C7 Pablo

The work in the kitchen was in full swing in those early hours of dawn.

I had already had my breakfast, separated from the other prisoners, since the agents themselves served the food and guaranteed that we had not put any poison or something worse in the puree mixture. I've never spit on any food I've touched my hand on. I only said that to cause fear and disgust in others, although I wanted a lot, food has always been sacred to me.

I came from a very poor family. My father was a farmer, in fact, he just took care of the place. The owners of the farm were older, and had grown up with my parents, since the whole generation of the family seemed to have been reduced to forced labor in the countryside. My parents were too old, too painful. And they could never control me, but they taught me basic principles and that I still followed, even in a distorted life.

My parents taught me not to get involved in what was none of my business. And I wasn't stuck for that. I got into what was my business. I let myself be carried away by sentimentality, and that took me behind bars. However, I would never forget that the difficult years they spent on that farm were also the years that shaped me to make me afraid to return to poverty.

I had constant nightmares about that life. With the days of a thin child who cried from hunger. With a stunted father and mother, because they could barely get enough to eat and give to their children, and they still had to work for the rich who had given up their farm for them to live.

Because of those nightmares, I tried everything. I tried everything in my power to have money. I've never sold drugs. I've never used drugs. But there it was; there I was, arrested for killing. Without ever having dared to lose my character for banknotes.

I knew very well that it should be the shame of the family. The middle son, spoiled, whose older brother did everything to have something to eat, and who even so, never showed gratitude. My parents knew I was in jail. The letters I wrote were for them.

I never knew if they had been delivered. I've never had answers. But I didn't expect to have it, my parents were illiterate. They couldn't write, but I still had the hope that my younger brother could read the content and allow them to understand what was happening to me.

However, I never received visitors. Neither my parents nor my brothers. I didn't blame them. I mean, not those who lived in the countryside.

Although the years have passed, and the financial condition has increased, I knew they did not have enough money to pay for a ticket to the capital and keep themselves to be able to visit me.

There was only Hazz. My older brother. The one who never visited me. He never wrote a letter. Hazz excluded me from his life. And it was only for him that I felt anger and remorse.

" Of all the places in this damn complex, the kitchen is always the stinkiest," grumbled Afonso, the oldest cook and inmate in the whole place. He was already old, past fifty years old, and his sentence had not decreased more than a few days, thanks to his bad behavior in other areas of prison. He watched me under gray eyebrows and blinked his big brown eyes towards me. "And why are you so quiet today, Shrek's little donkey?

I giggled at the reference and nickname.

I had never watched Shrek in my life. I bet it should be a ridiculous drawing, since an old man like that had such good memories to use any reflection of the work in his terrible life in jail.

But I always laughed when he talked about it, because I didn't want to explain that I had lived until I was eighteen in the garden, and that until I was twenty-four I had only turned on the television to make noise while fucking some girl. I've never even watched a real television. I never had time. And drawings weren't really my thing, I mean, I never knew. I've never been a child.

"I'm feeling that something is very strange," I replied in a low tone, although my naturally hoarse voice does not allow the sound to go unnoticed by anyone closer. "I don't feel well, actually.”

"Is it the cough? " asked Afonso, worried.

I hated to arouse any kind of pity in people. So, although it really is, I just shook my head in denial.

"No, it looks like a bad agosaurus.”

"There comes the PS talking shit," grumbled Alefe, washing dishes. "Every day he shows up with a different pessimism.”

Like some of the other inmates, he used the initials of my name, P.S., to give some air of importance to my mere existence within the prison. Of course I was nobody. It was just another one trying to survive, pretending not to see anything wrong, and lowering his head to the guards.

But mentioning that acronym gave me a guarantee of peace, and people interpreted me as a creature that hid in the skin of a man, for my constant stillness and observation. I was just another idiot who was arrested for a stupid attitude.

"When is something normal for you, huh? "The cook asked again, now chopping carrots and throwing them into the pot of bubbling water next to me. "If you don't show up saying that the rain will bring the death of one of us, you show up saying that you had some crazy dream and that it also means a death.”

"As if it were new," said Alefe with a roll of his eyes.

"I'm just saying what is the reason why I'm not talking by the elbows like you," I retorted, tying my face while moving the deep pan and full of pasta in front of me. "I don't want to get into trouble for a little.”

The steam went up on a mission to touch the hair on my arm, and they would have left the place very humid, if it weren't for the gloves up to my elbow. The heat was so hot in there that several parts of my body were itching, including my head in that thin fabric cap.

My hair was growing, so any sweat made me itch, and any itching made the guards think about the lice and cut our hair again. I didn't even remember what my wires were like before prison.

And when I mentioned that I didn't want to get into trouble, they considered that I was actually sparing their physical integrity. Sometimes it was a little funny the way they respected me. Being part of the kitchen had its advantages.

Nobody messed with me for fear that I would put something in special dishes. Nobody said anything really offensive so as not to have to eat some shard of glass unintentionally, not even the guards had that courage. I acquired that respect without having many pretensions of having it. At first, I just wanted to survive.