by Bryan Smith
Chad’s stomach rumbled.
“Please don’t do this,” he mumbled.
Another guard clubbed him in the ear. “Shut up.”
The guard assigned to Cindy slammed her against the wall, causing her to cry out. Chad winced at the brutality. He had to remind himself this was far from the worst of what he would see before this nightmare was over.
The shackles snapped shut around Cindy’s wrists and ankles. The tall man approached her slowly, flicking the whip against the floor again and again. Chad sensed a terrible relish in the man’s deliberate approach. He radiated malevolence. His dark eyes reflected no hint of mercy.
He stood before Cindy and smiled. “Who do you serve, bitch?”
Tears were streaming down Cindy’s cheeks. “The M-Master.”
“Yessss.” The tall man sounded like a snake poised to strike. “As we all do. And you have offended the Master with your insolence. Now you pay.”
Cindy’s knees shook. “Please. Please don’t.” She was sobbing now. “I’ll do anything.” Chad wanted to look away, but he found himself unable to do so, as though some outside force compelled him to bear witness to Cindy’s indignity. The heartbreaking part of it was the strength that still resonated in her voice. “Anything at all. You got anybody you want dead? I’ll make them dead. Use my body in any perverted, fucked-up way you want. I’ll make it better than your sick mind ever imagined. Just please don’t do this.”
The tall man laughed. “Really? How tempting.” Laughter from the guards this time. “Of course, I’m used to pleas of this nature from people in your position, but I find this interesting.” He nodded at Chad. “Would you kill him?”
Something at the center of Chad’s being went very cold. Cindy made eye contact with him and held his gaze for a period of seconds that seemed eons long. Then she looked at the tall man. “Would you approve my petition?”
The tall man’s eyes narrowed and he turned to appraise Chad more fully. He stroked his chin with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. In that moment the warden was the epitome of a Mephistophelean figure, diabolic and crafty. It was just one more unpleasant association on top of a whole heap of unpleasantness, and Chad suddenly felt very weary.
He was really and truly fucked.
The tall man seemed amused by Cindy’s gesture of ruthless self-interest. “I would consider it a second time, perhaps more favorably?
Cindy scowled. “Fuck that. You have to promise.”
Chad had to wonder what the point of that condition was-this was so clearly not a man who honored his word. His promises would be worth less than Confederate cash. And he didn’t know what to make of Cindy’s tentative acquiescence, either. He had a hard time believing she would kill him, not if he trusted the truth of the things she’d told him in the cell, but maybe none of that mattered anymore.
Maybe all she gave a damn about at this point was self-preservation. He strongly suspected no one survived three years in this place without making that the number-one priority of every waking moment.
So, yeah, he could see her killing him.
All of a sudden, he felt a little less detached from the situation.
A little more in imminent danger of serious harm.
He didn’t know how to deal with it. Should he protest? Beg for his life? Maybe whimper and cower like the cowardly cur he secretly feared he was. Maybe there was some other angle he was missing. Wasn’t it possible Cindy was acting, playing the angles until she could work out a way to get them out of here? The helplessness he felt was humiliating. Debilitating. He’d handled some pretty stressful situations in this business world, scenarios that called for quick thinking and an ability to solve complex problems in creative ways, and he’d come to believe he was pretty damn smooth.
Well, that self-image was all shot to hell now.
He didn’t have clue fucking one what to do.
The way the warden was eyeing him wasn’t helping matters. He looked like a serial killer sizing up a lone prostitute at two in the morning. “I’ll tell you a secret. This is a personal insight I’m giving the two of you. The thing I treasure most about my position Below is the freedom to do as I wish with my inferiors.”
He started to coil the whip. “Before I came here, I ran an office of twenty. I worked my people hard, and most of them did good work. Some of them, though, were slackers. Layabouts. I did my best to get rid of them, but that wasn’t so easy a proposition with the ones who’d done enough to fake their way through the probationary period. The corporate bylaws made them almost untouchable. The niggers were the worst. That affirmative-action shit made my life hell, I’ll tell you. All that red tape. All those government regulations. I can’t tell you how much it all pissed me off. I would’ve given anything to string any of those assholes up by the balls.”
He finished coiling the whip and handed it to a guard, who returned it to the peg behind the tall man’s desk. “Here …” He spread his hands wide and smiled. “I have none of those worries. Procedure?” He indicated the pile of shredded paper on his desk. “You’ve seen how much proper procedure means to me.” He addressed one of the guards. “Release the woman.” The guard took a ring of keys from his belt, unlocked the shackles around Cindy’s wrists and ankles, and moved back as she stepped away from the wall. She rubbed her wrists as she walked slowly to the center of the room. She walked straight toward Chad, making fearless eye contact with him, and came to a stop several feet in front of him.
She said, “We do what we have to do down here.” She extended an open hand and a guard slapped a baton into it. She held out her other hand and the handle of a knife was pressed into the palm. She began to advance on Chad, who was dismayed by the gladiatorial gleam in her eyes. She smiled. “It’s going to feel good to kill.”
Chad drew in a deep, anticipatory breath.
This is it, he thought.
Ready or not, this is it.
Holy shit, say a prayer or something.
He barely perceived the rest of the warden’s monologue, but he could see Cindy was waiting for him to be done speaking. “Two more examples. Two mysteries someone else might give a damn about solving. Two people who wound up sharing a cell with you, young lady. Two people who were never signed in.”
He chuckled. “Typical administrative sloppiness. Accurate record-keeping isn’t one of our priorities. It bothered me in the beginning, when I first took this position, but now I appreciate the freedom it gives me.
“No record, no official notation of their presence, means they were never here.”
Another chuckle.
“You can think of it as a license to kill.” A pause. “Again.”
Cindy’s voice was a breathy whisper. “Thank you, dead man.”
Chad winced, bracing himself for the killing blows.
He wasn’t prepared, however, for the roar of gunfire that suddenly filled the room. He flinched and hunched his shoulders, but he didn’t seek cover-because Cindy’s stolid green eyes never wavered.
She smiled at him. “You’re okay, Chad.”
Her voice released him, and his gaze darted about the room, taking in the carnage. Three guards were dead on the floor. A fourth guard stood to his right, a 9mm pistol aimed at the still-standing warden, who was now a quivering mass of terror. His lanky, angular frame seemed to collapse in on itself as he fell back against the desk, his shaking hands held out before him.
“P-please … ,” he sputtered, his suddenly red eyes brimming with tears. “I can-“
Cindy was still facing Chad. “I don’t give a shit what he can do.”
Her hand, the one holding the knife, reared back.
Then, with a grace and precision worthy of a prima ballerina, she wheeled around, cocked her arm all the way back, and whipped it forward. This all occurred in the space of a heartbeat. The knife sliced through the air and flew straight and true. The tall man had time to gasp before the blade punched through one of his eyes and penetrated his brain. His hands
clutched instinctively for the knife’s handle, but he was already dead. His body toppled backward, slid sideways along the desktop, and rolled to the floor.
Chad’s psyche, overloaded with violent sensory input, finally kicked his mouth back into gear. “Oh my God, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you were going to torture me and then kill me. Oh, shit. Oh my God. Oh shit. Holy fucking shit.”
But Cindy’s smile was implacable. She exuded the calm that had left her following the tall man’s denial of her petition. “That was never going to happen, Chad. You’re too important.”
Chad cackled, a sound close to lunacy unleashed. “Yeah, you bet. Never going to happen. That’s what I thought all along.”
He looked at the guard with the pistol.
The unlikely savior.
He was a stocky guy in his thirties. He had a thin wisp of a mustache and a receding hairline. His gaze was sturdy, and he projected the air of a man you don’t mess with, not unless you want to lose a lot of teeth. Of course, maybe some of that had something to do with the big gun his hands were wrapped around. The black pistol looked huge and malevolent. But, hey, at least it wasn’t pointed at them.
“So you’re in on it, too.”
Chad’s gaze shifted back to Cindy. “You really ought to tell me more about this whole revolution, conspiracy thing. You’ve been implying I’m some kind of central figure in whatever’s going on, which makes no goddamn sense, since I don’t know you people and have never set foot in this godforsaken place even once in my whole life.” He laughed again. “Call me crazy, I think I’m owed a little more of an explanation.”
Cindy clasped hands with him. “Soon, Chad, I promise.”
And then she was pulling him out of the room.
“But now we have to go.”
He staggered after her.
The guard followed them.
“Hey-“
They were proceeding down a drab hallway at a pace Chad had difficulty maintaining, and he tried to plant his feet, an attempt to bring their exodus from this place to a temporary halt. He was pissed off about being kept in the dark. He wanted answers. But Cindy’s strength again eclipsed his own, and he was dragged along a bit before managing to regain his footing.
“Jesus Christ, Cindy” He panted. “It’s not like I’m being unreasonable. I really did think I was about to die in there. You could’ve fucking told me about our friend here. Do you not have an ounce of compassion in you? Not one single fucking ounce? And what was up with the wait? Why wait so long to bring in the cavalry?”
The guard cleared his throat. “Had to find out how much the boss knew.”
Cindy added, “Which turned out to be not much.”
The guard grunted. “Thank God.”
They exited the building through a rear door and stood in a tunnel that vaguely resembled an underground mine shaft. Earthen walls supported by joists and beams. Chad peered down the length of tunnel he could make out, which wasn’t much-it curved and formed a blind spot. He saw something flickering-a gas lamp flame.
Chad sighed. “I’ve died and gone to the land that time forgot.”
The guard pulled a folded piece of paper from a vest pocket and passed it to Cindy. “A duplicate of your emancipation endorsement. You’ll need it to get past the next checkpoint. The man you’ll need to see there is Stephens.”
Cindy nodded. “Stephens.”
Something flickered in the guard’s eyes, a hint of some private shame. “There’ll…” He cleared his throat again. “There’ll be a price to pay?
Cindy met his gaze. “It won’t be one I haven’t paid a hundred times before.”
The guard sighed. “I know.”
Cindy started walking.
Chad, ever reluctant, had no choice.
He followed her. “I would really like to go home now.”
Cindy ignored him.
“Good luck,” the guard called after them.
She ignored that, too.
The guard waited there until he saw them disappear around the bend in the tunnel. Then he went back into the holding facility and returned to the warden’s office. He examined the bodies of his former colleagues, checking to be sure they were dead. He detected a faint pulse from one of them, Nitkowski, a problem he took care of with another bullet to the back of the head.
Then he moved to the warden’s desk and took a seat.
He surveyed his bloody handiwork and judged it a job well done.
But not quite finished.
He racked the 9mm’s slide, ratcheting another bullet into the chamber. Then he put the gun in his mouth and thought about all the terrible things he’d done since coming Below. The slaves he’d killed. The innocent children he’d consigned to a life of slavery. Unspeakable, unforgivable acts of brutality. He wasn’t an evil man. Not really. These things had been an almost unbearable burden on his conscience, which was alive and well despite his repeated efforts to suppress it, even kill it. He’d allowed circumstance and his own fears to override his morality.
To turn him into a henchman of the devil.
But fate had turned and granted him an opportunity to atone for his deeds.
An opportunity he’d taken with gratitude. There was just one more thing left to do. Seal one more dead man’s lips forever. He pulled the trigger.
This is a dream. A dream but not a dream. A warped reflection or inversion of reality, like the dreamer’s odd visions of the beautiful woman called Dream. He experiences the same awareness that he’s dreaming. The lucid quality of the scene in his head distresses him. His sleeping body writhes on the bed, and he covers his face with his hands. Only then does he realize he is no longer tethered to bedposts. In fact, he senses he is alone in the bedroom. So this is it, the miraculous opportunity he’s been praying for, another chance to get out of this place. All he has to do is wake up.
WAKE UP!
an internal voice commands.
But he cannot.
How strange it is, how frustrating, to experience this dual awareness. Knowing that what he’s seeing in his head is something more than the usual juxtaposition of weird images conjured by a brain at rest. That random quality isn’t there. Nor is there any overt symbolism. He watches the drama unfold like scenes in a movie. A movie he can’t look away from. He is reminded of that guy in A Clockwork Orange, the singing sadist, who is immobilized and forced to watch a series of grotesque images, his eyelids held open with metal clamps. This is like that. Something restrains him. Monofilaments of psychic thread knotted in strategic areas, effectively preventing a return to the conscious world. The knowledge of his unbound body in the bed is like that proverbial carrot at the end of the string-always just out of reach. Maddeningly close.
Not for the first time, he experiences despair.
He is in a room lit only by candles. He sees this. He knows it’s an image in his head. But he’s there. Really there. He can feel the ground beneath his feet. Can feel the warmth generated by the flickering flames. There is an altar of sorts against the back wall. Upon it is the nude body of a middle-aged man. His chest is sunken and his ribs are visible through yellow, papery skin, the way plastic wrap might look stretched over a skeleton. His ankles and wrists are bound with lengths of rope, a measure that seems unnecessary-nothing about this obviously doomed man suggests “flight risk.”
The man is awake.
And resigned to his fate-no pleas of mercy issue from his mouth.
But the dreamer senses something more than mere resignation; the man on the altar seems almost… eager.
Yes, that’s it.
He’s eager to die.
He eagerly awaits deliverance from a long period of suffering.
The dreamer-who maybe isn’t really dreaming-is horrified by the revelation. Not for the sake of this man, who is obviously beyond help, but for himself. Because he knows how easily he might embrace a similar fate. It is all too easy to imagine that sense of serenity, of blissful acceptance, in that
last moment before death.
There is a small crowd in the room. A dozen people. All there, the dreamer supposes, to bear witness to this man’s death. Witnesses are an essential part of the ritual. He isn’t sure how he knows this, but it is fact, as immutable as the tide. He can’t make out their faces, and none of them speak. They are waiting for something. This is a reverent silence, a silence of solemn anticipation.
They wait.
And wait.
The dreamer wills his sleeping body to open its eyes. His concentration is so focused the intensity of the scene in his head wavers just a bit, goes soft-focus. His eyelids flutter. Once. And then the scene snaps back into focus. There is a flashing moment of utter despair and frustration. Then the mute witnesses drop as one to their knees. The dreamer is on his knees in the same instant, not at all sure how he knew the precise moment to genuflect. But the same mysterious impulse causes him to bow his head in the next moment. His peers in worship do the same. That sense of anticipation remains, but it is more intense now, and there is a collective holding of the breath.
Footsteps.
Someone has entered the room. A presence of authority. The footsteps draw closer. The sound is the thump of boots on wood, and there is something ominous about it. The dreamer begins to shiver and experiences symptoms like the onset of a cold, a headache and chills, a dull throb at the back of the throat. The clip-clop of the boots is like a hammer in his head as the person wearing them passes by him on the way to the altar. The person ascends the few steps to the altar, stops, and turns to face the small crowd. The worshipers, if that’s what they are, look up now.
The dreamer shivers again.
It’s her. Giselle. His tormentor. The awful mute woman who tied him up and tortured him. The candlelight seems to grow brighter. No, the dreamer realizes, it’s not just a matter of perception. The light actually is brighter. Giselle has somehow willed it. She is capable of such things. Magical things. She is not as adept as the one who taught her, The Master, but he thinks her power should not be underestimated. This knowledge appears fully formed in his head, intact from nowhere, like a file added to a computer’s hard drive via a floppy disk.
