carlos e. chees d8m | interview

His mother had loved jigsaw puzzles.

When she hadn’t been split between her shifts as the cannery or preparing dinner for the week, the few hours she had, she’d put together thousand-piece puzzles.

Growing up, Carlos had been too fidgety to sit still, always crawling, moving about as though he might burst right out of his skin if he sat still for too long.

Staring at the capitol skyline puzzle box in front of him, Carlos itched underneath his nose and scattered the pieces across the hardwood floor. He lay flat on his stomach and took time piece the border together, somehow drawing out five pieces within the first few minutes as though he’d been doing puzzles his whole life.

But then it all got too hard – the pieces that looked as though they should fit did not, and he eventually stood to shift his attention to the furniture they’d put into the room. A bed with a cozy, comfy mattress and more pillows than he’d ever seen in his life took up one corner. Paintings of people he didn’t recognize hung on the walls. A long marble table with a bowl of wax fruit and a single chair sat on the other side. A black leather couch sat flush against the wall.

He liked it because it make a squish noise when he sat down. He’d spent ten minutes getting up and down, then another ten hopping up and down on top of it.

It was about two hours in that he decided to push all of the furniture together in the corner. A sort of lean-to that surrounded his bed, as though it could ever protect him from what was to come.

Yet Carlos could at last close his eyes and rest when he’d stacked the chair atop the table and blocked the front with the couch (as far as he could push it, small as he was).

Carlos had cried when he’d said goodbye to his mother and father.

He cried again before he’d gone to sleep. Staring up at the ceiling, he’d thought about how he’d never go home, how death was around the corner. He pictured everything he’d built in the courtyard destroyed in the first bad storm of the season. All the rats that would disappear and find a new home, scattered to the winds.

Perhaps that was life. They had never been his, despite all that he’d built, and food he spared for them. They found a way in and out of his life, just as he would, too.

When they’d come to take him to the stage, a dull flame burned in the pit of his stomach.

He’d mourned what he’d left behind. But more than that, Carlos had thought of how this was his maze. They laid out the twists and turns for him, and in the end, either he’d escape to freedom or die.

’You grew up on the outskirts of District 8. Would you say that had a hand in helping shape who you are today?’

No one had paid him much mind in eight. Not enough that they missed him at school. If he’d stayed another year, he might’ve gotten a job and dopped out altogether.

Here he sat on a stage in front of long faced men and women. They stared at him as he’d stared at his own rats. Would he go left or right? Would he fight or cower? And when he’d made his choice, would he double back or press forward?

“Yes.” In the silence that followed, he thought he heard someone cough. He licked his lips and brought his hands into his lap. “Garden Arms Apartments. You don’t want to get lost there.”

‘And it says here money was a little tight growing up. How did you keep yourself entertained? School? Friends? Sports?’

Carlos could feel the heat on his brow when the question came. He could close his eyes and imagine the scurrying bodies and little whiskers out in his courtyard.

“Rats.” He started. He smiled, “Little ones, big ones. There’s lots all through the complex. But I would collect cans and tubes, and glass – would put all of it together so I could see them run through the glass. See which ones were smart, what’d they do for food, if any of them would fight.”

’Very... intriguing! So, here you sit at the age of 13, going up against lots of other people- some of which are up to 5 years older than you. Intimidated?’

“I ain’t scared.” Carlos narrowed his eyes and leaned back, “You could be bigger than me, but if I get my teeth in your neck, then I can cut your artery and you’re done for.” He had seen the rats kill one another. Big ones could overpower the little ones, for sure. But the clever and the quick could just as easily slice open the fat and stupid.

‘Pardon my forwardness, but I wonder: Are you willing to do anything it takes to survive?’

“You back anyone into a corner and you’re making a mistake.” Carlos had been bit enough to know what a cornered creature was capable of doing. Soon it’d be him, and, well, he wasn’t about to lay with his legs up in the air and his belly exposed. “I said I ain’t afraid anymore. At all.”

‘Any parting words?’

He stared out at the people watching him, flashed his teeth and scrunched his nose. 

“It don't matter. So no. Not now.”