The Pit
An interview with an old bacterium.
Hello. Welcome to another post in The Void, where I publish about the crazy, dark, painful, and confusing things in my head. Here, you enter at your own risk. Today I share a fiction story that I have been holding back since I started this newsletter years ago. But I recently heard something that has impacted me deeply. “Explore the uncomfortable”. So well, here I leave you this slightly crazy story.
Origin of the story
Fire is a primal doorway to trippy thoughts. Looking straight at it will take you into an almost state of phantasia. Ideas and thoughts mix up with the senses and they become a momentary reality within you.
After I built the fire pit at home, I became more fascinated by it (fire) and I've spent countless nights feeding it with wood and flames and allowing whatever nature can exist inside, to live until the next fire. Each fire cleanses the pit, burning what’s in there, to open space for what comes.
With the end of summer here in Orlando, Florida there is the smell (or the anxiety) of a much-expected cooler season. It only lasts so little, but it is very welcome by people, nature, and by my long solo hikes in the woods. It is also welcomed by the opportunity to use the fire pit on a more consecutive basis. The smell of burning wood, a nice bourbon (neat), great company, and a roaring flame warming up the moment is certainly something to dream of.
When I started this story, I figured that since I am so romantic about the whole topic, why not write something crazy about it? Not a guide to how to build a pit, to build a fire, and not even about cooking on it, but about the things that live between fires that we can't even see.
Setting the stage
Imagine a fire pit made of red bricks for walls and thick concrete tiles for the floor. A thin metal sheet (originally meant for home roofing) covers the inner walls, and two concrete blocks stand vertically close to them. It is a simple rustic structure in the middle of a grassy backyard. Inside, there is a civilization of bacteria with its own culture and history. An old bacterium is being interviewed about the history of The firepit, which is the world where they live. You are the interviewer and for some crazy reason, you are interested in listening.
This interview is one sided. Only the old bacteria speak. Its voice is that of a rugged old man/woman who smokes, drkinks, and loves to talk about poetry and philosophy.
(The interview) An old bacteria speaks about The Pit for their local news.
Do you want to know about The Pit? I don’t know why I’ve been picked for this interview. I told my wife I didn’t want to do it. I don’t know anything about this place. I mean, I hadn't studied it. I only know what I’ve heard, seen, and lived.
Is this a prank? Well, if it is indeed a prank, then the joke’s on you because you are in for a ride. You are going to have to listen to me. And the wife says that I tell the most boring stories there are, and that I speak too much shit.
Ah! Well, where to begin?
The pit is a structure with the simplest of designs. A square of sorts. A thing made of bricks placed in a manner that results in a square shape, which constitutes the walls. But also placed in a manner that allows for space between the bricks, which allows for the various cavities around.
The floor? A rugged two-piece surface that while resistant, provides a solid base for the structure. The inner walls are covered with a thin whitish metal, with a bunch of holes all over, as if they were placed there by intention. At least that is what I suspect.
We are Bacteria. We don't have a name as a people. We call ourselves that because that's what we hear the beings that live above and beyond The Pit tell their younger ones, “Don't touch that honey, bacteria lives in there”, or “I wouldn't touch that if I was you. It is full of bacteria”, and so and so - and they even say it when there is nothing visible to their eyes. Therefore we, as in everything that lives within The Pit when there's nothing else to see for them, are Bacteria!
We live in The Pit, and we die in The Pit. Well, most of us. We tell our story so that new generations at least learn about where they come from. But, if you ask me, in the end, nothing matters. We all die.
I really don't know when this place was created. All I know are stories that have been passed from generation to generation. We learn about our ancestors by the markings on the walls and the floor, left after the passing of an event that we call The Fire. When The Fire comes, almost everything within The Pit dies. Turned to ashes. Burnt until there's no more burning left to do.
But every now and then, something survives. We call it the Essence of The Fire - though I don't think it is Bacteria, because they, the beings from above, on occasion call it Charcoal. Sometimes, pieces of it stay longer than they normally would, but sooner or later, they too turn to ashes.
Oh, the Essence you ask? I once overheard a conversation held by the giant beings from above, saying something about something called firewood.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know why they call it The Essence - pst as if it was the most absolute thing of things. Essence my ash! But that is the name that we’ve been told since, well, the beginning.
Maybe some old Bacteria who lived during the beginnings of our world, hallucinating right before it passed away, saw something; a bright light or a spark; right before it couldn’t escape anymore, said with his last breath… “The Essence”. And his last words were printed somewhere.
Or maybe his words were grabbed by some lucky surviving Bacteria who passed it onwards. Someone who wrote it on the walls or left them printed anywhere before it too passed away.
Oh yes! Sometimes, once in a blue moon, one or a few bacteria survive the forces that come, and they pass on their experiences, and our history to the new generation.
Before I forget, I want to mention that the spaces between the bricks, from the outer side of the wall, have no doors, and so, sometimes we peek through the little holes that are in the thin whitish metal I was telling you about. And we get to see some green stuff on the ground, that, unlike the hard and rough grounds here in The Pit, it seems alive. The Grass, the giants call it. And every so often, one of the beings cuts The Grass with an apparatus for which I have no explanation of what it is, and all I know is that it sounds very disturbing. The Grass, sometimes, has many companions called Flowers, Weeds, Herbs, Insects, Birds, Lizards, and Frogs to name a few.
Sometimes, through the holes in the wall, we get to see another being. A four-legged beast covered in millions and millions of single hairs, moving around. We fear such a beast, for occasionally, it comes and bites on pieces of The Essence, and well, bacteria live there too, and it takes them away, never to be seen again. Never to be burned by The Fire anymore.
The Fire comes from above (or at least part of it), brought by the giant beings that live beyond us. I don't know much about them either. What I can tell you is that when they bring Firewood and light it, it grows into flames and burns almost everything in The Pit.
We all have it coming. There is no escape. Even if one survives such an event, one is still exposed to the other forces.
The Pit has no roof. It is wide open, exposed to the sky, the giants, the forces, and other beasts that either walk by or fly over. However, sometimes, the giants place a sort of grill-like metal thing on which they burn what apparently is their food. “Let’s cook on The Fire”, they say. And some other bacteria have heard how they call the things they burn up there; and there are rumors of food names like Chicken, Meat, Vegetables, Smores, and Hot Chocolate.
I cannot tell you about what is beyond The Pit, other than what little we can see through the wall, or than what we believe there is to be. But I’m not going to torture you with my beliefs. I am old enough to understand that a belief is nothing but a figment of our imagination, on what we think is out there, based on what limited information we’ve had so far. In my experience, well, this is a complicated topic, but beliefs seem to change with new information.
And some Bacteria are at times blown away by something called The Wind, or washed away into the ground by something called Water. Sometimes there are those who hitch a ride on whateve touches or passes through. But nobody ever comes back. There are not even actual anecdotes of what it is supposed to be out there.
We hear the giants talk about things like food, and fire - and about other things that we don't even have any idea of. They mention things like Gardening, Politics, Social Media, and something called Cerveza that they seem to enjoy very much.
Has anybody ever climbed the walls, you ask? At least in my generation, some have tried. And the only few that have gotten to the top, never come back down. Perhaps, they see something out there worth the risk and they love it just so much they don’t want to leave it, or they just die. Or, maybe they just find a place to make their own The Pit.
To be honest, I tried it once, but I didn’t get to the top. By the second level, peeking through the holes, and looking back down, I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. Maybe I got scared and or maybe The Universe, already had other plans for me. Like meeting my wife.
It is not that bad here though. Nobody has a better life than anybody else. We are all called Bacteria, so there is no confusion when talking with someone who lives in the other corner of The Pit. The old are Bacteria, the young are Bacteria, and the ones in the middle are Bacteria. No identity issue there.
I don't think there is a “best way” to live here. Although some bacteria prefer the walls, others the floor, and others sometimes live on The Essense (at least when it is not burning). We all know that everybody else has the same chances as everyone else. And so, when The Fire, The Water, and The Wind come, no matter who you are, we all have pretty much the same chances of survival.
But it is not like we have no hope! We move, tell stories, and try to protect our young Bacteria from any of these events… but we don't give them false hope of an afterlife. We all know that there are forces that we can't control, and destinies we will never know (until the time comes). So, we don't prepare excessively for a future we don't know. We accept our vulnerability to what the beings from above call Nature, which is apparently a greater force from which the events I have mentioned originate, even The Fire. We tend to have a really good life. Short but good.
Well, that's all I’m going to say about The Pit.
