Nosotros woke up to find nosotros locked up. Not knowing why nosotros were here. Not remembering nada, not a thing. Nada de nada. Yet here nosotros are. Here in this damn cage, a whole lot of nosotros, made to be dirty and stinking, made this way from the heat and the sweat and the filth of this place. Probably from the heat and the sweat and the filth nosotros wade through before this place, too. This the way of things. Thrown into this hole in a wall that is just metal and concrete and bodies: this nosotros now. Young bodies and old, aging all the same. Forgotten all the same. Too many arms and too many legs and too many ojetes to make this place comfortable, pleasant. Just the one shitter there in the middle of the space with no privy, not even no seat cover, so that even then, once nosotros reduced to the lowest of the low, like cattle in them pens before a slaughter, nosotros made even lower still when nosotros one by one have to take them pants down right there in the middle of this mass of flesh, strangers the lot of them nosotros be, to push them bowels empty. The very worst part of it all is how uncomfortable that seatless shitter be, that worst of them metal rim johns that comes like beartrap for nosotros bottom halves. Plus with all them eyes on nosotros. This like shitting into a rusty tin can of a beartrap in the center of a wrestling ring right then before the main event. The pounding of flesh that is being there caged this way, so long. This what this part feels like, the indignity nosotros all been made to share.

Nosotros don’t all come from the same place even if nosotros share some things in common. Yes, yes, yes, a common tongue. Common enough to be waylaid together. Yes, of course, many of nosotros are as Catholic as the pope his piss. Some of nosotros pray more often than nosotros breathe even. Them nosotros say Padre Nuestros and Ave Marias even in sleep. Most nosotros make the sign of the cross and most know that God’s glory will be with nosotros, in the ever-after anyway. Nosotros can hope, just like all else. Here, in this bodily existence, nosotros say them prayers and nosotros know to keep quiet when the masters they talking.

A lot of nosotros share that dark complexion that’s so troubling to them whites in charge of being in charge, but not the whole bunch of nosotros is ‘swarthy in spades,’ as Juanpie likes to joke. Juanpie looks like he was dipped in cow’s milk within seconds of being born, from the tip of his toes to the very last hair on his head, so that when nosotros woke up here all together, the whole lot of nosotros were all wondering if he was a narc of some kind, locked up in here with nosotros to gather them intel pieces, to rat nosotros out if nosotros tried anything.

“Will you shut the fuck up over there. God-damn-it, nobody wants to listen to your whack-ass nonsense twenty-four-seven.”

Turns out Juanpie is from Tegucigalpa and that his family can trace them Spanish lineage all the way back to the town’s very first mayor, some bag of bones that Juanpie’s eager to tell nosotros about named Juan de la Cueva. Plus some terrible poet from around the same time he says, which means zilch to nosotros, nada. But it all means so much to Juanpie, these other two Juans’ lives, their names even, since this is why his parents named him Juan Carlos, of course, which seem like nonsense to nosotros, cause who wants to be named after some whack-ass poet. Eventually nosotros started fucking with Juanpie by calling him Juan de la Cárcel. Nosotros came up with that nickname one day when nosotros all shooting the shit, nosotros all admitting the worst thing each of nosotros ever done to someone else, trying to figure out if that was what had landed nosotros in this stinking cage in the first place. Juanpie, for some reason all over again, started up with that story about Juan de la Cueva, and nosotros asking to hear about Juan de la Cárcel instead. Juanpie, he just keep going though, talking about him his mommy, him his daddy, that name.

“Somebody over there crack that guy’s fucking mouth broken. Please!”

“Fuck you. Let him talk. What else we got to keep us entertained.”

“¿Entretenimiento? Es que este idiota no sabe hablar.”

He talk, nosotros listen.

“Esa cabeza esta llena de tonterías. Le falta a ese man una lengua segura.”

Another voice, Alejandro Peña, the smallest of them bunch, but the one out of all nosotros who’d braved the shitter first that morning when nosotros woke up first time to this cage life. This Alejo, he spoke with a Texas twang when, for nosotros confessions, he say he’d gotten some boys some work on a farm. Nosotros asked why getting boys work could make him such a terrible person. And Alejandro, he respond with a long-winded story about how those boys had gotten mixed up with the wrong kind of work on account of his connection, not grove work picking oranges as Alejo had intended, but narco work bringing big ass loads of the white stuff north of the border by way of small planes, the kind crop dusters use. Alejandro tried to get all technical explaining the planes one of them boys had learned to fly and nosotros told him to shut the fuck up so that nosotros could all have a moment to share nosotros confession stories.

“Sounds like better fuckin’ pay than that slave labor they been selling us all these years.”

“Fuck yeah. Living wage my ass.”

“My moms raised me and my brothers on minimum wage. She did alright.”

“Did she? Look’a you now. Where you at boy? You ain’t nothing but where they want you.”

Cristian Henríquez said he didn’t know why for the life of him he in this predicament. Nosotros listen good when he talk—he was a good talker. He worked at a bank in San Diego and he’d recently married to his high school sweetheart and they had a first baby on them way, a baby them were going to name Piedad after a grandmother his wife had recently lost to them countless cancer deaths. Them deciding between Alma and Piedad when their abuelita’s light went out, so it made that decision an easy one. And honestly, nosotros believed him, it was like listening to the sweetest of schoolboys give nosotros all them hopes and dreams he had for himself and his family, and there didn’t seem to be anything he hiding there between those well spoke words he shared about those days he had, dull as they were, between bank and home. As for nights spent between wife and sheets he didn’t mention peep, even though one of them two Jorges kept asking what she looked like and how good she was to him in the bedroom. That one Jorge kept asking for the dirtiest of details, wanting for nosotros to be able to see them size of them titties and what that fine gash smelled like between them long legs of hers, and Cristian, bashful as he was, just went red as a bloodbath might when he heard Jorge speaking that way, and said he wouldn’t couldn’t never share that kind of secret out into the world. Them kind of details were between him and his girl and his God. That mention of his God being there got the first Jorge laughing so loud he fell to the floor. Some others of nosotros could be heard snickering, too. That there mention also got the other Jorge to saying that maybe Cristian was just a really good liar and that he had a world of skeleton secrets hiding dead in his closet. Why else, the second Jorge was saying, would any man bring up God when talking about fucking his wife.

“Amen to that, motherfuckers.”

“I second that, I surely do—the amen and the part about fucking mothers, too. But I kind of wish this Cristian boy you dreaming up wouldn’t be such a damn prude so that we could hear all about them titties and that gash.”

“Más que idiotas, estos huevones son viejos verdes todos.”

Ernesto Caldrón Matadero heard all this talk of crimes committed and said he’d admit to the worst of the worst. Nosotros all turned nosotros heads to look over at Ernesto, who had himself two sleeves of tattoos, all kinds of that religious iconography type stuff the Jesus-lovers among nosotros clamor over, but mixed in with them skulls and other bones stabbed into the flesh of his arms with all those hundreds of hours of needle pricks. Them images on his arms jump as if alive when he says he certainly the biggest monster.

“Sounds like he’s talking about me.”

“Me too.”

“Me fucking three.”

Ernesto, he was hunched over and holding them his hands, turning them over and over in his very own grasp, like examining a bloody knife or a gun for the cleaning of its parts. Then he smacked the back of one hand against the palm of his other and he said for all of nosotros to hear, “I kill a man to not be killed myself.” This sounded fair enough to the lot of nosotros. Most of nosotros will probably admit to having been through some pretty hairy situations where one turn further left might have put any one of nosotros into that kind of predicament, but nosotros now were like any other lot, an audience that needed them details, so nosotros pressed Ernesto for more. Not either of the Jorges, though, since it was obvious that them two would speak up to press a small fry like Cristian for more of them details, but them had their cautious reservations when addressing someone of Ernesto’s size, especially after someone of that size had just rubbed his hands with grief after admitting to killing a man. Them hands of Ernesto’s were massive. Them weapons for sure.

Still, none of nosotros was surprised when Márquez asked Ernesto to clarify. None surprised when he asked in the way a priest would, in true confession, to get any of nosotros to spill them beans about the worst of the worst been done. For absolution, of course. That’s cause Márquez he was dressed up like a priest. Now, nosotros don’t know if that’s ‘cause he’s them bona fide thing, or if it’s ‘cause he was wearing a costume, a wolf in sheepskin type. What nosotros do know is that Márquez had them cojones to ask a killer why he killed, and he did so in a way that didn’t at all suggest he was afraid for any reason, with the asking that is. Which made nosotros suspect Márquez more killer than priest.

Ernesto looked over at Márquez and smiled and said what he needed to say to explain himself. He had been carjacked on his way from Chicago to New Orleans, a trip he was making for work. The carjacker had promised to drop him off at the next gas station so long as there was no funny business, but then the carjacker realized he had a living breathing ATM sitting next to him, so each time they ran out of driving cash, the carjacker said to him, his prisoner, to take out another few hundred bucks at them next ATM they drove up to, always the drive-up kind of course, always with the gun down low against Ernesto’s dick so that any security cameras wouldn’t see.

“Sounds like a case of Devil’s Breath to me.”

“Devil what?”

“¡Burundanga!”

“Buru what?”

“Fucking scopolamine man, get yourself some fucking knowledge.”

“That’s the weapon of choice, for reals.”

Ernesto was not a man drugged. He was a man sitting at the shit end of a shit barrel, a barrel pointed at his very manhood, and he knew his money was running low and knew also that the carjacker was losing it after them two been driving three days straight without sleep, and he figured it would be him or the carjacker dead, so he decided to make his move at a Love’s station one morning real early, way before the sun come up. “How did you kill the man?” Márquez asked. Jose Posada answered for him: “With a gun, with a knife, with his bare hands, isn’t it all the same?”

“Not the same in the least. Sounds like our preacher here ain’t once killed himself a man.”

Ernesto nodded his head and went silent. He done talking even with the prodding that came, so the rest of nosotros shared out sins. This be confession everlasting. Nosotros know nosotros were here in this place for no good reason, but them stories, that made what nosotros know to be truth. One man, from Puerto Rico, he stole a chicken from a rich farmer on account of his starving family. As it turns out, one of his little ones, a girl of seven, sweet thing, died of pneumonia a few weeks after the theft, leaving that poor Boricua feeling a weight a guilt for the chicken he never could understand. Another fellow, the oldest of the bunch, he was a soft-spoken Chilean who said he’d been walking across them Americas for decades just trying to find his lost family. When nosotros told him that wasn’t no sin, he said he’d crossed borders to do it, the searching, and still, none of nosotros couldn’t fault him for that. When he said that death itself wouldn’t stop him from searching, nosotros all got quiet for a bit and felt for him a bit of them sadness he must have been facing with the loss of his family, a loss nosotros were certain he would never fill. Nosotros mostly know that hollowness well. After him, there was a kid from Jersey who said he’d gotten a cousin pregnant after he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and nosotros all laughed at this and said, Is that all, kid? But then he broke down and started crying when he admitted that he’d pushed both of them mothers to abort their babies, and only Márquez had anything to say to that when he told the kid all things could be forgiven.

“I ain’t never forgive me no man who murders babies out of their mother’s wombs that way. Ain’t no real Christian gonna buy that shit-ass argument about my body my choice.”

“Oh, get the fuck out of here. You know you had yourself plenty of women who pulled the plug. Fucking hypocrites always—”

“Shut the fuck up. Let him get on with it already. Maybe if he finishes his damn story, we can all get some shuteye finally.”

“Jesusito, por favor dame la fortaleza que necesito para sobrevivir a este infierno.”

Nosotros kept on telling stories for days, there were that many of nosotros there in that cell. In fact, each day, nosotros kept on getting new recruits to fill the space even fuller. That meant more stories, but it also meant more bodies, and more bodies meant more heat, and sweat, and filth, not to mention more of them shits being taken, constant shits in that one john nosotros had there in the center of the room. And all the while, getting filthier while nosotros shared out more stories and got to know one another, while one man after another relieved themselves their bowels from some terrible gruel they served nosotros twice a day, and all the while, none of nosotros could for the life of nosotros figure out why it was any of nosotros had gotten picked up in the first place.

“Preach on preacher. That there is the truth.”

“A-fuckin-men to that.”

“Fuck amen, we all know why we’re here. Same reason slaves were slaves.”

Not even the newest members of nosotros could offer any answers since these men usually came carried in unconscious by faceless guards. Nosotros been beaten all the way down, since the start by such faceless entities. Faceless on account of how they make nosotros look at these them nosotros feet whenever they coming down the hall. They scream bloody terrible threats, violent threats, and, after nosotros saw them take cudgels to poor Cristian’s face and body, nosotros knew those threats were weighted with terrible possibilities promised. Cristian had looked up to see who unlocking the cell right after nosotros been clearly commanded to look down and the man with the keys saw himself in them eyes, Cristian’s. The door swung open and an arm swept in and yanked Cristian out into the hall. Then them door slammed shut and there nosotros were watching—sneaking glances that is—while six guards bludgeon the poor boy to a bloody pulp. Worst than pulp on account of the sound of bones breaking beneath the pulp. And there nosotros was, listening to the violence, since looking down couldn’t block out the horrors nosotros heard, once nosotros couldn’t watch no more. When they opened the cell door again, none of nosotros was sneaking a look at the men, but nosotros heard them throw Cristian’s body inside. Heard the wheeze of a body finished, near done. Hell, nosotros could smell the fresh blood off him, too. Then they carried in another six men that they piled one on top of the other, with Cristian, broken as he was, there at the very bottom.

Cristian never really spoke the same after that. Took him some time to kind of convalesce. His breath moved into and out of his chest in that raspy way that old-timers do after them decades of smoking their cigarettes, and his mouth didn’t seem to open proper, making his words garbled when coming off the side of his face. If nosotros heard them guards hollering their orders, he cower at the back of the cell, making a wall with nosotros bodies, between him and their violence, but nosotros couldn’t blame him for that cowardly response. He was just trying to survive something awful, a force almost preternatural that had been working to divide nosotros from the earliest of them days of mankind.

“Don’t get me started on those fucking twats.”

“They’re worse than anyone of us locked up in here.”

Nosotros watch an unending stream of new nosotros. Them new men said just the same as the old men, nothing new, that they couldn’t for the life of them remember why it was they’d gotten picked up, why the hell they ended up in this hole. Them all gave nosotros a start with their names and even joined in, sharing the worst of their sins.

So it been going. Nosotros growing in size, growing to be the many rather than them few. There was by this time countless Joses and Juans, seven Samuels and four Santiagos, a couple of dozen Diegos and Lord knows how many Daniels, two Rodrigos and three Rafaels, not to mention all the many other names that came in single samples between them lot of nosotros. One man, Carlos Facundo, a latecomer straight from the southern coast of Spain, flummoxed to see so many men in one cell that he asked to know how many nosotros were, the actual number this lot, which got nosotros to laughing, since not one among nosotros had thought to get a count. The second this Carlos got nosotros to agree to a count, they brought in more bodies, all still out cold, but nosotros started that count anyway, each one of nosotros pointed at by Carlos, each one saying the very next number in them count when Carlos pointed nosotros way, but right when nosotros got near the end count, them guards came screaming once more, to deposit even more men in such a blustery way that nosotros lost count and had to start all over again. So nosotros did, but then, them guards came back, screaming and hollering, dropping off more men, all of them a growing pile of knocked out flesh, so that nosotros knew then that them guards didn’t want nosotros counting so nosotros stopped and made Carlos Facundo promise not to try at all anymore. When he asked why the hell nosotros so scared of them guards, nosotros all responded all at once: “Things can always be much fucking worse.”

“Nothing could be worse than having to listen to this nonsense.”

“What the fuck’s with him using that stupid word anyway? Huh, preacher, what you got against talking normal anyways?”

“Yo les dije. Este man no sabe nada de nada. Pero no me escucha nadie—nunca.”

“Let him be. He’s working through something.”

“We’re all working through something, asshole. Some of us are just doing so quietly, peaceful fucking like.”

Nosotros fell apart easy. That’s cause things got much fucking worse, as if them words spoke be prophecy. That’s cause the fever came through the prison. Nosotros heard whispers of it hitting other cellblocks, where there were other cells, filled with men for no other reason than simply to have more struggling just like them masters wanted.

Those other men started getting sick with a fever that brought with it some wicked, wet coughs, coughs that were accompanied by yellow globs of mucus and dried blood, coughs that did something terrible to each sick man’s lungs, so that all through the night, before the fever hit this cellblock, nosotros could hear the coughing from them other corners of the prison, sounding like a great big pond of water full of toads croaking up terrible sounds just before them toady lungs and them toady bodies gave up to the fever. And nosotros all started praying then, every last one, even the ones who didn’t believe all that much in that religious bullcrap. But all the prayer in the world couldn’t have stopped the inevitable.

It was Ernesto who got sick first. He’d had to ask one of them guards a question, something about getting in touch with his wife, who would have had for him his second child by now, if Ernesto’s tally of days and months correct. The guard he’d spoken with, a man named Ray who was gentler than the rest of most of the guards, he said he’d see what he could do about getting Ernesto word about his family, which nosotros all thought was generous of Ray to offer, so generous. But then, a few hours later, Ernesto was coughing into those murderous hands of his. He got sicker than a dying dog in just one night, so bad it was like nosotros was watching a plague of the Good Book unfold. When nosotros woke up the next day, it was from a shitty night’s lack of sleep on account of how his coughing had kept nosotros up all night. But then, it wasn’t just Ernesto coughing, it was Cristian too, and Márquez, and three of them Juans and two of them Joses, and then, later that second day, more men coughing, some of them coughing up so violently, they were hacking blood into their hands if they managed to cover their coughs, or against the flesh of other men if they didn’t.

“Angelito de mi guardia no me desampares.”

“Now you got nosotros worried old man. You happy?”

“We hear you preacher. We with you. Nosotros ain’t worried. Nosotros here to hear the word of the Lord. So preach on, brother.”

“Fuckin’ Christ. This ain’t no prison, this a looney bin for sure.”

It was them third night when the first of nosotros died. Poor Cristian, poor husband, poor father, poor widow, poor everything, he left everything behind. Nosotros figured the beating he’d taken had messed up his lungs so bad he had no hope of surviving a fever that went for the lungs the way this fever did. After Cristian, another two other men followed in short order, so that nosotros had three corpses in a cell full of festering, a sea of sick flesh, and more of those men were getting sicker and sicker, sick to the point of facing death very soon. Sick they were rattling so it sound like flesh about to fall from bone. So of course, nosotros called for help, nosotros begged, nosotros added all them voices to the voices of other men pleading for help from other cellblocks. But all nosotros got in response was a cough-filled silence, no word at all from them faceless guards. We all know this the way hell goes. 

“Oh, you fucked up! Anyone else catch that? He been trying so damn hard to now use the word—”

We the people is nosotros. We always been nosotros. We were from the start, we are now at the end of things. Nosotros is us coming together, kept together, penned as one. Men the monsters have kept weak and dying, as others among nosotros kept the same, weak and dying, sick and sicker, as we keep up the work being sick. Eventually, those of nosotros who had any energy at all left to work, nosotros started stacking the corpses to one side of the cell, making a makeshift cemetery on one side, a clinic on the other. Those of nosotros who could stand and walk, nosotros made rounds among the sick. Nosotros brought them water from the fountain to keep them hydrated. Nosotros came up with a way to make broth from a small fire nosotros kept going from the dead men’s clothing.

“He’s at it again.”

“Let me guess. Next up, he’ll have us walking and talking like them cannibals he’s dreaming up for us.”

“Colorín, colorado, por Dios este cuento, ¿por que no se ha acabado nuestras injusticias?”

Nosotros served them soup one spoonful at a time and in time, some of them men made it past the worst of this fever, while those that were weakest, died like all them rest. Nosotros added their naked bodies to the morgue nosotros built and nosotros used their clothing to heat more water, to make more of the simple bone broth nosotros were getting accustomed to having, the sick and those past sick, too. The smell of death and sickrot didn’t bother nosotros given how bad that shithole smell already. Nothing mattered then. What did it matter the reasons for why nosotros been put under lock and key? There were no keys anymore, no locks to be of concern with, no bars. Just this small place nosotros existed in. This cell that is the body that speaks: nosotros. We hadn’t seen them guards in months, maybe even years, but we did all that what nosotros had to do in order to survive. Nosotros los que quedan encerrados en este infierno, and nosotros, the many among who will continue with that work no matter what it takes. To survive. You, me, we, nosotros, we together are what makes this nosotros now, this nosotros always. Nuestro cuento, it never changes. For us, this is always how it’s been.