Glia: A Psychological Thriller of Madness, Loss, and Perception by Relvin Gonzalez

Author:Relvin Gonzalez [Gonzalez, Relvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birthmark Publishing
Published: 2023-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

As night fell, so did Roset’s arms. His numb body surrendered to the ground on a bed made of piled up moss. The silence of fifty bodies trying to sleep inundated his ears, and animal sounds from the jungle filled him up with hope. If other life forms can survive this, so can I, he thought, and fell asleep.

He had no option but to wake up when he received a kick in the ribs the next morning. To mitigate the risk of anyone feeling special, everyone got their own kick. Roset jolted up and almost fell headfirst to the ground. It was still pitch black. A pot of white watery soup fed all the workers for the day. Everyone dug into their tiny servings without questioning and grabbed their empty gallons. Unlike their stomachs, their gallons wouldn’t be empty again until they finished their work for the day.

As time went on, Roset too had the slimy black skin uniform that all the other workers had. His body wanted to grow as a response to carrying heavy gallons of oil, but didn’t have the caloric surplus to do so, so he became thin and veiny. He often thought about his tiny world inside the police station back in New York, and how he tried so hard to get out of doing anything productive. He really enjoyed that revolving chair at his desk. Now his world had become even smaller, as small as the couple of miles between camp and the oil fields. The guards rationed everything from the food they ate to the air they breathed. Workers could not speak, and Roset soon felt his language slip away, like the last embers of an unattended bonfire.

There was one worker that captured Roset’s eye. Their place in line made it so they always crossed paths, one coming and one going to the oil fields. He was tall, with protruding eyes as sure as the night, and always wore a dry piece of vine stuck in his pants, with a few inches coming out of the top. The guards pulled the vine out of his pants whenever they noticed, and Vine picked a new one defiantly a few seconds later. Roset liked Vine and tried to look for him in the crowd. Vine picked up on Roset’s stare, and one night after the guards had fallen asleep, Vine raised a hand in the air and waited for Roset to look at him. Vine swung his hand back and forth three times and opened his hand for a few seconds. Roset laid still, half trying to understand, half pretending he didn’t see in case a guard woke up. Vine swung his hand three times again, this time he raised a fist. The third time, Vine summoned two fingers and Roset raised his open hand at the same time. Vine smiled and turned around to sleep. Roset started scheming.

Roset’s training taught him two fundamental things: always plan an escape route and always know the next step.

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