Contest Submission " An Insurrection"

4,000 words or less created solely from the title prompt : "An Insurrection". Any input would be much appreciated. Criticize the hell out of it and brutalize me :P Enjoy  (took me 8 hours to write but i finally finished it lol) :

"An Insurrection"

Hill Crest Orphanage burnt to the ground in 1864, and with it came a sigh of relief from almost everyone in the town. They had all heard the whispers and rumors surrounding the place, most since they were small children telling stories around dying campfires, and some even knew how true those rumors were about the dark happenings that went on behind the closeddorrs; taking late night trips up the curving road to the top of the hill to drop off their unwanted cargo. They knew about the beatings and they knew about the rapes. Everyone in the town either knew from first hand experience what happened to the children, when the sun went down and they marched inside, when the moon rose and the lights went out, or they heard from a friend of a friend who saw something unspeakable and whispered what they saw with a promise to tell no one. They saw the scars and the braces and the casts .They knew about the mortality rate being a bit higher than average, give or take, but wasn't that why the children were sent there? Wasn't that why the men and women who, everyday, walked under the shadow of that God forsaken place and turned a blind eye to that knowledge.

The horrible answer to the even more horrible question was yes. But when the building saw it's last night and fell to nothing but ashes and charred cinder block, when the fires rose into the dark star studded sky, they all watched and felt the weight of that evil place lift from their shoulders (and most of them even convinced themselves it had left their hearts too, but deep down in the recesses of their minds they knew they were only fooling themselves and cringed at the thought) and they silently cheered the blazing inferno to end it, to burn that damned place to the ground.

What started the fire to this day is still anybodies guess, but what is known comes from two wardens who ran the night shift that were lucky enough to make it out, and one of the children, Billy Rikes, who made it out but wasn't so lucky. Most discount his telling and say it is unreliable at best but who can really tell after so many years have passed and filled the story with hearsay. When your telling your story through unconscious screams and blood curdling moans as nurses and doctors try to bandage you up and save your life, it's hard to tell if you're screaming through delirium or speaking the truth, especially when the ones you're telling don't want to know the truth and have to admit it to themselves.

From what was gathered through the inspection that followed of the remains and through the reports of both wardens, Roger Clem and Eric Vastine, and the boy Billy Rikes, the fire started in the Cafeteria on the first floor of the building...

Smoke filled the mess hall and children were crowded around the tables chanting and grunting, screaming like barbarians, while the flames licked the walls and turned them cinder black. Most of the wardens were sleeping in their comfortable beds, dreaming their calm dreams and unaware of the insurrection that had begun to take hold all around them, devouring the not so innocent men and women one by one with it's gnashing and angry teeth. They didn't hear the locks on their doors being jimmied and broken, or the doors being smashed in by the older and stronger of the children. They didn't hear the screams as throats were cut and crudely made knives found their marks, leaving blood to soak into the sheets and drip onto the warping floor boards of their sleeping quarters. They didn't smell the smoke as the building began to burn with growing rapidity, moving from room to room, alive, feeding it's devastating hunger. They slept the deep sleep of the dead because the children were tired of being treated like animals, caged and ragged and ready to take action; they were prepared..

For weeks the children whispered and plotted in short bursts on the playground and in the depths of night when their captures eyes were turned away. They passed notes and secret messages in the chalk they used to play hopscotch and in the mud and muck when it rained and the playground became more like a swamp than a place where children could laugh and enjoy their lives, even for that short span of a time before the whistle blew and they were sent back to their cells like prisoners. They kept their secrets, and kept them well, until everything was set and they were ready to spring their trap, setting their plans for freedom into motion.

The plans that were laid were shaky and free flowing at best but incapacitating the staff was a necessity and a rather simple undertaking and the means to do it with was easy to get and why shouldn't it have been. Every night during dinner, if you could call a small bowl of what barely passed for soup dinner, the nurses would come around, handing out the little blue pills with fake smiles and eyes filled with contempt, and watched as the children swallowed them down one by one. They moved with years of practice, quickly and efficiently. But with years of practice and calm sailing comes complacency, and when you cage a tiger against it's will, complacency is never a good habit to get into. It wasn't hard for the children to fake somber moods and dull smiles. Many of them hadn't taken their pills in years and when they went for their bathroom breaks, they slipped them out from under their tongues and flushed them down with the rest of their shit. Now, instead of watching them spin and sink into oblivion , they passed them around into open palms and waiting hands, and slowly, they made their way into Billy's.

The children of Crest Hill were used to being used for many things, play things for the older and less noble wardens was the worst of them, so cleaning the kitchens and scrubbing the floors was the least of their worries and everyday Billy Rikes could be found scrubbing like hell every inch of the kitchens tiled floor, until it was spotless and shining with mirror like brilliance. He was left alone most of the time and considered one of the more trustworthy of the wards. He was smart and kept to himself to avoid the beatings. He did his chores without question and scrubbed the floor until his fingers bled, but on occasion the thick leather belt, and sometimes the rod, found it's way to his back and he endured it like all the others. He gained their trust, to an extent, and when no one was around to see, he moved slowly and with care,  near the stove and into the pots of stew (the facility never touched the “soup” made for the children) the ground blue powder went, waiting to send the wardens to sleep the sleep of the damned.

Dinner went by without a hitch and the staff ate their meals eagerly, as they always did, and without hint of suspicion. They worked themselves to the bone making sure the children were kept in line and at the end of the day their stomachs rumbled and welcomed to the warm meal, and the cool drinks to wash it down. The children gave no notice to the walking dead as they ate their meals and not a single eye shifted in their directions to give them away. They stared at their bowls and ate in silence as they did every night and took their sleeping pills, or didn't, like they always did, or didn't, and went to their rooms to fake sleep and wait with an open eye.

The hours passed by, the children in their beds feigning sleep, while the wardens finished their nightly rounds, were relieved by the night crew, and heading off to bed. The moon was high in the sky and the children began to slowly stir and quietly roam the halls, taking down the night guards with concealed, and crudely made, shanks, leaving the bodies where they fell and moving on  to the next unsuspecting victim, if you could really call them that. They moved with deadly precision and soon the hallways were filled with bodies of the dead and those few still alive, trying to claw their way out of their rooms, to get outside, away from the revenge driven children, trying desperately with all their remaining strength to get away before they bled out or before another of the children could finish the job.

The revenge driven children ran though the halls screaming and chanting, barring teeth and cutting throats. Anyone they found that had held them prisoner and used the belt to beat them, and even if they hadn't, they cut down and kept on screaming and chanting in their savage tongues. They were animals caught in a red rage of heated blood and burning fury. They were more animal than children that night and Roger Clemens, as well as Eric Vastine, both made accounts of passing children on several floors on their run to get out, who were looking out the windows and shrieking at the moon. Howling like wolves with eyes dancing with a devilish passion they had never seen before and never wanted to again, they were quotes as saying.. They didn't stop to think on it long before they continued their run and eventually found their way outside, mostly unscathed but not unwounded.

By the time what was left of the night staff, who had actually taken the time to make their rounds, realized what was transpiring all around them, right beneath their noses, it was too late. Most of the building had caught fire and most of the doors, locked from the outside to keep the ever so precious children inside, had been blocked off by the quickly collapsing ceilings and the masses of clamoring bodies trying to climb over one another, working to pull out of the wire meshing that covered all the windows on every level of the orphanage. They desperately searched for any means of escape they could crawl out of, like rats they were, as the flames licked at their skin, filling the hallways with the revolting stench of singed hair and burning flesh.

It had never been part of the plan to torch the building many people had come to think, but a mob is a mob and has a mind of it's own. It is a creature built on fear and anger and follows the path it is set on, regardless of the consequences. The fires had been lit and once a floodgate is unleashed, you must let it run it's course and be crushed by the on coming flood. The children, frantic and filled with hate, hadn't thought about their means of escape and never added in the fire to the equation. In the end they were just as lost and confused as any of the staff, crying and screaming as the tears evaporated off their faces, their skin heating and charring, becoming unrecognizable as it melted and burned along with everything else around them. They all screamed their dying screams, many alone but some found one another and huddled together, holding each other as they passed out and smothered from smoke inhalation or burned to death with their last breathes coming out as screams.

Billy had been the only lucky child to make it out of the inferno. He was much older than many of the other kids and had kept a cool head. He had tried to save some of the others but they wouldn't listen and ran back through the hallways shrieking, looking for more blood to spill. He grabbed several of them but they scratched and tore at him until they broke free and eventually he just gave up and looked for a way out on his own. He ran through rooms filled with smoke and hallways mostly consumed by the hungry flames but kept running, not matter how many burns he got or how many times he thought he would pass out from the smoke. Several times he thought he was home free only to find the way had been blocked off by falling beams and had to back track and find a new way out. He ran until he could not longer keep up his pace and then quickened it and ran some more. His body was aching and he could feel the pulsing heat of the burns that covered him, sinking past his skin and deep into his muscles but still he ran on. When he was close to the brink and was just about to give up and let the fires consume him he caught a glimpse of light ahead and saw two of the night guards running out into the open air. He waited for only a moment and charged after them as fast as his tormented legs could carry him.

When Billy pushed the doors open he thought he would die of pure joy as the smell of fresh air filled his lungs but he kept on running. He saw the two men rushing down the hill, never looking back, and followed after them, onto the winding gravel road and into the street where he collapsed and let the pain wash over him in a tidal flood that consumed his mind, pushing him in unconsciousness. He never saw the man that drove closer to get a better look and found him lying in the middle of the road, on the brink of death. He never felt the man pick him up and drag him into his car. Billy never knew about the man that drove him to the hospital, throwing him unceremoniously onto the curb and driving away without a word. Billy Rikes, from the moment he passed out in the street to the moment his heart stopped beating three days later in room 17 of Ravin Hill Memorial Hospital, never saw another thing in this world. But he dreamed vivid horrors and screamed in that dark delirium he was trapped in during those last agonizing days. He had made it out and the cold cobblestone road was the last thing he ever saw.

They said you could hear the screams all over the town, like the shrieking of banshees, while they watched the place burn to nothing more than ashes, and the children along with it, but not one of those watched with unblinking eyes moved an inch to help put out the flames. They watched, stunned and hopeful, until the sun came up and until the flames died down to slowly burning embers, and began their day of mourning those pour children, weeping over the tragedy and doing anything they could to make themselves feel a little better about what had happened, what their blind eyes and closed mouths were somewhat responsible for. They sifted through the aftermath and recovered only a few of the bodies, thirty-six or thirty-seven was the official count, and when the charred and broken ruins of the Crest Hill Children's Orphanage was removed, the investigation ended, the town went back to their normal routines. They built a pricey memorial where the building had stood at the top of the hill and filled it with  row upon row of unnamed markers, white as snow,  from one end of the fenced in memorial cemetery to the other.

There was a massive ceremony when Billy was laid to rest at the head of graves, and the whole town came to be apart of it, dressed in traditional black with their mourning faces flawlessly in place. The preacher spoke his long winded sermon and gave the boy his blessing to go with God. He gave his wishes for the boy to go to his heavenly father and to be at peace in that land where he would feel no more pain. He knelt his head to pray and the entire crowd bowed their heads and followed suite without so much as a whisper. They laid him to rest beneath a massive bronze statue of some generic angel standing atop a marble pedestal, wings spread and eyes pointed out towards the rest of the markers, two hundred some in all, representing all the children who lost their lives that night. The inscription at the base was short and simple : “Billy Rikes. We will never forget. The only Orphan to escape the Hill Crest tragedy”.

They called it a tragedy and mourned the loss of life like anybody would, but in their hearts, in their deepest and darkest secret thoughts they were smiling, jumping for joy and sighing grand sighs of relief. The horrid place they had all hated, and many feared but dared not to do anything about, was gone forever and was never coming back. They were brought out of it's looming shadow and that was the real reason behind the memorial and the statue erected for brave Billy Riker. Even though it was unspoken, it was in all of their minds, and they all knew it. They thanked the children for ridding them of that darkness. They held him, and and the rest of them, up as symbols of their new found freedom, and as a way of giving their thanks to the dead. The children had fought their battle for them and were given the proper respect for their sacrifice.

The children killed their captors and had in turn given their lives for it, screaming and choking on smoke. They fought tooth and nail from beginning to the every end of their hellish insurrection, and spilled the blood of the men and women who had tortured them and raped them, and in many instances over the years, had brutally taken their lives without a second thought or a batted eyelash. This was the story that was never told in the newspapers or the on the street. This was the story they never printed in the history books or the records in Town Hall. The dark deeds that went on behind those closed doors were never put on paper and never spoken about in the public. They were hidden and even in death the truth is still masked by the bravery of that one child who fought to live and make it out. This is not the story about tragedy, or how brave Billy was to make it out alive. This is the story of how the children fought to gain their freedom. This is the story about their will to survive and live without fear, to live without the need to constantly be on the watch for their next beating or to see which one of them would disappear, without a trace. This is the story of how the children of Crest Hill Orphanage abandoned all fear and sent their devils back to the hell, screaming and begging for mercy.