Boris flinched like a child, moved swiftly across the cell and hovered beside me; unexpected, this late in the day.
‘What’s your problem?’ I snarled.
He grimaced a half-smile, his teeth barbed wire. ‘Are you being fucking funny, man? Have you forgotten why we’re in here?’ His skin, so close to mine, stunk; grey and unwashed. ‘Anyway, I’m not talking about…’ He pointed upwards. ‘That. The chair.’
I slunk to the bench. My hands ached; I’d been grabbing the bars harder than I realised. The stone under my butt was cold, but at least I could feel it. For now.
‘Can’t you hear that?’ he said. His forehead cascaded sweat.
‘What?’
‘The rattling, it’s driving me mad.’
I shook my head. ‘All I can hear are bells tolling. And power buzzing. Last thing on my mind are strange noises.’
But he was pale, quivery like a dying lizard. I picked up the spoon and fiddled with the mash potatoes, took a mouthful of beer. Warm, sour; but I wasn’t really tasting it.
A fly landed in the mash. It floundered; I slowly buried it, mixed it into the potato. Swallowed another spoonful.
Boris banged his steel cup along the bars. ‘Guard! Guard!’ he shouted. Eventually the warden materialised from the twilight of the long hall.
‘What?’ he said, his arms crossed, the baton in his huge fist a dull shine.
‘That sound,’ said Boris. ‘Can you hear it? It’s driving me crazy.’
The warden’s eyelids were heavy, soulless. ‘It’s probably a rat. Plenty in here, as you’ve prob’ly noticed.’ He grinned. ‘But anyway, you won’t have to worry about it soon, will yer? Just enjoy your last meal, fellas.’ His khaki trousers, stretched tight across his wobbly arse, receded into the hallway’s shadows.
Boris wiped his palm across his forehead. ‘It’s not a fucking rat,’ he muttered. He screamed at the empty hallway. ‘It’s not a rat!’ The lights were dim, the other cells silent, obscure, a dozen or so holes for the condemned. Even the low gleam in our cell had dulled.
I swallowed some more beef stew, chewed a crust of bread. All tasteless. Boris plonked himself on the opposite bench.
‘I don’t know how you can eat,’ he said. ‘All this food, and beer! Where was it when I needed it, eh? Ah, man.’ He stood up briskly, squeezing his hands. ‘The irony. A feast fit for a fucking king, isn’t it? Sort of meal I’d’ve killed for out there, ha ha, but never got.’ His hooded eyelids switched to solemn. ‘No, I was hoping for more than a good meal when I did what I did. The boss promised I’d be king one day if I did exactly as he told me. Head honcho. And I did: made sure there wasn’t much blood, and that they all would never snitch again, not even the fucker’s kids, god help me.’ Panting, his breath juggling, he wiped his mouth. ‘And what’d I get? Fuck all.’ He paced the cell, stopped. ‘How about you? Is that what you’re in for?’ His voice lowered. ‘Murder?’
As I told him to mind his own business he froze, squeezing his fists to his chest like a little kid. ‘Hear it? Christ, it sounds like…’ His pupils flickered madly behind their hoods, his prison shirt drenched in sweat.
‘Sounds like what?’ I spat a sliver of bone on the concrete floor. ‘It’s just a mouse. Leave it.’
‘It’s more than a mouse…It sounds like…’
I picked up the Bible they’d left on the table, flicked through; it fell open at a grubby thumbed page: But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. I tossed it where I’d spat.
‘Do you think it hurts?’ he asked suddenly.
Slouching back into the bricks I crossed my arms, the stone behind me tomb-cold.
He was shrill now, frothing saliva. ‘You hardly talk!’
‘What d’you wanna talk about?’ I snapped. ‘What’s it matter? I’m not gonna blather on to you or anyone else why I’m here, now. And about to be not here no more. It’s no one’s fucking business but mine.’
‘I know, I know…but that sound…it’s not a mouse, man. It’s a…I think it’s the ghost of the guy that I…Or his kids.’
I glared at him.
‘He said he’d come for me, he meant it, I could tell –’
‘Maybe he already has come for you, matey. You’re about to be –’
‘Don’t say it!’
‘E-L-E-C–’ I began to spell softly. But he towered, fists clenched, the madness in his eyes as wild as what his victims saw. ‘Go on,’ I said, even more softly. ‘Do it.’
He backed off. ‘You’re a cool bastard, aren’t you?’ he muttered.
But I had heard it. Rattling all right, like chains. Or bones. The warden’s keys? No – it was ancient, hollower.
The feeble light flickered once, twice.
‘That’s another one,’ whispered Boris. ‘I just don’t see why they don’t fix the fucking electricity in here.’
‘They want you to know when they’re executing–’
‘Shut your fuckin mouth!’ He rubbed his hands through his thin greasy hair. ‘I just wish they’d tell me when it’s my…turn.’
‘In a rush?’
‘Man oh man you’re cold.’ He yelled for the guard again, then glanced across, his eyes hooded again. ‘I know what you did, you know. I know why you’re here. You are really one scary motherfucker.’
I slowly lifted my head and stared unblinkingly into his pupils – an old knack of mine – and he turned away swiftly. ‘Where the fuck is the priest?’ he muttered.
‘You really think confessing your sins will make a difference now?’
‘I just want – I just hope I can see my mother.’
‘For christ’s sake,’ I snorted, crossed my arms harder. ‘What – you expect to find her in hell?’
‘Don’t you fucking talk about her like that!’ he roared. Finally he was gonna hit me. Ironic that there were still uncrossable lines, this late in the day.
The rattling seemed nearer now, in the brick wall behind me, in the stone ceiling. A scab of rotted plaster hit the floor. We both jumped.
‘Is it coming for me or you?’ he said hoarsely.
‘I dunno know what you’re talking about, matey. But just shut up, okay?’ I wished they’d take him away. Or me. I was ready.
The light flickered again, and again. Day’s end, I assumed; despite no windows in the dank basement it was duskier. Gloomier. Boris lay on his cot, his head wrapped in his arms; I could hear him mumbling to someone, begging or praying. The room grew icier, smaller; the light flickered for the tenth time and I was sure I heard a scream, a thump.
Suddenly the guard was at the cell door, a fat dark lump in the tinny hall light. ‘Right, Malback, it’s your turn.’
Boris stood, opened his mouth, then shook his head, saying nothing.
‘See you in hell,’ I smiled thinly.
Time passed; I found myself dozing. Dozing, knowing the chair upstairs, sucking life from the building, was waiting patiently. I know I was asleep because the child squatted nearby, smiling, his face round and fair, the gash on his forehead seeping red, dripping onto my chest. I tried to tell him I was sorry, but he smiled widely, in a kindly way, and said, Why should it matter? You killed many more.
‘Not children. Never children’ I whispered. ‘But you…that was an accident.’
It didn’t seem an accident, he said. Blood from his head streamed heavy now, soaking my torn prison shirt, the thin mattress beneath me, filling the cell.
‘It was,’ I said. ‘You came out from under the bed. Without warning. Weren’t you scared?’
I thought you were my dad. I heard him yelling.
‘Your dad,’ I muttered, thinking of the guy in the tenement house. His arms bound tight with my favourite rope, my knife cutting his chest. Slowly he’d moaned, my dick rigid, painful. He was a beautiful man, I’d needed to kiss him, hug him, eat him.
‘Listen to me.’ I tried to sit up but the child’s little arm, his smile, pinned me down. ‘I’m so sorry. The others – I had no control. No control. But a child.’ I saw the freezers in my flat, the meat grinder; smelled the stench each time I unlocked that room. ‘That was unintended.’
When I awoke there was only one narrow light in the whole basement, the yellow bulb above me, slightly swinging. I patted my shirt but it was dry, still piss green, and cried, ‘Anyone there?’ but my voice echoed from the empty cells. ‘Guard!’ I yelled, but no one came.
After a while the light blinked brighter; it’s my turn, I thought, and I brimmed with trepidation, relief. But it wasn’t another human; the light blazed and the face of the child grinned from the dirty bricks and I screamed again and again.
In time, perhaps the next morning, perhaps a few days later, the guard appeared. ‘You’re lucky, you fuck,’ he said. ‘Your lawyer’s here. Something about a stay. An appeal. You’re goin back to the general prison. No more death’s row.’ He spat at my feet. ‘For the time being, at least.’ He opened the barred gate wide. ‘Well, what’s your problem? You’ve got a break. Christ knows why it happens to filth like you but it does. So move.’
Behind him the little boy smiled and smiled and I begged the guard to leave me, to drag me up and tie me to the chair and yank the handle but he laughed at me like I was a madman then grabbed my wrists and strapped on the cuffs and hauled me to the stairs, into the balmy morning sunlight and the boy’s neverending grin.
Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash
