The Cell

I’m lost in colorless clouds. Then I ascend to a gray terrace where other beings frolic around running in circles. A thick smoke cluster prevents me from looking up when I try to. My companions seem happy in their little bubble of stupidity. Walking between them only made me realize that their lost eyes don’t notice my presence. Some chased each other in a slow trot with mouths wide open in an absentminded grin. It was impossible not to feel a little envy.

I crossed the room noting that mysterious figures in white uniforms statically monitored those present. They seemed not to take any interest in me either.

The back of the room exploded in a dazzling light that calling heavenly would understate. An immense magnetism pulls me toward it as if I were tied by the waist with an invisible harness. As I begin to sink into it I start losing track of the characters playing behind me until they disappear in a dawn of golden sparkles. The light now fully surrounded me. Maybe it was me who disappeared.

A black line draws itself on the horizon splitting the clarity in half. Subtle. Whispering to me with the gentleness that destiny usually has that I should walk through the thresholds which wait beyond it. My footsteps produce no sound as there doesn’t seem to be ground beneath them. Somehow I floated without fear, as if I had done it a million times, yet that didn’t mean I had the slightest clue of where my actions led me.

The mystery is revealed as an apparently endless ladder. While mounting it with ease, I become aware that the starting point of my journey is not necessarily the one where the stairway begins. It’s been there all along. I know that the steep slope, which appears not to be subject to any wall, is a being in itself, and has omnipotence and superiority over minutiae like us.

The color palette reappears, though limited, as my ascent continued. The grays were more varied and I could even distinguish yellow ovals covering my sight in a glare, although there is no sun in this empty space. A dark door was slightly suggested in the shadows of the dirty steam formed near the top. Hanging from the metal bars I confirmed this as the destination of my trip as my ladder made a weird turn to finish its path in that cornered cave .
I could’ve climbed miles in brief seconds for all I cared; all I seized at the time was the voice calling me from above. I swear that ladder was infinite and that only a mayor force, too large to summarize in three vulgar letters as we tend to do, could make my exodus such a painless and forgettable passage. All trace of it was removed as I got to the opening and began to perceive happy voices mixed with the chants of birds I’d never heard.

In this new terrace I rediscover life. Wheat-haired nymphs jump rope, or make wildflower necklaces. I leave the vaporous catacomb that covered me to be greeted with smiles. Sprites and elves play a lot more vividly than the grotesque airheads from the first room. All notice my arrival and embrace it yet I fail to spot another human in sight. Not one that could be called fully human, with all faults and limitations involved. Some had human bodies, sure, but exuded extreme holiness and even if they walked you knew they would fly if they wanted.

Now I know nobody’s infallible. I've thought long of it and concluded they only welcomed me because they had never seen anyone of my kind. I was mistaken for a member only because no human had ever visited the paradise I witnessed. A green-crested blue dove flew by my head with no hesitation and, for whatever reason, I knew they took me as one of them from that moment. How beautiful was the time I walked among those delicate beauties emerging from the most perfect and high ragweed. Flaming irradiation embodied in dreamy landscape that only grew brighter with the approach of dusk, when I was to have a welcoming ceremony, according to the words of the indescribable voice of a nymph. Unprecedented happiness came to my conscience, which uttered naively: "Pump up your chest and sigh away your sorrows, for to roam around this site you have merely the whole eternity”

The sun reappeared, though it seemed to be one very different from the terrestrial. It moved slowly making me count its steps over the untouchable sky. I walked spinning on my axis trying to admire the exquisite glory of every corner. Immersed in the grandeur, I stumble suddenly with a clear creek full of clumsy fish being pushed downstream tumbling against the rocks. A young albino lady rests on a rock on the shore giving me her back. I wonder if she’s fishing.

“You can’t fish in this place”

I felt her voice echoing inside my head more as a thought than actual spoken word. How did she hear me? I'm sure I had not blurted a syllable.

“You're obvious and predictable. There’s still some mortal to you, everything will get better after the ceremony.”

Although lightning shook my column, I decide to indulge in such disturbing phenomenon and direct my thoughts to this figure, since my curiosity defeats my fear. Where am I?

“I need not explain. You already know that.”

Am I dead then? I notice the idea of dying only upsets me slightly. I'm getting confused.

“It would be a great drawback that you were alive.” she stated “You could be of great disservice.”

How could I have any effect and a in a place like this, vast as it is magnificent, and inhabited by superior beings?

“See that?” She said pointing at the fish “These are the counterparts of the fishes of earth. Their souls.”

I do not understand.

“Death does not kill. Life dies. Only the living can kill. We can not touch the animals that live here, but the living can, and if they did, it would alter their essence and kill them in both worlds. Soon you will understand, you might want to go get ready for the ceremony.”

The idea of moving from my location does not fit on my head. Confusion paralyzes me. Then I notice I don’t know where I shall go to be initiated into the site’s intriguing ways.

“Head for the skyline. Where you see the red clouds. Climb them, they are actually ash and sand. What you will see the on other side I can not narrate. Words don’t suffice to describe the sacred fields.”

I stay kneeling on the spongy ground, but my anxiety grows. My eyelids vibrate incredulous from the denial of everything previously known. My whole body convulsing burning inside because of a simultaneous overload of an infinite glory and its underlying horror. Horror. For I see those big, motionless, and even disproportionate eyes notice my presence before vanishing in the watery reflections, messengers of their chilling journey.

I sink my fingers into this strange land and drag myself to shore. I need to see this. Maybe I can escape this verdict that my skepticism makes seem appealable. Every inch makes me tremble at the prospect of images equally distressing as these visible souls lying before my ungrateful person. I feel a certain nostalgia of life, even if I can’t call my death tragic. I throw my hand hesitantly in the direction of the water, it seems icy to me, it would appear unusual for a spirit to still notice things so earthly as temperature.

My desperate movements must have awaken in the youth a shaky concern which only allowed her to turn her head without being able to make a gesture to stop the events. Her reaction revealed a vague premonition of the importance of coming events, and its weakness showed a null understanding of the situation.

Fearful, my fingers clenched its claws roughly to one of the mindless fish. After snapping my hand back from the water I witnessed out of my senses the convulsions of the dying animal. Suddenly a shock of panic struck me and I dropped the soul, which expired on the floor its life both here and on Earth.

Then I looked up to meet the red pupils of my companion, more terrified than mine, because of their apparent unfamiliarity with adverse emotions. Our eyes met for seconds I’ve deemed impossible to count, and finally she let out a scream sharper than any mortal could imitate. I hear the footsteps of all the others running toward us while I stick my sight on the ground to watch the grass that once surrounded the corpse turn gray and disintegrate.

Only then do I fall into the terrible nature of my crime. I do it too late, as idiots always do. I can not move a muscle under the weight of the pressure life has dropped onto my back. Life. How many torments would I have avoided if my hand would’ve passed through the animal like the dead soul it should have been. But only life kills. And an intruder from the living came here to cause destruction like they so often do among themselves. Deceiving dimensions, someone had ruined the perfection of this radiant kingdom using nothing but his humanity, the incendiary of all things good, that stubborn fool who pulls the rope in the wrong direction every time. I don’t know if we deserve the free will the universe has given us, for we insist in using it for evil. Maybe that was the mistake of whoever decided to create us.

Failure for all these immaculate beings to atone, they, who having paid for all their sins were getting ready to enjoy eternal glory, only to be thwarted by a stranger who does not even know how he got there. Now they run to the hills of sand that seem to form an ethereal orange cliff. Fleeing from the unexpected horror that I have induced by heading for the sacred fields. Gray dominates the landscape around me now.

At a point I could never define, I started walking over the charred plants and began moving aimlessly; with the indecisiveness of a pendulum. Soon I was in the uncommendable company of carbonized dead stems and screams toppling each other in the background. With the worst self-loathing hovering over me like a condor challenging its prey, my clouded mind fails to turn on the lights and illuminate the scene that just occurred. I feel like a blow to the jaw would have made me forget everything.

The floor is so stained with death it doesn’t reflect my shadow, if it ever did before. I’d never bothered to check. Noticing my contradictory steps had carried me into the valley before the tan mountains, a small spark melts the heap of confusion for a moment and gives way to the only kind of redemption beings in my situation aspire to. They’ve all climbed to the opposite side and surely sit troubled, waiting for a much better explanation than the one I can offer, but if I could speak to them honestly and then leave, I may silence my helplessness. If I was granted seeing the sacred fields before parting, it would be an elixir of peace to rescue my tortured memories.

I note that the desertic vegetation of the hills has not been affected by my appalling attack. The cactus rest over the scented sand, serene witnesses of my unforgivable fault, which they condemn with their thorns. After starting my new ascent jumping over some rocks, I stop, attracted by the effects of my presence, I look back to find a horrible black scar demolishing the once irresistible face of paradise. I would cry but something tells me that some misfortune will happen if I dare to even blink, so I settle for throwing a rock in anger before going on my way.

After walking a calm road for some time, hosted only by the polar wind whistling between the reeds that rose from the stones, my legs started weighing supernaturally. I'm alive after all, so I attribute it to fatigue, but my presumption is buried in the dirt when I notice every step increases the agony on an impossible scale. I was never a strong being, but my conviction momentarily broke through this barrier and I could go on for some time, though much diminished, crawling over the surface. The hills try to rise against me with angled slopes making me contort to climb their monstrous heights. The ash that I cling to leaks between my fingers as if it rejected my touch.

Later on, the bedrock fades entirely. Tiny particles of sand take over making a dune of what was once a mountain. I try to move forward but I end up falling headlong and choking into the hot red dust more than once. Unable to crawl anymore, I sit up with superhuman effort, even giving 2 more painful steps before surrendering.

This is where justice catches up to me. Something gives in under my legs and I sink waist-deep without resistance. The strength of the quicksand resembles steel chains hidden under the dusty orange sheet. I feel this is the end, my strength is gone and I can only manage to lead a hopeless look at the mountaintop. The look a death row prisoner must give to his executioner. I decide to close my eyes for a second. A hand grasps my shoulder.

I can hardly feel my legs under the boiling prison. As an hare in an eagle’s claws, I realize my efforts are insignificant. Without letting out a sound he turns me around without difficulty and sets me free of the suffocating punishment only to carry me down a dark road that I believe came out of nowhere.

He holds me in a strange way, looking in my eyes but separating me from his figure as much as his arms allow him, as if he was carrying a plague. Draining the strength of my shoulders with his power, he takes away my hopes of forgiveness. I see the shades of the hills and the cloudless purple sky fade into the shadows that spilled from the back of his person. Even my conscience is erased in one blow and replaced with a being without more energy than a rock, who looks into the eyes of the warder trying vainly to understand.

I resolved to glance down and resign myself to what had to be, and that was when I recognized his white uniform as the one of the guards in the first room. Looking at his sides, I discover that my captor is escorted by two other fully equal characters who look ahead without paying me any attention. The caravan stops. For a moment I feel that we are in an endless and ancient hall, standing on a marble precipice forming in the in the middle of the room. They seem to have people locked up and asleep inside capsules, but my dizziness but will not let me see well. I have so many questions, I must speak now. But just as I open my lips the white jailer shoves me into the void. Despite the strength of the push, I sense some fatherly affection from it. His face had a grave look, similar to that of a pet owner who decides to put it to sleep and end its pain. Then he turns away and I slowly fall, drowning in the darkness.

The shove was so strong that somewhere among the abyss I reacquainted myself. Now the fear of plummeting to death fills me with despair, but not so much as to die out the doubts about everything I’ve witnessed. How did I break free? Why didn’t anyone stop me? I notice a little glimmer of brightness at the end of the pit. That's what I own, my only place. My safe cell. The light from a vulgar star alerts me, and all the other living vermin, to the start of a new day. I still hold out a little. But I betray myself and close my eyes again to undertake the journey back to my capsule. Someone locks a door behind me.

Cursing my luck, I awaken in this world again.