The Cull



  THE CULL

  Enn Kae

  Copyright 2013 Enn Kae

  Published by Enn Kae/Mispel Books

  License Notes

  The right of Enn Kae to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  Find out more about upcoming books online at www.zeekworld.net

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Enn Kae was born in a small town in the north-west of England to immigrant parents. When he was 11, his family moved to live in Scotland. At the age of 21, after graduating with a Masters in English from Dundee University (he also studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a year), he left Scotland to live in England. He lived and worked there until 2012 when he left the damp isle for political and spiritual reasons. He has worked in many guises: office worker; car insurance salesman and, for the past 6 years, as an English teacher. He has taught one of the most vulnerable groups in Britain: socially disadvantaged young people at risk of exclusion. His stories evoke the sense of isolation and alienation that he encountered whilst growing up in the UK and they are also inspired by the kids he taught. He currently resides in The Netherlands with his partner and family of animals and he teaches English at a couple of universities in Rotterdam. He cites his main influences as African-American history and literature; Frantz Fanon; Noam Chomsky; Edward Said; Jean Baudrillard; Ayn Rand; William Blake and Prince, the musician.

  OTHER WORKS

  For more information, please visit www.zeekworld.net

  .

  ''Prince, Madonna and Post-Modernism: signifiers of post-modernism in popular culture" - a critical view of popular music culture with a post-modern lens.

  Available by e-mail from [email protected]

  FOREWORD

  It's very difficult not to get agitated and annoyed when someone, usually white though not always, asks me - "where are you from?" It's something that used to irk me a lot when I lived in the UK. It was the land in which I was born yet I could never escape the question. My agitation was not borne out of personal issues over my own rich cultural heritage. It was the intention behind the question that aggravated me. In my experience in the UK, I felt that the person asking the question was really asking "who are you, what are you doing here and why don't you go back to where you come from?''

  In America, where I once lived for 18 months in the 90s, I felt that the question was really formed from of a genuine curiosity out of the rich tapestry of its own culture. Where I live now, in The Netherlands, I feel it's a question that is often asked in order to assess whether or not I speak enough Dutch in order to then converse. Again, I feel it's borne out of a curiosity rather than a condemnation; a practicality rather than a projection of the questioner's sense of superiority, or suspicion, or a masked hatred or - as is often the case - to then ascribe a whole set of labels and preconceived ideas about what someone of my skin colour and cultural heritage should say, think, look, act or feel.

  The fact is that I do not know where I come from. As Paul Mooney once said: "I come from my mother's womb'' and, indeed, that is the closest response I can give.

  If, in the not-too-distant future, there came a time when we (as humanity with a single consciousness) would have to grapple with that same question in the face of a new breed of super-humans, how would we answer it and how would we react? What would happen if the same systems of control and oppression that we apply to certain groups in society are then used against us as human beings?

  These sorts of questions seeded the premise of this novella. I can remember exactly when it happened. It was in June 2007, during the height of the 'war on terror.' I was sitting on the stairs in my house in England after feeling particularly upset over an argument I had over the phone with a now former friend. The argument was over the persecution of Muslims by the media amidst the 'war on terror.' On a street-level the 'war on terror' meant that it gave racists a green-light to act and behave appallingly towards brown-skinned people in general.

  .

  It was a time when the government began raiding many Muslim households; holding then releasing their 'suspects' without charge. In what can only be described as a PR campaign to support the 'war on terror' narrative, the population had been subdued into fear by the media and the government. It was also a time when I encountered many hostilities, lost many 'friends' and awoke to the mass manipulation and mind-control. It was also the time when I gained my strength and, now, my voice as a writer.

  I became horrified at the change in mood in the country; the vast majority of the public were beginning to accept, without questioning, what they were being told and the treatment of vulnerable groups in society was beginning to worsen with impunity.

  I remember thinking humanity was not going to survive if we continued on that path. I then took that idea to its very extreme and concluded that humanity wouldn't learn its lesson unless there was an apparent and immediate threat to its own perceived position in this world - the presence of a super-human race would create some perspective into the lives of human beings who sought to oppress others. Pro-gens and Re-gens were created to serve as an literary device to drive this story of alienation and social exclusion.

  The idea of Pro-gens (a genetically-enhanced group of people) serves as a symbolic reflection of not just the situation in the country I have since left behind. Pro-gens are everywhere. They exist in our reality in any country that has a minority group or a group that exists within its periphery. The Re-gens are also everywhere: they are the 'Pakis', the Gypsies, the Travellers, the Gays, the African-Americans, the First Nation peoples, the Polish, the Somalians and the Refugees. The list is endless.

  This story is allegorical in nature like most politically-motivated stories. After studying Post-Colonial Literature whilst at university (and after observing trends in publishing over the past 20 years) I didn't want to write just another story about growing up at the margins of society. I find those stories of Diaspora desperately boring as they don't engage me nor do they actually speak of the true essence of the process of marginalisation - that there exist deep-rooted structures which need to be examined before they can be broken.

  Having said that, I present to you The Cull - a story, in all its complexity, about the experience of every human soul that has struggled to find its place in this world.

  - Enn Kae, August 2013.