A beggar boy

“What are you good at, boy?” he smiles a cracked dry grin.
I shrug. “Nothing,”
It is the truth, and he is disappointed.
“Then we will make you good at something other than searching through trash heaps.” He grins again. “Follow me.”
I do so. My heart beats excitedly. They are to give me something that is to make my life better.
My dirty bare feet carry me across the dirt path behind the camp to a little room where another man waits. He holds a shiny sharp object. I smile at him. If he is to help me too, then he is my friend.
I am told to sit on the table beside the man with the shiny object. He puts a cloth to my face and tells me to breath in. my head gets cloudy, I can’t think clearly. The room is spinning. My world goes black.
I scream. A searing never ending pain shoots up my body. I hear the steady sawing of something being cut. The pain only increases. I can’t stop from yelling and crying. It hurts! It hurts! I wish it to stop! They don’t stop, but continue on as if I haven’t made sound. I hate them! They don’t listen to my pleas. I want to die. I can’t live with this pain.
All I can see is red. Someone must be bleeding. Blood is everywhere. It can’t be me; the pain is only a dull throb now. All is hazy. I don’t understand. I can’t feel any pain. Maybe I am dead. Yes, I am dead. If I were alive, I would feel something.
Something so harsh that it cuts through me and kills.
Something painful enough to make me want to die.
I am sent spinning across the sky. Everything is red. Too much red. I cry out in confusion and anguish. Then I feel it again. All of it comes rushing back like a water fall of red hurt.
I awake. My upper thigh is bandaged in cloths dripping in blood. I am surrounded by blood. I look down and see what they have done to me. I cry out in despair. I now have only one leg. They might as well have taken away my life. My whole body hurts. My stomach heaves and I retch on myself; a stinking yellow liquid comes pouring from my mouth. It burns my throat. I’m sobbing now.

It still hurts, but not a strong, just throbbing. The sun is hot. Dust clogs my throat as I sit in a corner in the train station, a bowl for alms in front of me. So this is the better life they told me about. This is all I can do now. I have no family, or friends, just the ones who did this to me, and they are now my enemies, and the others who have had the same thing done to them. All of us are maimed so that we look more pathetic for the people. No matter what they do to us to keep us alive, still all I see when I close my eyes is red.