by Hakok, R. A.
I reach a hand out uncertainly. Rough planks beneath me, on all sides.
A shuffling noise from above and I feel flakes drifting down through the gaps in the timber. The muscles along my jaw ache, like I’ve been grinding my teeth, and when I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth there are ulcers there. I cough painfully, spitting to clear the blood from my throat.
There’s the scratch of bolts being drawn and then whoever is up there steps away again. I remember where I am just as the door swings up and a flood of searing white light fills the box. I raise my arms above my head, trying to get away from it. Strong hands reach down, grab me. From somewhere behind them I hear a voice I think I recognize.
‘Easy now. Finch said we was to be gentle with him.’
The voice giggles, like this might be funny.
My hood slips back as I’m dragged from the hotbox. I screw my eyes tight against the blinding glare, but not before I glimpse a man with golden teeth. The grin he’s wearing dissolves; his eyes go wide as he sees my face.
Then I’m being hauled across the yard. I try to straighten my legs, but they’ve seized and won’t unbind; I can manage only the small, mewling steps of a newborn, unaccustomed to the business of walking. I give up, allow myself to be carried. The toes of my boots drag through the snow, leaving shallow furrows in the gray powder. I let my head hang down. The parka’s hood falls forward, mercifully returning me to the shadow of its cowl.
We pass through a door and beneath me snow gives way to stone. It feels no warmer inside, or maybe I have stopped noticing the cold, but at least I’m out of the merciless light. I’m dragged through the cellblock, into a dark passageway, past kitchens and laundry. I lift my head a fraction. The smells are stronger here, a complicated raft of odors. Concrete replaces stone and the corridor narrows, forcing whoever is carrying me to press closer. Their smell is tight-packed, overpowering; a pungent blend of breath and sweat and clothes long unwashed.
And something else, underneath all of those things.
I lift my head a fraction, wrinkling my nose at it. A sweet, coppery aroma fills my nostrils and I feel something flicker inside me. Ahead the man with the gold teeth continues to jabber away, but I can barely pay attention to what he’s saying. I am suddenly aware that I have not eaten in days. An image flashes before my eyes, of an earlier visit to this place. The thing I had glimpsed, back in the shadows, dangling from an old hook, as I had passed the kitchens.
And for a second something flares, writhes inside me, a compulsion so fierce, so complete, that it might bend my very bones if I do not obey. Inside the hood my jaw clamps shut and the muscles there clench in a long, shuddering spasm.
The men carrying me are breathing hard. They walk with the quick, shuffling steps of those hefting a difficult load; every now and then I hear one or other of them grunt with the effort. My weight’s not enough to trouble men like that. I tilt my head to one side, slowly, so they don’t notice, and then I see why: they hold me awkwardly between them, out at arm’s length, like I’m a hundred and fifty pounds of sweating nitro on a bumpy road.
I let my head fall back down. Inside my mittens my fingers curl into claws.
They are right to fear me.
I am weak now, and they are strong.
But soon that will change.
We pass through a metal gate. To one side a guard booth, the glass reinforced with safety wire. Another corridor. The bars of cell doors, each ajar.
I’m dragged into a large, candlelit room. Thick drapes line one wall, as though we are on a stage. In the center on a raised plinth there’s a heavy wooden chair, almost like a throne. I don’t think I’ve been in this room before, but the chair is familiar.
Next to it a small man, kneeling by an old diesel generator, tools scattered around him. My boot catches on a thick rubber cable that snakes across the dusty floor and then I’m being hauled up onto the platform, lowered into the seat. I’m stripped of my parka. Thick leather cuffs fold themselves over my forearms.
The men who have been carrying me each take a side. They work quickly. Fingers cased in thick rubber hold my head to the back of the chair. The one with the beard leans in and there’s that smell again, slick in the back of my throat, so strong I can almost taste it. He reaches under my arms, pulls a thick strap across my chest, feeds the end through a heavy buckle.
From behind me I hear a tut-tut at the big man’s handiwork.
‘I think that will need to be a little more secure Mr. Knox’.
A pause and the one called Knox steps forward again. My spine is pressed into the back of the chair and I feel the air squeezed from my lungs as he pulls it tight. He steps away smartly, but the smell of him lingers.
I lift my head. A small, neat man stands by the wall, clutching something to his chest.
Him I know.
Finch.
He hobbles forward.
‘You must forgive the delay, Gabriel. Rest assured, Mr. Culver here has been working around the clock since we last spoke.’
He holds up the thin volume, offering me a better look. The pages are dog-eared, tattered but I can read what it says on the cover: North Carolina Department of Corrections, and underneath, Modular Electrocution System Operating Manual.
My boots and socks are being removed. I look down. The top of a large, domed head, glistening with sweat. I feel the leather around my shins being tightened.
Finch leans forward on his cane.
‘Yes, Mr. Culver has been quite the wonder; we would have been lost without him. Inverters; capacitors; regulators; I had no idea this could be so complicated. We’ve had to improvise a little, of course. The chair has not seen use in decades; it was in need of considerable repair. And then there’s the matter of the voltage. Too low and I fear this simply may not work; too high and the body will simply combust.’
He splays his fingers, demonstrating that effect, then sets the manual down and pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. He takes my head in his hands, more gently than the other men did. His brow knots with concern.
‘I have to say you’re not looking very well, Gabriel. I do wish you could have given us more notice, so that we might have been ready for you.’
He turns to the man bent over the generator.
‘Mr. Culver, are you almost done? I really think we should proceed without delay.’
He turns back to me, reaches for my neck. The one he called Knox steps forward to restrain me, but Finch sends him away with a flutter of his hand. He grasps the chain there, lifts it gently over my head. He holds the dog tags out, examines them for a moment. As the dull metal catches the light I can see it’s pitted and pocked, like something’s been eating away at it.
The other man, the one with the beard, holds out a thick garbage bag and Finch drops them in.
He turns around and Knox passes him a set of hair clippers, the kind you work by hand. The metal is cold where he presses it to my scalp. He works his way gently from front to back. The clumps of hair that fall to my lap are shot through with white. When he’s done he carefully brushes the last of it away, dropping the clippers into the bag with the dog tags. Then he reaches above my head for the metal headpiece that hangs there. There’s a dull creak as it swings forward on its bracket.
He turns around and points to a bucket on the floor.
‘Mr. Tully, if you would be so kind.’
The man with the beard whose name is Tully dips his hand into the bucket and hands him a sponge. He places it on my head and lowers the metal cap. Another strap goes under my chin. He tightens it. Water streams down my face, stinging my eyes. It runs down my neck, inside my thermals.
Finch pulls a handkerchief from pocket of his suit and mops my brow.
‘I am sorry, Gabriel.’
Another sponge wets my shin and I feel something cold, metallic, close around my ankle, the hard nub of an electrode pressing into the bone there. Tully sops up the excess water with a rag. When he’s done he dumps it into the bucket.
Culv
er makes some final adjustments to the generator and then hurries up onto the platform clutching a thick rubber cable. More water runs down my forehead, wetting my cheeks, as he attaches it to the headpiece.
Finch steps off the platform.
‘Are we ready, Mr. Culver?’
He looks back at me.
‘Would you care for a blindfold?’
I shake my head.
Culver returns to the generator, bends over it, grasps something there, pulls. It takes several goes before the motors catches, then it sputters to life and settles into a lumpy idle. He retreats to the far side of the room, like he may not have as much faith in his handiwork as Finch made out. The two large men join him.
Finch steps over to the wall and flicks a switch on a large console. A moment later there’s the whir of an exhaust fan somewhere above my head. His hand moves to a large lever. He looks at me for a long moment and then pulls it down. There’s a loud bang. A sharp, acrid smell fills the room, like burning metal.
The hair on the back of my neck stands straight up and suddenly every muscle in my body tenses all at once and it feels like I’m on fire. I try to scream, but my jaw has clamped shut and won’t open. I can think of nothing save the pain and in that instant I know there may be nothing I would not sacrifice, no one I would not give up, to make it stop.
And then, mercifully, I’m gone, carried off into oblivion on a bolt of white lightning.
*
HE WALKS DOWN THE HALLWAY. The floor is dusty, littered with debris. Once-colorful posters hang from the walls, the edges lifting, curling with damp. Here and there withered pieces of rubber that might once have been balloons dangle from faded ribbons.
The boy with the curly hair said this place was a school, once. When they climbed the steps out front he had shone his flashlight up above the entrance and read the words there out loud, slow, like he was uncertain of them. Stoneville Elementary.
They hiked all day, until it got dark and it was too cold for the boy to continue. He lit a fire with branches he had gathered from outside while the boy warmed a couple of the cans with the little blue squares that sting your eyes. The boy wolfed his down, but he had only picked at his before setting it aside. When the boy was done with his own tin he had looked over and asked if he meant to finish it. He was worried the boy might think he was sick, but he only seemed interested in what was left of his ration, so he handed it over. He watched hopefully in case there might be a candy bar in return, but there wasn’t. The boy took to his sleeping bag as soon as he was done eating.
The boy is sleeping now. It will be hours before he wakes and they can set off after the girl again. The boy says they are making good progress, but he’s not so sure. They have been on the road for two days already, and they have yet to see any sign of the dangerous man. They have a map the boy found in a gas station. He takes it out and studies it whenever they come to a sign. He spells each word, checking them carefully against what’s written there, as though he doesn’t trust the directions he gives himself. At night he traces the route they have taken with his finger. It has been mostly flat so far and the snow has settled, so he can go quickly. The boy tries to keep up, but he has to wait for him a lot. Tomorrow they are going to cross into another place the boy says is called Vir-gin-ya. He asked the boy if that is where the doctor and the soldiers live. The boy said it wasn’t, but they are closer.
He wanders into one of the classrooms. In the center of the room rows of tiny desks, facing a large chalkboard. A couple of crudely-drawn pictures still cling to the walls, but for most the tape that held them up has long since failed and they lie scattered across the floor. He makes his way in, pulls back one of the small chairs, takes a seat. A piece of plastic is peeling from the edge of the desk he has chosen. He pulls at it and it lifts easily, revealing the board underneath.
He’s not sure what they will do if they ever catch up to the dangerous man. There has been no more talk of that since they left the others. At night the boy takes out the gun the girl gave him. He turns it over in his hands, studying it, but it doesn’t look like he knows how to use it.
It is good they are going after the girl, though, even if they don’t have a plan yet for what they will do if they find her. The boy explained to him what the tall boy intended to do. He doesn’t think that is a very good idea at all.
He sits there for a while, just staring up at the row of letters written across the top of the chalkboard. When the boy studies the road signs they pass the names that are written there are foreign to him, alien. But there is something about the way these letters have been arranged that is familiar, pleasing even. He looks up at them from the desk for a long time.
Eventually he gets up, makes his way out of the classroom. And for a second as he steps back into the hallway the colors return and he hears sounds: laughter; voices; the squeak of sneakers on polished floor. Somewhere in the distance a bell is ringing. At the end of the corridor a woman stands, waving to him. Her lips move and although he can’t hear what she is saying he knows she is calling to him. He stares at her for a moment. Her hair is long and brown, except where the sun catches it and it turns gold. Her eyes are dark, smiling. But in spite of all these differences he recognizes her immediately.
He starts to run towards her but in a blink the colors are gone again, replaced with silent shades of gray. He stands in the middle of the empty, trash-strewn hallway and looks around, confused.
Has he been in this place before?
He tries to bring the woman back, but all he can see now is 98, as she was when he knew her, crouched in the cage opposite his: her head shaved, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dark and sunken, except when the doctor would shine the flashlight on her and they would flash silver.
The woman he just saw at the end of the corridor, it was her, though; he is sure of it. She had been calling his name. His real name. He couldn’t hear her above the other sounds, so doesn’t know yet what it might be.
Only that it isn’t Johnny.
*
I COME TO SUDDENLY, like someone’s just flicked a switch inside me. The experience is abrupt, jarring, and for a few seconds I just lay there, blinking in the gray half-light, awake but empty, unsure of what I am now, or who I might have been before.
There’s a strange taste in my mouth, like metal. A smell, too: charred, sulfurous. I look around. The room I’m in is small. Concrete on three sides, the fourth, bars. The narrow cot I’m lying on takes up most of the floor. At the foot of the bed a toilet, without seat or lid. Above it a steel mirror, bolted to the concrete. Otherwise the walls are bare. Something’s wrong, though, not with the room, but…
It takes me a moment to work it out. There’s no color, just gritty, ashen tones. Everywhere I look it’s the same, just grainy shadows, shades of gray and black.
Is this how I see things now?
A helpful voice inside my head suggests that’s the wrong question. It wonders how I’m seeing anything at all. I look around the cell again. The voice has a point. There are no windows. The corridor beyond the bars is dark.
I sit up slowly, noticing for the first time that my ankle is bandaged. There’s a sensation there I recognize as pain, but somehow it’s distant, unimportant. For a moment another memory – the creak of a hinge closing; something hard, metallic pressing there – threatens to break the surface, but then slips under again.
From somewhere outside my cell, the fitful chug of a generator. A different memory shifts, slowly uncoiling itself. But when I reach for it it retreats, just like the first.
I stare down at my ankle again. I wonder if I am injured anywhere else. I roll my shoulders. The smell becomes momentarily stronger. I tilt my head to one side, testing the air, trying to work out where it’s coming from. It’s heavy, cloying. It clings to my nostrils, so thick and rich it’s almost a taste.
The generator grumbles away in the background, its lumpy clatter muted by the concrete between us. I probe for a little while longer and then all
of a sudden it hits me.
A heavy wooden chair. Leather straps, tight across my arms, chest.
Something bad. I was afraid.
A metal cap for my head.
A tumble of memories now, each more vivid than the one before.
Cold water streaming down my cheeks, the briny taste of it in my mouth.
A small man with pale eyes and a cane, his hand on a lever.
The hairs on the back of my neck rising on a wave of gooseflesh.
A loud bang and an instant of unbearable pain.
Suddenly I’m standing. It happens so fast I put a hand out to steady myself. But it’s unnecessary. There’s no dizziness, no disorientation. I stare down at the thin mattress, at the shallow indentation where I was just lying.
What just happened?
I don’t remember deciding to get up. I was thinking about it, and the next thing…
I bring the back of my wrist to my nose.
I know what the smell is, now.
I hold out my hand, flex my fingers.
Have you ever smelled burning flesh?
Have you smelled your own?
It’s not just the smell, though; I realize I can feel every singed hair, every inch of bruised, charred skin. My mind isn’t ready for this; it baulks at the sheer volume of information, the absence of control. There’s another part of me, however, an older, animal part, the part that never cared to trade tooth and claw for reason and intellect.
That part is already rejoicing.
I return my gaze to the bars, just as the last of the memories slot into place.
Mags.
I can’t be here.
Next thing I know I’m standing at the front of the cell, barely aware of the sequence of actions that brought me here. I grasp the thick steel, but it won’t budge. A voice inside my head, familiar, but somehow calmer, quieter, tells me I should pay attention to that. The rest of me’s already busy shouting. At first my cries come incoherent, wordless, but soon they settle around a name: Finch.
I keep it up for what seems like an eternity. At last from somewhere off in the darkness I hear the soft click-tap of heels and cane on concrete. As they get closer I can make out the heavier footsteps of two others behind him. I can smell them now too, the faint odor of their sweat. From the end of the corridor there’s the sound of a gate opening, and then a flicker of candlelight. It grows steadily brighter, bringing with it traces of color.
