Visions of St Lazarus : Expanded version of Lazarus Kafkaesque Paper

SAN LAZARO’S KAFKAESQUE PAPER
(The Confessions of a Forgotten Soldier)

I woke up one day in a different form. I was no longer human. I had become a lymphocyte—a shapeless sentinel adrift in an ocean of blood. My body, now ameboid and translucent, slid gelatinously across the vessel walls. I no longer knew limbs or breath, only the silent, rhythmic pulse of crimson tides. How did this happen? How did I turn into this?

Origins

I was as old as the nation I served—the Republic of Reynaldo. I had no name, no soul, no identity—only purpose. Born from the Bone Marrow canals, I emerged like countless others: anonymous, obedient, eager. I was drifting in the bloodstream when Destiny called out to me.

“I am making you a soldier,” it said. “Your role is to defend Reynaldo from all that seeks to destroy it.”

An unseen current pulled me toward the mountainous twin cities known as Kidney. There, hidden deep in the biological terrain, lay Fort Thymus Gland—our military academy. I joined ranks with fellow recruits and was forged through rigorous discipline. We learned combat, reconnaissance, logistics, justice, and the unspoken code of camaraderie. It was there that we transformed: not just in skill, but in purpose.

After graduation, I was reassigned to Fort Lymph Node, near the city of Throat. Destiny’s voice returned once more: “There will always be wars. Do not grow weary. You are mightier than the invaders.”

I became a Reserve. A shadow in the bloodstream. Waiting for the call to war.

---

Structure of the Military

In Fort Lymph, I was inducted into Reynaldo’s Defense Forces—a streamlined military compared to the world’s superpowers, but no less effective. Ours had only two branches: the Natural Forces and the Acquired Forces.

The Natural Forces, composed of B-lymphocytes, were our “Born Killers.” They were instinctive and unpredictable, believed to have emerged from a mysterious southern lake called Fabricius in the prehistory of Reynaldo.

I belonged to the Acquired Forces—the “Trained Killers”—the T-lymphocytes. Our training at Fort Thymus was rigorous. We were honed to precision, prepared for enemies our ancestors had never seen. Our rallying cry: *Name it, we kill it! We had brought down Tumor, TB, Leprosy, Flu, Pneumonia—formidable enemies, but never invincible to us.

Within our ranks, soldiers were divided. The ordinary among us served in the battalions of Antibody and Lymphocyte. But the elite—the CD4 Masters—commanded us all. They were the tacticians, the nerve center of our campaigns. Each time an invader appeared, they knew where to strike, when to strike, and how to win. We trusted them implicitly.

War was relentless. Some battles were drills—vaccination campaigns that introduced fake enemies for us to slaughter and study. Others were real—ugly, vicious, bloody. Yet always, we triumphed.

Until we met HIV.

---

The Invasion of the Unseen

It started slowly. Subtly. And then it devastated us.

HIV did not strike like other enemies. It infiltrated. It learned. It corrupted. Instead of attacking the army, it targeted the generals—the CD4 Masters. It was the perfect strategy: decapitate the leadership and leave the ranks directionless.

And it worked.

With the commanders gone, I remained in Fort Lymph, hiding. Powerless. I watched as HIV infiltrated the command centers, dismembered our leaders from within, and used them as breeding grounds. What I saw chilled me to my core.

HIV replicated by slicing into the DNA of our CD4 Masters, encoding itself into their very being. Then came the horror: it birthed offspring inside them—soldiers born not from purpose, but from self-destruction. Each infant HIV performed hara kiri—splitting into parts that became new warriors. It was grotesque. Efficient. Unstoppable.

We cried for help. But the Republic turned a blind eye.

Instead of mobilizing, the nation numbed itself. Parties raged, vices flourished. The Republic suspended its emergency state, and its citizens danced in the ruins.

They forgot that each cigarette summoned cancerous invaders, each sleepless night weakened the Heart's engineers, each binge pushed the Liver's chemists to the brink.

The waterworks of the Heart struggled. The Kidneys protested. The Liver faltered. And the Lungs—oh, the Lungs—choked as old enemies returned: parasites, fungi, tuberculosis, pneumonia.

And HIV laughed. Always cloning. Always killing.



Collapse of a Nation

Funerals became daily rituals. I buried comrades—brave souls from Antibody and Lymphocyte battalions. CD4 Masters exploded before our eyes, replaced by mocking, leering HIV soldiers. We scattered. We hid. We hoped.

Then came AZT—*Attack the enemy, Zip its code, Tear it apart*. A miracle? At first. But our people failed to follow through. Discipline was foreign. They forgot doses. HIV adapted. It donned a new armor—resistant, untouchable.

Our hope dwindled.



The Clone Wars

This was no longer a war of bullets or bombs. This was a war of identity. Of biology. Of will.

HIV, born from twisted science and nurtured in political blindness, had become a plague of clones. Ruthless. Empty. Mindless. Their creator? A rogue leader from a distant desert, wielding the secrets of genetics like a weapon of prophecy.

Many called him the Anti-Christ.

Steroids and Antibiotics were brought in as our new commanders. But they lacked understanding. We followed. We faltered.

And then…a whisper of salvation: *Protease Inhibitors*. They stopped HIV’s babies from slicing themselves into war-born fragments. We multiplied. We fought back.

Cocktails, the scientists called them—ironic, considering the drunk state of our nation. But they worked. Hope returned.

For a while.



The Final Hour

Then the nation grew sick of healing. The Kidneys and Liver revolted. Exhausted. Broken. They stopped working. To appease them, the Republic abandoned the Cocktail.

Too late.

Now I am alone.

The Heart no longer pumps. The Liver has petrified. The Kidneys lie poisoned. Parasites dance in the Lake Stomach. The University of the Brain is buried under grief.

I am the last lymphocyte.

Around me, billions of HIV clones sing their victory song—an anthem of ignorance. When I fall, so too shall they. For without a host, they perish.

I am closing the last door in this broken country.

I offer the final tear.
The final heartbeat.
The final breath.

Goodnight, Republic of Reynaldo.

I lay my body to rest.
2025-04-08 16:04:43
visions

Visions of St Lazarus 3

A Sentimental Camelot

Lazaro remembered his days in Manila.

He sat cross-legged in a loose lotus posture on the edge of Miami Beach, the soft rhythm of the Atlantic lapping the shore beside him. Pelicans glided across the surface of the water like ancient kites, dipping now and then into the sea. He watched in silence, his hands resting lightly on his knees.

*From Manila to Miami... how far is that, really?*

The images came unbidden:
Manila Bay, unglamorous, raw in its beauty—rusted milk and sardine cans scattered on the shore like forgotten relics, stubborn clumps of grass clawing through dirt and sand. Coconut trees, stoic and swaying, bore the heavy years. Bougainvillea wrapped themselves in delicate bursts of pink around the trunks of weeping willows, as if trying to console them. Dirty boats rocked in the dock, the water thick with the scent of gasoline and decaying cargo.

He could see it. An old man casting a fishing line into the polluted water, catching milkfish no one dared eat anymore. Jellyfish, translucent and grand, drifted like umbrellas abandoned in the wind. The air of Manila, even under a summer moon, had a bite to it—a strange combination of nostalgia and exhaust fumes.

He remembered stretching his arms, lying flat in the park grass, staring up at the blistering sky. Five minutes later, he would rise and sprint—training for the Manila Marathon.

But it was all a joke. A kind of cosmic prank.

He had first run—not for fitness, but for eggs. A teenager sent by his mother to buy a dozen at the village store. On the way, he met a postman who handed him a letter. It was from the university—he had been awarded a state scholarship. His legs moved without thinking. He ran. Past the store, past the eggs, past the duty. He never returned home with them.

He ran toward the city, toward a future.
To the university.
To Manila Bay.
To the rallies against Marcos.
To the lepers.
To the street children.
To the airport.
To Texas.
To Tennessee.
To North Carolina.
To Miami.
And now—to this quiet shore.

---

Miami. A fever dream of bodies, brightness, and music.
White boats slicing through turquoise water.
Cruise liners fat with excess.
Gyms. Bars. Tourists. Latin beats, American pop, a constant hum of wanting.

Across the Atlantic, his mind’s eye drifted to the colors of home.
*“This is beautiful,”* he whispered, barely audible to himself.

He inhaled deeply. He hadn’t run since setting foot in Florida—not in the way people measure running. Physically, no. But emotionally? Always. Constantly fleeing. And now, with back pain and the burden of responsibilities, even running felt like a luxury.

Dusk had descended.
He scooped up a handful of sand and hurled it into the ocean, the grains scattering like ash.
*"I'm well settled now… so why do I still feel like running away? Why do I keep saying goodbye?"*

A shadow moved behind him.
He turned, slowly.

The figure took shape—a familiar silhouette. It was the Director. The same man who, just the day before, had hesitated to receive him at Dade Rest.

Under the yellow seams of distant lampposts, the Director’s body seemed more ghost than man. His skin thin and bruised, marked with KS lesions he could no longer hide. His blonde hair was retreating, and his posture sagged under invisible weight.

Lazaro felt the primal urge to run again.
To escape this sorrow.
This decay.
This reminder of mortality, of AIDS, of frailty, of all things unresolved.

But he stayed.
He turned his gaze to the sea.

The Director’s voice cut through the growing dark.
“Who are you, Lazaro? Why did you disturb the stillness here? When we received your AIDS paper, we thought you were a messenger—an angel of hope. But your words... they unsettled us. They painted a world already lost. Tragic. Grim. And worst of all, you portrayed us—gays—as reckless men with no self-discipline, no future. Is that how you see us?”

He stepped closer. “What is your purpose here? To condemn us? To cleanse yourself through us?”
His tone sharpened. “Isn’t it enough for the straights to damn us? Why must you, too, twist the knife?”

Silence.
Lazaro absorbed the pain.

Then he rose from the sand, his voice measured but firm.

“Hush, my friend. I never meant to steal your peace. If my words wounded you, I offer my apology. I did not come to disturb, but perhaps, to awaken. Yes, you are at peace—but what kind? A peace purchased with silence? Isolation? Denial? Have we truly accepted ourselves, or merely agreed to disappear quietly?”

He paused, then added, “Maybe I’m only speaking for myself.”

The Director’s eyes narrowed. “And what would you have us do? Fight? You speak of struggle like it’s still an option. Look at me. I’m dying. We all are. And you want us to march in the streets? I’m lucky if I can keep my mind in the morning. Don’t talk to me about flowers on graves. Most of us won’t even get that.”

Lazaro’s voice softened. “I just wanted to make you happy.”

The Director stared at him. “Do you have a lover?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know sorrow. Not real sorrow.”

He drew a shaky breath. “You speak of love and struggle—but have you ever *lost* love?”

Lazaro said nothing.

The Director looked beyond him, as if speaking to the waves.
“Gay love,” he said slowly, “is when a man meets your eyes and you fall—just like that. His name alone sends a tremor through your chest. You follow him without knowing why. He becomes your compass. He is the face you imagine in every painting, the figure you seek in every crowd. The dream beside you in every empty bed. You hear his voice in every song, you see him in every stranger who almost resembles him.”

He turned to Lazaro. “And gay sorrow? Gay sorrow is what you taste when that man leaves.”

He began to cough, but pressed on.
“Oscar. His name was Oscar. We met in 1980 at MIT. Engineering majors. He was Italian-American—dramatic, loud, impossible not to notice. Boston was blooming with poetry pubs back then. We went to one on a whim. I still remember him on stage, bottle in hand, spouting some drunken verse:

‘I love Engineering,
It deals with my forte,
Figures and numbers—
That of women,
And the times I fuck them.’

Of course, chaos erupted. A woman hurled soda at him. 'You fucking animal!' she screamed. Booing. Jeering. Someone called him a faggot. A group of jocks threw him out.

I followed him outside. He stood there, broken, eyes wide, lost in the noise of rejection. And I knew right then—he belonged to me.”

The Director exhaled.

“I chased him across campus. Joined the mountaineering club just to be near him. We became lovers. We built a life. We lived seven years in defiance of everything that told us we couldn’t.

And then... the world turned crueler.

Companies blacklisted us. Friends started dying. Oscar wouldn’t let go—he visited every hospital bed, held every hand, burned every candle. I didn’t. I stayed distant. Detached. But not Oscar. Never Oscar.”

His voice cracked.
“One night, spring rain against the windows, the fireplace humming low, he turned to me and said, ‘I always promised I wouldn’t leave you…’ He paused. And then: ‘I’m dying of AIDS.’”

A silence fell like a curtain.

“He broke his promise.”

His eyes glistened.

“In his final days, he made me bring a CD player. He wanted to hear *Camelot*—the Broadway version. He told me to ignore his body, just to focus on his eyes. As he lay dying, we held hands. I played the song. And he whispered, ‘Remember our past.’”

The Director’s voice faded into a whisper.
“I didn’t blink. I memorized every shade of blue in his eyes. The same blue I saw during our canoeing trips in Tennessee. The same eyes I woke up to every morning. When he died, he took my meaning with him.”

---

**Oscar’s Song**
*From Camelot (with breath-altered phrasing)*

If ever I would leave you,
It wouldn’t be in summer—
Seeing you in summer,
I would never go.
Your hair streaked with sunlight,
Your lips red as flame,
Your face with a luster
That puts gold to shame.

But if I’d ever leave you,
It wouldn’t be in autumn—
How I’d leave in autumn,
I never would know.
I’ve seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air,
I know you in autumn—
And I must be there.

Could I leave you through the snow?
Nor through the wintry evening,
When you catch the fire glow?
If ever I would leave you—
How could it be in springtime,
Knowing how in springtime
I’m bewitched by you so?

Oh no, not in springtime,
Summer, winter or fall—
No, never could I leave you at all.
2025-04-08 15:44:11
visions