Cattle Life (short story)

(Nota do autor — a versão em português deste conto está disponível aqui)

He woke up, that is, if one could call that sleeping. The bell rung with that distinctive migraine sound, taking him off the trance state he had spent the past hours in. It was difficult sleeping in such tight quarters, with the incessant humming of the fluorescent lightbulbs above frying his thoughts. If it weren’t for the tiny cracks on the walls and barred windows, it would be impossible to distinguish night and day, to tell a fresh spring day from a deadly storm. For the creatures inside, time was controlled by that migraine sound and the seasons changed according to the artificial wind that came from the malfunctioning fans, that only seemed to make things worse.

It had been ages since that fateful day, or at least that’s what it felt like. He had done nothing wrong, just was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but most important, his skin was the wrong color; he took a blow to the head from a man dressed in gray and blue that was arguing for money on the street, while he held a package that a childhood friend had tossed him in his hands, he didn’t think there was any harm in helping out, but his heart raced as he took the white pouch in his hands. A blow to the head and he blacked out. Woke up under the light of that greenish-white sun and, for the first of many nights, his eardrums were perforated by that humming hound.

He was born free, son of an honest, working man who like him had found himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time; and a courageous, strong woman who raised him with no help and prayed every night that her son went to school and became a good doctor. But times were hard in the Tropical Land of Wonders, and soon enough, he was dressed in blue, part of the working class. His mother had given him a name: John D.

But inside, they stole your name and gave you a number, inside, John D. was 1138, caught red-handed carrying illegal substances. The truth is that the man whose drugs “belonged to John” was found a year later, sleeping with the fishes with a bullet between the eyes, but the paper that explained 1138’s innocence vanished amongst the piles of red tape in some boring old office building, and after all, to the suits there, it felt safer to keep such a dangerous subject away from Urban Utopia and its Model Citizens as long as possible.

The days were monotonous, the nights were just like the days. To escape madness, 1138 wrote in an old notebook he got from the Priest who would come and visit every two weeks; most of the pages were filled already. He found that by staying awake and writing his nightmares down on paper every night, he wouldn’t have to sleep and live them in his head or go mad, like what he saw happen with many of the other inmates. Just after lunch, when they served that indigestible paste that tasted like nausea, it was time for the exercise hours, an hour that, in 1138’s eyes, felt more like a cattle parade, with all of those men going around in endless circles, eyes glued to the floor, trying to pass the time. For someone with a vivid imagination, like 1138, that place was pure torture.

Each day, dozens of new inmates just like him arrived: young men with pounding hearts, looking at the grief-stricken eyes of the others, fearing for their own lives. He felt sorry for them, after all, he knew that not many of them had a set date to leave their cages and breathe freely again; most would have to pray on the good will of a person they had never seen and to whom, their faces meant little more than their numbers stamped on the folders, faceless creatures.

1138 feared even more for the youngest, the ones who would soon be corrupted by the seductive words that echo out of the mouths of the elders, worlds of hatred and pain that fill their little hearts, taking away day by day the motherly love, their sibling’s friendship, their sweetheart’s tenderness. The boy who enters leaves as a violent, torn shadow, but that doesn’t matter to the Model Citizens, as they never see the shadows. 1138 prays for them every night while writing.

He’s there now, writing, waiting for Dawn to save him or for the trance to take him away for a while. In his soul, he still finds hope that he will see his mother again, and that hope is fed every day by a little swallow that finds shelter in the broken window frame, with a birdsong that echoes throughout the prison, to all the cages. He dreams of his fair freedom, but he’d love it if Reality could hear his thoughts.

Here comes that migraine sound again…