[Officelover]

By the time I was fourteen, I hated the Child, as most of us do. I don't know exactly what had changed my mind. I hadn't seen it again, and I still had the occasional nightmare with it. I think it was the fire that did it.
I had never seen fire before, outside of the fireplace in my home. Our family friends, Ievan and Len, and their crying baby Yon, had to stay with us for two months or so. Their house burnt down one winter day—bad luck I guess, but we all knew the Child had set it, everyone was saying it. Things like this didn't happen in Omelas. In Omelas, there are no fires or storms. That fire wasn't natural, and no one could have set it.
Omelas is a great city to grow up in. It's the only thing around for miles—a wall of sea on the east, endless endless to the west. There are other towns, across the ocean and downstream, but no one ever thought of visiting them. All their merchants and travelers couldn't wait to come to Omelas for vacation. The city wasn't one of gold, drowning in bullion, or the magnificent seat of a bloody empire. It was a great city in the sense that it is a terribly good place to be, not because it was grand.
There were no temples in Omelas. No soldiers, no politicians, no money really—you could barter for most anything—but we weren't simple people. We were intellectuals, I suppose—anarchists, socialists—all very idealistic, and very little of it nonsense. There was no discrimination in Omelas—men and women, people of all races, people of different worldviews—we just got along. We all considered each other human beings.
Omelas was fairly small. All the adults I knew growing up loved their jobs. My father was a baker. He used to love the feeling of dough in his fingers, and I'd help him bake on Saturdays. My mother was a painter. I used to sit for her every so often. She wasn't particularly good at painting, but honestly, I don't think anyone minded. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, or maybe I've just forgotten. I don't remember much from my childhood, anymore.
Soon after the fire, I decided that I hated the Child. Gone were the days when I fantasized about freeing it. Now, I lay awake at night, imagining how I could hurt it for what it had done to those innocent people. I would rock back and forth, back and forth, thinking about how I'd like to hurt him.
One day, I finally worked up enough courage to go back to the library and ask the librarian if the Child was in. She said she thought she saw it go out the back door, into the alley. “Would it be dangerous if I went to go use it? Would it be able to fight back?”
“That thing?” She asked incredulously, “That thing can hardly stand up, let alone fight.”
So, I went to the alley where she said it had gone. I didn't see it anywhere, until I turned the corner and saw its raggedy, naked body sitting against a wall, with its head buried deep in its palms. While it wasn't looking, I gave it a big kick in the balls. As it looked up in bewilderment, I ran away giggling.
That was one of the first memories I ever touched myself to.