New Alcatraz: Dark Time

by Pies, Grant

  From the first day they wed, the man taunted her. He dictated to her what she was to do, and what she was not to do. If she did not act how he wanted, or did not act fast enough, he beat her. He pushed her down, and trampled her ribs. He threw objects at her, pulled her hair, and spit in her face. By this time, it was too late. She was trapped inside his field of influence; this was all she had.

  Quickly the woman grew even meeker than she was before. She spoke little and smiled even less. The man barked orders, and when he felt the urge he would force himself on her. Some days he would strip her naked and keep her in the bedroom all day. He used her for all sorts of sexual perversions. He beat her as he screwed her; sometimes several times in the day.

  The man’s dark cancer infected her. His cancer removed what little personality was left in her. It overtook the life inside of her and replaced it with the same darkness that was inside the man. Years after they were wed, the woman became pregnant with a child. It was not the first child she carried, but it was the first that she delivered. During the pregnancy, the man did not touch her. He did not speak to her, and he barely looked at her. It was as if the man had already decided he hated what was inside of her.

  The woman gave birth to a boy. Once the child was born, the man went back to tormenting the woman, and soon enough tormented the boy. At first, it was subtle. He laughed at the boy. He ignored the boy when he spoke. He scolded and rebuked the boy daily. Once the boy was old enough to walk to school himself, the man beat him regularly. The man removed all furniture from the boy’s room, except for a blanket. The man had infected the woman, and now he sought to infect the boy. He sought to spread his cancerous infection to as many people as possible.

  The family lived in a government apartment building. The walls and floor were all solid gray concrete. The windows were barred. Outside the building was an old playground that had been unattended. Weeds and tall grass grew up around the playground equipment, and vines wrapped around the seesaws. The chains of the swings were broken and dangled in the wind. The only piece of equipment that had not succumbed to the elements was the monkey bars. They stood tall even over the weeds and grass.

  The boy climbed these bars and sat atop them. He spent hours perched there; looking up. Sometimes he stayed there long into the night, waiting until his father went to sleep before climbing down and going home.

  One night, while avoiding his father, the boy noticed a girl the same age as him. She chased fireflies in the overgrown playground, and he watched her for some time. She clumsily skipped and jumped toward the glowing bugs as they flickered in front of her. The fireflies danced and glowed in the hazy night sky. She never actually caught one of the insects, but she didn’t seem to mind. Almost instinctually, without thinking, the boy blurted out “Use an old bread bag to catch them. It is easier than using your hands.”

  The girl turned to face the boy. She smiled an awkward smile and raised her hand in a static wave hello. “Why are you out here?” she asked. The boy shrugged and avoided the question. The girl approached the monkey bars and climbed up to the boy. “It’s only the male fireflies that glow,” she said. “They are trying to attract a female.”

  The boy didn’t know many girls from school, and he didn’t know how to act around them. They both unsuccessfully tried to catch fireflies that night. The boy stayed out well beyond the time he usually did when trying to avoid his father. It was well beyond their curfews when they eventually decided to part.

  “My name is Loralie,” the girl said. The boy smiled an even more awkward smile than the one Loralie had previously.

  “Red. My name is Red. Nice to meet you,” he said.

  From then on, every evening that Red spent on the monkey bars, Loralie visited him. She lived in the building, one floor above Red. Whatever was inside of her was the opposite force that dwelled inside of his father. Loralie talked about things that Red had never thought about. She said how, when she was older, she wanted to explore the depths of the oceans. She wanted to visit the islands south of Georgia before they disappeared. She wanted to travel north to see the snowcapped mountains. She said these things with an air of confidence, almost as if she had seen the future and was simply reciting what she had seen herself doing. As if nothing could prevent her from doing them; as if there was a version of her that had already done those things.

  Even in the plain dilapidated building they lived in, Loralie found everything intriguing and interesting. She pictured mountain ranges in the swirling mirages caused by the afternoon heat. And with the blink of an eye she saw through the façade and saw the drifting plains of reality ahead of her. She found both, reality and mirage, equally interesting.

  Once Red and Loralie met, they were never short on time to spend together. Both her parents and Red’s parents were inattentive to say the least. Parenting was a community effort where they lived. Doors were left open, and children floated from one apartment to the next. So it wasn’t hard for Red and Loralie to sneak around at night. Each night they walked around the block repeatedly for hours. They held hands and walked as they stared up at the night sky. Since Red met Loralie, he almost forgot about his father and how he had infected his lifeless mother.

  But he was quickly reminded of his family life when he returned home late at night. On a good night, Red’s father was passed out on the couch. On a bad night his mother sat on the couch, knees held tight against her chest, with her eyes wide and alert. When Red came home and his mother was still up, he would say nothing to her. He knew her range of emotions had been beaten down to only a few; fear, apprehension, and hopelessness. And an anger that was buried so deep it would never make its way to the surface. There was nothing Red could say to his mom to pull her out of where she was. So he left her there, without a word, on the couch waiting for the sun to come up. Red was resigned to his family life and longed for the day to leave it behind.

  One day, when Red and Loralie were headed to the overgrown playground after school, Red’s father, in a rare instance, asked Red to go to the corner store. His father gave him money for basic groceries and told Red that Loralie could wait in their apartment for him to return. His father placed a firm hand on the top of Loralie’s head. Red’s father wore a smile that didn’t suit him and that Red had never seen before. He didn’t like the idea of Loralie spending time in his apartment, much less without him. But Red had no choice, and he left to go to the store. He glanced back behind him and saw his father leading Loralie into the apartment with his hand placed on her back.

  Red returned with the supplies and found his father in the apartment in his usual chair. Red dropped the bags on the kitchen table, and his father didn’t move or even glance at the supplies he claimed he needed. Loralie sat on the floor and stared through the television; Red could tell she was not taking in a single thing. The rest of the day, Loralie said very little, her eyes shifted from side to side, and she fidgeted with her hands.

  In the weeks and months that followed, Red’s father sent Red to the store to pick up supplies regularly. He sent him to get milk and bread, or apples and toilet paper; tobacco papers and canned pasta. Every time Red was told to go when he was spending time with Loralie. Red’s father placed his hand on Loralie and forced that awkward smile. Red always returned to find Loralie more clouded and despondent. Upon his return, Red looked into Loralie’s eyes. They were round as bottle caps, but dim as bar lights.

  The trips to the store went on for years. Loralie became angrier and distant. She threw herself at the other boys in school as she got older. The more vulgar the man, the more she was attracted to him. Red imagined this is what his mom was like as a teenager. The two naturally drifted apart, but not completely. One night, Red found Loralie on the roof of their apartment building. She lay on the roof and stared at the same stars they both stared at years before; now they were just a bit more dead. The wind rustled through the tall grass that grew up even taller around the monkey bars below them. The fireflies blinked and flickered in the
distance, attracting their mates.

  “I was going to visit the mountains up north one day,” she said. “I was going to dip my feet in the murky sands off the coast of Georgia.” She spoke as if she once again saw her future, but this time it had changed. Something came along and infected her future to the point that it didn’t exist anymore. She sat up and looked at Red. Tears dripped down her face and streaked through her makeup. Her eyes were like two small black holes. Her face was blank, like Red’s mother’s face.

  Loralie stood and walked robotically to the edge of the roof. Red knew what was to come, but he also knew that he could do nothing to stop it. Loralie was the same as his mother, cradling herself on the couch late at night. They were both beyond hope. Loralie turned to Red.

  “Don’t waste your life here. There is only so much time in our lives, and you can’t steal more of it, Red.” She stepped up to the edge of the roof and said, “Time is too fine a thief to be caught, and trying only steals you away from this life.” Loralie looked away, stepped over the edge, and fell. Red flinched but didn’t let out a sound. A loud noise of broken metal rang out over the silence of the night. He stepped up to the edge and looked down. Her body was draped lifelessly over the old monkey bars where they first met, but no more lifeless than she was only moments before.

  CHAPTER 27

  2050

  SANTA FE, NM

  Red left the night Loralie died. He hitchhiked to the next city over. By then he was old enough to at least get a part time job, working with a car mechanic. His new boss taught him most of what he knew about machinery. For years, he slept in the shop and eventually saved up enough money to get a shared efficiency in another government building. Red enjoyed his freedom, learning a trade, and finding something he was good at. But he could not stop the empty black hole that expanded inside of him. It was the black hole that grew inside of his dad, then inside of his mother, and then inside of Loralie. Even though he was free from his father’s berating comments and physical abuse, he was not free from the thought of his mother trapped in the apartment with him. Red was not free from the thought that his father would find another young girl, and infect her with his darkness.

  Red’s thoughts consumed him and ate at him from the inside out, manifesting themselves in the same darkness that inhabited his father. The inside of his soul was hollowed out, and Red retracted from the world. He spoke to no one, and, at night, he dreamt of Loralie’s body dangling from the monkey bars. Bones protruded from her skin; ribs cracked out of her chest. Red thought about his father’s life and saw his own future. For the first time Red thought about his father and how he might first have been infected with this darkness. Had his father ever been normal? Did Red simply witness his father in the middle of this endless cycle? Did his father start out as spirited as Loralie, only to be used up and drained by another person, like a butterfly in reverse? From a vibrant colorful being, to a brittle cocoon, and finally to a dark and slimy creature. Red struggled to find a way to break this cycle until he thought of only one solution.

  Years after Loralie’s death, he borrowed his boss’ car, and drove back to his old home. Red arrived at his old building late at night, and walked up the cement stairs to his old apartment. He pushed the door open slowly. It creaked and revealed a dark room. The television was left on, and the lights from the screen flickered around the entire room. Clothes were strewn on the floor. Empty beer cans were scattered around. Not much had changed since the night Loralie died.

  He walked slowly to the bedroom; the door was open, and his father and mother were both in bed. His father was on his back facing the ceiling, and his mother curled in a ball with her back facing his father. Red stood over his father and felt the darkness boil up inside of him. He visualized a dark fluid flowing through his veins and pumping out of his heart, pulsing through his body and mixing in dark black swirls inside of him.

  The darkness stretched all the way down his arms and into his fingertips until Red reached out and placed his hand over his father’s mouth. His father’s eyes jolted open, and his arms instinctively flailed through the air, but Red straddled his father driving his knee into his father’s sternum. Red felt his dad’s rib cage crack under the pressure, and Red thought of Loralie’s ribs cracking inside her body when she landed on the monkey bars.

  With one hand over his father’s mouth, Red wrapped his other hand over his father’s throat. He squeezed gradually tighter and tighter. His father’s trachea cracked and folded like a thin paper Chinese lantern. His father grabbed at Red’s shirt and tried to reach Red’s face, but could not. Red felt his father’s pulse through the veins in his neck. His heart pumped rapidly, like a drum beat steadily growing faster and faster. Red envisioned the darkness leaving him and flowing back into his father’s pounding heart. Red looked into his father’s bulging eyes. They were neither surprised nor angry. Red’s hand left the crushed throat and slid up his father’s face.

  He drove his knee further into his father’s chest, imagining his knee pushing through his ribs and lungs, and then pushing straight through his back. He removed his other hand from his father’s mouth. His mouth hung wide open and his tongue thrashed back and forth. Red’s father could only let out a shallow gasp. With both of Red’s hands free, he wrapped his spindly fingers around the back of his father’s skull. He dug his fingers into his head. His thumbs hovered over his father’s face. Red took one last look at his father’s dark eyes. The source of this darkness that consumed everyone he knew.

  Red drove his thumbs deep into his father’s eye sockets. The holes were wet, like sticking your thumbs into tubes of room temperature bread pudding. The punctured eyes let out a metallic stench, and blood ran out of the two holes, trickling down his father’s face. Red pushed and pushed, until he felt his thumbs reach the back of his father’s skull. He took the darkness that infected Loralie, and in turn the darkness that infected him, and he pushed it back into his father. He felt the heavy energy leave his arms and hands.

  Red didn’t know how long he stood there, with his knee in his father’s chest and his thumbs jammed into his father’s eye sockets; it felt like hours. He finally lifted his knee off of his father’s body, looked over, and his mother stared at Red. She had seen the entire event. She didn’t cry or scream, and she didn’t try to stop Red. Her eyes had the same blank look as his father, but there was a slight smile peeking through her lips.

  Red pulled his thumbs out of his dead father’s eyes. There was a suction sound as the last inch of his thumb came out of the bloody holes. Without saying anything to his mother, he flung his father’s body over his shoulder, and walked out of the apartment. He strained and struggled as he marched up the stairs in his old apartment building. After two more flights of stairs, he reached the roof, where years ago he found Loralie. He walked to the edge of the roof, and placed his father’s body on the ledge. Fog wafted over the overgrown playground. Fireflies flickered and blinked in the distance. Red exhaled and with the heel of his foot he pushed his father’s body off the roof, and down onto the same bent and broken monkey bars where Loralie fell years before.

  It wasn’t long before the police tracked Red down. He went willingly and didn’t deny what he did. Red’s trial was swift; his sentence harsh. Red was given life without the chance of parole. When he was first incarcerated, temporal prison didn’t exist. He was sent to the Administrative Maximum Unit prison, ADX, in Colorado. After Alcatraz, and before New Alcatraz, ADX was the harshest prison in North America. Red was prohibited from interacting with any other humans. The prisoners were let out of their cells for only nine hours a week. After years in ADX, the North American government created the future penal colony of New Alcatraz.

  Prisons were so overpopulated that the state governments were permitted to send a portion of their prisoners to New Alcatraz. Colorado created a lottery system. All prisoners who were sentenced to life in prison without a chance to get out early were put into the pool of potential transferees. Red “
won” the lottery, along with thousands of others. Over the next several years, these prisoners were shipped into the future. Red eagerly awaited his departure.

  UNIT 5987D V.

  FEDERATED NORTH AMERICA

  CASE NO. 2070FN99823

  (The following ensued at the bench)

  Federated Prosecutor Klipton: Your honor the answer to the question can only lead to testimony that is hearsay. In addition, the question is self-serving to the Defendant, in that the victim of the crime is not here to rebut or defend himself.

  Court: Counselor do you have a response?

  Counselor Powell: Your honor I would suggest that the jury can judge my client’s credibility and determine whether his testimony is only self-serving.

  Court: I agree that the question can only lead to hearsay, so I will sustain your objection.

  Counselor Powell: Your honor, would you permit me to ask if it was Whitman’s idea to begin human experiments, as long as I do not ask any follow up?

  Court: Counselor Klipton, do you have an objection to that line of questioning?

  Federated Prosecutor Klipton: I do not agree with the question seeing as he just asked in open court if Pierson was the one who suggested the human experiments. I believe that the question will have the same implications that Powell was seeking to make with his original question.

  Counselor Powell: However, there is no legal basis to object to a question such as that. Whitman has direct knowledge to answer that question and it raises no hearsay issues.

  Court: Okay. You can ask if the Defendant was the one to initially come up with the idea of testing on humans.

  Counselor Powell: Thank you your honor.

  (The following ensued in open court)