Last Sunrise in Eterna by Amparo Ortiz

Author:Amparo Ortiz [Ortiz, Amparo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2023-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

THE UNSEEN ITS TRUTH REVEALS

Maybe it means something different to my friends.

But I recognize it as a verse from Emily Brontë’s “The Prisoner.” This was the first of Emily’s poems Mami read. She discovered it long before she touched Wuthering Heights and despised its characters. I remember her telling me not to consider Heathcliff the man I should aspire to marry. I had no interest in spending my free time buried in more books back then, though, so I had no idea what she was talking about.

I have to tell Jason and Ryujin about the poem. It’ll help us develop a plan.

“You guys, that inscription is from—”

I break out in spasms.

Thousands of electric shocks burst all over me. I arch my back. Grind my teeth. I become lightning. Thunder. Fire. Everything feels like it’s burning, falling off, and turning to ash…

The shocks stop.

I’m drooling. Sweating. I hack a cough and fold into a bundle of pulsating limbs.

“Sevim!” Ryujin yells. “What happened to—”

She screams.

She’s being electrocuted, too.

“No!” Jason and I shout.

My chair unleashes more shocks—this time with double the strength. Jason, Ryujin, and I endure a relentless stream of white-hot bolts. By the time they’re gone, I’m hunched over and spitting out wads of saliva, wondering what the fuck is provoking these sudden blasts.

Ryujin lets out a sob.

It earns her another round of torture.

“Stop this!” Jason begs.

He earns another, too. Just for speaking up.

I hold back a gasp—I was electrocuted after trying to say something. Jason’s plea, Ryujin’s sob … We were all making noise. Could the shocks return whenever we produce sound?

One potentially mistaken theory is better than none.

Since I can’t call on Jason and Ryujin, I shake my head slow enough not to brush strands of my hair against my shirt. It takes them a second to notice; they’re sweating and drooling even more than me. I barely lift my finger, pointing to my lips, and curling them inward—a warning not to speak.

Ryujin is on the verge of tears, but she doesn’t open her mouth.

Neither does Jason.

Feyn never gave us a time limit. He threw us into the dark without a match. More darkness is surely on the way if I don’t decipher whatever this poem is meant for.

Jason and Ryujin sit perfectly still as I go over Emily’s verses in my addled brain. “The Prisoner” is about a literal captive who’s threatened with death and despair. However, her faith in God acts as her shield against all evil, rejecting any kind of pain as something worth fearing. In the end, the captors quit trying to shatter the prisoner’s will and leave with their tails between their legs. This isn’t someone they can easily torture.

But if we’re supposed to mimic that same attitude, what does speaking have to do with it? There’s nothing that stands out in regard to noise in Emily’s piece!

Then I remember the first two lines:

In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray,

Reckless of the lives wasting there away.

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