I straddle him. Unable — and too afraid— to leave him conscious and able to pursue me, I seize him by the throat with a vice-like hold. The clerk tenses and trashes violently. The thick-rimmed glasses are askew, and his eyes, which had spat such venom at first, are now turning up— two great white orbs startling from their sockets.
There is a moment in my heart that prompts me to kill the man on the spot— to retain the grip on his throat till he passes. I dare not let him live, and yet I dare not murder him.
But I could, I think. Putting together the simple thought with an incredible amount of difficulty as something twists inside of me. I could, and it would be frighteningly easy.
The man relaxes. He becomes pliant and unstrung. His face, which had been white with dread, is now dark from suffocation.
That is enough, I think. He is unable to harm me now. But my hands stay where they are, fingers splayed out and holding onto the tense, lethal arc of the clerk's neck.
Not enough. Kill him.
Why? I slowly, curiously, answer the voice.
Kill him and he will never harm you.
I tilt my head as I think the motion over. Expressionless, and yet full of wonder, I study the dark face of the clerk as the whisper in the back of my mind grows more insistent.
Break his neck, it says. Just a quick little crack like a branch in a storm, like white porcelain hitting tile, all it takes is a tilt of your hands— just so— and tense— just like that— Do it. Why are you waiting? Do you want him to hurt you, you know he will and then he will kill you. You must keep yourself safe you must keep yourself safe you must keepyourselfsafe DO IT DO IT—
An incoherent cry I do not recognise as my own rises from my throat, and I shudder. My strength collapses inwards, and I become a shaking heap on top of the clerk. I bend over in a wracking fit of coughing and try not to pitch forward. A deep breath. A shudder passes my body. While I try to think, try to make sense of what happened, I attempt to stand, and fail. It is as though my body is no longer my own, a strange, sickeningly strong rush spreads through me.
Someone is laughing hoarsely, and it takes me a moment to realize that it is me— so foreign and strange my own laughter sounds. Then whatever it is withdraws its claws. The sickness sinks back into me, only lingering in the back of my mind like a poisonous promise. My breath evens out. I lift my tear-filled gaze. For a moment, I am disoriented. For a moment, I expect to see a legion of spectators.
The cabinet. The desk. A chair. Cracked walls.
God— I despise walls.
Finally, I rise, on staggering knees, my eyes on the door. And then I break into a mad run.
I feel desolate, and discouraged with the prospects before me. What will become of me? Who would help me? To where could I flee?
The bright sunlight pooling along the corridor windows gives an almost dreamlike sheen to the hallway, and I hurry ahead after a moment of uncertainty. Nothing looks out of place.
In fact, everything looks eerily still. Peaceful. Too peaceful.
Where were the guards? Where were they? They should have been here. I know they should have been here.
I lose count of the corridors I pass; the doors I find locked and the ones I find open.
Then I arrive at a passageway.
I look back over my shoulder one more time at the wide, silent vista of the corridor I had come from, washed in soft mid-day light. And yet never before did the atmosphere feel so uncanny and uncomfortable. The walls are old. A stone sprawl of decay, and there is a charge in the air that hadn't been there before.
I shake my head and look back with concern at the mouth of what looks like a staircase leading downwards. The entrance is so dark, my eyes can hardly focus on it. It is unsettlingly devoid of light, darker than my prison cell had ever been. I stubbornly watch the first steps for any kind of movement. I breath. Then I square my shoulders and walk down into the mouth of the staircase. One hand, I keep on the inwards-curving wall. There is the sound of trickling water, the condensate clinging to the walls and dripping, all funnelling back down. I listen to the sound of it dripping into some far-off pool and find it just as hauntingly inexplicable as always. The stank of centuries clogs the air, sticking to my nose and throat, thickening in my lungs.
As my descent progresses, my mind provides me with cruel phantasms. And I imagine something in the darkness, something buried in the centre of the building with long legs patiently tucked up in the middle of its web.
Waiting.
Bidding its time.
Nothing is here, I tell myself as I clench my hand on the wall. My shackles click in disagreement.
Of course not, comes the immediate thought.
Because it's somewhere deeper down.
In my mind, I have been descending forever, and I am convinced I am already deep underground. The contrary is proven when I discover a slither of light that passes through a split in the wall high above me and I realise I am following an outer wall.
My descent ends. I stall at the end of the long, dark staircase and stare down into the silver-grey sprawl of a half-lit passageway. The scene splits up. Doors, three on the opposite wall, lie wide open, looming pits of black.
A musty smell hangs in the air.
I shake my head without taking my eyes off the yawning doorways, expecting some half-coalesced inhuman shape to crawl out of them. I swallow around the thickness in my throat, the ache in my ribs. "No." I whisper. "No, there's nothing there."
An ominous silence follows my statement, stretching out between me and the corridor and the doors. They taunt me to pass. I steady myself on the wall, the shake returning to my fingers, just for a second. Then I put my back to the wall, some primal part of my brain screaming at me to keep the doors in my direct line of sight. To not turn my back on them. I pass the first doorway and the dim, misshapen forms I imagine hiding inside; too far back from the slight beam of light to identify.
I pass the other two.
An inexplicable sigh of relief washes over me until I quickly realise that to advance, I will have to turn my back on the scene. The further length of the corridor falls outside of the beam of light, and I am reluctant to advance without looking forward. I breath. Then I tear my gaze away and turn and speed up my pace, casting frequent glances back at the beam of light until it disappears behind the next corner.
There's nothing here, I repeat to myself, wishing the dread I feel would disappear at the statement of that fact. But it remains, stubborn and deep.
Something slides over my shoulder.
I shriek and turn around and jump back from the presence. I can see nothing. No one is there.
The corridor is empty all around me, whatever had touched me nowhere to be seen.
"Hey!" I shout, tears running down my cheeks. I whirl around in a defensive slant, heart pounding, angry with myself for being afraid. Oh God! God, what was that? "Hey!"
There comes no answer.
I break into a sprint. My mind zones out.
I stumble often and hard, my feet trapping behind misaligned tiles, and my shackles prevent me to catch my fall on more than one occasion. But I care not. I have but one objective. To outrun whatever my mind has convinced itself is pursuing me.
Then I find myself outside.
At first it doesn't fully register with me. I turn back to look where I had come from. The sunlight almost blinding my eyes. A ruined, decrepit door stands awry and a dark corridor looms behind it. Had it really been that dark? I turn back. The greenery before me. A pause. My breath still hurried. Then I turn back to look at the door and the corridor again. Back to the wood-pasture on my left. Then back at the door. Back at the forest. A maniacal elation fills my mind.
Then I take off.
Relief blossoms through me, and a sound like a sob escapes my throat as wild emotion pounds against my temples. Relief and fear and excitement tangle together, forming a knot I cannot begin to unravel.
Grass, my mind supplies suddenly. Grass. Sun. Grass. Clouds. Clouds are white. White is pretty. Green is pretty. Green is grass. Grass is green. Grass—
I shake my head and realise I am smiling like a madman. I bid myself to refocus. What on earth should I do, now?
Grass— I like grass. I don't like walls. Walls are bad. I am bad. No I'm not. I am free. Free is good. Good is—
I pant and leap a fence nearby, and hurry across the grazing land, passing the hedgerows. At the end of it I finally reach the wood-pasture, and while it has only been a short time that I have been running, the lack of exercise these past years have left me a cripple. My body aches. My breath catches and I make a chortled attempt to even it out. Allowing myself a moment of respite, I turn.
For the first time, I truly see the prison. The battlements show a jagged line against the sky and a heavy, oppressive atmosphere hangs in the air surrounding it. It appears as though the walls separate two climates, and now that I have escaped its heavy clutch, the afternoon sun finally fully falls upon me while it shies away from the prison.
Something inside me rejoices, and momentarily overshadows the pure horror and painful foreboding that swarms my mind, then I turn and run to hide myself under the canopy.
I am free, the voice tells me. Free is good.
Great forest giants surround me. I know the forest to be large, and to extend to the cliffy shores of the Atlantic. It is without inhabitants, save for wild beasts and critters. These beasts surround me, and I imagine them crouching behind fallen trunks. Waiting for their prey to pass by. Every log and bole— every trunk of a fallen tree, over which I am compelled to climb, I am sure is alive with them. Some critters crawl away at my approach, and along the way, I have lost one shoe. The sole has come off entirely, and for some time I leave the upper part dangling from my ankle. Foreboding terror gradually filters into my mind as I resume my way deeper into the forest. The constant sense of instant peril gnaws at me. I am near crying. My heart races. I stop, and throw the shoe into the undergrowth. Weary but desperate, I force myself to continue.
I am free, the voice tells me. Free is good.
The shackles on my wrists click in disagreement.