Free Beast

by Suzanne Marine

  He pauses, shifts. “Don't worry, I'll be out soon. I'm sure of it, my family will take care of it. I'll call a lawyer.” He turns away towards the wall, refuses to look at me. It is a goodbye, his way of steeling himself for the evil that will come. Of turning out the soft in him and making it end to the finite.

  I go to him, hold him tight, whisper in his ear that I will always love him, he should remember that. I will never forget him. My tears wet his neck, slide down the ridged sinew towards his heart.

  The guard pulls me away and out the door.

  He turns towards me one last time, eyes brimming with wet, fear overcasting his face, his palm open on the steel table, facing up like a martyr. It's a naked face, no mask, ashen and drained.

  The door slams shut.

  GANGLIA THE GORE

  I know the essence of the hunted and trapped. It stains me, clouds every thought through a glaucomic prism. Milky and mired, marbled with dead-blue ink.

  I hurry to devise a plan after I went back the next day and learned Jamie was moved to the unknown. They wouldn't say or didn't know. But I have no plan really. Just to take what I have and walk towards the countryside. Find a way to fall off the face of the earth, away from government, from people, the flinty confines of society. A sort of dare with a death wish. A sort of metamorphosis from human into creature. This is my way of transcending the tired and treacherous. Into a songbird.

  A man in his early thirties with blonde, straight hair and intelligent, probing eyes wades into a pristine, blue pool. He swims gracefully to the deep end, gliding just under the surface silently, his white skin luminescent with a hint of pale blue. There is only the sound of water undulating past him. His sight is fixated on the edge, to the side. He looks there and smiles warmly. I feel the immense love radiate off him. It swells with kindness, openness. A vulnerability and a fulsomeness, as if whoever he smiles at completes him forever and ever. As if he could give all his love to this person for the rest of time. I think he must be smiling at his daughter, that only a daughter could unlock such sensitivity and beloved devotion, but when I look, it is his son. A curly haired boy, chubby, around three years old who smiles and points to the sparkling water, oblivious to the everything his father gives. I'm half asleep and groggy, waking slowly, when I hear the child's laugh fading into evanescence and then... My boy, my son. My boy. His voice strangled and anguished, overflowing with a love that can no longer be passed on.

  My wet hair steams, my core is still hot from the shower as I step into the darkened room, my sightline blurry from crying. It is a lonesome night. And I know instantly something is amiss. The room's air has transposed, as if molecules have rearranged to accommodate a presence, a spoken word whispered right before I entered. The aura hits me odd off-kilter, skims and brushes past my psyche. For a few seconds, I question if I'm paranoid or real.

  And finally, one slinks out of the shadows, a second one too, both hulking and large, dressed in black military garb. A man's firm, mechanical hand takes me by the arm, maneuvers me forward like a rag doll.

  “Come with us. You're under arrest for treason.”

  “Wait, I need to get my things.”

  “No, as you are.”

  As I am. Barefoot, braless, in my pajama pants and thin t-shirt. In this picture, as a criminal. In this life, a prisoner of circumstance.

  They put a thick, black hood over me so I can't see. The cold, pricks of jagged rocks dig into my feet as we walk the asphalt street. The ice-cold ground is absent any softness or give. I'm thrown into a hard, steel, cavernous van, my ankles chained to the bottom, my thuds echoing as bruises develop. My voice goes no farther than this, it only reverberates here, vacuum sealed into nowhere so no one can know my story. I imagine Jamie going through this same process and feel an odd sort of comfort with my fear knowing that I walk in his steps. It brings me closer to him, our communion. The cold in the steel permeates my back, freezes me bit by bit, soaking the skin, spine, ribs, freezing and oozing towards the heart. I close my eyes, I will myself to float above and away into mystery...

  And I see him. He turns to me in a wooden tunnel, face hidden in shadow, a torch in the far back with looming figures that watch his every move. I see a damaged, crooked smile, something I've never seen on him before. A hand up to stop, go no further.

  I tell him through thoughts, I miss you. I will follow you. Into the guts and ganglia, the gore. My love is a witness.

  The ride glides smooth. No words are spoken. I don't question. I don't know how to fight, how to stand or fall. I just know how to be within myself so I train my thoughts on the old, majestic trees of my childhood. The tall ones that are hundreds of years old with arms spanning in all directions, the ones that have seen and heard every story known to human-kind under its canopy of secrets. I levitate from the ground, the muddy scent of wet, spongey, green moss soaking every dry crevice within me. I am restored. I rise slowly, deliberately. This is what I can control. Through the humid air, its vulnerary embrace all around me. To the first world of webbed bark, those forks in the roads of branches, all the choices we are forced to make. A sweet fragrance of humectant dances on me as I reach the second range where the small hands of leaves brush my skin and filter the spots of sunlight that reach me. I see the immortal sky in peeks, that portal, the way out. And I think of the many others who have suffered through the ages and looked up towards the blue seeking the same deliverance. Perhaps the slaves Dr. M spoke of. Perhaps the white rose resistance group. Anyone asking god and universe for liberation, for why, why, why. For peace with what is. Rock hard support through the wooden tunnel. I'm just at the tree's edge now, the leaves fall behind, trail their tips against me one last time and the sweet aroma of tree is lost into the diffuse breeze of clarity. Up here. The clear, bluebird sky opens wide ahead as I ascend even higher. I look below and see the world's divides, its lines of demarcation and ownership for this lifetime. A landscape cut and scarred. And out there, the wild and virgin, rough and tumble, not yet desecrated.

  I want to tell you...

  My beloved. Love frees you.

  I will see how strong I really am. They can control me, my body, but they can never have my soul. That is all mine. And it will endure into time, beyond the reach of anything human-made.

  I must.

  Steel doors slam and open. I hear the echoes of other steel doors in this building. How many others like me are here? Or am I one of a few. I imagine it to be an Escher drawing of mazes and trap doors, just like that bureaucrat's mind. Each prisoner and keeper trapped in their own world, not able to see that the whole complex imprisons them all. Keepers think they are free, they don't see the shackles that bind them. The lack of free speech, free choice. The dearth of truth. And political prisoners are mentally free, but not physically. The butterflies in their heart and mouth cannot be loosed.

  We walk past a shaft or hallway of some sort; a breeze flutters my pants as we pass. And I hear a shout and whimper from a grown man. He's muffled, as if from a cell in the next room, through cotton padded walls and dead packed ears and my dense hood.

  We enter a room with stale air. I'm sure I'm the first person to breath it in for some time. I'm pushed into a cold, steel chair. My hands are still tied behind me and my feet are stiff arthritic from the freezing cement or stone floor.

  I hear the steel door creak open. This person's steps sound clipped, narrower than a man's. They move a chair. They lean on the table because it pushes towards me a bit.

  “I never thought it would be you.” Madlon.

  Of course. I am frightened, but also oddly glad to hear her. She's someone familiar. A link to the past, and a dotted line to a future that unfolds now.

  “How did you know?”

  “We ran your name through a database of government employees.” Yes, I know now. They found my full name when I signed in to see Jamie, when I showed them my ID. She only knew my first name before that, a common name in our country. It was my own undoing. I didn't think o
f it. How naïve I was. They must've kept him at the jail as bait to see who would visit.

  “Where are Jamie and Jimmie.”

  No answer.

  “How could you do that? Do you have a heart?” My voice small, earnest and searching.

  No answer.

  “The truth is the truth. Does that matter to you?”

  No answer.

  “You betray the trust we all had.” I'm trying to crack her heart, if she has one. I can't get a read on her, how she feels, how I can try to turn her and create a caveat in her conscience. There's no vulnerability there, only an autistic, enclosed, efficient emotionality. Like a box that folds in on itself.

  “I want to be assigned a lawyer. That's my right.”

  “It doesn't work like that here.” Cold.

  Silence.

  “You're in neverland. Limbo land. You'll never talk to anyone from out there.” Calm, stern and official. No hint of anger or kindness, no fire or still water.

  It hits me hard. Into silence. Am I to spend the rest of my life here? How wretched will it be? Would they torture a female? Will I be put into forced, hard labor? Will I die? Would old friends mourn me? How would anyone know. I'm relieved she can't see my face.

  The chair scrapes the floor, the door opens and she walks out. Her footsteps clicking and drumming into a hole of endless dimensions.

  I'm left alone with my fear and imagination. I think of other political prisoners, what happened to them. We never hear from them after they're taken. It's hard to believe this is now my reality. The first stage of mourning is disbelief. Then anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

  It dawns on me that I'm on the other side, the underside of the world. Maybe the depths of hell, definitely the shadow side of us. Above we are busy with life, full of patriotism and pride. Above we are the good face shown to the world. And here, below, we are the turmoil on the inside, behind the mask. The violence we use to keep the engine going, the suppressed voice within each of us. We are the ego keeping the soul in check so it can expand only so much, purity blanketed with depths of soot.

  I am strangely nervous yet strong. If someone had told me this would happen, I think I would be anxious and frightened beyond adrenaline. That I would leap out of myself and go mad. I don't mean strong in the sense of the bold and unbendable, strenuous strategy and fearsome language. Anger that initially fuels strength, but eventually burns you out. But strong in the sense of acceptance and transcendence. Strong in who I am, what I believe. The knowing that I am anguished here, but not there...

  The door opens. Someone pulls me up and we walk for what seems like miles. Everything echoes in this building, making it seem like a cathedral, inhabited by mysticism and unseen forces. Steel doors open and close, locks turn and click. Men speak in short, incoherent spurts, their voices overwhelmed by their own echoes, as if in a choral group with varied start times for singing verses. Someone drills something, the growling motor insistent and persistent. Wheels turn and creak, they haven't been oiled in some time. And when they pass over a hump of some kind, steel sheets bounce up then slam down. My feet press on cool, metal grates as we walk through the complex, turning here and there. I don't hear prisoners, which is horrifying.

  The floor changes to cold dirt and earth. The echoes are replaced with the closeness of our steps, as if we were walking through an enclosure. Insulated quiet. I reach out to touch the sides to see what they're made of and my arms are shoved back harshly, the pain reverberating long after. I believe it's wood, unfinished. A rudimentary basement tunnel of sorts.

  We eventually enter what seems to be a different wing. The air is warmer, the floor is a sort of vinyl or plastic that has absorbed some warmth from people and activity. The ceiling may be lower and insulated because sounds don't ping and echo here. The conversations here are amongst males and females, more sculpted and recognizable. They speak of numbers and acronyms I don't understand. I hear silence now and then, no carts or machinery, just padded footsteps.

  We stop and someone whispers something indiscernible to my keeper. I imagine them leaning in. I can't tell the tone, is it tense or calm. We walk some more and my hood is pulled off. My eyes are dizzy and starry as I adjust to the bright, burning lights. We look to be in a high security hospital of sorts. I see male and female nurses, guards with guns, windowed desks, retina scanners, steel doors with massive turnstile locks. One sedated patient strapped to a bed, being transported. In the blur of movement, as we walk forward, I see Dr. M coming out of a room far ahead. I know we see each other but we pretend to not know the other. It is all peripheral in a split-second decision. I don't dare. He passes by. I keep my face blank and unknowing. Stupid. My eyes are flat and small and easily distracted by other sights. He does the same, looking down at his papers as if studying something important. As if I were any other patient being escorted to their room. But the sighting is acute and bewildering, a knife through my facade.

  ALIEN EVER

  A scurry across the floor. A tiny mouse scavenging in the corner. A pitter patter.

  He starts gentle. Timid, almost tender. The glass looms behind him. The camera records our profiles.

  I don't seem to understand what he utters, it is all sound, elongated and sloping, going diagonal on me, swerving off into the unknown. I should be sharper, keen to understand. But it's as if my subconscious fear is awakening, becoming realized, and it is a fuming elixir that distorts my senses. A veil of memory and time, of the past and future melded into one. A smeared collage of everything that has ever passed.

  “Do”

  “You”

  “Understand...”

  I stare. I realize it might be taken to be resistant, uncooperative. But I can't help it. My mask, my face, it betrays me, showing me numbed into disbelief.

  His dark eyes. I remember thinking they were archeology, remnants of clues, knowledge I could never know. And now I know a small thing. Yes, of course, I never knew and I still don't know the enormity, the all-encompassing.

  The dark mole that lured me to a store. Sitting high on his cheekbone. A beacon of my demise in this glaring, surgically bright room. Square tiled and efficient with a drain in the floor just beneath me.

  I begin to sweat, it's very hot here. The heat loosens me, makes me want to slop to the side, spill everything. I suppose a cold room would make one want to tighten up, suck it into your core. But the heat, it makes you sleepy wobbly. Sensual and careless. Care less.

  His words are a rivulet, streaming into drops I hear as staccato. One tap, a second tap. Unconnected. Pinging me.

  “Another”

  “Group”

  “Do”

  “You”

  “Know”

  “You”

  “Can”

  “Help”

  “Yourself”

  “By”

  “Telling”

  His face sweats. A look ripples every so subtly, like waves of water that fan and curve after a tiny stone has dropped. I think I can read its Morse code through my haze. He is afraid he'll be found out. That I will betray him. He's being tested somehow. There's something else... a defiance hidden so well. It is the steely conviction behind the fear, which is behind the intellectual reserve of physician and scientist. And that is behind the mask of arrogance borne of his class and upbringing, which is behind the facade of patriotic duty. We are layers and layers of masks and I wonder if he's ever been to his core. If he even knows of its existence. He leans into his ear. A small snail of a piece rests in the cochlear, dispatching orders to him.

  Our jigsaw, with missing pieces.

  He says what the instrument tells him to say.

  “Do”

  “You”

  “Know”

  “Who”

  “I”

  “Am”

  So, his final mask is that of puppet, mouthpiece. I feel a sadness for him and I. That we are trapped in this claustrophobic, mad dungeon game. Our true selves suffocated and
confiscated. I close my eyes. “No.”

  Another tinge of ripple. Of relief.

  “Where”

  “Is”

  “The”

  “Other”

  “Group”

  Silence. I'm frightened. What is the long range. Is there one. Why do they think I know any of this.

  He reaches out and touches my hand. Covers it, pats it in a fatherly way.

  “What”

  “Do”

  “You”

  “Know”

  “Of Zeus and Venus”

  This wakes me. Shunts me forward into awareness. Where have I heard that... it is somewhere in the black and unforgiven.

  Zeus and Venus. A guide wire to the past. Yes, his children's names. I remember. His eyes of nostalgia. A sign of trust.

  “Nothing.” I murmur.

  “I know... believe me -” Abrupt and shortened, mid-thought and interrupted.

  “Do you know of The Lion's Den?” Believe him. After all that's happened. I'm confused. The words are full of holes, a faint apparition. Here and gone. I'm not sure...

  “No.” I whisper.

  “Do you know of The Honor Group?”

  I shake my head no. He's hiding in the names, the toss-up of words and a past that's centuries gone.

  “Believe me. I know you know.” He's playing with the words, the lingo and tone to plod together a mask of deception. Emphasis on 'believe me'.

  “We know,” he says.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” We are in a tug of war. A round-about cul-de-sac.

  Perhaps he sees no way off.

  He knocks on the table. A moment later the door opens. An underling enters with a silver tray holding a bottle of clear liquid and a needle. She leaves it before me and leaves.