Up the Beanstalk

A boy born into a world of industrialized cannibalism seeks answers from the very top

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My earliest memories are of the field. The wilted brown grass, occasional dandelion and playing with the other children. I discovered early on by playing simple games in the mud with the others that I'm different.

My mother's different in the same way. She can make sounds with her mouth that mean something. Different mouth sounds for different things. Always with great caution to avoid notice, she would whisper these 'words' to me until I knew them.

“Field”. “Grass”. “Flowers”. “Man”. “Woman”. “Mother”. “Father”. She could also count, using mouth words to indicate how many dandelions she held, or how many others like us stood in a group.

Once old enough, I asked her who taught her to do this. It was my father, she said. Before he left. He was someone very special, who did not go naked as we do, but instead wore a body covering and spoke mouth words even better than mother.

Around the field is machinery. Stacked up so high I cannot see the end of it. We are in the center of a tower I think. I have often wondered what is outside. During my darkest moments I imagine it is a field like this one but boundless, where I might escape with mother, even the rest if they can be persuaded to follow.

This is how I began planning to escape. Idle fantasy at first, but it grew concrete on the day I learned where the grownups disappear to. The men in the shiny black aprons, goggles and masks come to take them. The hoop of wire on the end of their stick is looped around the neck, and the one they came for is herded through the gate in the outer wall. That’s the last I ever see of them.

Mother told me that they take the rowdy, disobedient ones. But there’s no pattern I can see in who is taken and who is left except age. When we grow up to about five or six heads tall, they come for us. I am four and a half heads tall. My mother is five.

She changes the subject whenever I bring it up. Hushes me if others are near. “They will not come for me. I am obedient” she whispers. Whether she believes it or simply hopes it will comfort me I do not know. What I know is that there is not much time left to save her. And if I mean to do that, they'll have to take me first.

I take one last look at the sky. A muddy brown haze, foul smelling but familiar. Then picked another about my size and hit him hard in the face. The rest turned to see what the commotion was. He climbed to his feet and lunged at me. I twisted out of his reach and kicked him in the back, sending him face first into the mud.

Another I recognized as his kin came to his defense, bellowing as she planted her fist in my stomach. I was sent staggering backwards but caught myself on the way down. The two approached me. “You fools!” I shouted. “Look around you! Can this last forever? One by one they take us. Will it never be you?”

They both stopped and stared at me, dumbfounded. Anger gave way to fear and they began to retreat. In the distance I heard the groan of the gates opening. The masses near them parted hurriedly to make way for the men in the shiny black aprons. Those nearest me withdrew and all pointed in my direction. My mother clung to me, bellowing and crying but speaking no mouth words as they pried me from her arms.

“Never seen one do that before” one of them said to the other, muffled by the mask. I could see nothing of their expressions behind the masks and goggles. Were they even like us? “Send him through with the rest but tag him, level 5 will want a look at his brain to make sure it’s not a parasite or something.”

They brought me deep into a tunnel of girders and bolts, before a third dressed as they were. The two held me still as the third raised some small machine to my ear. A loud impactful sound momentarily deafened me and after that subsided, the pain began. Hot, pulsating pain from my ear, shooting from there all over my head and down through my neck.

The superstructure around me was plainly vast and also decrepit. I once asked my mother how long it had been here, she said there was no time known to her when it was not. Various incomplete floors afforded gaps through which I could see others, naked as I was, performing various tasks.

“Alright, in you go” said one of them, as the other pushed me through the gate and shut it behind me. The entry was so narrow I couldn’t turn around to pry at the gate. It seemed designed so that I could only go forward. Someone else was pushed in behind me. Then soon after, another behind them and so on.

The line moved briskly, and in increments. It would stand still for a few seconds, then we’d all move forward a little. Over and over. I could hear the sound of buzzing in the distance, echoing through the narrow corridor I was in. All of it rusty, scraping at my arms as I advanced.

Finally the corridor emptied into a small room. Ahead, a vertical sliding door. It opened, the line advanced, the one in front was pushed through and the door slid down behind him. I heard a loud crack, then the thump of something falling to the floor. A light next to the sliding door, red until then, turned green and it slid open once more.

The line moved. I panicked. Still unable to turn around, those behind me pushing me forward step by step, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever was on the other side of the sliding door ahead. Another was pushed through. The door slid down, the light turned red. A loud crack echoed through the room and down the corridor behind me. Followed by a thump.

Seconds passed. The door slid open, the light turned green and the next of us was forced in by the advance of those behind him. Anxiety overtook me. I called out to the man in the black apron working the lever which I determined controlled the sliding door. “I'm scared, and want out of here! I do not want to go forward!”

He looked around for the source of the noise. Never at me, as if that were an impossibility. He shrugged, and pulled the lever. The door slid open. The line advanced, I was forced forward a bit and the fellow at the front went through the door. It slid shut, the light turned red, then another loud crack followed by a thump.

When the fellow in front of me arrived at the door and went through, I could see for the first time that it did not slide all the way down. So that once closed I could still see his feet and legs, almost up to the knee. The light turned red. The crack, louder than ever, sounded. Now I could see what happened. He quivered violently then fell to the ground, red water pooling around him. Some unseen force then dragged him away.

I was next. There was no way to go back. I struggled violently to turn around or inch myself backwards but when the light changed the line would advance and there was no place left to go. I teared up, thinking of my mother. I couldn’t save her, and soon she’d have her turn on the other side of that door.

Only, the door didn’t open. The light stayed red. “What’s the hold up?” one of the goggled, aproned men shouted. “This is a big’un, there’s a blockage.” He stood up from his seat at the lever. “How can there be a blockage? I oiled the chute myself two days ago.” He vanished through a flap of some kind, back behind the door and I could hear muffled argument.

I am afraid of what happens on the other side of that door. I can’t go backwards. But I won’t go forwards. If I am going to escape, it will have to be now. So I wriggle myself up a bit by the shoulders. The walls on either side are only a bit taller than us. I can shimmy up this way and use my toes to climb as well.

The one behind me is murmuring nervously. I’m doing something he knows I am not allowed to. Even now he believes obedience will save him. Like my mother. Soon I am at chest height. Now my arms are free! This is when the apron man emerges from behind the flap. He spots me immediately.

“Motherfucker! How’d you do that? Get your ass back down there and through the door.” He leans over the wall and grabs me. I put my fist in his face. Red water streams from his nose holes. He gets up, shouting anger words and disappears behind the flap. When he returns he has some small machine in his hand. I do not like the look of it.

It is a shiny metal tube with a handle. Out of the back comes a long flexible black hose leading to a much larger metal cylinder he lugs behind him. I think I know what made the loud noises earlier. “Goodnight sweet prince” he cackles, and tries to put the tube up against my head.