The Box - Nov 2021

Sometimes the guard would get surprised at how many men it could take to hold a heartbroken mother back. Didn’t she realize that no matter how much strength she had and how much she tried, she’d never get away? Did she not see the forlorn, fuzzy grey eyes of the other mothers who had given no protest to having let their child be ripped from their embrace?

No one was above the say of the emperor. If he tells you to crawl, you crawl. If he tells you to die, you die. And when he demanded that all children were to be beaten into submission, to have trauma that would trap them in the shells of their bodies they were left with, you give up your child for them to do so.

You can’t forget the look. The look of a mother staring as her baby is taken away. The look of a person from a third world country watching their village burn down. The look of a free climber who stepped on a wrong groove, watching as his foot slipped off the dirt, watching as his fingers released, brushing past the rock he previously held.

And when the climber fell, maybe his face would echo this mother’s. Maybe his lips would be stretched across his face, frozen in a scream like her’s. Like the lips of someone crying and laughing that look similar. When someone is so hurt and so ripped apart, the quick gasps and shrill cries come out from a mouth that is stretched across their face. But their eyebrows would be pushed together, eyes glistening from tears, and their face blotchy and red. They’d look like her. Snot and tears running, the mother was held back. Thrashing and hitting the men around her, she roared, she screamed. She belted and yelled for her child. She moved violently, an uncontrolled animal.

They can’t take her baby away. They can’t take her baby to the box.

The men firmly restrained the woman, their arms tangling and webbing together to form a wall separating a mother from her child. Even as the women fought with all her might to get out of their grip, her eyes never left her child.

The distraught child hit her back on the top of the crush box when she jumped up, shaking the wood logs that formed the cell she was trapped in. The chains and ropes holding her legs struggled to keep her in the box, but no matter how hard she shook the ground, no matter how hard she slammed her body against the logs, she could not escape. 

“Stop it!” The man roared, but she wasn’t listening to the men sitting on the log crossing the enclosure. One man held a bullhook in his hand. His feet pushed into the back of the child’s head. The other man with his back against him steadied himself, pushing his leg onto the other log.

“You stupid animal! I said to stop it!”

The child wasn’t thinking. She had to get out. She just had to.

She wasn’t safe. She knew she wasn’t safe. Her mom wasn’t there. Where is she? How can she get out? She can’t stay here. She can’t. She had to get out. She just had to. She banged the logs imprisoning her with all her strength, slamming her whole body weight into them. She was jabbed again. The men barked at her, but they spoke in a language she did not understand. They’d tell her something that sounded like her ears were on backwards. She’d pick out the wrong words and hear the wrong things and not understand. And they’d hit her, again and again and again.

“Help me!” She’d howl. “Please, please, stop!”

But it was as if her words were just the moans of an unintelligent animal, indecipherable.They didn’t hear her voice. They just kept jabbing her with the bullhook, and children watched as she bled and cried and screamed and shook. 

A boy in muddy shorts sucked on a piece of sugar cane. He looked straight ahead, away from her. The metal chains on her feet hit the dirt floor again as she jumped up. The boy never turned to look at her.

 The child pleaded. “Please let me go. I’m scared. Please, sir, what did I do wrong?” She grimaced when another jab hit her.

She was getting delirious. Her movements were getting weaker. She was blundering and even though she wanted to get out, she slowed. How long has it been? She couldn’t stay still, as she had to get out, but she was so so tired. But they wouldn’t let her sleep since they kept jabbing and poking and yelling at her.

The man yelled another foreign word. It didn’t sound right to her ears. The syllables didn’t round or cut. They were too slithery and rough. She didn’t understand, and she continued thrashing and twisting, the sharp pain of the bullhook hit her ears.

The man yelled the same word again. She continued thrashing, her limbs hitting the logs, her chains straining.

But she was tired. She was so, so tired.

So she curled up, tucking her bleeding head into her arms, her throbbing body into the fetal position.

The men shouted, jabbing the bullhook into her. And so she got up, about as much as she could in the confined space.

And this time she did not struggle. No bullhook.

This word and not thrashing meant no bullhook.

The delirious child tried to clumsily struggle against the men again, but at a certain point, she gave up grappling and wrestling against them. She did what they wanted her to do. She responded to the commands properly.

When she saw her mother the next day, outside the crush box, she didn’t run up to her. The men had told her to stay.

On this story:

In sixth grade, I cried while watching a documentary about Asian elephants. 

The film was called “Love and Bananas,” and it exposed a cruel secret known as the “pajan,” also known as the crush box. When young elephants are captured from the wild, they are put into wooden cages to try and crush their spirit and make them obedient and fearful of humans.

The idea behind this is that the elephant’s fear of the humans outweighs its love for its own mother, which means it will obey the humans and ignore the calls of the mom trying to get the elephant to escape. Later I read “Stand On the Sky” by Erin Bow and learned that they also do the same thing with hawks, putting them in a small box and not letting it sleep for many days by swinging the box around. When the hawk is sleep-deprived enough, they open the box and the animal obeys the human.

It baffles me that this is legal. Baffles me even more that no one is doing anything about it. It made me want to yell to the world about this issue to raise more awareness.

So when we were assigned to write a dystopian piece of fiction in English class, I drew heavily upon the images I saw in that elephant documentary. For example, in my story, “The Box”, when I describe the abuse my character has to go through as the child is separated from the mother, I drew inspiration from one heartbreaking shot in the documentary where an elephant struggles as two men sitting on the log cage hit it with bullhooks and canes. Even my ending line is about how our abused character became obedient and fearful of humans: “When she saw her mother the next day, outside the crush box, she didn’t run up to her. The men had told her to stay.”

I believe dystopian literature is important because it exaggerates and highlights issues in our world in a clear way, allowing readers to see how dire our situation can get. People can also be abused in the same way that elephants are. Sometimes in war, humans resort to torture in order to get information or make someone confess to something they didn’t do. There are many stories about people confessing to crimes because they were too tired to argue and had been kept up all night by questioning.

Dystopian literature is important because it can exaggerate world problems ahead of time so that we make changes. They act as a warning of things to come.

With some dystopian novels like the series “The Lunar Chronicles” by Marrissa Meyers, it’s easy to separate the far-away future of that world from our reality where there are no Lunars or Eartherns or Cyborgs. Other dystopian books, however, such as “Trash” by Andy Mulligan much more resemble real-life struggles many in poverty have to go through, such as looking through trash to try and find things to recycle and sell. This happens in present-day India, for example. Or “Want” by Cindy Pon, which describes a world in which our air is so bad that it is essential to wear air filtering helmets for good health. This is not too far-fetched from the PM2.5 pollution  that had us all wearing masks in Bangkok, even before COVID-19.

Therefore, when I wrote my own piece of dystopian fiction, I wanted to draw upon something that takes place in the real world to try and affect the reader. Even though the story is fictional, I hope that in my piece, the struggle of those characters appears real to the reader so they can empathize with my writing on a deeper level. I hope after reading my story, the reader thinks twice about the way we treat each other and the animals we are supposed to care for. 

-Chinjutha (Aki) Thangthanarkeat

Jan 7, 2022

(Draft 1) - July 2021

I was sitting in the front row of the cinema. I was watching a movie that I didn’t like but I wasn’t supposed to leave. So when the characters started to speak too loud and come too close, and the cinema started to become smaller and smaller, I stayed put. And when sweat dripped down my neck, I balled my hands so tight that they started to hurt. My knee went up and down and up and down when balling my fists wouldn’t help. I did it so much that I couldn’t stop. The characters were so loud. They came too close and whispered in my ear, they were huge. They moved closer and closer and the cold air surrounding me suddenly felt palpable. But even as the thick air closed its moist jaws on my body I did not move.

I can’t focus on the movie. And the loud noises are just as loud but for some reason, I don’t really hear them. It looks like they’ve moved me to the last row. The sounds are still there and the characters are still so scary but I think they’ve put earmuffs on my ears. The characters are telling me to do something and I can’t do it. I can’t move -- my body is stuck on the chair. The thick air was sitting on my shoulders and my head hurt and there was something kicking at the back of my eyes and I felt it but I couldn’t react because the air was holding me.

But then suddenly I didn’t care so much anymore. I didn’t need to react. I could stay still. And as the air’s heavy hands pushed down on my shoulders, I stopped trying to move. So I stare at the moving colors in front of me. The characters on the big screen don’t seem so scary anymore. Suddenly they were so affable and sweet. But I still couldn’t really hear them. They danced and twisted around in a strange dream filled with watermelons that were too red and grass that was so green. 

Then I started thinking that the grass was too green. That the watermelons were so syrupy red that it would burn my eyes. Then the contorted characters suddenly seemed contorted and the flashing colors suddenly stayed in my vision for longer than it was there, and the sounds echoed. I was scared again.

I couldn’t eat my popcorn, the air was heavy and I couldn’t bear lifting my hand up. And even if my stomach was empty and the back of my eyes hurt and my ears were ringing, the character pulled me back to the state of satiety. I was full, they said. The air will put me into a nice safe spot where everything was muted and if I didn’t focus too hard I wouldn’t feel thumping behind my eyes or see the characters becoming more and more warped. They are starting to stretch up and widen and twist. I don’t know what I’m seeing. The mangled, crumpled thing in front of me was there, but I didn’t see it. The air around me held me in a tacit world. And even though the movie in front of me was crooked and lopsided and contorted and distorted and stretched and horribly loquacious, the imprudent air still held me in that droll state.

But then the air let go. My earmuffs, my mirage, the safe easy spot I was in, were ripped away from me. I was in the front row again and there was no air and I couldn’t breathe as the characters wedged themselves into my ears and up my nose. They pinched and pushed at the back of my eyes and they kicked and stomped on my throat. I thrashed and cries ripped out of my throat but the characters were voracious. They squawked into my ears and howled when I tried to run away. 

I couldn’t stay seated. My neck was breaking and my eyes were burning. I ran and ran and ran and my legs were moving but the things around me did not move. I didn’t go forward. The characters leered, they’d wager that I wouldn’t get out of this cursed cinema. 

Suddenly, my hands ripped through the clotted air in front of me. My legs tore through the curdling smoke around me. I trudged up the red-carpeted stairs, moving as fast as I could. But when I got near the open door, and when I got close to the balmy light, the light that spilled onto the soiled floor waned.

The door had closed shut – and before I could even put my tired hands on the cool wood, I was pulled back. Back on the last row. In the easy, empty, forlorn space of mine, where I could pretend the movie wasn’t playing.