four — gabriel barrios

Four mint green polos and four matching khaki slacks lined neatly at the mouth of a cave, a popular drop off for tourists and occasional essentials. Garganta they call it. An Old World term for throat. Hollow transitory space. Swallowing up the resources of the earth. Some sort of passageway to passageways to passageways. A labyrinthine digestive tract. Clever youth would spend afternoons trading fecal jokes.

Soon the throat/intestine would expel three males. I sat nearby, on the dark side of the orifice, and watched them shuffle into the garb as quickly and awkwardly as possible. Long, pale bodies with amphibious legs left better untouched, felt best against torrential currents. Yet here they are, adjusting to the pressures of fitted cotton. Without so much as a glance in my direction they scurried out. I found mouth more appropriate. The earth was vomiting.

I pictured their brows furrowing in the new light, a white stretch of hairless skin wrinkling above two abysmally black eyes. Flat noses would twitch, dry lips would crackle in the heat, or maybe swell in the humidity. They would scratch at the freckles on their forearms, freckles that turned to splotches that turned to charred hands.

Is it hot down there?

Yes.

So it can melt metal right?

Yes.

And it burns skin right off?

Yes.

You feel nothing now?

Clever youth cleverer in their maturity.

Several hours later the three would return with due rations, prodded and poked by strangers more brown, more blond, more pure and less hesitant than they. I imagined no glance would be thrown my way this time either, though I never knew if for any reason other than exhaustion.

One mint green polo and one khaki slack before me. I was offered a choice, but I would not go outside. Those clothes would not fit me. I could not fit those clothes.

I think often about what it should have taken to get me out into the light. Was it passion?

Two childhood friends, eager for adventure. One finds her way into the wrong places and gets tied to a post. She is engulfed by fire. I will avenge you. She ran into the brightest bright and burned all of their villages down.

Was it desperation?

My wife is sick. She finds nothing easy in herself anymore. I must get her the help she needs. I will go outside and bargain my way for her life.

Was it

For the group. What is clear to me is that the sole reason for venturing into brightness lies in someone else. I am a vehicle for some need, and my destination is predetermined by the seemingly arbitrary misfortunes of life. These are the forces that expel me beyond myself. I am selfless so much as creatures who have no concept of self can be. I imagine being an exception to the rule. And yet even I have difficulty living fully for myself. This consciousness was something given to me in order to be overcome. Another voice to quash in favor of a wave that subjects itself to the whims of impulse and stimulus, reward and punishment. I write in this diary openly, knowing not a single person has the means to understand my practice/wondering if perhaps others once wrote, too.

Deep in these thoughts, I nearly missed the butterfly that wandered into the cave. It burned alive within seconds. I marveled at the flame, suspended mid-air.

Polo is an indisputably stupid word.

I keep in mind the failures of the errant. The talks of illness and infection. There is something in the air beyond the walls of our tunnels that lulls the unfortunate into madness. Quietly. It always moves quietly, taking on the face of a stray berry, false glints in pockets, a burial site. Two people smiling. A half-eaten bug. A string of words. Amorphous and quiet it crawls inside another’s lungs and replaces their breath with its own. The result is fatal. Scavenging is quite equivalent to heroism these days.

But it is not fear that keeps me away.

Every day I have been putting my theories to test. If I was wrong before, I can be wrong again. Would you like to read my journal? I pace up and down the queue desperate for an answer. Would you like to read my journal? Eye contact is rare here, verbal response rarer. I am near a conclusion that I am indeed alone in my practice when I sense tension. Even in or perhaps because of this darkness I am attuned to changes in the composition of space, how someone’s shoulders clanged suddenly against the air above them when I ask them if they feel like running and screaming and if they know what it means to talk about themselves? Is anybody else angry? Is anybody else repulsed by the khaki slacks? Could they want to read my journal?

The only response I get today is from a Gigas who reminds me of my role. Wake up. Find ore. Smelt iron. Forge metal. Eat food. That is all. I am shoved back into line.

The brightest fire came from a surprising place. I found myself throwing rocks at a Gigas. I saw him with a group of fledglings, guiding them toward Garganta, on the verge of showing them what

Many have seen

Many do see

And many will see, every day, after us, flint of the fire.

I thought carefully about the indoctrination, these subtle attacks on the consciousness. What is so bad about I, Gigas? What is wrong with me? My? Mine? I thought about the fragility of the butterfly, and the battered bodies. My mind went beyond itself. I picked up a rock, and threw it at Gigas. He looked, at me, without so much a wrinkled brow. Dead eyes I felt dared to thrust back into life. Hate me, Gigas. Hate me. That was all I could think when I threw the next rock. And the next. And the next. I caught the space between his eyes. For a moment, the red of the blood burned duller than those eyes it traveled between.

I touch.

I feel.

I think.

I recognize.

I like.

It is conscionable to educate a servant to an extent just beyond their need. If too little, one risks being accused of utilitarianism. If too much, one risks fostering an expectation for fulfillment. The window for proper execution is small, yet a necessary calculation if one hopes to breed the perfect servant. Any single oversight is a danger to the trainer’s reputation.

This, then, the reason for the young girl’s intrusion into my unknowing. She forced herself into me, dared by the unimpeachable. Brown hair, blue eyes, mousy nose, she was of a new generation, one that demanded upheaval of the old ways. I have an idea, friend. She ran into me and forced my stomach open. I felt her squirm inside me, impregnating me. Good, she said. This will be like being born again. How does it feel with me inside you? How does it feel to hear my voice at every mention of your self? Good, I said, and bad. It is in your voice that I hear myself think now, where before I had no voice I could remember. I feel separate. And yet now I am stuck with you. Before you there was no I, but with me there is only you. I am an experiment in freedom. Such are the ways of the radical trainer, perpetually and recklessly pursuing the novel.

May we put on a wonderful show, friend.

Already I feel the effects of my mutation. I feel a heat between my legs. And this, in turn, draws my eyes downward, between others. I know there to be several types of bodies. Large. Small. Bulging. Concave. I never knew there to be attraction. I never knew there to be a desire to search for more, to find better words to describe the flexibility of the muscles, or the redness of their excitement. The involuntary contractions. The smell. The moistness. Liquid is so sparse here, and yet there is a wetness that leaks from within every body I observe. Oases to jump into. I imagine others wanting to seep into me the way I want to seep into them, and the heat rises. How quickly one seeks partnership where before none existed! So many creatures winding mindlessly around, stepping in footsteps already forged by those before them. And all I want is to step out of line. No, to force someone out with me. I wonder where this impulse stems from. Is it defensive? At every mention of my self I feel my body tearing itself toward another. Any other. Navigating these passageways alone must be no small feat, I have concluded. This is what the body wants. What the body should want. Someone must have noted this when they placed us all together.

My mind wanders most frequently toward a slender body that works at the front of the flames. Never missing a beat. His arms blackened to the shoulders. Evidence of an admirable worker. Despite the direct encounters with the central flame, still he strokes the heated metal in perfect synchronicity. Turning solid into liquid, with bare hands, he folds the earth into itself. I watch his hands dart into and out of the mounds of melted ore. He regularly volunteers to venture out. A perfectly oiled machine, bred to think only of others. I have heard the word handsome echo through the pores of our tunnels. Words from girls up above who could see the beauty in him the way one would a jewel. He turns to look at me.

And for a second I forget myself.

How plainly I want to.

Feel him.

This interest is mundane.

900+

It was not the first. Or the second, or the third, or the thirty first. It is only now that I give thought to my first encounter with a broken form. Three males between them carrying a mound tucked neatly underneath a blue rations tarp. With a stiffness not unlike boxes of food. The People were generous today. I thought. Perhaps the impulse toward my current self always existed for, in my rush out of their way, I remember watching an ore fall out of my hands and into the path. My instinct was to leave it there, preferring to study the results of error. One foot caught the ore and near tripped, as expected. In the jerked effort that followed his correcting himself, a slender arm slipped from underneath the tarp. The black I knew well. A certain violence any of us learn to understand quickly. What I had never seen was the purple. The blue. The red. So much swelling. Fingers that gnarled. Fragments of bone peeking through a fibrous forearm. No more than a few seconds must have passed, but still I watched, taking it all in. There was an impulse inside of me to remember.

I wonder how she imagined a world in which she did not die. Would she have continued to scavenge for berries? Would she have overseen an ore depository? Would she have sold her eyes, bought a dress, burned her skin red, and lived amongst the Humans? I placed myself inside a dead girl and lived my life as she would. I imagined this was akin to keeping her alive. I did not know her any more than I knew the group. But if we are one and the same, did it matter?

Only I did know her. I do know her, for she was sick as I am sick, wildly searching for more and begging for change. She stepped out of line. I step out too. She did matter. She mattered, I matter.

She was the first of many. The first that I can remember.

So when I saw the blackened shoulder of an outstanding worker slip from underneath the tarp, I felt no surprise. None at all.

My insides burn. My arms burn. I swear I feel them sting when I near the fire. Where once was death I now see life. I have known about people who believe in revival. People who see life where death begins. Perhaps this is who I am now. Perhaps these are those who must be sought. At the top of a mountain, at the bottom of the ocean, there are those who must see my burnt arms. How blind I was before. Eyes on me, I understand the significance of the ventures. I scratch the ash away from my fingers and push into the faces of small children asking me about the monsters in my home. I look for elders, I look for people who can talk to me about death, and dying, and killing. I will show them what has happened, what has been done. I will ask them what happens when they realize I hurt too. I can hurt, too. I will burn the village. I will move on.

I find myself before those khaki slacks again and I touch them for the first time. Pink flesh poking through the spaces my skin has flaked off. It stings to touch, yet the fabric is soft, a softness I find foreign but I understand to be pleasurable. There were some, I imagine, who would have enjoyed the lightness of these garments. A comfort that comes with resignation. I can see the allure now.

But Garganta speaks to me today, in far more attractive terms. Its brightness as overpowering as ever. Light brings a comparable softness to the hard edges of earth’s threshold. If I run my fingers along the cracks, I know I too will feel this softness. I do not need their clothing. I do not need their words, their noses, their violent hands. I am at the mouth with my body bared, light brushing the edges of my swollen muscles. No polos, no slacks. I kick myself into motion. Passion, desire, desperation. Resignation. Rebellion. The reasons, I suspect, are infinitely complex. If I look deeply enough I am certain I can understand the allure of my people. My people. People that have done, that do, and that will do. Or won’t do. On the surface, it is all so simple. Yet I understand the nuance of subservience. The compromise that pairs with safety. To me, the answer is simpler. To me, what I know is this:

I exist.