097

Number 097 had a pijama that was way too small. Nobody brought attention to this fact but he observed this by himself in the pieces of the mirror from the communal bathroom. The sleeves were ending suddenly before covering the forearms, and a button snapped from the effort of holding everything together.

The „caregiver” was complaining that they don’t have enough money to keep up with his rythm of fattening. But number 097 was not fat; he was thiner than his will to live – the long arms were hanging rigidly on both sides of what the orphanage was calling a 14 years old’s body.

The orphanage had it’s own terms that it was using to write beautiful stories with happy endings. In their dictionary, numbers were names, the mush was food and the beating was education.

The pijamas with the same size for everybody were considered good clothing and the uncovered ankles were simply a sign of disobedience. „How dare you not to fit in the pijama?”. The crying was a caprice, hunger just a pretence and the laughter was just too much noise.

Number 097 knew that he is just a number in an ordinal row. He was counted every morning and evening between 096 and 098. But it was not honest math, he noticed; because no one was addresing their problem. No one was solving equations: no one was doing addition so they can make an equal division – the division was made only after the substraction.

The multiplication opperation was unknown to them: as well as the powers. All they knew was reduction; they were put in fractions one over another and then put in radicals until everything was taken out of them...until they could not be reduced anymore.

It was not honest math.

Number 097 had bare purple soles: he was making turns for a pair of slippers with number 056 in exchange for half of his mush. He didn’t like it anyway because it had no taste. And he allowed himself not to be content with the „food”. What insolence...who has ever seen a number before to have the guts to wish for a better life?!

097 was not insolent though; all he wanted was not much and he was saying it anytime his hands were whiped: „ if you don’t know education, at least ask the children with names from the secondary school to solve something.”. And with this, he was withdrewing his red, heated hands back.

„Please?!”