clean . 

Have I been to see my Breeders lately? Well 
yes right before ... it was last Restday. Dad 
still wouldn't talk to me but mom was nice. 
See, I was born before the Purge so I'm one of 
the few left around who really knows who 
their actual parents are. Mom always makes a 
big deal when I visit, of course they never 
leave the breeder farm but she seems happy 
there. I wouldn't know about sex but I think 
she feels safe there. We were placed in the 
farm when the government first introduced 
mandatory culling and reclassification to 
control the disease, that was back in the 90's. 

Dad hated it there. When I was little he 
used to rant and rave about freedom of choice 
and his constitutional rights. I don't think the 
disease ever read the Bill of Rights. I guess he 
never understood the government's responsi­
bility to protect us, not to mention the survival 
of our race. Back then at least eighty percent 
were infected, that's way down now. When 
we first got there I didn't like the Breeder farms 
either. Once you tested, clean isolation was 
permanent. We never talked about the soldiers 
that were stationed all around us. 

Before the Purge Dad used to take me fish­
ing every spring. We'd drive down to the river 
and sit on the rocks, impaled worms dangling 
in the water. He used to send me up to the 
stand for pop and crackers. I'd munch away 
and he'd tell me about the river, the fish he'd 
caught when he was a boy and how he and 
grandpa used to fish in the exact same spot. 

35 

Fishing on the river is a family heritage my dad 
would say. make sure you pass it on . I don't 
fish anymore. Of course all of us have to make 
sacrifices, who knows that better than a Celeb? 

The day it happened I came home from the 
reclassification center, sore from the operation 
but excited, now I had a status all my own, a 
guaranteed job and the chance to leave the 
Breeding farm. He was sitting in his chair 
when I came in, said hello but he acted as if I 
wasn't there. Tried to hug him but he pushed 
me away. Said that I was dead now, no longer 
his son. Ran to my room, never seeing the 
tears my mom said were streaming down his 
face. 

He couldn't accept my reclassification. I tried 
to show him how it was the right thing to do, 
how necessary it is for excess males to be 
classified Celeb so they can work in the 
unclean areas without fear of infection. 
I even brought home my textbook from school 
and the pamphlets that they hand out around 
classification time. He said I'd be better off a 
Homo, or even going wild. He has this bizarre 
image of the wild ones as rebels fighting 
repression, 'Revolutionaries and Patriots' he 
used to call them. He never saw them for 
what they really are, the infected carriers of a 
deadly disease, a cancer nestled within the 
very breast of humanity. 

Every visit I would sit in the chair across 
from him while my mother served us supper, 
trying to tell him what I saw at work, those 
thin pathetic stick people, covered in running 
sores and smelling of death. Some came will­
ingly. others had been captured by the weekly 
patrols. It didn't matter how they got to the 
Chambers, they all ended up in the same 
place. Some believed the government claims of 
a cure, in a way I guess those claims are true, 
they all wound up cleansed. Most were too 
weak to even walk, but they all screamed 
when the conveyor belt dumped them into 
the Chamber. He never listened. 

Charles H. Rose Ill