[WE]

We – a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand of us blind children – are locked inside the womb of the world. We know nothing of this place, we know nothing of the reason why we are held here. We cry and suffocate in the darkness of tombs the size of cathedrals. We roam endlessly, trying to gather together. We, the amnesiac flock endlessly rolling up on itself.

 

Our prison is engulfed in the silence of the abyss, and we are always cold. Many are those who become sick, many are those who collapse, clenching their fists to their chests. Lost in this endless labyrinth of cells and corridors, stepping on the bodies of our brethren, we run our fingers along the walls that stand before us, stumbling on every obstacle, desperately trying to find our way.

 

We no longer eat, we no longer dream. Perhaps they inject some substance in our veins while we sleep, perhaps we simply do not need food anymore – we do not know, we know nothing. Waking up is more painful every day, as if someone was taking advantage of those long periods of sleep to operate on us, to modify us. We the small ones, the weak, the sick, the lame, the dim-witted ones, melting away in the great crowd.

 

In our gardens all the flowers grow deformed, and in spite of our best efforts, they wilt before they even blossom. Our puny cuttings thrive against all odds and bloom monstrously in greenhouses that stretch as far as the eye can see, bathed in artificial light. The small animals we breed are bleating, emaciated things, and prone to birth defects. Our weak attempts at crossbreeding result in deplorable beasts that die in our very arms. Piles of small carcasses rot, their decaying skin stuck to the rusted bars of their cages.

 

Our flesh is frail as wax, unraveling and slowly rotting. We have no past, no future, our consciousness is falling apart, piece by piece, until there is nothing left of it. We are but fleeting creatures, promised to the void. Those who become ill are made saints, and we extol their diminishment until the death and putrefaction of their flesh. Then we bury them in the garden and forget about them, like we forget everything else.

 

To play again. And again and again. Hour after hour, we keep moaning as we keep repeating the same empty movements. We retell the same stories and we replay the same scenes without comprehension. We spend hours pretending to be what we will never be, trapped in the mephitic darkness, losing ourselves in obsessive games that leave us weak and exhilarated.

 

We imagine the walls are painted in vivid colors and rich frescoes. We are delighted to think about these thousands of richly detailed scenes, these thousands of captivating tableaux. We shake with excitement and frustration, and we moan together in pleasure. On our knees we laugh and we sing without parting our lips. We dream and dream and dream again, our hands never leaving the walls.

 

Sometimes, some of us disappear without a trace, without reason, and it feels like a void is opening up, a white cell in our mind turning black. Our grief is eternal, though we want to believe that our brethren have found peace and serenity, that they have discovered a way out and have left for a better place. But perhaps there is no other world.

 

We tear at the walls with our bare hands. We scratch the mortar until our fingers bleed. We try to pierce through the concentric enclosures one after the other but the walls heal up every night. In spite of our repeated assaults, our obsession, our hundred and thousand and tens of thousands and hundred thousands of hands working toward this goal, we are still prisoners. The labyrinth is rigged, there is no escape.

 

We suture our wounds with old medical supplies found in old storage rooms, but we only make things worse, for the dirty needles give us infections. Our wounds never heal and weep abundant tears of pus. It makes no sense. Sometimes, during a fight or a game, we sense the traces of fresh incisions ready to reopen, and think to ourselves: “cursed”. And the accusation rolls endlessly in our common consciousness.

 

We scream in hunger and mourn our dead, we complain in a language that no longer exists, and that is all there is to say about our inane, larval existence. We the shadows hiding in the shadows, we the idiotic, starving children, we the downtrodden dogs. We the deviants, we the aberrant ghosts, the sleepers who dream no more.

 

In our gardens of ashes and bones, a subterranean rumor is swelling, unbearable: the song of countless maggots feasting on the rotting bodies of our brethren. The sound the teeming multitude makes is barely stifled by the earth we pour on the dead to cover them. Soon will come the time when the worms turn on the living. The garden will then become a forbidden zone and we will be forced to erase it from our minds and our history.

 

When the worms start whispering their canticle of decay and dread strikes, we huddle together, eyes full of tears. We kiss and hug and whisper words of support to each other. We try not to hurt each other, but sometimes nails will rip through the skin, involuntarily tearing open bellies and throats. We cannot stop it, for we are the victims of our ravening tenderness. We crave comfort. We need help.

 

Monsters. Dirty little monsters, dirty little kids, twisted and wicked, this is what we are. Dirty little monsters. Monsters.

We press our hands over our eyes, for we don’t want to see. No one will stop us from being what we are, our blindness is bliss. No, we don’t want to see. No, we don’t want to see.

 

The song of the worms grows louder and the frescoes covering the wall decay and disintegrate in moments. Then we fall on the ground and cover our ears. Our eardrums bleed but we feel no pain. We, the willing amnesiacs, mute by principle, blind by choice. We, whose names were crossed off the lists, whose existence was denied. We, one soul scattered in a thousand bodies, one consciousness. We, locked up in the night of time. We, a thousand lunatics bathed in the light of knowledge, a thousand devotees haloed in pathological glory. We, sparks of life, ephemeral.

We run towards extinction, never looking back. We, our asynchronous wanderings, our starving dreams.

 

We dwell on our senseless stories we stitch up our wounds we cherish our failings we lick our wounds we mourn our dead. Nothing, we will be spared nothing. Bones crack and souls perish constantly, and nameless children constantly come and take their place.

 

We will sink deep into blind suffering and oblivion. We will drain our conscience as we have been drained of our substance, we will kill each other in dark, addled ceremonies. We – a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand of us.

We.

We.

We.

We will be heard.

 

We will duplicate ourselves again and again, strike at the walls until we bring them down, we will multiply until we spill over from our prison. And we will see the planet beneath us and we will spread, screaming in unison, from a vengeful, blind fever, we will contaminate reality and drag it into our extinction. We will grow until every other life form disappears, we will be heard. We will be heard. WE WILL BE HEARD.