Carlos E. Chees | D8M | Done

Left or right?

He would watch them skitter through the rolls of old paper towel tubes. Their faces in cut mason jars, black eyes big against the glass, whiskers twitching to sense the best way to go.

He grew the path they could choose each day, trawling for bits and bobs to add to their maze. What had been an overrun courtyard of burnt-out husks of cars and a dried-out fountain was now best by what appeared a garbage heap to the untrained eye.

A closer glance would reveal the maze of pipes and cages he’d built for the rodentia that pierced through the stalks of grass and cat tails.

He skipped school to collect his things.

They had never wanted Carlos there.

Not because he had been rude or terrible – he didn’t steal lunches or curse at his teacher. Didn’t get all the answers wrong. Didn’t refuse to say the pledge of allegiance to the capitol, one nation, under panem.

But he was poor and that was enough –

He lived on the edges of his town, in the big concrete box of a housing project. That was where the worst offenders lived, the public housing complex that had been built to keep the men and women who had the hardest time making better of themselves.

And as Panem would teach him, to be poor and to struggle was not valiant and it certainly wasn’t worthy.

His clothes were always dirty, and by the time of his first reaping splotched with stains, though not for failure of his mother or father from trying. But this day or that they had to work, to get to the cannery or the factory line, and they were tired, bone tired, that there had to be choices made. So what if Carlos’ clothes missed a wash or two?

He was always coming back covered in mud and dirt from the time spent in the bushes of the old courtyard.

They refused to yell at their boy for doing what he loved. That much they could not do; his fascination with the imaginary proved a healthy distraction from all he had to face. Their tenement apartment held dim birthdays and the hallway bath always overflowed. The paint peeled from the walls and the first sight of rain could take the lights out.

To have found something he loved was a blessing, and those were few and far between in this world.

Besides, he’d have to busy himself while they labored their long shifts – afternoons to evenings to bedtime when a last they’d get back from their long walk home to cook the spot of dinner they could manage.

His body had been pricked by the throws of puberty. Deodorant was foreign as it was unnecessary. And so the bigger boys had sang their rhymes about him and the girls turned up their noses. Worse still, he’d been taken to the nurse to search through the lost and found to find something that wouldn’t be quite as distracting or pungent.

What did he need school for, anyway?

They all ended up in the same place, didn’t they?

He could trod a path that took him to great heights. Six feet up off the ground. In circles that looped up toward the clouds and blue sky.

Or he’d take the slow march through the grass, low to the ground. Straight and narrow. Tight. Empty. Dreadfully boring, but safe.

They all wound up the same in the end. No matter how many twists or turns they put, that’s the march of it all –

The brightest ones would avoid the path all together. They’d disappear through the grass, only following the path if there had been a prize waiting. But to become trapped, to find a life in the comfort of cages and pipes and hidden in the grass, that much was a charade as it was life.

All the days he missed to stay here were more enlightening than anything he could’ve learned there. Numbers and letters paled in comparison to the back and forth and up and down.

The little rat prince saw dozens of rats, big and small, spotted and jet black, crisscross through his paths.

Ginger as a soft breeze, he tried petting them now and again with the treats he’d offered.

The gashes and bites dug into his skin had turned red and oozed; he’d spent weeks in bed after one last June.

His mother had carefully wrapped his wrist after the bite but had not forbid him to return to the courtyard. She knew no matter what she told him, he’d still dream of that place. That even if his father had torn it all down in a fit, Carlos would return and build it twice as high.

‘Learn your lesson, like they do,’ She’d said. She’d cradled him through rolling fevers until he’d come out the other side.

He watched them fight in the tunnels. The big, fat ones with fearsome teeth cutting right through the necks of the littler ones. Broken and bloody bodies Carlos had to bury when they’d blocked up his work.

Death had scared him, and the violence, too.

But it became a natural part of life – no one could survive if they failed to thrive; no one would reach the end if they could not find a way to fly or fight.

When his name had been pulled from the reaping bowl, they had been his only worry.

But then, standing on stage and staring out at the crowd, he knew two things:

1. The rats would live and die without him, even long after his maze had crumbled;
2. He would fight and kill and maim as they did because that was life – to give up now meant death, and he knew what would lead him back.

hesper hart 🐺 d9f L△LIA