Tales of Sin and Madness

by Brett McBean

  It is then I laugh; short and breathy. Why think such a thought? I am no longer bound by these walls; come morning I am free, I have no need for a dirty river. That is a thought of a doomed man, not of a free one.

  And so I jump back into my cot, thoughts of the morning floating through my head and miraculously I fall back to sleep.

  Next time I wake, the block is asleep, it seems only I am awake at such an ungodly hour. But what hour is this? The room is still as thickly black as before, it feels like time has hardly shifted. I sit up, put my chiseled feet to the rock floor and saunter to the end of my world.

  I clutch the thick bars and stare up at the clock, its round, watchful face winking at me. One it tells me; five hours till rise and shine, knuckleheads. It feels like it should be later, but that’s the curse of time, and I shuffle on back to my cot to sleep out the rest of the night.

  But sleep does not come easy now. My mouth is dry, my stomach aching, and I just wish it was morning so bad my head hurts. I go over and rinse my mouth, take a moment to sigh and at my cot I sit, not lay, head in my calloused hands.

  Why does it seem that this night of all nights should be the longest? Why doesn’t sleep just take me and drop me down once morning shows herself, in all her beauty? It will kill me to have to sit here in the gloom and wait out the night, and surely not even the devil himself can be so cruel.

  I have spent too long in this accursed place, and maybe, I think with a gut-curling thought, it will not give me up so easily. Maybe the longer you stay, the more you belong to it, the more it owns you, the more flesh and blood and tears it takes.

  I shiver. I hear a dog bark from somewhere that’s not here. Sleep is what I need, sleep and a cold glass of beer and a woman lying unconscious on the…

  I slap myself; a hearty, stinging slap. As I blink cold tears away, I know it’s this place that’s filling my head with these evil thoughts; it’s not me, it can’t be me, it’s…

  “Always been you,” says a voice, deep and dark.

  I gasp and snap my head towards the end of my world. “Who’s there?”

  A burp, a sigh. And then that sooty voice, bouncing off the hard cracked walls: “Nobody. A friend. An enemy. Whatever.”

  The voice feels familiar, but I can’t grasp it. I stand, step one, two, three paces and stop. I can smell the blood-smell of the metal before me. “How’d you get in here?”

  The man, sitting cross-legged in front of me, is shrouded in shadows; he smells of damp towels and old urinal cakes. He takes a swipe from his paper bag. “The question is, how did you?”

  I open my mouth to answer, but instead I ask, “What did you mean by ‘it’s always been you’?”

  The old man (how do I know it’s an old man if I can’t see his face?) grinds gravel, but then I realize he’s laughing. “You blame this place for your evil thoughts, but this place blames you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The stranger scratches himself and swishes around the paper bag, a bag that smells suspiciously like wine – and not the good kind. He drinks more of the paper bag. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” he says.

  “Give me some of your paper bag.”

  “Get your own,” he answers.

  “I will, tomorrow, when I leave, but right now, I need some of yours.”

  The old man howls with laughter. He remains sitting on the other side of freedom, a dark blob.

  “Guards!” I yell. “Hey, there’s a bum here, and he won’t give me any of his paper…”

  And I awake. Immediately look beyond the end of my cot, but there’s no old man behind the bars.

  A dream, I think, and smile, but not because of the dream, but because it means I was asleep. But then the fact that I’m thinking this means I’m awake, and because it’s still dark, the smile washes away.

  “Damn it,” I mumble, wanting just to wake when the sun does, but it seems I’m destined to wake every five minutes.

  It certainly was a strange dream. I sniff the air. I smell old, sweat-stained towels and a smell all too similar to the time I peed my cot.

  It’s the smell of the old man, but he’s not there, just an empty space.

  I lie back, close my eyes and think about the old man’s voice. So familiar; not unlike my father’s deep growl. His voice used to scare me when I was young – he used to scare me. He opened his veins when I was eleven and what splashed out looked more like red wine than blood. He was barely forty when he died, but to my young eyes, he seemed ancient. Apparently I look a lot like my father – same narrow eyes, full lips and dark wavy hair – but I don’t see the resemblance.

  I lie with my hands over my heart, eyes shut to the darkness, and try and sleep, but sleep is like water flowing down a stream – there, but not there. I’m unable to grasp it and flinging my eyes open I heave a heavy sigh and sit up.

  This is the ultimate punishment. Somehow the warden has struck a deal with the devil and has made the night twice as long as usual. The beast! I just want the morning to caress the night, even a hint would be a blessing, but no, the night is a leaden thing, unmoving, stubborn, and doesn’t appear to be leaving anytime soon.

  I fear looking at the clock, for what terrors it has to show me, so, staying on my cot, I turn and look at the wall, the wall that has been a constant friend throughout my stay. I reach out and finger the multitude of grooves, nicks, wedges – all so familiar, their mystery help keeping me sane. What was the reason behind this groove? Who chiseled this nick? Was the previous occupant crying, laughing, or dying when he carved this wedge? Long days and even longer nights I’ve laid here dreaming of the past, imagining the men who have come before me: their history, their deeds, their personality. I’ve had conversations with these make believe characters; sometimes it seems they’re more real than any of the men locked in here with me. More real than anyone I used to know on the outside. I will be sad to see them go, but alas, time has come to say goodbye (if time hasn’t decided to stand still).

  I turn from the wall and wonder again if I should gaze out at the circle of life and see if it means me harm or kindness.

  Or is that too cruel a game?

  Yes, I decide, and again close my eyes and attempt to fade into sleep. Because surely, if I can achieve that, the next time I wake, it shall be morning and I shall be free at last.

  Sleep comes, dreams come. I dream of an unborn baby, curled inside its mother, only the womb consists of thick heavy bars and instead of an umbilical cord, there’s a long needle which feeds blood and a milky substance and clear, salty water. The baby is sleeping, smiling, sucking its thumb and as I watch, the baby grows. It grows into a newborn, then a toddler, but it doesn’t stop there. I scream at the toddler to wake up, to break the bars down and leave the womb – it’s getting much too big for the womb – but it doesn’t heed my calls. It continues to grow, into a five-year-old, then ten, and I can see the womb stretching, bloating, and I scream, I cry, and yet the kid seems oblivious to the situation. It continues to suck its thumb and receive the blood and milk concoction. It grows more; teenager, young adult. The bars split. Then I hear the snapping of flesh and muscle, and when it reaches its thirties, it opens its eyes, turns, stares at me, smiles, and then there’s a wild explosion of guts and tissue and blood. I wake, screaming, sweating, heart thumping at a rapid rate. I cease screaming when I realise it was a dream, but my scream continues to echo long after I have stopped.

  It’s still dark inside my room, and I’m convinced the night will never end, that something has gone wrong with the world. Maybe the night is stuck, unable to move forward for day to take its place. Or maybe God has fallen asleep at the wheel; or worse, died during the night.

  I kick my legs onto the floor and walk the three paces to the bars. I have to look, need to look. I close my eyes, figure it has to be at least three. Three I could handle, only three hours then until, "Rise and shine, knuckleheads", and I could handle that, yes, that would be fine.

  My eyes flutter
open and, swallowing my fear, I gaze up at the pearly white clock and I feel my heart split in two. I shake my head. “No, no, it can’t be. It can’t be!”

  The clock is teasing me, it’s toying with me; it has to be, because surely more than five minutes has passed since I last cast my red, bleary eyes upon its face. Its long hand has to have shifted more than five tiny minutes. I blink, thinking I have read it wrong, the shadows are misguiding my eyes, because I know it has to be five past three, not five past one, no, not that.

  I look again, and now it’s four past. I scream. “Guards! Guards! The clock is broken! The clock is broken! Fix it, you bastards!”

  I listen, nobody calls back. It’s dead quiet tonight.

  “The clock’s not broken, you are.”

  I flip around, my back straddling the bars and stare at the old man, standing like a dark, stinking statue near my cot. “How did you…?” I breathe, my lips forming a grimace. “How did you get in here?”

  He tips more of the paper bag down his gullet. His smell is a solid mass of rottenness, watering my eyes and churning my gut. “You think you’re ready to leave?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Really?”

  I nod.

  “You think this place is ready to let you go?”

  “I…” I don’t know, I hadn’t given it much thought, but I don’t say this. “It’s just a place.”

  “Just a place,” the old man grumbles. “And this is just a paper bag.” He laughs, and it sends a cold wave of ice crawling up my back.

  “I don’t…”

  “Understand? Yes you do.”

  “I just want to wake up and see the sun rising. I just want to leave this place. I deserve that much.”

  “You want to wake?”

  “Yes. But I’m not asleep. I need to sleep first.”

  The old man grins, even though I can’t see him, I just know he is, I can feel his sly smile, and suddenly I’m lying back on my cot. I sit up and look around. I’m all alone, and darkness is like a claw that has gripped my room and will not let go.

  I feel tears stain my cheeks and I won’t go to the clock and look, I can’t, my sanity won’t allow itself to be punched and kicked anymore.

  Why won’t this night end? I cry inside and I leave my cot and stand by the window, looking up, feeling the hint of a breeze. Through the bars I see stars, then a cloud passes that resembles a dead, naked woman. I stand that way for a long time, thinking how, during the dark times, I would often stand this way and dream that the breeze was the breath of a curvy blonde, or a mysterious brunette; I would smell peach, or vanilla, or strawberry and I would imagine lips pressing down on mine. I would never picture a face, the idea was good enough, and I would be transported from this dungeon into a world full of possibilities, where cars were fast and women were ripe for the picking. My world, a world…

  “That doesn’t exist,” says the old man.

  My reverie breaks and I twirl around and yelp, “I thought you were gone?”

  The old man is now slumped in one corner, paper bag sitting beside him, the sour smell of vomit now a most unwelcome addition to the mélange of putrid vapors.

  “You’re full of shit and you know it,” the old man whose face is still covered by shadows croaks. “You still have the demon in you, you always will. I should know.”

  “No…I…” I stumble, looking to the bars, wondering if they were already open, maybe I’m allowed to leave? But no, the bars are in place, and it’s still night, and why, oh why won’t the morning come already? “Are you my father?” I ask.

  The old man nods. “Let me ask you – what’s waiting for you out there?”

  “Plenty,” I say, the wall cold against my back.

  My father gurgles. “Like?”

  “Well…”

  “You got no wife, no kids, and your mom doesn’t want anything to do with her rapist son.”

  “Fuck you,” I spit, but the spit has no venom.

  “But here, well, here you’ve got everything you need…”

  “I hate it here,” I say, and that’s the truth, I do, I hate the routine, the suffocating boredom. I hate concrete and metal and plastic and numbers and the smell of blood, semen and sweat makes my head hurt and my spine crumple. “I just want the morning to come,” I tell my long-dead dad. “That’s all, I’m just waiting for the sun to shine and then I’ll be out of here.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, then that’s easy.”

  I swallow, taste hope. “What do you mean?”

  The old man grips the bottle wrapped in paper and raises one raggedy arm. He releases his fingers and the bottle falls. With a sound like a baby’s scream, the bottle smashes to the cold floor, spreading red wine and glass.

  I wait for a guard to come, but it doesn’t happen.

  I turn to my dear father; of whom my memory consists of nothing more than the smell of alcohol and the size and power of his fist.

  That, and the time I found him in the den one evening, slumped in his chair, something like red wine oozing from his wrists, staining the carpet below.

  “There’s your way out,” my dad says, nodding his shadowy head to the floor.

  I frown down at the small pond of wine and glass. “There’s nothing there.”

  “I know, but you won’t listen. Still, if you want the morning to come, look harder.”

  Yes, I want the morning to come, I think I tell him. That means I’m free, I can leave this construct of torture and step out into the free world.

  But the night…

  “Is there for the taking, if you want it. If you really want this pain to be over, then all you have to do is climb through the hole, jump down into the river, and float away.”

  I swallow. Taste blood. “I see no hole.”

  “Yes you do. It’s there. It’s always been there. People don’t realize that anything is there for the taking if they look hard enough. Take this paper bag. I looked, and I found it. Now I’ll always have it, just like you’ll always have this place.”

  “But I’m leaving this place.”

  “As you wish.”

  And then I see the hole. Just big enough for me to slip through, it’s like the spilled wine was acid and ate right through the concrete. “Where does it lead?” I ask.

  “Hop down and find out.”

  I get down on my knees. I hear the glass crunch, feel pricks on my knees and hands, but they don’t affect me. I peer down into the hole. I see a river rushing by not five feet from my face. A deep red river, with streaks of creamy white, like strands of milk have been poured into a tub of ketchup. It smells sickly sweet, like wine.

  “Just hop down into the river, float away and soon it’ll be morning and you’ll…”

  “Be free,” I finish. I wonder how long this river has been flowing; wonder if any of the other prisoners have ever swam its red tide to freedom.

  “Go on,” my father urges. “You can do it. It’s your destiny. If you don’t, the night will never end.”

  I nod. Go to say goodbye and thanks to my dad, but when I turn around he’s no longer sitting there.

  But his smell still fills my head as I sit on the edge of the hole, then lower myself down.

  I hold onto the edge of the hole until my arms are fully extended and I’m knee-deep in the river. I take one last look up at the small section of my world I can see, my world for the past fifteen years, and then let go.

  I drop into the river, get a mouthful of saltiness as my heads dunks under and when I surface I see pipes flashing by overhead.

  At first I’m scared. The river is flowing fast and I don’t know where it’s taking me. The water is warm, not cold and refreshing like I expected, and sticky.

  The river snakes through the dim steel and concrete corridor.

  Soon the surroundings get lighter. I begin to relax. I kick up my legs and lie on my back, letting the rushing river take me away.

  The shade of night lifts and sunlight, so bright it
hurts, is unveiled and finally the night is over and I smile. I cup some of the river in my hands and then tip my hands toward my face. Red runs down my arms like mini rivers and I laugh.

  I wonder – will the guards see the hole when they come into my cell to tell me it’s time to rise and shine, knuckleheads? Or will it have closed over, leaving only the broken glass and spilled wine?

  One thing’s for sure – I know that come morning, the guards will open my world and stand there looking at the empty cell and, scratching their heads wondering where the bottle of wine came from, say, “Why on earth would he escape? He was free to go today.”

  They won’t know the real reason; that I had to, or else the night would never end.

  And with a shake of their heads, they will turn and leave, the smell of piss and wine drifting in the air, leaving me in peace, leaving me to enjoy the morning light.

  NOTES:

  This story was born out of one night’s frustration at being unable to sleep. I usually don’t have much trouble getting to sleep, but on that particular night, I simply lay in bed, staring at the darkness, unable to fall asleep. As you’d expect, my mind started wandering, and I started thinking what if I could never get to sleep, and what if, because of that, time stood still and the night refused to end? What if sleep was the signal for time to continue clicking away and for night to eventually end and for morning to come, and since I couldn’t sleep, the world would remain on pause indefinitely (these are the strange things us writers think about whilst battling insomnia)?

  Thankfully I did fall asleep, the world continued turning, and the next morning I sat down and started writing a story dealing with a person’s desperation at wanting night to end and morning to come. ‘Come Morning’ is essentially a poem written in prose form (I think of it as a hybrid, a proem, if you like), and although I don’t write many poems, this style seemed to suit the story.

  JUNKIES