by Justin Wayne
***
Outsider spent the night resting and meditating on what he would soon have to do. Breaking out of prison wasn’t something entirely new to him, but breaking into one was; not to mention bringing someone else out with him. Within his waking dreams he imagined the prison and tried to remember what the inside of it looked like. He had only been in its confines for a single night before escaping through his window, but he had spent the majority of those hours incarcerated trying to memorize its layout.
Three floors, maximum security on top, intermediate in the middle, and lowest at the bottom; with those awaiting execution at the highest. Guards posted at every landing on the stairs and two patrol each hallway. The kitchens are in the lowest level underground with a cellar which has a single entrance internal to the building only.
He thought over what Blaine had told him before, with Thom having twenty four hours to live and paced the empty room. He had found an abandoned building that had mostly burned away in a fire some time ago but still had a room here and there intact. So far no one had come around but he remained quiet just in case, always cautious. He leaned forward and set his head against the wall.
He’ll be on the top floor then, a small cell with a single barred window facing a fifty foot drop to the middle of the city. The surrounding buildings are at least twice that distance away to ensure no one can make a jump and they constructed a wall just in case.
He did an about face and slid down the wall to sit. As he did he stared through the upper half of the far wall which was missing. Through it he could see a large building across the street with a single lit window facing him and a clothesline swaying in the wind from it.
A sudden thought grew in his mind. He rummaged through his pack and removed the recurve bow pieces. Stringing it together securely, he tied a length of rope around an arrow and fired it across the room experimentally. The arrow flew a short distance with a twang then dropped and hit the floor.
Rope’s too heavy, he told himself and reeled it back in. Using his trusty knife he split the rope lengthwise and carefully separated the strands that intertwined to make the thick rope. Tearing a length free, about a third of the size of the total, he tied it about the nock of the arrow, drew, and let fly.
The arrow soared across the street then stuck in the wooden wall near the window with a muted thunk and held fast. Excited, Outsider dropped the bow, tied the rope off to the knife he had stuck between the floorboards, and gripped the rope. Gingerly, he stepped off the floor and wrapped his legs around the rope until he was hanging upside down from it as if he was crawling.
“Here goes nothing.” he whispered and began making his way across. The rope swayed in the breeze and he held on tighter, gripping the rope tightly with his gloves and continued sliding himself across. He looked down and saw the ground two flights below him; a stone pathway and devoid of life. With a sigh and groan he pressed on until he was halfway across, taking note of that fact just as the rope snapped between him and the arrow.
He held on as the rope swung free, back toward the abandoned building, and fought the urge to scream as the wind rushed past him and roared in his ears. His head narrowly missed the street by an inch and brushed his hair. A sickening lurch and bout of vertigo later, he was thrown through a charred and decrepit wall of the burned building with a loud smash.
Lying there stunned amid the debris and small cloud of smoke, he coughed and rolled over to relieve the pain in his back. “Well that was unpleasant.”
