text: I awoke screaming, waist-deep in beans. My hands were chained above me in the dark, my hands having long since gone bloodless. A few moments passed, I was hyperventilating, my stomach rising and falling with my full body breaths, pushing the beans out in tides. The small slit in the metal door of my cell scraped open. An oily voice oozed in, “I should kill you for that.” It was the bear. Always the bear. “No! I’m sorry!” I yelled back, my tears adding to the bean’s juice around me. The slit shut. “No!” I called out, “please, give me something to eat or drink, I don’t even know how long I have been in here!” The slit opened back up, the yellow bear again. “Eat the beans, I gave them to you, do you not like them?” it responded. I hung my head and kept crying as the bear left again. I was fed beans, a spoon floated out of the slit, shoving the mush into my mouth. I shit beans, and it joined the pool around my body. The bear told me I would become the beans. Always the yellow bear. I woke up screaming again, I was having memories, dreams, of my past life. I had a past life right? The bear told me these were dreams, that it would have to hurt me if I screamed again. It said it hurt the beans, I didn’t want to hurt the beans did I? The bear let me out today. The top half of the door was opened, my chains were unlocked and I was dragged out onto the floor. I curled up and lay shivering, hugging my oily, bean covered legs to my chest. The bear stooped down and picked me up. I was like a child curled up in its arms. It carried me down a sterilized corridor under the glare of fluorescent lights to a large open room. Inside sat rows of tables, lined like a military graveyard. At least a hundred people sat in the chairs. They had clean clothes and smiled, some would laugh at an unspoken joke, and all of them turned to us when we entered. Sitting in front of each of them, laying on the stark white tables, was a bowl of beans. Almost mechanically, they each picked up a spoon and simultaneously slid beans into one another’s mouth. The room was filled with the sound of a hundred jaws pumping like pistons, and a hundred simultaneous gulps. As I lay watching in the bear’s arms they all, in unison, said, “become the beans, join us.” The bear carried me back down the hall to the cell, my heart pounding in my chest as we approached the door. I heard screaming coming from one of the other cells as we walked down the hall. The bear whispered to me in its oily voice, “You don’t want to be like her do you?” I shivered as a chill set over me, “no... no, I don’t, don’t put me back in there, please.” I responded shakily. “If you don’t want to go back, you must become the beans,” it said. I lay in the beans. It wasn’t so bad after all I guess. There were worse things weren’t there? I was fed here, and the bear watched me. It said it only did what it had to for my own good. I swung my feet up, feeling the little globs slide through my toes. Things could be much worse. When the bear came back next I told it. I told it I wanted to become the beans. It pulled me out again, it was like being born again, sliding out of the womb of beans. The bear carried me, lovingly, back to the large room. It called out “This one wishes to join us!” “Become the beans! Become the beans!” chorused out from the crowd. A pool was brought forth and set on the ground. Pictures of those that had come before me lined the wall behind me and my fellow beans sat in front of me, watching. Every eye was on me as the bear approached. I sensed its form’s presence looming above me like a yellow god. Soon I would join them at the table, I would be welcome, I would be family, I would be a bean. “Today you join us!” I heard from behind me, as a bucket of warm beans splashed over me, oozing down my body like a comforting second skin. Today I became the beans.