The Darkest of Dreams

by Emigh Cannaday

  He still couldn’t believe that this was really happening. He couldn’t believe that the last he’d ever see of his brother was the blood-spattered body gasping for air. His mother’s cries continued to fill his ears, along with those of his father and older sister. And he would never forget the way Annika had looked at him when the authorities had removed him from his home. Even if his trial went well and the judges only sentenced him to a hundred years, would there be anything worth living for when he got out? What if there wasn’t? Like too many of his most recent questions, only time would tell.

  So far, time wasn’t telling him anything useful or helpful. If Talvi could keep track of time, he could keep from losing his mind. Just like everywhere else, time at Bleakmoor was measured by the presence or absence of the sun, which streamed into his stone cell from the narrow horizontal gap near the ceiling. If there were birds or trees or a beautiful sunset or sunrise outside that mighty fortress, Talvi had no way of knowing. He didn’t even know if it rained unless he heard a storm pass through. There would be roars of thunder outside as the lightning flashed through that tiny hole that was called a window. Then the water would pour down on that little northern island and begin seeping through the walls and along the floor, carrying with it some of the piss and vomit from the other prisoners in his cell block. It would snake along a path on the floor, leaving a festering stench of filth in the air for days. After the third time it happened, Talvi had it down to a science—it took roughly five days before the smell dried up. Unfortunately it never quite went completely away. The walls and the floors never quite seemed to dry out completely.

  Time was also measured by the meals that were delivered two times a day. It came through the slot at the bottom of the door, which meant the tray was pushed across the floor. If it had rained in the past five days, which was usually the case, there was a film of piss and shit and mud left on the bottom of the tray. The food inside of it looked like the grime clinging to the outside of it. Breakfast and supper was the same gelatinous mass of brownish-green slurry every single time. The guards had pointed out how they’d bent over backward to bring Talvi something that didn’t require chewing since there appeared to be no intention of removing the wires and metal bars that held his jaws together. Silverware and chopsticks were forbidden to those unfortunate enough to be placed into ‘protective custody,’ which meant that Talvi was forced to slurp the disgusting mixture through his teeth from the corner of the tray…all while trying to avoid touching the filth along the bottom of it.

  The guards had taken to slipping newspaper articles through the slot in his door which portrayed his wife as the ultimate home wrecker. The dates had always been torn out of the corner of the paper, and as much as he hated what he was reading, he was desperate for news from back home. Unfortunately, it was never good.

  “I heard your wife likes to keep it in the family. My brothers and I all have some vacation time coming up,” the guards would taunt. “How do you think she’ll manage four of us?”

  At first, Talvi tried reaching through the slot to break their hands, which was exactly what they wanted him to do. They’d stomped on his fingers until at least two of them were broken. No doctor seemed to ever be available to mend them, and thankfully Talvi knew how to bind them with the torn-off hem of his trousers. It was the last time he fell for their twisted games. He quickly learned not to react to the guards, but their lewd jeering was impossible to ignore. Instead, it only prompted him to think up all the various ways he’d like to return the favor tenfold. He would ruminate for hours on end, which propelled him even further into the darkest parts of his mind. And being that his former profession as an assassin was already quite dark to begin with, his thoughts had nowhere to go but down.

  One thing was for certain—if he ever got out, he would make their lives miserable.

  While he conjured up all the ways he would go about the task, he focused on how many sets of push-ups and sit-ups and squats he could do, and each day he made himself complete a set number of each exercise. Then it was back to scraping bugs off his mattress and crushing them, before washing them down the drain of his tiny sink. After enough nights of sleeping on the hard stone bench that left his body perpetually bruised, the worn-out wool mattress didn’t look so bad anymore. Satisfied that the bedbugs were eradicated from it, he lay down and closed his eyes one night, dreaming of his bed back home. He let himself imagine sprawling across the immense width of it and stretching out his legs. He saw himself adjusting his multitude of pillows before gazing up at the heavy, dark red velvet curtains that hung from the rails between the posts. Would he like to draw them shut and sleep in late, or would he prefer to rise along with the sun? Mmm, waking up to bright blue skies and a warm breeze felt like the right way to start the day. The only thing that could make it better was waking up to bright blue skies and a warm breeze, and his wife curled up in his arms.

  In his dreams, he could see that she was already awake, and grinning mischievously at him. She’d developed a ritual of reaching up and twirling his hair into two small, devilish horns. He immediately raked his fingers through his hair, yet she did it again.

  “Stop that,” he argued playfully while fussing with his hair.

  Annika merely laughed. “Your hair’s getting long,” she hummed, then formed the horns once more.

  “I mean it,” he said in a stern voice, not finding it quite so amusing this time. Annika ignored him and reached again for his hair. He jerked his head away from her fingertips, yet they still managed to tickle and creep along his scalp, maddening him to no end. Feeling even more annoyed with her, he grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away. Suddenly she disappeared, and Talvi woke up to find himself scratching the back of his head furiously. His blanket lay on the floor, riddled with lice just as he’d feared. He spent one hour after another trying to pick through every single strand of hair on his head and remove the nits. Then a tray of brown mush was slipped under the door, and he realized he didn’t know if it was morning or evening. His sleepless delirium and six-legged, blood-sucking cellmates had distracted him so much that he’d lost all track of time.

  Had he been there a full month yet? Had it been less? More? It must’ve been October, judging by the chill in the air and the length of the short beard he now had. His fingernails had also grown long, and since he couldn’t chew them off he used them to create figurines out of the little pats of soap he was given every week or two. If he was doing the math right and receiving a new pat of soap every two weeks, then it meant it was closer to the end of November. So far he’d made a tiny version of Annika, Finn, Yuri, his parents, and Ghassan. Then there had been a contraband search, and his little soap family had been stolen from the seam of his mattress and smashed under the boot heels of the guards. Talvi watched in horror as they were ground to nothingness amidst the brown slime coating the floor of his cell. It was almost as bad as watching them die in real life, and he fought with all his might not to scream and give them the reaction they wanted from him. It took a special kind of person to willingly choose to be a guard at this particular prison, and while Talvi had fully expected to be mistreated to an extent, this brand of emotional torture was a different beast altogether. The only thing that gave him pleasure was to think of all the ways that he would seek revenge if the time ever came.

  As the days and nights grew cooler, the cold ocean air surrounding Bleakmoor Island seeped through the prison walls, leaving all of the inmates perpetually damp and chilled to the bone. Prisoner TM00769 was no exception as he lay on the stone bench that served as his bed. He could hear a new prisoner being brought down to his cell block, although he didn’t dare try to peek out the slot at the bottom of his door. He didn’t dare make a sound. Instead, he huddled on his side under his scratchy wool blanket and stared at the wall across from him; staring at the vision in red.

  He couldn’t remember when she’d appeared, but his new cellmate had faithfully kept him company day after day, night after night. S
he was the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning, and she was the last thing his eyes gazed upon before they closed. He’d stared at the lines of her face for so long that he swore he could see them through his eyelids. Even during his nightmare-filled dreams, she was always there, silently watching over him. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself pressing a white knife to his brother’s throat. Sleep was his enemy, which left delirium to become the closest friend that he had, aside from the red portrait of the woman on the wall across from him. It was Delirium who told him that all was not lost…not if he still had his wits about him. Delirium said he ought to find something to focus on that brought him joy, and it turned out that his imaginary friend was right.

  He stared longingly at Annika’s face night after night, imagining one day that she would come to life, reach out to touch his ears, and whisper all the things that he wished he might one day hear from her lips. He had no way of knowing what she knew, or what she believed about him ever since that horrible night had come to pass.

  Sometimes he would speak to her, making promises that he fully intended to keep if he were ever released. He swore to prove himself to be worthy of her, to spend his life clearing her name from what it had come to mean to the general public, no thanks to the newspapers. Now she listened in silence just as he did, straining to hear a word of news, of any information at all. The only thing he could gather was that someone new had arrived…someone called RS00483.

  He waited until the guards were gone before he sat up and crawled barefoot over to the wall he’d been staring at, then nodded at the face looking back at him. He hadn’t been given paint, yet her dark red mouth had been drawn and re-drawn into a sympathetic and coy little smile. She smiled constantly, but she never spoke a word out loud. Perhaps it was for the best. If she hadn’t had anything to say to him since the fateful night that put him in prison, then it wasn’t likely that she’d suddenly change her mind now. It made no difference to Talvi. He still gazed at her with longing, then ran the tip of his finger against his teeth until it caught on one of the wires keeping his jaw clamped shut. He was able to paint a red chain around her collarbone before his finger healed. He caught it on the wire again, then used his blood to draw the protective amulet that he prayed she was still wearing on the other side of the prison walls. It was the only way he could think of to keep her safe during the next five hundred years. Five hundred was such an overwhelming number. Would she still be there when he got out? Would she want him at all? He pressed his cheek against hers and tried in vain to stifle a sob.

  “Is someone there?” a voice hissed in a loud whisper.

  Talvi held his breath while his eyes darted around his closet-sized quarters. Was the voice real or imagined? Was it male or female? Was it a living thing, or a ghost?

  “I say, is anyone over there?”

  Convinced that the voice was real, he crouched down to the base of his door and cautiously peered out of the slot. For the first time since he’d arrived, there was an eye staring back at him from the cell across the aisle.

  “What’s your name?” the voice belonging to the obsidian eye asked. It was RS00483.

  “TM00769.”

  “No…not your prison name. What shall I call you?”

  Talvi was quiet for a few moments as he listened for any sign of the guards.

  “Don’t call me anything.”

  “I’m going to have to call you something. The only way to stay sane down here is to find someone to talk to.”

  “I don’t want any more trouble,” Talvi hissed back, yet he continued to lie on the floor and study the sliver of the masculine face looking back at him. Although dirt and grime disguised his complexion, he appeared to be close to Finn or Asbjorn’s age.

  “More trouble? Listen, TM, I don’t know what you’re in here for, but I’m serving a life sentence of hard labor. Now I’m lying on the floor, quite literally eating shit from the bowels of Bleakmoor simply by the act of opening my mouth and speaking to you. How much worse do you expect it could possibly be?”

  Talvi frowned at the man’s words. Aside from making a very good point, the way he spoke wasn’t like any of the other prisoners or guards he’d heard since arriving on the island. This man’s accent and speech were refined as if he’d grown up surrounded by wealth and been educated at top universities. The question of where that was exactly remained to be discovered.

  “What did you do to earn a life sentence?” he finally asked.

  “I was on the losing side at the Battle for Veselle.”

  Talvi blinked in confusion.

  “The Battle for Veselle? But that was nearly a century ago, so clearly you aren’t human. What are you?”

  “I’m elven, just like you. My name is Nillin.”

  A faint sneer of disapproval passed over Talvi’s face.

  “You’re not like me. If you lost the battle, that means you’re one of the Näkki. With all that demon blood running through your veins, I hardly consider you to be elves at all.”

  “You primitive Kallo elves would’ve lost that battle if you hadn’t hired an army of vampire mercenaries at the last second,” Nillin countered. “Perhaps if you learnt a bit of magic as we have, you wouldn’t have to resort to using hired help and sharp sticks.”

  “What does it matter how we won? We won.”

  “Yes,” Nillin agreed. His grin was hidden behind the door, although Talvi could hear it in his voice. “Your side won, and look at where you’re savoring that victory—licking the shit-covered floor of this moldy dungeon. I know prisons aren’t meant to be luxurious, but the ones back where I come from are much nicer than this. Prisoners behave far better when they’re not constantly hungry, cold, and chewed up by lice.”

  “Where are you from, that has such nice prisons?”

  “I’m from Sinaryos. Do you know where that is, TM? I don’t expect that you would. Most Estellians haven’t a clue about geography beyond their backward borders. Advanced education isn’t exactly what you’re known for.”

  “I know where Sinaryos is,” Talvi said in a peevish tone. “Your kingdom juts out into the sea between us like a thorn that would rather be in our side.” A quiet, satisfied laugh escaped Nillin’s chest.

  “Then that makes you more intelligent than every other Estellian I’ve met since arriving here. Now I’m even more pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

  Talvi’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he stared across the aisle at the other man lying on the floor.

  “If your prison ID begins with RS, then why do you call yourself Nillin?”

  “It’s a name that my brothers gave me,” he said. “My birth name doesn’t matter in here. It ceased to matter after I failed to conquer Veselle and take Prasad.”

  Talvi frowned even more. The Battle for Veselle was the last attempt made by the dark elves to reclaim the narrow peninsula from the vampires inhabiting it. If Nillin had been a soldier in that battle, then he was most likely one of the Näkki. That made sense. The Kingdom of Sinaryos was crawling with dark elves just like him. Their defeat had led to the ongoing cold war between the Estellian and Ellunian Empires, leaving both nations completely cut off from one another. There was no social interaction, no economic relations, and certainly no political involvement. All that separated them was a narrow zig-zagged path of seawater called the Estellian Straits, or the Ellunian Straits, depending on who was asking. The neighboring nations were so close in some places that a ship could sail from one to the other in less than a day. But they may as well have been on opposite sides of the world, because, they never spoke with one another.

  Talvi brushed away a small pebble that had lodged itself in his cheek before studying the man’s face again. He searched for a sign of the demon-fire that was said to light up their southern-born eyes. He was expecting them to be bright yellow, orange, or even deep red, yet the eye staring at him was either the darkest shade of brown or as black as pitch.

  “That doesn’t make sense,�
� Talvi said. “According to the rules of engagement, if you were taken prisoner during the war, then you should’ve been released once it was over.”

  “Clearly you’ve never seen action. Otherwise, you’d know that war is deceptive by its very nature,” Nillin replied in a dry tone. “I watched your army take a hammer to the skull of every single soldier who was too injured to travel north because they didn’t want to waste the arrows. And instead of being buried or sent home, their bodies were thrown to the vampires the way one throws a bone to a dog. They didn’t even send Prince Dillon’s body back to his father in Sinaryos. The only thing King Balerin received was his son’s bloody helm with the terms of surrender shoved inside…along with some bits of his skull before they hammered it shut. The few of us that remained in good health were shipped up here to work in the somnomium mines.”

  “I don’t understand how that can be,” Talvi insisted. “You should’ve been released well before now. The Battle for Veselle was a hundred years ago.”

  “It’s been ninety-six years, to be precise,” Nillin said in a calm tone. “Ninety-six years of working in the mines…breathing somnomium dust and feeling it mix with my sweat and bleed into my pores until it rendered me as weak as a human. That’s why I can’t speak to you with my mind. That’s why you can’t communicate telepathically with anyone here, either. Somnomium negatively affects all the races of fae-kind, although I’m convinced that we Näkki and Kallo elves suffer the worst—after the fairies. I know everyone thinks iron’s enough to hold those little bastards captive, but somnomium’s the only thing I’ve seen work consistently with all the races. That’s why all the bars and doors and chains here are made with the damned stuff. That’s why all the guards are human. I’ve heard that they even put the dust in our food to keep us manageable. At least I’ll have a proper rest from breathing it in all day. They gave me six months in solitary for bad behavior.”