Principle Seven

Foreword to an Ugly World

I was eight when my grandpapa told me about the Passage. I only knew what they told us in school. The Passage was based on the “Basic Principles of Humanity”. These basic principles were quite simple:

Be like everybody else.

It was simple, they said. You only ever needed to know some basic rules:

There will be no relations between humans of the same gender.

There will be no relations between humans of different race.

When a Malady is afflicted upon a person, this must be reported to the Counsel of Cleansing.

Any conduct of intimacy must be organised by members of The Supremacy.

Female humans must wear proper clothing both inside and outside unless apparel is permissible by The Supremacy.

Any persons aged over 60 years need to be reported to the Counsel of Cleansing.

And those were it. The Six Principles of Humanity that needed to be obeyed, the Passage that governed our very lives. There were often sub-Passages that made things more complicated than it seemed, but they only ever told those sub-Passages to adults, to those who would understand. Those that did not obey the Passage were often, if not always, caught by The Supremacy, a group who enforced the Laws passed by the Counsel.

What my grandpapa told me, I would never forget. My grandpapa was already 59. His birthday would be in a matter of a few weeks. Sitting on his lap I remember his grey eyes staring down at me, looking both sad, but happy. My grandmama died at the age of 36, after giving birth to my mother. She, my grandpapa said, was the lucky one. As I sat on my grandpapa’s lap, he told me of the Passage, of the Principles, of the sub-Passages. But then he told me of the hidden Clause. The Clause relating to the Others. They, my grandpapa said, were not a race, nor were they human.

My grandpapa called them Angels.

He told me this hidden Clause allowed for their persecution. He told me they were all now extinct, their brutal deaths hidden from the world. He painted a picture for me, filled with beauty yet pain.

These Angels were persecuted under Principle 7: they were different. My grandpapa told me that they had wings of different colours, ranging from the whitest of ivory to the deepest of blacks. He told me they were kind in soul, gentle in touch, and beautiful in feature. He told me they were perfect. As perfect as the destroyed paintings of olden lore, as perfect as a fully blossomed cherry blossom, as perfect as the unbridled love between soul mates.

So perfect, my grandpapa said, that their deaths at the hands of the Counsel was almost as perfect as them. He told me they had been burned, their wings broken backwards and crossed behind them, their hands and feet bound. Yet despite their pain and suffering, their eyes still shimmered with the faint glow of Hope, that maybe one day, a human would revolutionise the Ugly World.

I listened to my grandpapa say that to me. After that, my family went home for the night, we all got ready for bed, and I slept in my room, comforted by the warm sheets around me.

The next time I saw grandpapa, he was laying dead in his bedroom, an empty medication bottle on his night stand.

Principle Seven © Eileen. A. Setiawan