Chapter 13
He couldn’t remember any of the journey. All he had seen was the passing of canopy as his head hanged back over his shoulders, staring idly into the sky as his arms stretched out above his body carrying the extent of his weight as his heels dug into the dirt and dragged along behind the momentum of his captors as the sun; high in the air, maintained their discomfort and exacerbated their exhaustion.
He had slipped in and out of consciousness since waking from the fall and as his body scraped along the dusty track, he thought only of his delusions and he wondered if it would be fonder to die a stranger to himself than to be awoken to the reason for his flight and succumb to whatever past he kept in a quieting coma in the backs of his mind and in death’s throes, wishing that he could close his eyes and forget everything one more time.
His captors were mumbling amongst one another. They kept their whispers low, but he could sense scheming in their snicker and in the hiss of their restrained laughter. He couldn’t see them but imagined they were no different to the two old ladies of whom he woke to, attempting to cut off his face.
When they arrived at their destination, his captors dragged his body towards an open cell, bound by bamboo bars that shot up into the blue sky. They carefully positioned his body on its back and as he lay there, staring up into the blue sky blinding his sight against the afternoon sun, a realization beckoned his conscious mind.
He needed to learn how to skip his conscious state and enter into delusion. If The Woman were here; he wouldn’t feel so alone. Even if he had to die here, somewhere beyond reality, at least he wouldn’t die alone.
But her face slipped from his sight every time he tried to recall it. She was buried somewhere far in his subconscious, weighed down by some terrible emotion that was tied to some unfortunate event as is usually the case with memories stored so far out of reach; not very obvious but like condescendence to a young child, subtle enough to influence with a foul intent.
“What’s your name?” said a voice that sounded young like him but spoke without fear.
Marcos lay completely still. His body was sore, but it wasn’t broken. It would take him some time to gather his strength. As the sun drenched his eyes, he thought only of strengthening his mind before he armed his body.
“They’re preparing your skin. They use the sun to leather it. It’s much easier to dress. My name is Sofia. What is your name?” she said.
“Marcos. I think. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I woke up here. I have no idea who I am or what I did to get here. Where are we?” he asked.
The voice moved from behind his sight and stood over him. She was beautiful. She held more life in a single hair than he felt in the entirety of his soul. Her eyes were like crystals; and as he looked long into them, he felt himself scatter in a million directions.
Just one look into her eyes; a moment of trance was enough to liberate the binds of his conscious trappings. His pain vanished as the blinding sun hid behind her demure shadow whilst above him, she looked down woefully at his crumpled frame, taking away the fright of solitude that had been his only companion since waking outside of remembrance.
“I don’t know where we are. I was brought here like you. I woke in this cage. There were many of us but now there is just me, and now you” she said.
“What do they want with us,” asked Marcos.
“They want our faces,” said Sofia, lifting her hand slowly to a gentle caress of her cheek.
Her slender fingers touched lightly against her sun burnt skin, running down her neck to her chest and then holding in the air before the woe in which she dressed upon Marcos; a feeling which outweighed the pull of gravity and at one moment had lifted her hand high, pulled it firm to her side; lifeless as an extension of her impeded soul.
“I don’t want to know. Have you been here long? Do you have amnesia as well?” he asked.
“No. I remember everything. I remember my mother’s smile. I remember my father’s voice. I remember playing out in the field with my friends. I don’t remember the game or its rule. I don’t remember what we said to one another but I remember that we were happy even though I look back with an amber lens and I mourn every memory because a memory lives, only when a moment dies. I remember I never looked through an amber lens before. Everything was always so clear; so true. And now, there is just this yearning. I was taught this word; yearning. I don’t remember ever feeling this sensation. It is so heavy but it feels warm and familiar, I could drown here and I wouldn’t lose a breath” she said.
“I don’t understand. What happened to your friends? Were they taken as well?” he asked.
“I come from somewhere very different to this. It’s not too far from where we are on this Earth, but it’s a lifetime away from where we are in our minds, right now” she said.
“Your friends are they alive? What happened to them? Are there more of us?” asked Marcos twisting in his body; not willing, but commanding every muscle to move.
He lifted his body and the pain from the bruises on his ribs coursed through his mind. He breathed like a raging bull, venting the extent of his agony to avoid an escaping scream that might call the attention of his captors. He pulled his hand over his eyes to block out the blinding sun. The way it burned, it felt as if he had never swum in its warmth a single day in his life.
“They took their faces, all of them; my friends, my brother. I see them dancing under the morning sun as the first light touches their stolen skin. Something happens to them and they dance and then that is all they do. They hunt, they deface, they dress and they dance. And they never tire; ever. And now I wait for them to dance with me. All I can do is wait, and yearn. O how I yearn. It is such a beautiful word and an intoxicating state; sadness and loving bedding with the want of desire. We never had this emotion before. My people, they do not yearn” she said.
“They have no desire?”
“They have no want. They have no need. They have no desire. They feel no good and they feel no bad; to make your bed with one is to cheat on another. My people, they feel. There is nothing more to it. Nothing is lost and nothing is gained. They do not comprehend loss, therefore they do not comprehend gain, therefore they do not want what they do not have and they do not yearn for what they have not lost. My mother and father, they live without me and yet they do not even know that I am gone” she said mournfully.
“And you, why are you different? Why do you yearn?”
“The mind can only deny the heart so many times. And when I lost enough of my love, my heart would not let me forget anymore” she said.
“How many of you were there, here in this cage? How many were taken?”
“One and many are but the same number in the division of one’s heart. The loss of one is no less than the loss many.”
“Is there a way out of here? We have to escape.”
“There is no escape. You go when you are chosen but you go with them and you return only, as a dress.”
“What about your people? Your tribe, it’s close to here. Surely they are looking for you?”
“They do not know loss so they do not comprehend that we are gone. Do you understand? My people, they only know what is, not what is not. Nobody is coming for us” she said sternly.
“How can they not know that you are gone? Don’t you have an obligation? Don’t you have a function?” he said as if some primal learning were finally awakening to him and her life were more foreign now than it was only a moment ago when he consciously knew less of himself.
“My people only know what is, therefore, the concept of what is not, is foreign to them. They cannot comprehend what is incomprehensible and if they cannot comprehend it, then they cannot see it, they cannot touch it, they cannot taste it and they cannot feel it. Soon, they will forget that it ever existed. For if they cannot sense it then it cannot be, therefore it is not real and does not exist. I yearn for my mother and father, but now that I am gone, they have forgotten that I ever existed.”
“What is a
father? What is a mother? Are they important?” asked Marcos intrigued.
“A father is… a father. He made me and my mother is my mother. How can you not know what mother and father are?” she asked confused.
“I’m sorry, it’s just very strange. I mean all of this, it’s very strange. What do you mean they made you?”
“They… made me what more is there to say. My mother and father made love and then my mother gave birth to me, they made me; you know, life.”
Marcos looked bewildered; his eyes crunched downwards, a blank stare cast upon his face, more lost now than he was making stride through the wilderness when he woke into a race for his life. Then a word etched in his mind; familiarity.
“The Industry,” he said loudly.
“What industry? What does that mean? I have never heard that word before.”
“The Industry. They produce life. I remember now. It’s coming back, slowly, but I’m starting to remember. Your city, it has an Infant Industry; extraction factories? Contracts? Products? Investors?” he asked, each time remembering a little more of himself and in the absent stare dressed upon him, realizing how far from reality he really was.
He wondered, in a nano of a second, whether it would have been sweeter to run with no direction in mind and no distance from the heart. And then he started to yearn, thinking at first of The Woman in his dreams and her simple black hair and the soft lilac fringe that she would always pull from her eyes and how, when she wanted to cut it, he always said no because there was nothing in the world as pretty as she; when the light caught the tip of her finger pulling back on her hair like the opening of a shade, gently pressing it behind her ear and he, running his sight down the length of her arm and caressing with his thoughts, every curve in her body, bursting into a billion particles as his senses pressed against the warmth of her heart.
He thought first of this moment and then of a collection of papers that he had, since his Branding, kept in a drawer beside his front door. And he thought about how every night he would open then drawer with a gloved hand, taking the papers into the light and then laying on his back as he read every term and clause of his agreement, imaging the wonder of life as his product lived every day according to its obligation. It’s obligation to The Industry and its obligation to him.
As Sofia yearned for her father, Marcos thought of his obligation, his desire to choose correctly and he too yearned. He yearned for a collection of white papers, stacked neatly in the antique oak drawer beside his front door.
“We don’t have that word in our vocabulary. In fact I couldn’t imagine anything outside of nature producing life; we just participate; the mother, the father, the child” she said.
“Then how do you extract the infants; without machines?”
“They arrive when they are ready,” she said.
Marcos was confused. He felt infant in his knowledge of the world but certain facts, certain innate truths were washing over him as he drowned under the scorching sun. He knew that he was far from where he belonged. He was far from his dwelling, far from his obligation, far from his contract folded neatly in a small antique drawer beside his bed, far from The Woman in his dreams; the one who caused him concern but for whose closeness and familiarity he longed, far from a decision that would matter; one that would affect a person other than himself and far from The Industry, the protector from the ills of nature.
As he closed his eyes, the darkness cooled his mind as he saw how foreign he was under this horrid sun. He had never seen one before. He didn’t know that they could exist. Wherever he was, it was far from home and being here, he felt distant and estranged from himself.
“What do you know about them?”
“We call them Facers. They call themselves The Elemental Ladies. I don’t know much more, just what I perceive. My friends; the ones they took one by one, I never saw their bodies again, not one. But their faces returned. They wore them. It changed them. They would revere one another and then they would want another face and they would take another of my friends. It was like…”
“Fashion,” said Marcos.
“What is that?”
“The assembly of self. It is something we have in our City, something wonderful. The desire to change one’s self.”
“Why would someone desire change?”
“Resetting values, renewal of identity. Change is necessary and change is good. We would change everything if we could. Our world is changing every day and we change with it, our desire for difference and our desire to belong have us desiring all day long.”
“Is it like yearning? Do you yearn for change?”
“For change? No. We only want the result. We don’t want to change, We want to be changed. The result is never fast enough for our desire. That is the rule of fashion”
“Sounds defeating, purposeless.”
“But without it, who are you?”
“I’m Sofia.”
“No, who are you?”
“I am Sofia.”
“You don’t get me; it’s supposed to be a mantra”
“What is a mantra?”
“It’s a word or a question or a thought; something that when you speak it or think it in your mind, all your thoughts vanish, and you feel light.”
“You’re thoughts are heavy?”
“Not all of them, but I guess, yeah they are. We collect a lot of information and sometimes it can get confusing, knowing what to throw away and what to collect. And what they mean I suppose.”
“Why do you collect them if you’re just going to throw them away?”
“Everyone does. I have to be like everyone else if I ever want to be better than them. I have to be informed. Information is intelligence and intelligence is attraction and attraction is power.”
As he spoke his strangeness, Sofia; though participative, held her hand to her cheek, picking at the skin on her face, trying in vain to scratch the surface but as she did, pain rushed from her fingertips through her whole body and she weakened, letting out a gasp and flailing her arms.
“What are you doing” asked Marcos shocked.
“Trying to save my face,” she said.
“By cutting at it, are you crazy?”
“I can’t. I have no nails” she said holding her hands out to Marcos who looked over the bloodied stumps where her fingertips and nails should be.
“Why did they do that?”
“They’ll have done the same to you no doubt. They remove your nails so you can’t pick at their dress.”
“They’re what?”
“That’s what they call it; your face; they call it a skin dress. They wear your face like you wear your clothes. Well… maybe not now” she said trying to avoid his exposed genitalia.
“Why?”
“To live forever. As long as they wear a face; as long as they change the face, they never die. They just keep dancing” she said hanging her head low.
“Live forever? Why would anyone want that? What happens if I cut my skin?” he asked.
“They don’t like that. They won’t let you. Look at your hands” she said, pointing to the ground where his hands stayed; fixed, obedient and now pulsating as he awoke to a pain he hadn’t known existed, staring at a dark red bandage covering the extent of his hands.
The pain from his fingertips started to throb and with every pulse he slipped further from his conscious burden; the absurd reality he wished was only a dream until he found himself again, awake inside the body of a man; staring out through his eyes at a woman who looked upon his with affection; her, again.
The Woman was laid out on a sofa, her legs pulled up to her chest and a gentle smile dressing her face. Her eyes shimmered as she looked at Marcos, dancing like they always seemed to when it was that she wanted something so badly.
He always knew when she was at weakness; watching the lashes of her eyes flicker; the black tint brushing against the soft white of her skin. It was like watching a butterfly gently flutter its wings, stretch
ing out its sleep in the morning light, casting off a single drop of rain high above the variegated circles painted upon its body which then broke into a million tinier droplets; all scattering through the mixes of blue and lighter blue that made up the portrait of the morning air like a delicate chaos. The joy she willed to restrain always made its escape through her long black lashes and when he saw this, he heard her soul singing for more; “Dress me in your appreciation” it said. “Make love to my necessity.”
And though he knew her weak, he knew himself weaker at this moment, staring deep into her want, like the young boy again watching the girl’s defiance as her hands glowed red from the thunderous cracks against her white skin and her eyes; unyielding, but her lashes; flickering lightly as she stared in his direction and he; watching her; wanting to be loved; wanting to bed with her necessity.
“I want to show you something,” said Marcos holding a small booklet in his hands; still staring into The Woman’s giddy stare; feeling sexualized and only a mockery of the confidence of which he normally addressed.
“Is it a brochure, from The Industry?” she asked excitedly.
She threw her legs down flat and kicked them up and down like a wriggly worm.
“Can you believe we’re doing this? I mean I know I was scared before but this is a big thing and I’ve changed, it changes you; overnight, you wake up a different person; more mature, more important, more industrial. I think I was scared of that change you know? I just needed to accept that, yes, as of now, I am an Investor. I am an Investor, I am an Investor, I am an Investor. God, I can’t believe I’m actually saying these words. I know we didn’t exactly plan on this, but you know, why not? I mean it’s inevitable, we have to think about our future; you and me” she said in innocent splendor, like a child to her doll completely unaware of the course of her reality; sipping from the well of naivety and feasting upon the breast of self-indulgence.
“I think I want to keep the baby,” he said; his words sounding like a dog’s bark against her tender ear; vulgar and of no sense whatsoever.
The Woman just stared at him as if there was a wire loose in his mechanics and he was emitting strange sounds; strange troublesome sounds.
“Keep what, what’s a baby Marcos?” she asked; more demanding than asking really.
“Just keep an open mind” he said as he swung her legs off the sofa and sat down beside her with the small booklet in his hands and an exhilaration she had never seen beaming from his eyes; almost how a universe must have felt when it bore its first sun, watching the energy bouncing about against the backdrop of its own luminal absence.
The Woman pulled closer; already attaining some prescribed defense in her thoughts. Marcos held the booklet in front of their view.
“Instructions on how to birth a baby,” said The Woman mockingly; using an inflected masculine tone in her voice. “So what is it?” she continued.
“Patience” he replied, pulling the cover back and gently folding it under the press of his fingers.
He flipped past the contents with strange titles that made The Woman wonder and gasp and giggle and caused Marcos to fall into discontent.
“Look, I know it’s weird, but can you just take this seriously, for a second, for me, please” he pleaded.
“Ok, ok, I’m sorry. So what is a baby Marcos?” she said in a calm tone.
“It’s what they call a product, or called a product. I don’t know how old this is, but it was written in a Helvetica type print so this predates anything I’ve ever learned of. They say that a product, sorry, a baby is a living thing, I mean while it is inside of you, it is like us; just, it is evolving. But they say, like us, it can feel and it can want; it’s alive, so it can die” he said.
“That’s absurd,” she said.
“I thought so too at first, but look at this. They explain the science here and it’s plausible. Day by day, the cells are evolving just like you do now. Day by day your skin radiates more, your hair casts its ends closer to the earth, your desires mature and your self-appreciation refines; day by day, you flower, you take a breath of the warm air against your pale skin and the cells beneath partake in dance, they lift your feet into the air, they pull you closer to the sun to drink from its mount of existence. Inside you now, there is a living thing, a collation of cells coming together, evolving, being; dancing, casting themselves high, reaching out to their sun; your heart, fed by your soul” he said.
The Woman stared empty into his eyes. Her lashes no longer fluttered. Instead, she bore a childish fright; an indomitable ‘what if’ undid the knots of her subconscious binds; the ones that educated a ubiquitous absence of human affection.
A sickness welled in her stomach again and she swallowed the sensation as Marcos took her hand consolingly and gripped tight; forcing her conscious focus to fall on his warm hand, on his tender touch, on the strength of his belief and do away with her infantile indecision.
“They describe everything; about what you’re feeling physical and about what changes will occur metaphysically during and after what they call the pregnancy. They humanize the whole process. They don’t look at the object in your stomach as an object; it is a being, it is human like us. And this process is procedural yes, but determined and governed by nature; it’s natural” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we weren’t chosen by The Industry. This was not a lottery. This had nothing to do with The City at all. I did this, we did this. Look here, this chapter on what they call Conception. They show how the baby got inside you” he said, turning the pages.
The Woman continued staring in disbelief. It was horrible to think that from their sex had come this responsibility; had come this change that was not of her willing. It was horrible to think that The Industry had played no part; that they were not chosen to invest, that there could be no lottery, which for something so dangerous like re-creation of life; that The City or The Industry could not be in control; like a flight with no autopilot or a system with no architect. It made no sense and the idea was; nothing short of horrific.
It was horrible thinking that life could come from sex; something so violent and barbaric of an act; which from a human, liking to an animal; overcome with sensual ferocity, came creation. What Industry could permit such nonsense? It was horrible to think and worse yet to imagine that the thing inside her, the sickness that welled in her gut, was a being, born of this desire.
“This baby, it is us. Don’t you understand? This isn’t a chip from The Industry. You are not a server. Your stomach is not room to rent. Do you get what I’m saying here? This baby is a mixture of us. We are this baby, this baby is us. It has our cells, it shares our heart. It will grow to be us. It will have my height, it will have your hair, it have my eyes, it will have your care, it will have my anger, it will have your love, it will have the flutter in your eyes when you dress with desire, it will have everything we have, it will have all of the above. Do you get it? This baby is us. We created it. We are The Industry” he said emphatically.
“Marcos stop” she screamed, turning to her side and vomiting onto the floor.
Marcos immediately dropped the booklet to his side and pulled her lilac fringe from her face, holding it over her ear and caressing her back with his other hand.
“I know this sounds scary, but I don’t think it has to be. Haven’t you ever wondered about your Investors? Isn’t it strange that we keep the idea that they exist not in our thoughts but somewhere near our heart? Isn’t it odd that we protect the idea of an Investor as if we are protecting The Industry itself, but maybe this link, this trust we have, it’s not in an intangible idea, maybe we understand our investor not because we will inevitably be one or we desire our entitlements, but because, they are us. We admire ourselves, so we admire them and when we hate ourselves, it is true then that we also hate them. Last month, we were not Investors, what reason did we have other than our learning to defend so rightly in our hearts the existence of our Investors and w
hy do we feel so compelled to make every choice so certain when the reward is not ours? How could we possibly comprehend the value of this committal if in turn we had not invested ourselves into The Industry? How could this be; if we had no link at all to them; if there was no familiarity whatsoever; if we were just a product and they were just Investors? We make the right choices for them because they are us, thus we make the right choices for ourselves. We defend them in all irrationality because we are universally linked to them. We are the grey to their black and white. We were born of them, not of The Industry. Look here” he said, opening the booklet. “They are our fathers and mothers. They’re not Investors. They’re not random and faceless. They feel for our condition, even if they’re not conscious of this. The book says that they love of us, but different to the love that we have for each other; it’s more potent, more visceral. Why do you think they care so much about the quality of their product? They talk about returns in words of entitlement but subconsciously the return they long for is to know that their babies are doing ok without them. Why do they check the paper everyday looking at Industry gains? They are checking on their babies. This makes so much sense. I know it sounds crazy, trust me I get it; but I think they may be right” he said falling quietly in his last words, emptying his charge and sitting back down beside The Woman on the sofa letting the booklet fall onto her lap.
“Do you feel different?”
“Different how?”
“Do you feel the same way about the thing in your stomach as anything you horde in your closet?”
“I haven’t tried to terminate my shoes if that’s what you mean” she replied.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said exhausted.
As fire touched his skin, Marcos awoke to a scream jumping into his scorched body; being molested by the fiery circle sitting high in the clear blue sky and beside him stood the strange girl, still looking down on him pityingly.
“They’re coming,” she said, ignoring the pain in her fingers as she tried to claw at her face in a last stand to tarnish the mould.
Marcos had forgotten for a second the danger he was in. Coming out from these dreams; these excursions into his hidden self were exhausting and each time it took him several minutes to return to his quickly approaching reality.
“No!” screamed the strange girl as three old ladies came dancing into sight, opened the bamboo gate that kept them prisoner under the scorching clear blue sky, kicked the strange girl’s legs from beneath her, sending her careening to the hard and hot dirt floor and then dragged her by the hair; kicking and screaming, out and away from Marcos who sat in a dream state stupor; rubbing his eyes and still gathering his senses. And now as he was as he had been; before, when abandon was his only companion; completely alone.