Welcome

The word “Welcome” appeared over a picture of the main entrance. Just below, in smaller yellow letters, the analogous, yet even more distant “Bienvenidos” flashed over the screen as a female voice pronounced each syllable in the bureaucratic tone of a sentencing reading. The palm treetops honoured the wind-stirred flag against the sky, whose limits where drawn by the glittering spikes of the barbwire crowning a twenty-five-foot fence. Further in the background, twice as tall, half a dozen poles loaded with lights like coconuts watched tirelessly over the grounds and the main building, which gave the impression of being as compact on the inside as it was white on the outside. From the small projection room where he sat, he could feel how even the airflow had been restrained within.

The passive voice marked the tone of the text throughout. It spelled loss of freedom, limited agency, depravation of will. The mumbo jumbo of rules and regulations, clearly enunciated in his mother tongue, revived in him childhood memories of the tiresome authority of the man whose name he had just signed in with. He did have some privileges, all of them subject to periodical evaluation of his behaviour. This was of little concern to him as he looked at time materialize on a colour-coded table, conveniently reproduced on the back of his inmate manual, the New Word handed down upon him by the sons of men. Each new day would replicate the one before it and shall be the foreshadowing image of the next.

The choice of the words “to remain free of” to describe a right in the section on sexual assault had a particular ironic resonance in his ears. Nonetheless, he was comforted by the fact that all human interaction would be limited to exiguous commands and the ceremonial routine of life in the no-place behind bars. Having no one to call or correspond with, television, select newspapers, magazines and books would be his only ways of maintaining contact with an outside world he had no longer any interest in.

Come the time to seek spiritual counsel, he would have access to the chaplaincy should he choose to, limited only by legitimate security and operational concerns. The need to confess had vanished from his heart as what used to be an overwhelming intentionality became an irredeemable deed. The blood still ran warm from his fingers, washing away any residue of guilt, when the authorities showed up at his doorstep. He hadn’t spoken since, let alone informed his defense. A written avowal of the charges pressed upon him would have sufficed the prosecutor to set his case, but the blind justice of the people needed to further the spectacle to substantiate its own flaws.

The last part of the video directed him towards the completion of an intake form. The information written on the sheet matched almost to the last detail the description of his victim. Even the picture seemed to play a sinister game of mirrors that reflect the passing of time more than projections of space. The deceased and the perpetrator united in the continuous course to the fall from grace. The last stage in the process was the subjugation of the name to the neutrality of an eight-digit number. He got up of his chair shortly before the end of the video. The word “Welcome” reappeared on the screen for a few seconds as he walked through the door that closed behind him for the last time.