...all the junkies and the rat-runners broke curfew that night
and some even tried to jump the wall. There were three noises that broke the
quiet sky; the first was a ‘thuck’ as the dum-dum bullets entered the bodies
and then blew them apart before they had time to scream. The second was the
cries of ‘hallelujah’ as the lucky souls escaped over the bricks, some ankle
crashing to the ground on the other side. The third was the sad noise of those
who thought they had made it, just a little call of ‘halle….’ moments before
the sniper shot them through the head. It had become known as the Hallelujah
Night and it lived long in the memories of those who were there.
What had caused it? Well the rat-runners and junkies had
nothing left to lose - they had nowhere else they could go, except the other
side of the wall.
Once upon a time there had been the working classes, who,
for generations, had suffered at the hands of the elite and little by little
they had bettered themselves. They pulled themselves up the ladders and made
sure that their children were better off than they had ever been. And as they
were concentrating on their lives, the politicians grew grey and similar until
there was nothing left to separate them. And while the peoples’ backs were
turned, the criminals came in from the east and ran in the vacuums created by
the lack of government.
The middle classes grew fat and insipid and blamed
everything on those on the outside. Then one day, a man came and told them that
all their problems would be over if they ‘cleansed’ those on the outside. And
when those troubles were gone, they started on the middle-classes themselves,
picking off those with illnesses and those with weaknesses - and yet the people
at the centre were sure they would be untouched. But there would always be new
rules created for a new elite, and in the end most lived on the outside. The
junkies and rat-runners called it the Guillotine Factor – as the man who created
that particular way to die, ended up (because of the constant rule changes)
being guillotined himself.
So that evening, that glorious evening, when the revolution
came and the souls of the crushed said ‘no-more’, they regrouped on the other
side of the wall and knew that this was only just the beginning…..
bobby stevenson 2015
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