Lucas

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//My parents are crazy, sending me off to the coal mine for their own food, not considering me even living, nevermind worthy of anything better than starvation. I write this in the middle of the night, the only time I am not working the 14 hours I do each day. They give me half a bowl of rice each day. I get whipped when I am pushing the carts so I go faster, and am whipped when I am working the drill if I turn away from even the tiniest of pieces of coal left in the rock. And the dangers! Floods! Fires! If a rock fell... oh, what could happen... Wing 7 collapsed yesterday on my best friend. No-one tried to rescue him, the manager caring for nothing but his own profit. I wept for this friend, as he was the only person who kept me knowing I would ever leave. The fire two weeks ago was living horror. I heard the screams of the children, trapped down in wing 4 when the manager// "Accidently" //dropped a cigar down there. The day I was sent to work I recall as my last day of happiness. My mother told me what was happening as the men walked in the door. I was pushed, pulled and beaten towards the mine, still in my pyjamas, which would become all that I had to wear for years. My voice went hoarse on the train from screaming; I was truly terrified, even though I knew not of the pain and hatred before me. Every day it is the baton on my ear that wakes me. Oh, I better go now. the manager's here.//======