Authors: Mark Jeffrey
The guards eyed each other uneasily.
“You’d rather face
them
, then, would you?”
Milton’s eyes snapped up, wet with fear.
“Either we take care of this, or they do.”
Milton stood then and folded his arms, knees shaking visibly.
“I can’t fall again.
Not that.
Anything but that.”
“So it’s them.
Okay then.
It’s your choice.”
Milton nodded vigorously.
“Yes.
Yes!
Lock me up, put me in the cell, and lock it! Please!”
The guards looked at each dubiously.
They muttered between themselves, and then one of them shrugged.
They did as he asked, and then departed.
They were only halfway along the bridge to the Panopticon when the air popped with a new presence.
It came from nowhere: a will-o-wisp, a handful of smokeless, soundless flame.
Then it divided in several bobbing, floating tongues of fire.
The crowd roared with approval or terror.
Elspeth gasped.
The guards ran, closing the door of the Panopticon behind them quickly.
At first, they floated slowly, aimlessly, like balloons lost by a child.
They were pretty as Christmas tree ornaments, magical as faery stars descended to earth.
They were waiting for something.
And then, the clock slipped forward a tick: Elspeth felt it in her scalp.
Some threshold was reached, and the things bolted towards Milton’s cell.
Instantly they burned brighter, like a great quantity of halogen set afire.
Their mood was went from tinkling and dancing to menacing and vicious: a wronged sprite.
They slipped between the bars of Milton’s cell.
He screamed piteously — “Not again!
Not again!” — and then fell silent.
Splashes of blood and hunks of flesh and cloth rolled out from between the bars.
Milton had been taken apart at the seams.
It was like a pack of piraña had devoured him, filleted him while he lived.
THE MORNING brought a dense mist — and an earthquake.
Long before the shriek of the Panopticon rudely sliced through the endless film loops, and the parakeets and parrots skrawked and clawed in the open air, the entire prison shook with a violent wrench.
Instinctively, Elspeth leapt out of bed and headed for her bathroom door frame, screaming for Oscar to follow her.
But there was no door frame, and there was no Oscar.
At first, she was confused — the thick fog engulfed even the innards of her cell, blinding her with white swirl, masking everything but the shaking stone floor.
But soon her hands came to rest upon her bars and she clung to them as the tremors raged on — and it all came back her in a flood.
When the shaking stopped, she stood for a long moment, her heart pounding.
The rumbling had ceased, but the tropical birds had been set to a panic.
Dark, flapping shapes cawed and zipped in and out of the white nearby, nearly colliding before being enveloped by the mist once again.
“Well, that’ll get you up in the morning,” James Card said.
“At least the goddamn films have stopped.”
She realized it was true.
Good!
Maybe the earthquake had cut the Panopticon’s power.
“Well, earthquake narrows it down somewhat.
That, and the tiki birds.
I’ll bet we’re in South America somewhere.
All we need are drinks with little umbrellas in them.”
AT BREAKFAST, she sat with James Card.
They had arrived early, and she had brought along the Pantheon Chess board so they could take advantage of the extra time.
She played the pieces of the Egyptian gods again, while James went for the Greek pantheon.
She told James about Titus and his mysterious appearance and then subsequent disappearance.
“What do you think that was about?
And by the way, check.”
“Eh.
Mind games.
Lunatics in the Panopticon, screwing with your head.
Who knows why.
Your move.”
The game was a quick one.
Elspeth won, just as she had with Titus.
“Huh.
That’s weird,” Elspeth said.
“What is?”
“The board.
Where the pieces are.
It’s exactly the same as where they ended up when I played Titus.
I mean,
exactly
.”
Card shrugged.
“Maybe you just played the same strategy and I fell for your tricks, just like the vanishing Titus man did.”
“No.
No, this was a completely different game.
A totally different set of moves and events.
And Titus, Titus I beat easily.
But I almost lost to you.
And I probably would have too if you hadn’t made that one stupid move with your Queen and let my pawn nail you.”
“I so did not see that,” Card muttered.
“Card.
What are the chances of a different game producing the same exact outcome?
The probabilities must be lottery-level ridiculous.”
Just then a man slammed into Card as he shuffled by with his breakfast.
“Goddammit!” the man cursed.
“What are you doing, just standing in the aisle, staring at your bleeding chess board like that?”
Elspeth looked up and was stunned to see that this man was none other than Milton.
Milton?
But Milton was dead.
Milton had been ripped to shreds by light-things just the night before.
She’d seen it!
Everyone had.
Milton could not be up and walking around.
But here we was.
Card turned around to retort, but when he realized he was about to tear into Milton, he just stared for a moment, and then finally managed to say, “Sorry.”
THAT DAY, Elspeth and James Card were assigned to the same work detail.
They were led to a craft shop very near the bottom of the prison, the place some inmates called the South Pole.
Elspeth and Card were paired off and shown very large wooden blades of some sort.
They were given tubs of clear paste to apply with brushes.
It was a kind of epoxy that smelled rank and noxious, a chemical fume that waters the eye.
Before long, it hardened into a clear shell around the wood.
As they did their assigned work, they kept a watchful eye: Card pointed out the presence of six of the Latin Kings gang members.
They were here also, slicing the new, raw wood according to directions from the guards.
“I miss my cat,” Card said.
“Most of all, about the real world, I think I miss my cat.”
“Your cat,” Elspeth said, amused.
“Really?
No girlfriend?”
“Nope,” Card said.
“No time.
I have too much to do.
The tech world moves too fast … or used to.
In this place I have an eternity to burn.”
“Not really a fan of cats personally,” Elspeth said.
“No?
Well, my cat’s hilarious.
You’d like
him
.
I just started to get him catnip.
I had no idea how much they love that stuff, they go crazy for it!
Gets them baked out of their brains and elsewhere.
“Anyway, I remember the first time I got it for him.
It comes in this clear plastic bag full of the powdered green leafy stuff.
I actually snuck it up to the counter!
I felt like I was scoring a bag of weed for my cat.”
Elspeth snorted out a laugh in between brush strokes.
“Yeah I kind of hate cats.
But dogs!
I love dogs.”
“So what do you give a dog to get them high?”
She blinked.
“Nothing.
Dogs don’t get high.
Dogs are drunk.
They’re
born
drunk.
And they stay drunk, all life long.”
She laughed uproariously.
“Hey tall señorita,” snapped one of the Kings.
“Keep your mouth shut.
You’re going to get us all on hard labor duty.”
He nodded towards the guards.
But Elspeth didn’t back down.
Instead, she seemed to grow even taller.
Card hissed a warned, but she wasn’t having it.
She stepped towards the Latin Kings.
For their part, they seemed more amused than challenged.
“You.
What’s your name?”
She addressed the apparent alpha of the group.
“You don’t want to know, chica.
You’re too tall for me.”
They all laughed.
“I’m not looking for a lover.
I’m —“
“No?
Not even a Latin lover?”
His friends guffawed while he air-thrusted.
She smiled patiently.
“No.
Not even.
Beside, we have a more immediate problem on our hands, you and I.”
“What’s that?”
“This prison.”
“Si.
It is a problem.”
The alpha suddenly grew more serious.
“But what is to be done?
It has swallowed us.”
Elspeth responded with a tight grin.
“What’s your name?”
“My name?
Constancio.
What’s yours?”
“Constancio.
Yes.
I’m Elspeth—”
“You’re going to learn to scream it!” Constancio grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly towards him.
“Has anyone ever died here, Constancio?”
She said it suddenly, hoping to throw him off balance.
It worked.
His nostrils flared like he’d just smelled something rancid.
“Morte!
Why do you speak of death?”
“Answer the question.
Nobody
dies
here, do they?
Not really …?”
Constancio pushed her away, clearly turned off now.
“I never seen it.
No.”
“What’s the matter, Constancio?”
“You ruined the mood, man.”
The Latin Kings pushed off, clearly annoyed with her.
“That was
not
smart,” James Card said.
“Those guys can get real mean.
You got off easy just now.
You have no idea.”
THAT NIGHT, she dreamt of the Painted Man in the airport.
This time, he was not wearing a business suit.
Instead, he was nearly naked, and dancing around a fire he’d made of newspapers and magazines.
But nobody paid any attention to him.
Next he smashed an old-style Kodak camera with glee; and then did the same thing with a big vacuum tube powered radio.
He looked around for reaction — but got none.
This seemed to disappoint him.
She woke up feeling the fire of the plane burning on the runway — the heavier-than-air flying machine that could not fly and never, ever could …
Here’s a kiss from the Dolphin Queen.
FOUR: THE ARBORETUM
THE NEXT DAY Elspeth was separated from James Card.
She was grouped with another company of prisoners and led into a narrow chamber that at first appeared to be just another cell.
But it quickly opened out into a vast underground arboretum or hothouse of some kind.
The guards handed out wicker baskets with leather straps that could be worn across the body: apparently, they would be gathering fruits and vegetables or something.
When it came to her turn, Elspeth accepted her basket silently, as the rest had done, and slung it around herself and followed the company deeper into the neat rows of growing things.
When she reached a patch of cornstalks, the guard barked an order, and immediately everyone began picking the corn, harvesting long, healthy green ears into the baskets.
Elspeth watched how it was done and quickly began doing the same.
For long time, she moved like a robot, emotionally exhausted, almost thankful for a mindless repetitive task.
Several times, she’d attempted to strike up a conversation in low tones with a fellow prisoner — only to be shushed by the guards, or given a steely-eyed refusal from the inmate.
The corn wasn’t high enough to hide a stealthy verbal exchange.
So it was here, she reasoned, that all of the prison’s food was grown.
But as the minutes melted into hours, she couldn’t help but notice something strange.