I hate this time, no longer night but not quite day.

This is a regular occurrence, waking as the sun starts to creep in through the small windows. My stomach always twists with a heavy uneasy sensation, making it impossible to return to sleep; meaning I'm left with too much time to think.

Thinking time is never pleasant when your future can not be planned out and you have no choice. It's especially unpleasant when you're trying to avoid your past memories, which I try to box away in the hope of being forgotten yet they continue to fight in a bid to escape.

I flick through TV channels aimlessly, the volume is too low to hear but my mum is asleep again and what little rest she gets, I try to make it as peaceful as possible. The few channels we have are a bombardment of State propaganda.

You'd think the makers would have thought a more subtle approach may be a better and less annoying way to convince people how to act and think.

Every TV show, movie, song, book and newspaper all shove The State's moral code down our throat. Every word and image is carefully constructed and chosen, all of it thoroughly thought out to never be provocative. There is no cursing, no anger, no fighting, no sex, no hint of relations before marriage, no baby's out of wedlock, no same-sex relationships; the list could go on.

The only references to these so-called deplorable acts are when they are used to demonstrate how they lead to a vicious downward spiral of depravity, corruption and immorality; ultimately ending in your demise.

Listen to provocative music and you will end up dancing for money in an underground basement where old perverted men visit until The State find you and send you to a labour camp.

Kiss out of wedlock and you will become a full-blown whore who is pumping out drug-addicted babies until you're rejected from society and killed.

Drink alcohol and you will become an alcoholic and die of liver failure.

The links are mind-blowing yet somehow it works. People fall in line and do as they're told. Well, most do which might have less to do with the propaganda and be due to the large fear factor.

Turning off the TV I can't stand to watch anymore, I lean back closing my eyes and think of the markings I will get someday.

This is my favourite pastime when I'm alone. The only daydreaming I allow myself to do. My mind conjures up images, patterns and colours which will cover my skin causing the tension knotted in my stomach to ease slightly.

I'm not asleep but it's definitely a dream because everything I imagine will never exist. I can't get any of these marks not without exposing myself for the anomaly I am. I'm a blank canvas, a covering of nothingness, I've never even received the compulsory birth brand.

I'm unmarked.

Author's note

What do you think of Cady?
And the society The State are trying to set up?

Trying to make it clear what happens without being too explicit... It's kind of hard because I want this still to be Teen Fiction!

Xx