"Hombres" Managing "Hambre"

Recently, I had great honor to both participate in and lead a session of a writing retreat for a group of extremely talented and creative students - writers and editors of a college newspaper. The retreat was in an art museum and for my session I had them go out into the museum, take a picture of an artifact (most of them ended up with paintings, but there were a couple of sculptures as well) and write down a short caption for the picture about the artifact or a sentence that would help them later build a story.

After they all came back with their pictures, I introduced the element of surprise and had them swap the stories with their neighbors. Because it is of course easier to write a story about something you liked, but why make it too easy? After the swap, they were supposed to write a short story within 20 minutes. We tried to impose a word limit but it did not really work. We then read our stories to the group and constructively critiqued (read sang praises to) each other's creations. I must tell you they were all excellent, the creative potential in that room was shooting fireworks. I participated as well, and why waste a (semi-)good story anyway, right? So I'm going to share it with you here.

The painting I got is the cover picture for this story. It had the following description: "a linocut on paper by Emilio Gonzalez titled '2020.'" Even though it clearly alludes to the global pandemic and evokes the feelings of gloom, dread and anxiety associated with it, I decided to take the story in a slightly different dystopian but hopeful direction. It was mostly inspired by the "Capital" sewing machine that the masked woman Victoria is operating. So here's how my story goes...

***

By 2020, the world's plastic pollution was totally out of control. It was not entirely bad: animals like warthogs became sentient thanks to the microplastics in their brains. But for most humans, it was disastrous: inhaling plastic particles made them into walking dead. Many powers tried to solve the plastics problem and failed, until...

A gang of tailors named "Hombres" took over the entire world in a violent revolution against the powerful plastic producers. The masked gang leader Victoria and her security detail - Skull branded COVID and Monocled Warthog - made sure that every living being wore only the clothes made by the gang, exclusively from natural materials like linen and cotton.

One day, a competitor tailor was brought in front of Victoria. He was making clothes entirely by hand, with no equipment, and gave them out to people in need. He figured out that the new world order was not about eliminating the plastics but merely about making money and controlling the world in the name of eliminating hunger (Sp. "hambre") and poverty with natural materials. He was disrupting the gang's business.

"Why are you doing this?" Gang Queen Victoria thundered at him. "What's your plan?"

"I just want those who cannot afford your clothes to have something to wear. You yourself set the rule of no naked beings in the street," the brave tailor responded.

"That is not what we want!" Victoria shrieked. "Take him away, banish him!"

Skull and Warthog threw the tailor out into the landfill with all the discarded plastic. But just like Cinderella, the tailor won the landfill bugs with his kindness and they started giving him the thread that they produced by consuming the plastic waste. He then would make the clothes out of that thread and smuggle them into the city for the poor.

No one can stop good people from helping others.