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This chapter was so large in its first draft I divided it up into two. So you can think of it as the first half of a larger whole.
Thanks as always to the readers who have helped me with feedback and proofreading before each chapter is published. Special thanks to Jade.Indigo (also a Nifty author!) for their help and always thoughtful observations.
If you also wish to send feedback, send it to: inaccesiblecardinal@protonmail.com
Additional Author’s Note:
I'm dedicating this story to the public domain, which means I'm waiving all my rights to this work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
You can copy, modify, distribute, and perform this work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for my permission. For more information visit: creativecommons.org/publicdomain
Hoarse breaths and slaps of skin-on-skin echo inside the small metal cabin. The white walls crisscrossed by weld chords, chalk drawings, and magazine collages held in place with colored magnets vibrate with the harrowing echoes of distant machinery and muffled voices from other decks of the gigantic submarine.
“Did you hear the news?” says one of the four naked boys standing in a circle at the center of the cabin holding a shallow plastic cup in his hand, his other hand frantically stroking the penis of the boy to his left.
“Yeah. It sucks…” says the preteen boy he’s masturbating who strokes the cock of the boy in front of him with both hands “And he looked so sad in the video. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“You would also feel sad if you were in his shoes,” says the third boy short of breath, his body trembling as he approaches the edge of orgasm.
The second boy smirks “I would be crazy rich if I were in his shoes. I would never feel sad.”
“You only… Say that because you don’t know what it feels like to lose family…” says the trembling boy bending his body back, his eyes unfocused “Trust me dude, money doesn’t make it hurt lesssss...! Mmmh! Get the cup ready…!”
The first boy hurries to place the plastic cup between the web of hands and under his hairless penis which spasms and spurts a few drops of sperm a second after. Yet the four boys barely notice his climax and continue talking as normal.
“When is he going to give his speech?” says the second boy now holding a boy cock on each hand.
“Uh, tomorrow…” says the boy who just came catching his breath.
“You think she will let us watch it?” he says with an added emphasis on the word ‘she’.
“Of course! She risks a mutiny if she doesn’t.”
“I dunno guys, I think the whole thing is fake,” says the fourth boy who hasn’t spoken yet, his hands fiddling the nipples of his cabin partners.
“Yeesh! What’s wrong with you!?”
“I’m just sayin’… The whole thing sounds too unbelievable.”
“You’re such a conspiracy theorist dude. You sound like my grandma.”
“No I’m not! Conspiracists killed my grandma!”
The other boy rolls his eyes “Whatever dude. I just hope she lets us watch the speech so I can see him,” he closes his eyes and concentrates on the many hands working to make him cum “He’s so handsome… His voice is so smooth….” He suddenly laughs “Hey guys, now that he has been all over the news, doesn’t he remind you a little of someone we know?”
“Uh? Who?”
“Come on. It’s obvious. He was just…”
“Shhh! You heard that!?” says the fourth boy suddenly. The rest stop their jerking-off session and stand alert “Someone’s coming!”
The kids break formation and hurry to squeeze against the grill metal door that stops them from leaving their cabin, their small hands and throbbing erections poking between the cold metal bars.
“Aw man, I was about to shoot…” whispers one of them as they try to listen.
“Shhh!”
Two figures in blue monos can be heard walking up the long corridor. One set of footsteps is quick and restless, while the other is labored and methodical. Each step is followed by the distinct aluminum clank of a 4-pronged walking cane.
“These cells have to be left spotless,” says an old woman sounding tired, the kid’s murmurs from the other cabins growing silent as she walks in front of them “There’s always a risk of improvised weapons when dealing with fresh drones, but we’ll have to double our precautions with this new batch.”
“I-I understand Boss, but you should be aware this will lengthen the transfer schedule,” says a young woman walking by her side, her voice hesitant and fearful as if dreading each word that must come out her mouth.
“Mmh? How so? These decks usually get cleared in a manner of hours. It shouldn’t be a problem having them ready by Monday.”
“M-Monday…? But Boss! I’ve never dealt with this type of logistics! That was Ram’s…”
The skinny old woman stops walking and slowly turns to stare at her young adjunct with a fiery eye, her other eye hidden under an adhesive eye patch covering a large purple bruise around her eye socket.
The adjunct, a college-aged girl of round features and short hair with rainbow bangs, gulps.
“S-sorry Boss… I’ll make sure these cabins are ready by Monday.”
The Boss holds her stare for a long second, sniffs and continues walking.
The four nude boys gasp when they hear the clank of her walking cane approaching and take a step back to stand in a row looking down. The injured old woman passes in front of their cabin and throws the boys a passing glance.
She stops and turns to the adjunct waving exasperatedly.
“This is exactly what I mean! These drones have been on board for LESS than a week and their cabin is already a trash bin! Throw all their shit away if that speeds things up. I’m DONE with this sham of us operating like we’re some kind of cruise ship. It’s exhausting!” she sniffs again and continues walking. But then stops and tilts her head “What happened to the fourth one?”
The curvy young woman blinks and takes a look inside the cramped cabin with the four preteens standing in a row looking at the floor.
She looks back with a worried look “Um… Boss? Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
The white-haired woman rolls her eyes and raises a hand covered with a removable wrist brace with four fingers extended which she starts to lower as she speaks.
“Do you also need Ram’s help to do basic arithmetic? This cabin should contain THREE drones fresh out of land and ONE drone just released from the infirmary. You should remember him as it was just yesterday that I taught you how to sign his transfer on the blockchain between ship departments,” she points back at the naked boys “So tell me, which of these drones looks like he’s just recovering from a bruised rib?”
The adjunct raises her eyebrows and looks inside the cabin at the smooth, hairless skin of the four naked boys watching her with fearful faces.
She suppresses a squeak and types the air with both hands, her irises flashing rapidly.
“I-I don’t know what happened Boss! But give me a second and I’ll…!”
But her employer is already shaking her head, not wanting to deal with this right now.
“No, no, don’t bother. I bet someone tampered with your signature just before it was certified on the blockchain, right?”
The adjunct hesitates and clicks the air a couple more times. She puts a hand over her mouth and nods.
“How did you…?”
The Boss sighs “That darn kid…” she reaches into her pocket in one quick, practiced motion and extracts a smartphone on which she starts typing one-handed on a messaging App filled with emojis.
But then she stops and narrows her eyes.
“You know what? I have a better idea. Let’s fix this once and for all,” she stores the paper-thin phone back in her pocket “Summon Lieutenant Garcia to my office. Tell her I have a mission tailored just for her.”
A small bedroom lit by the warm afternoon light. The walls are almost bare and the wooden furniture sparse, reminiscent of the chamber of a Franciscan monk or a similar tradition that values simplicity and frugality.
Atop the small bed which looks like a bombsite Ramesh and ‘Santiago’ rest after an exhausting sex session. The twenty-year-old Indian man lays naked on his back with his hands tied to the bed’s headboard while an equally nude Santiago rests on top of him trying to catch his breath, his narrower but just as sculpted back shiny with sweat.
"Where did you learn that? Weren't priests supposed to be celibate?" says Ram dreamy looking at the bare ceiling with a single lightbulb at its center. His body trembles slightly as Santiago absentmindedly nibbles his neck.
"Only if you want them to molest their flock in secret..." coos the twenty-year-old Afghani man "The kids feel reassured when I bring someone from the outside to my bed. It reminds them I have no ulterior motives when I ask them personal questions," he sighs as if having finished a meal and rests his chin on Ram’s chest "But the local folks are boring. Sometimes we don't even do anything and just play Nintendo into the night. They're also all skinny and emaciated. No one has..." he kisses Ram's nipple "Enough protein for my taste."
The twenty-year-old shivers and tugs on his tied-up arms, causing him to wince from his bruises that haven’t healed yet.
“Oh! Sorry!” Santiago says and moves up his body for another prolonged kiss.
Ram smiles and talks between slurps "I’m okay babe…. So, despite all the theater of you being sexually satisfied… You're still a danger to these kids...”
Santiago shrugs and starts kissing his neck, moving down his muscular pectorals “All humans are a danger to other humans. It’s in our nature…”
"And what's your plan for when they grow up?" says Ram with his eyes closed twitching in place "Some of them are going to become real studs in a few years. Will you be able to resist the temptation of so much ‘protein’ walking around?"
"Mmh…? What's that thing you say? I'll figure it out..." he says holding lovingly his eleven-inch monster penis resting on its side. He starts landing small pecks around its length, causing Ram to jump and purr.
Santiago smiles and rolls around the bed to reach for something underneath the mattress near the bed’s footboard. He produces two leather belts which he uses to tie Ramesh’s ankles.
“Whoa! More?”
Santiago grins mischievously and moves his curly hair off his face “And I haven’t even opened my toy box,” he motions at a wooden chest at one corner of the room “Some of them are war relics worthy of a museum, but they work just fine. You’ll be amazed what you can find inside some of those armored mechas.”
Ram drops his head back on the pillow as Santiago giggles like a little boy and accommodates himself between his thick legs to continue playing with his hardening pole. He looks down and smiles as he watches his past lover play with the mushroom head of his penis while holding his testicles with another hand, looking for a moment exactly like he did when they were both kids and sneaked behind bulkheads or inside broom closets to share a blowjob or two.
“Isn’t your flock waiting for you?”
“They’ll be fine. They’re resilient boys,” says Santiago wiggling his tongue around his frenulum. Then adds with a sour note “And they have to learn to do things without me. I may not always be here.”
Ram wets his lips, “What if they didn’t need to be so resilient?” he hesitates, seemingly debating himself whether to continue talking “How does moving your flock to Antarctica sound like?”
Santiago stops and looks at him with a stern expression while keeping his massive penis next to his cheek "Sounds fancy… But also self-serving. I'm needed here, close to the Equator, where the consequences of those living at the Poles wash ashore. Someone’s got to pick up the pieces of soul that people like you leave in your wake."
Ram raises an eyebrow "Poetic... But also unfair,” he sees the way Santiago stares at him with his cock by his cheek like a boy hugging a stuffed toy and shifts uncomfortably “We were just providing a service. I've stopped whole countries and ethnic groups from going extinct."
"Sure, by stealing the sperm of other countries and ethnic groups so they go extinct first."
"There's a demand for our services babe. Someone's going to satisfy it no matter what. Would you rather have someone less scrupulous than me doing it? Someone like the Chinese?"
"I don't dispute the fact that if the Devil is going to have franchises in this world I prefer YOU as one of their store managers. But you know what I would prefer?” he releases his penis and starts to sit up “For people with your talents to fix the darn problem rather than shuffling people’s place in line as the whole of humanity marches towards oblivion."
Ram watches his penis flop down and groans disappointed. He opens his mouth to speak but realizes he doesn't have a prepared talking point to counter that.
"Fix the problem? What problem? The fertility crisis?” he chuckles “By doing what? Take everyone to the Moon?"
Santiago sighs and sits on his knees "God... You've given up hope so long ago you no longer remember what planning for the future feels like," he waves at the narrow window of his small, spartan room "I mean fixing the planet."
Ramesh smirks. Then giggles. Then starts laughing harder and harder until his body curls inwards, wincing in pain from the added strain on his injuries.
"Y-you're serious...? Is that why you don't want to come to Antarctica with me and stay in this shithole country instead?" he brushes tears from his eyes with the side of his arm "Babe... People knew this was going to happen. They had a chance to DO something before it was late and they sat on their asses with their arms closed, just as they did with, well, everything!” he extends four fingers and starts counting “Global warming, microplastics, Kressel syndrome, World War Q, you name it! We’re the same monkeys we’ve been for the past twelve hundred years and not getting any wiser. I'm not hopeless, I'm realistic."
"What's that thing you say in finance? Past performance does not predict future returns? People can still make things right."
"An engineered species of humans perhaps. But have you seen how much designer-babies cost nowadays…?" he hisses, skeptical “Too little, too late.”
"It’s never too late. God judges us not by what we did — or didn't do — in the past, but by what we do now,” he stands up and starts gathering his black clothes spread around the floor “We are creatures of the present and judged in the same time frame. That’s why even you can be forgiven despite all the souls you’ve already broken, and why it doesn’t matter how many souls I’ve saved, as long as there are people in need I got to keep trying. I can't help you build your fortress of solitude down in Antarctica if it means pretending like I can't hear their pleas.”
Ram rolls his eyes “You're not selling me on this whole Catholic thing. It sounds exhausting."
Santiago closes the clerical collar and snorts "Being a good person IS exhausting. But it's also fulfilling, you should try it sometime. As for ‘catholic’," he shrugs and turns to leave "There's some fees, a newsletter, some online meetings. Frankly, my D&D group is more demanding."
"Hold on babe, we haven't even talked about why I'm here."
"What is there to talk about? You want to get back inside the cage you spent literally half your life trying to escape. You know me, I can't say no to something so deliciously ironic. So, whatever you need, count on it. "
Ramesh sighs in relief "Good. Because I need your help to find Samantha."
Santiago stops and looks at Ram with a raised eyebrow "You do know there are MUCH easier ways to sneak back into the Farm? Why take the hardest approach of them all?"
Ram doesn't answer. Santiago pops his lips.
"Right, I’m guessing it's all part of your ‘Plan’," he shakes his head and steps out of the small room "Alright, this just turned out to be some orders of magnitude more difficult than I anticipated. Fortunately, there’s a boy here who had the misfortune of falling in the spiderweb of that Devil’s spawn. He may remember something."
"Thanks babe!"
"Yeah, yeah, send the above-mentioned Devil my regards for when you inevitably see her again.”
“She has a name you know?”
“Ha! As if you knew it!” he says closing the door behind him.
“Hey! Wait! Aren’t you going to untie me?”
“And let you rummage through my stuff? I can’t have you know more about me than I know about you. You’re dangerous enough babe."
Ram tugs his tied wrists and ankles "I… Need to go to the bathroom."
Santiago smirks “No you don’t,” and closes the door.
He stands with his hand still on the door handle and shakes his head. He turns around and sees a blonde seventeen-year-old coming in running.
“F-Father!” he says with bulging eyes.
Santiago notices the military radio in the teen’s hands and drops his shoulders, already guessing what news he brings. He takes a deep breath and brushes his curly hair off his face, flattens his black shirt, and accommodates his clerical collar.
“How much time do we have?”
The blonde teen frowns, confused. Then realizes what he means and shakes his head.
“Oh no! It’s not that! It’s…! It’s…!” he babbles, not knowing where to begin.
Then to help illustrate his announcement, he raises a finger and points upwards.
The boys’ chant bounces inside the mess hall. Despite the large holes in the walls from a decades-old artillery strike, the air inside the Christmas-themed food court overseen by a small theater stage feels hot and stagnant. A moist, claustrophobic mixture of salt, oil, spices, and a tinge of sweat with masculine undertones from the fifty-or-so armpits of the boys in various stages of puberty sitting close together along a series of long, wooden tables with their palms pressed together.
Yet despite the sensory overloads all around her, Carolina doesn’t seem to notice. Her palms are also pressed together but her eyes are fixed on a tall metal structure in the distance visible through one of the holes in the back wall of the mess hall stage where a teenage deacon leads the prayer before the start of their meal. Their droning words seem to fade away as she stares at the 300-foot-tall tower haphazardly painted in red, blue, and white stripes framed against the yellow-blue sky. From this vantage point the Asian preteen can barely distinguish a handrail around the top circumference of the tower which seems to surround a small structure at the center she can only guess is the ‘shrine’ where Miguel’s photo likely is.
The nude ginger boy with an astronaut helmet sitting next to her follows her line of sight, looks around to make sure everyone else has their eyes closed as they pray and opens the golden visor of his helmet.
“Hey,” he whispers, jolting Caro out of her stupor “Are you really going to climb the tower?”
The eleven-year-old girl in a baggy t-shirt with a cheerful UN slogan at the front and handwritten notes in Sharpie covering the rest of the grey fabric nods “Yeah, I have to check if Miguel’s photo is up there,” she whispers back.
“Why? What difference does it make if he once lived here?”
“Shhh!” says a teenage boy in a sleeveless shirt with fine copper-colored hair and narrow eyes sitting on the opposite side of their table. Caro and Dedos jump on their seats and keep quiet. But a short while later they continue their whispering.
“I just do, okay?” she says, “So many people are helping me find Miguel and I still know so little about him! He just kinda… Washed ashore one day as if he fell from the sky and never talked about his past…”
She looks around the long wooden table and the rows of shirtless or nude boys ranging from first graders to late teens repeating the deacon’s words. Outside of old movies, she had never seen so many males in a single place.
“I have to know if this is where he comes from,” she whispers, then stops when she sees Rebecca dutifully following the prayer along while sitting on her side. Caro crumples her eyebrows.
“Amen,” says the deacon, followed by an ‘Amen’ by the flock of boys who start murmuring in excitement when wheeled carts full of food are pushed into the mess hall and the boys manning them start unloading the metal trays at each table.
As the kids wait eagerly on their seats for the food to be served Rebecca grabs her vintage camera and winds the film forward getting ready to take more photos. She looks to her side at Caro and Dedos still talking in whispers and leans closer.
“What are you two chatting about?” she says teasingly “Remember our promise!”
The Asian tween rolls her eyes, but before she can speak the teen with copper hair sitting opposite on the table points at Becks.
“Hey bro, what’s up with you and that camera? Are you two news reporters or something?”
Suddenly many heads around the table turn in their direction. Caro instinctively straightens in her seat and touches Dedos’ hand as it rests on the wooden bench. Both preteens flinch and move their hands away.
“Oh! No, no, it’s just…” says Becks before she remembers to lower the pitch of her voice. She coughs and shakes the intricate mechanical device in her hands “It’s just a toy I got as a birthday present, it’s all analog. And in any case, I don’t have a social media license yet...”
“Oh no! Stay away from social media! That shit is dangerous!” says a preteen boy next to her wearing a space suit’s chest piece and fidgeting with a Beretta pistol in his small hands.
Murmurs of agreement around the table as the boys share factoids on how unhealthy social media is. Meanwhile, the Turkic teenager holds his stare on the two girls dressed up as boys, studying them. But then he sees the food cart approaching and dismisses the issue.
“YunsÄ thalika,” he says “I ask because some months ago a journalist tried to enter the Sanctuary to take some photos and Father Santiago turned her away. He said it was too dangerous as people may use her article to plan an attack.”
“Oh! I remember that reporter! She was hot!” says a nude chubby teen with a pimpled face next to him “I wish Father Santiago had let her in. We could have taken turns on her…”
“Yeah! It’s been AGES since we’ve had some pussy!” groans the kid with the Beretta, bringing laughs and murmurs of agreement from the other boys.
“A tight pussy especially! Not those grannies Father Santiago makes us visit!”
“Hey, that’s charity. It’s God’s work.”
“But why can’t we rape virgins from orthodox communities instead? That’s charity too!” he counters, bringing laughs around the table.
Caro’s eyebrows rise as the boys continue talking, one-upping one another on what they would do if a woman was there. She meets eyes with an equally wide-eyed Becks and motions her with a head movement to stop looking so shocked and join them. Both girls force a laugh.
“Y-yeah! Young pussies are the best,” she says nodding along.
“Just don’t say the D-word while we’re raping them,” says the copper-haired teen shaking his head “Can’t imagine what Raptor would do then.”
The food cart finally arrives and a couple of teens in aprons start unloading steaming metal trays and baskets of tortillas on their table.
“Hey, take that off while you eat,” says the skinny sunburned teen with brown hair tapping Becks’ MAGA hat. He moves behind Dedos and slaps his astronaut helmet “You too! And give me that, you’ll get hurt,” he says taking the submachine gun from his lap.
“Yes Chef,” says the ginger boy taking off his helmet and covering his penis from Caro’s eyes with both hands.
The scrawny teen points at Caro and Becks “And I don’t care if these two aren’t carrying nanos, you still keep an eye on them anyway. Understood?”
“Yes Chef…” says Dedos meekly.
The last metal tray is unloaded, and the wheeled cart rolls away. Suddenly the boys jump over like a pack of hungry seagulls, shoveling the brightly colored food into their metal plates while passing glasses of water, lime slices, and tortillas around.
Caro wets her lips and lifts from her seat to join in the carnage, but then stops and does a double-take when she sees Dedos’ uncovered head.
He looks at her and raises an eyebrow “What?”
“Um…! Ah…” she babbles with a spoon and metal plate on each hand, her face blushing. She shakes her head and looks at Becks also waiting with her spoon and plate, looking bewildered as the boys empty the mountain of fajitas at a dizzying speed.
Caro looks at the cylindrical tower through the hole in the wall, clenches her spoon, and waits for the pimpled teen to finish shoveling food onto his plate before she jumps in to scoop the few meat slices he left behind.
“Hey! I’m not done yet!” the boy snaps, causing Caro to recoil and sit back. She looks at the food tray already empty, then at her equally empty plate and the boys around her devouring their meal.
“It’s okay, they may leave us some leftovers,” says Dedos with his elbows on the table spinning his empty plate.
“Uh… But didn’t the priest say we should be treated like family while we were here?” says Caro trying not to stare at his freckled face and button nose. She can’t believe such a cute boy had been inside that silly helmet all along.
“Well… yeah. This is what family is like,” he says with a shrug, then notices her stare and raises an eyebrow. Caro looks away and sees Rebecca holding between two fingers one of the spiced meat chunks that fell off a boy’s plate.
"Um, what’s this?" she asks sniffing it.
“Chicken," says a small kid eating with his mouth open.
"Eww… Don't you have insects or something less cruel?"
"Hey, chickens are mean! They had it coming,” says the copper-haired teen carefully folding a taco “Especially these.”
“Yeaaah, no. I think I’ll wait for the leftovers…” says Becks pushing her plate aside.
The Uyghur teen smirks and points at the ginger boy “Hey Dedos! Take them to the chicken coops later. See if he feels the same after trying to gather some eggs.”
Carolina perks up “Oh yeah! I’ve always wanted to see live chickens,” then adds as a side note “They look like small dinosaurs…”
Gasps around the table.
"Dude! The D-word!" whispers a boy in a panic.
“Uh?” says Caro.
"RAAAAWR!!!"
A naked nine-or-so-year-old boy suddenly lands on their table, launching tortillas, lime slices, and pieces of roasted vegetables all over.
“Raptor!”
“Not again!”
“Did nobody warn him about the D-word!?”
Dropped shoulders and laughs around the mess hall as the hairless boy runs up and down their table roaring at the top of his lungs, causing the boys to grab their plates and move them away to prevent the feral kid from toppling them too.
“Where’s Mata? Have him take him away!”
“RAAAAAAWR!”
“It’s no use! He’s already triggered! We need Father Santiago!”
“He’s busy right now!”
“…remember how silent he was before Sam…?”
The boy sitting next to Dedos abruptly moves aside as Raptor runs past, pressing the nude ginger boy against Caro who jolts when she feels his soft hand rest on her thigh which he quickly moves away.
“Sorry!”
“Ah! It’s okay! My fault.”
They try to separate but Becks is readying her camera to take a photo of the crazed dinosaur boy and presses Caro in the opposite direction, causing the two preteens to press against each other in a mess of limbs and hands placed in the wrong places.
“Sorry!”
“It’s fine! Wait, let me…! Ouch!”
Rebecca puts Miguel’s red hat back on her head and leaps off the wooden bench to follow Raptor, allowing Caro to finally separate from Dedos just as the bald feral boy jumps past her and lands on the next table, causing another crash of metal dishes, shouts, and boys jumping off their seats to protect their meals.
Suddenly a tall, broad-shouldered teen from that table stands up and hands Caro a plate full of food.
“Here, hold this,” he says in a thick Russian accent.
“Ah! But I’m not…!” she manages to say but he has already run away to try and help catch the crazed black boy.
She looks down at the plate, shrugs, and sits back next to a dazed Dedos.
“Here! Let’s eat!”
“Uh, I don’t think we should…”
“Come on! You said it was dangerous to climb the tower at night, right?” says Caro reaching for a tortilla and motioning at the afternoon sky.
Dedos follows her finger, then looks at the growing number of people chasing Raptor around the mess hall as he jumps between tables growling like a madman with Becks snapping photos nearby and the rest of the boys cheering his path of destruction.
He sighs and grabs a lime slice “Wait, try this.”
Caro watches skeptically as he squeezes some drops over her taco. She rolls it closed and takes a tentative bite. She opens her eyes wide and drops her shoulders as the smokey flavors wash over her. The chaos inside the mess hall vanishing for a second.
“Oh, God…”
She bites the rest of her taco, squirming in pleasure, and hurries to prepare herself another one while Dedos makes one for himself.
“Good uh?” he says with a smile while chewing. Caro nods rapidly as she licks her fingers.
They eat in silence and take a moment to enjoy their food amidst the yells, groans, laughs, and cheers going around them. They look at each other’s eyes, pause for a second, and look away from sudden self-consciousness. Yet a short while later their glances meet once again and they let their stares linger for a bit longer before they’re forced by an inherent sense of embarrassment to look away.
A click. They turn to the side and see a smiling Becks lowering her camera.
“Hey lovebirds, I heard you earlier about you going to some kind of tower?”
Caro nods and puts a hand in front of her mouth as she chews “Yeah, wanna come?”
“Will there be food?” she points at their food plate and sneers “Ethical food I mean.”
Dedos nods “Yeah, they store the airdrops of the Salvation Army nearby. There are some rations there we can take.”
“Sounds good! Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll tag along,” she then says to Caro in a lower voice “And if you’re planning on breaking our promise, at least let me know so I can take some photos, okay?”
She points between them and runs away giggling without waiting for an answer. The ginger boy frowns and looks questioningly at the Asian girl who shrugs pretending she doesn’t know what she was talking about either.
“Hey! What was that!?” the deacon suddenly yells pointing at the giant hole where the Christmas-themed stage used to be.
Raptor stops and stretches his neck, looking around with snappy head movements and unfocused eyes like those of a pigeon.
“There! It looked like a giant… lizard with red plates on its back!” continues the deacon pointing at the trees “Its tail seemed to have spikes!
A few more kids stand up and join him, yelling how they also saw something big moving outside.
Raptor jumps off the table and lands on the floor without making a sound, then sprints out the mess hall in a perpendicular direction of where everyone is pointing with his body bent and hands close to his chest as if they were claws.
“Um… Shouldn’t he be going the other way?” says Caro between bites as the commotion dies down and the boys start to return to their seats.
“Nah, therapods never attack head-on,” says Dedos finishing the rest of his taco “He’s preparing a surprise attack. That should keep him busy for a while,” he points at the tower past the hole in the wall “You finished? We gotta go find your boyfriend.”
Caro rolls her eyes and chews faster to speak. When she finally swallows and opens her mouth a massive angry figure stands next to them.
“Is that my plate!?” the Ukrainian teen growls with fists on his sides.
Both preteens jump in their seats and look at the hulking, shirtless boy in fear. The kids sitting around them turn and cheer excited for more action now that Raptor’s tantrum has ended.
“Wow. You’re so screwed bro…” says the copper-haired boy with a half-eaten taco in his hand, not having moved off his seat since the chaos began.
“Children…” says a gentle yet piercing voice all of a sudden, silencing the rowdy crowd with eerie speed “I have some terrible news to share with you…”
The boys immediately run back to their places and shush their younger comrades as a black-clothed, slender figure with hand intertwined in front of his chest stands at the doors of the mess hall backlit by the golden light of dawn. Even the angry teenager who was deprived of his meal sits quietly back in his seat as Santiago continues speaking with a sharp and clear voice as if spoken through a loudspeaker.
“Take a moment to look around you before you hear my news,” he says with a face obscured in shadow, a sliver of sunlight shining across his horn-rimmed glasses “Every generation experiences a moment like this. You’ll remember this day for the rest of your life. Everyone you know from now on will talk about what they were doing when they first heard it,” he takes a deep breath “Now, some of you may not understand the importance of what I’m about to tell you. But for the rest of you who do,” he takes another breath “I need you boys to be brave now…”
Dedos jolts when Caro taps his arm and puts a finger in front of her lips.
“Let’s go!” she whispers.
“N-now!?”
She nods and slowly steps out the bench leaning her weight on his soft, warm shoulders. She moves between the rows of teens and boys listening to the priest with her head down trying not to draw attention to herself, yet nobody seems to even notice her.
Dedos follows her with his eyes, looks back at Santiago, and grabs his astronaut helmet.
“I know some of you were hoping they would be alive, possibly even be among us,” the priest continues as the two preteens sneak away “But you see children, this is what I mean when I talk about God’s mysterious ways. The…”
Becks snaps a photo of Santiago speaking to the crowd of boys who listen with wide-opened eyes and hands in front of their mouths. She sees Caro and Dedos heading out, looks back at the dramatic scene in front of her, but feels another twinge of hunger and hurries to follow them.
“Now children, I know many of you have questions, but let us take a moment of silence to pray for their souls who have found much-needed peace…” says the priest now standing at the top of the stage followed by a long, respectful silence inside the mess hall.
Just outside Raptor emerges from behind some bushes with a live lizard in his mouth, peeks inside the mess hall full of frozen, silent figures, and then at the three tweens who went away.
He tilts his head, blinks, and runs in a perpendicular direction in his characteristic saurian gate.
“I don’t know guys. This thing gives me the heebie-jeebies,” says Becks looking at the sky with a hand over her eyes and chewing a snack with a cartoon grasshopper on the package “You say people, children, used to ride this thing all the way up there and then dropped down?”
“Yup,” says Dedos helping Caro fasten a harness around her waist with the astronaut helmet on his head and an old tote bag full of climbing hooks and gear hanging from his neck covering his penis. He points at a rusty, ring-like vehicle about a dozen feet wide at the base of the 300-foot-tall tower with dozens of twisted spokes radiating from its body “And not only that, see the way each seat could be rotated? When you reached the top the seats turned you up like this, so you looked downwards as it fell,” he says bending his body forwards to illustrate, but then notices the tote bag lets the girls look at his groin and quickly snaps back.
Becks snaps a photo of the dilapidated tower and takes another bite of her protein bar “This is what happens when you don’t let kids have sex,” she shudders “Can’t imagine what life was like back then…”
“Okay, all set,” says Dedos moving away from Caro who is now connected by the waist to a climbing rope hanging from the top of the structure.
Caro nods and throws a quick look upwards, not wanting to look up at the hulking structure.
“So… This pulls me up now or…?” she says wiggling the rope in her hand.
The ginger boy accommodates the tote bag with a ‘Selene Hotels’ logo in front of his body and shakes his head “Oh no! It’s just in case you slip. The belay device should slow down your fall,” he points at the weird-looking metal ring connecting her harness to the rope.
Caro blinks “Should?”
He nods and points at the tower and a makeshift ladder made out of galvanized pipes held together with carbon tape crawling up the giant metal cylinder in a rickety zigzag path.
“The soldiers blocked the inside stairs to build a sniper nest at the top, so the only way up is with that ladder… Oh! And try to hurry,” he points at the orange/blue sky above “A kid once took too long to climb and got stuck midway because of the dark. He had to let go of the ladder and use the belay device to descend.”
Caro presses her lips and nods. She tries to look up again but is only able to do so for a second before she’s forced to look back at the floor.
Dedos frowns “You scared of heights too?”
“No! No, I’m not. I’m just…” she taps her pockets to make sure everything she needs is still there, notices the rolled-up sock still inside her pants, and takes it away “This! It’s this thing. It’s making me nuts.”
Dedos hesitates but grabs the warm sock and stores it inside the space-themed tote bag around his neck. Caro bites her lip and lets her eyes linger on his pale, freckled body for a second before shaking her head and walking towards the improvised ladder.
“Good luck!” yells Becks as she starts to climb “Oh! And try to land on your back if you fall off! You’re flat enough at the front!”
Caro groans as she climbs. Becks giggles and turns to Dedos looking up with squinting eyes.
“Don’t worry, she’s been through worse. That girl will topple whole governments to Miguel.”
The boy gulps “Um… I’m confused. Is this ‘Miguel’ guy his boyfriend or not?”
The black girl shrugs and takes another bite of her protein bar. She then squints and points at the bushes near the base of the tower.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Carolina stops and hugs the flimsy ladder. She’s sweaty, tired, and her body twitching by the building pressure inside her belly. Let it be fear, the spicy food, the prospect of finding Miguel, period cramps, or something else, she can’t tell anymore.
Against her better instincts, she takes a peek to her side and hugs the ladder tighter. She’s about two hundred feet high and has an incredible view of the flooded amusement park and the marshes further in the distance lit by the dramatic colors of the golden sky and red sun about to touch the near-flat horizon.
A gust of salty, warm wind whirlpools around her, waving her short silver hair aside and making her feel for a terrifying second like her bare feet have lost contact with the makeshift ladder. Her knuckles turn pale as she holds herself with all her might to the slippery galvanized metal as the gust passes. When it does she inhales deep, glances up, and exhales. She puts her foot on the next rung of the ladder and leans her weight on the one-inch pipe.
The badly wrapped carbon tape bends and the pipe snaps loose, making her body lock in fear for a terrifying second before it snaps back to life and her hands grip the nearest rung, stopping her fall with a painful humph.
Yells beneath her, the distinctive high-pitched voice of Rebecca yelling something about her coming back, her words muddled by the gusts of wind and the deafening beating of Caro’s heart which seems to be pumping right next to her ears. The legs of the eleven-year-old girl flail aimlessly underneath her, trying to find the ladder which seems impossibly absent. She swore it was there just a second ago. Why is it suddenly gone?
With her grip on the horizontal metal pipe growing weaker Carolina tries to calm herself and remember Miguel’s face and the promise she made of finding him. Yet the only thing she can think of are Dedos’ green eyes, his freckled face, and his fine, red curly hair she’s dying to feel between her fingers. Why is it so hard to think about Miguel lately? It’s almost as if he was but a proxy for something else, something bigger than him or her. But what?
One of her bare toes touches the metal pipes by chance, jolting her back to stability. Caro stands on the rung and hugs the ladder tight with her eyes closed, the salty wind and Becks’ yells swirling nonsensically around her. She feels she can, and probably should, just give up and let herself go using the rope and trusting the weird metal ring kill keep her from falling. It’s not as if reaching the top of the tower would change anything anyway. Yet why is her body not cooperating?
She opens her tear-drenched eyes slightly to take another look at the sunset but discovers she’s pressing her head in the wrong direction and looking at the other side of the marshes where the colors are darker and bluer yet just as striking.
The preteen girl finds herself staring at a bright gibbous Moon hovering high above the horizon with a single green dot crowning its southern pole. The point of light is blurred and inflated in her vision as it passes through her wet corneas, making it seem larger than it normally looks which people describe as just a weird-colored star.
And yet for a second, Carolina feels soaked with a sense of understanding. No new knowledge reaches her brain, but rather the sensation that comes ‘after’ learning something truly mind-blowing. A surreal feeling that comes and goes as quick as the wind, yet strong enough to make her body unclench slightly and her arm move up to grab the next rung of the ladder.
“I’m okay!” she yells in response to Becks’ incomprehensible yells as she continues her journey up. Rebecca keeps yelling a couple more times about being careful about something but stops once Caro reaches the top of the tower and pulls herself over the circular platform and slumps exhausted on the cold metal surface, her silver hair fluttering with each ragged breath.
It takes some minutes for the preteen girl to dare to move, during which the clear sky above keeps darkening and swarmed by twinkling stars and tiny firefly-looking orbital debris crisscrossing the firmament, a few turning into shooting stars here and there.
Caro closes her eyes, breathes deep, and turns on her stomach to look at the center of the flat platform enclosed by a handrail where the boys have built a makeshift shed with wood and plastic pallets, aircraft parts, and tons of carbon tape to form a shrine decorated in a syncretic mix of Catholic and Dia de Muertos colors and motifs.
The girl swallows dry, unhooks herself from the climbing rope, and walks on shaky legs towards the shrine, careful to close the door made out of an airplane rudder behind her to keep the salty wind outside. The cramped space, sudden silence, and darkness inside immediately make her feel once more like she stepped inside someone’s closet.
She extracts the lighter Dedos gave her from her back pocket, finally realizing its usefulness beyond the religious ritual, and lights the prayer candles spread inside the shrine one by one, flooding the congested walls with an eerie, reverential light as the papers tacked to the walls and the colorful decorations made out of papel picado hanging from the ceiling start to come to life around her.
Carolina’s eyes dart rapidly between the dozens and dozens of boys of all shapes, types, and colors staring silent at her, frozen in time inside their four-inch squares tacked to the shrine’s walls. Yet the thing that surprises her the most are the handwritten letters that accompany each photo, a detail that the ginger boy was either unaware of or deliberately chose not to warn her before coming here.
She shakes her head, remembering her mission, and starts studying each boy’s face one by one trying to find Miguel as soon as possible. Yet after a minute of searching and reading a couple of letters figments here and there, she finds herself spending more time reading and less time searching. A few minutes later her breathing has slowed down and she has placed a hand over her mouth as her eyes start to water again, only this time not out of fear of falling. Not physically at least.
Each letter made out of colored papers is as unique as the face next to it, some written in beautiful cursive while others look like the first time their author held a pen, yet still made with so much patience and care it adds a whole new layer of intention atop the shaky strokes forming each letter and word.
…AND I’LL FIND WHERE I BELONG…
Some letters are short. Others are extensive, poetic, even rambling. Some are seemingly throwing shade at another letter in the same shrine, while others exuberate so much pent-up fear and anger that boils harder and harder until they seem to explode with each trembling stroke of their last few words.
…CAN’T JUST LEAVE US ALONE!?
Caro brushes tears off her eyes, snot running down her face. She can’t quite remember why she came here or how long she’s been reading in silence. Yet for some reason she feels like she must read all the letters before she leaves. As if doing otherwise would bring a curse upon her that would haunt her till her last days.
…AND I’LL ABLE TO WALK OUTSIDE AND NOT BE AFRAID ANYMORE…
Caro straightens and inhales deep, like someone who just emerged from the water after having held their breath for a long time. That was the last one.
She looks to the side, sees some crayons and pens neatly arranged on a shelf next to a small stack of blank, colorful papers, and grabs one.
She writes a few words, tacks the paper on an empty spot of the wall, puts the pen back to where she took it, and blows the last candle out, letting the shrine be enveloped in darkness once again until the next traveler comes for guidance.
She opens the door and is violently taken back to the real world by a gush of ocean wind, quickly breaking the remains of the spell. She closes the door, sniffs out loud, and looks around to find herself in the middle of the night. Impossible to tell if it’s been just a couple of minutes or several hours since she went inside.
She walks to the perimeter handrail of the platform and looks down, sees a small crowd gathered far below lit by flashlights and a few burning torches carrying a large circular object. What in the world are they doing?
One of the boys notices her and waves at her while yelling something. Others join him.
“What!?” she yells.
The crowd’s answer is incongruent and muddled from the distance and wind. She smiles and hurries to the side of the platform without a handrail where the makeshift ladder ends and the climbing rope starts.
She stands right next to the edge of the platform and fiddles with the hooks and anchors of her harness trying to remember how to connect them to the rope when she notices the crowd below seems to be chanting something.
“What!?”
“-rope!” the crowd yells in unison.
Carolina smirks, amused by their coordination. What are they trying to do?
She grabs the weird-metal-ring-thingy from her harness, snaps it around the climbing rope, and takes a glance at the shrine just as another powerful gust of wind begins.
“Rawr…?” asks the nude black boy standing just behind her holding a half-eaten lizard in his hand.
Carolina jolts in surprise but immediately laughs from the boy scaring her like that. But then she blinks when she notices her adrenaline rush isn’t diminishing and the world around her seems to be tilted the wrong way, somehow squeezing itself flat. The wind is also blowing a LOT louder and faster than before. Wait, did she connect her harness to the…?
“NO, NO! LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!” yells Dedos waving manically at the group of teens carrying a 20-feet wide doughnut-shaped cushion while Becks and the smaller boys at the sidelines track Caro’s descent with their devices and LED flashlights with wide-opened eyes.
The girl impacts the center of the giant white torus which inflates and explodes upwards like a giant créme caramel combined with a foam fountain, dissipating the impact energy.
A pregnant silence follows as cotton candy-like filaments slowly rain down the young audience who watches with stupefied faces as their older peers spit out mouthfuls of foam off their mouths and gather around the remains of the white torus to see if anyone survived.
One of them raises a thumbs-up, causing an eruption of cheers and sighs of relief by the young crowd who jumps over each other and swarms a shell-shocked Caro deep inside the plastic crater, her elbows bruised and body sore, but otherwise unharmed.
“Did you see THAT!? It looked like a meteor!”
“Father Santiago is going to kill Raptor!”
“He’s going to kill Dedos for giving him a cock-ring instead of the belay device!”
“Come on guys! I’ve already apologized! Who the heck stores them in the same bag!?”
“Is he dead!?”
“Oh no! He’s hurt! His cock is missing!”
“Okay, everyone! BACK OFF!” yells the copper-haired teen pushing the smaller kids away from Caro laying between the cushioned sods of foam. He kneels next to her, unhooks her harness, and hands her the rolled-up sock while nobody is looking.
“Here, you dropped this.”
She a double-take and hurries to put the sock back inside her tight denim shorts “You knew!?”
The Uyghur teen smirks “Duh! I have one myself,” he stands up and continues waving off the younger kids “Get off! Give a man some breathing room!
Two other teenagers help Caro stand up and shake off filaments of foam off her body. Just then Becks appears running and hugs her tight.
“OH MY GOD! Are you alright!? We tried to warn you but…!”
She stops. Carolina is laughing, causing the people around her to glance at each other with worried faces.
“Sorry…” says the eleven-year-old girl brushing a tear off her eye “That was so cool…”
The boys relax and ruffle her short hair or punch her lightly in the arm, causing her to wince.
“You’re crazy dude.”
“I’d say that’s your name now.”
“Crazy?”
He shakes his head “Meteor.”
A round of Oooh’s and Aaah’s as the teens bounce the name around, liking more and more how it sounds. Dedos approaches holding a piece of foam in front of his groin and whispers closer to her ear.
“Did you find him?”
Carolina blinks as if suddenly remembering. She shakes her head slightly. The ginger boy nods and opens his mouth to say something else but the older teens have placed hands on her shoulders and back and taken her away.
“Come on Meteor, now you gotta help us clean the mess.”
“Like… All of it?” she says motioning at the area around them covered with pieces of foam and looking like some sort of winter wonderland.
“Yeah, that’s the downside of these terminal cushions.”
“Ah! Is that how it’s called?”
“Wait till you hear how much it costs. You’ll want to jump off the tower again.”
A round of laughs as the teens organize the rest of the boys all while teasing and praising the two girls dressed up as boys.
A short distance away Dedos watches them laughing and chatting with a sour smile. Suddenly someone bumps his astronaut helmet.
“Ouch!” he says turning around to find Chef walking past.
“I told you to watch over those two.”
“Oh! But I…!”
“Keep at it,” says the brown-haired teen throwing him a piece of red fabric.
The ginger boy barely manages to catch it since his hands are busy covering his nakedness. It takes him a moment to realize he’s now holding a small pair of shorts. He opens his eyes wide.
“Oh! T-thanks!” he yells, but the sunburnt teen has already walked away, now helping herd the younger kids.
“Show’s over everyone! Time to work!” he thunders.
To be continued…
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