The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  They interrupted their discussion and went to see.

  Dino’s body was growing stronger. Cables strained as they were, were shaking, causing an almost musical jingle. The scream started again, but it was different, increasingly resembled a cry of anger. The man blocked Nico before it got too close, and reached out a hand to touch the shoulder of Katia.

  “Go away. You two go away. I take care of him.”

  Katia turned confusing. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to top.”

  “What’s happening to him?” asked Nico.

  Dino, if he still was there, kept his eyes shut, clenched in the effort. The tremor increased more and more. Now all tighten cables were shaking with him. Nico looked at them with awe: if they detached not only the creature would be free, but they also could have hit them and hurt them. He took his mother’s hand.

  “Come on!” he told her.

  While trying to get away and extricating from the wires, the creature’s eyes widened. He had returned more blacks than ever, eyes full of hate and fury.

  Even the man was speechless when the creature began to move his arm. It was past ten cables, and the meat sheared in every movement. The blood began to flow copiously. He made an immense effort, and his scream almost pierced the eardrums. With a sudden jerk broke free. Shreds of flesh and muscles were attached to cables; the arm itself was shapeless and massacred, completely useless. But it was not so long. The bleeding stopped almost immediately then the meat began to grow. Muscles began to reform.

  “He is free!” Katia shouted, more and more hysterical.

  To Nico, it seemed impossible. An arm, maybe, but how could he free the chest? There were dozens and dozens of cables that went through it. He would be torn apart, completely. Maybe he wouldn’t have had the strength.

  “Go upstairs!” yelled the man, but still no one moved. Not even he could take away his eyes from the creature.

  Now that his arm was free had a way to help him. He grabbed the other arm and pulled hard. It seemed to explode. Pieces of flesh flew all around. The limb released seemed like the one from a skeleton, bones whitish with little meat around. Even in that case, the regrowth started instantly. The creature was ignoring them completely as if he did not see them, and the scream of rage and pain was unremitting. Then there was the creepiest scene when he grabbed his head with both hands and pulled it free. This seemed to explode: cables cut their anchor his skullcap, spreading clumps of the brain around. The cable that pierced his cheek tore and with it, the skin, revealing his jaw. Even the cable piercing his neck was away, slicing the arteries. A thick and dark blood began to spurt, but it was only for a few seconds.

  Nico seemed about to puke, and Katia was pale as a dead. She tried to get away, too upset to reason, ending up entangled in the cables.

  “Away! Away!” she said.

  “It’s not possible!” shouted Nico. “He cannot free himself! How does he can?” He turned to the man: “You can’t let him do that! Block him! Chain him!”

  The man seemed mesmerized by the spectacle; he hardly listened to him. “How? How?”

  It was difficult to get close to the creature; the cables did not let you to. As they imprisoned him, they left everyone away from him.

  “He can’t do it! He cannot!” Nico insisted.

  The man tried to send him away. “Go to your mother.”

  Katia was really in trouble. It entangled in the cables and now cried and sobbed, hysterical. Nico was forced to go and help her. He carefully disentangled her then helped her to move away. As soon as she was free, Katia ran towards the door, forgetting even about him.

  The man had approached as close as possible to the creature, who was trying to free the legs. But it was not easy. Now he was helping himself by clinging to the same cables that they imprisoned him and by pressing on them.

  “There is nothing to do!” whispered the man. “There’s nothing to do!”

  “Think something!” he shouted. “Soon he will be free.”

  The gaze of the man was a mask of suffering. All his confidence had collapsed; he had failed to fulfill his task.

  “We can’t hold him back!” he said. “He is almost free.”

  “So what do we do? Let’s go away?”

  He could not accept the defeat. A loss of that magnitude, then. There was no salvation for the man; not even Nico could succeed. No one could free him from his prison.

  “We can use the well!” he shouted.

  “How?”

  “Let’s seal him inside the pit! And hopefully, it will be able to contain it forever!”

  To Nico, it seemed absurd. They weren’t able to tie him down and take him into the cellar, how could they throw him into a well? And where was he, then? He didn’t see any well in the cellar. He had known of its existence only from the map on the computer.

  “It has to be you!” shouted the man. “You have to activate the pit!”

  Nico did not understand, but Katia did. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Upstairs! We have to do it again.”

  Whatever was the system, it needed the computer in his Chamber to become active.

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  Katia didn’t waste any time and began to pull him. “Move it, let’s go! We’ll do later.”

  Nico was confused; he tried to oppose. He looked at the man, who was still so close to the creature.

  “But…”

  “You don’t want him free, right?” shouted Katia. “You are the only one who can use that computer, so move!”

  He dragged him towards the stairs.

  “He…”

  “He keeps an eye on him. He would never free him, and you know it. Hurry up, find a way to end this nightmare.”

  He followed his mother up the stairs, rushing. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “We didn’t even know before, but we did it, no?”

  They crossed by the corridor. The room door was still wide open as they had left it. Katia almost dragged him; such was her enthusiasm and took him to the desk. The monitor was on, and still, the three-dimensional image of the living room was moving ahead of them. The creature was not free, as much as they could see.

  “And now?” asked Nico.

  “Return! From here you can’t see the well.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how! You try!”

  Nico tried and tried again, until he returned to the initial image, with no idea of how he succeeded.

  “Now what?”

  “You try, no? You do like last time! See if something is activated.”

  Nico grazed a finger on the tubular structure under the house, and that brightened by yellow.

  “Yellow, huh?” said his mother. “It is not enough; we must do something before. Search again.”

  He continued to swipe across the screen. Suddenly the floor of the first floor became blue. Katia let out a little cry.

  “See? We found it!”

  Nico was not convinced. He couldn’t understand what relevance has the floor of the first floor with the well. And anyway even if it managed to open it, as they would drag the creature inside it?

  “And press it! What are you waiting for?”

  He had the feeling of making a mistake, but his mother did nothing but shaking him.

  “Press it! Press it!”

  So he did it. It did not happen anything, though the floor became a blue uniform and like that remained.

  “Now the pit!” shouted his mother. “See if it’s still yellow!”

  It was green. Just he grazed it became green.

  “Now what’s the matter? What are you waiting to press it?”

  “What will happen if I do it?”

  “What do I know? Something! Shit, he had planned to have a use for it, right? If he set this trap, it will do something as well.”

  Nico shook his head because the feeling that he felt was strong enough to shake his stomach.

  “You can
’t do otherwise. If he releases himself, he will kill us all.”

  It could happen; now they had no way to see what was happening in the living room.

  “Press it!” yelled his mother. Then she grabbed his hand with both of her and crushed it up against the monitor, just above the well model. This immediately became green.

  And it began.

  The house began to shake. Katia clung to the desk, squealing.

  “What happen?”

  Nico turned his eyes on the monitor. He couldn’t understand; everything was the same. Then he noticed a slight movement and jumped up, shouting.

  “It moves!”

  He looked at his mother. The floor under them was tilting. Starting from the edges toward the Center the tilt was increasing. It was turning into a funnel.

  “No!” cried Nico and ran towards the door before Katia could stop him.

  Outside of that vault the Apocalypse happened. The hall was trembling so much that Nico was not able to remain upright, but collapsed to the ground and was forced to move crawling. Katia was after him.

  “Wait! Come back! There’s nothing you can do.”

  The walls of the building were cracking. Debris fell from the ceiling. When Nico reached the stair, he saw incredulously on the wall opposite a gash that ran through the entire wall. He leaned towards it. The lower stair steps were already in disarray; now they were floating under them nothing because the floor of the entrance was inclining towards the center of the House and underneath there was only emptiness. The walls creaked because it lacked the basis upon which they laid. More and more rubble collapsed from the roof and the walls. Nico dared to descend the stairs. One step at a time because they feared there was a danger that would fall apart from one moment to the next.

  “No!” No!” he heard Katia screaming behind him.

  The internal walls began to crumble. Under the stairs, a chasm of over one meter had already formed. Halfway Nico was forced to stop because the lower steps began to break off and fall into the abyss. His eyes fixed on the door of the living room, too far to be able to see what was happening inside, Nico began to call: “Max! Max!”

  He knew very well what would happen when he sent him into the Chamber. It had been his choice to stay there. The man had refused the freedom; he had decided to follow that creature in its eternal prison. He wanted to save him, but for him, there was no salvation, not from prison that he built around himself. The prison his mother built for him.

  The inclination of the floor rose again, and the wall of the living room suddenly crumbled. For a moment, Nico could see inside. The man was there; he moved back, almost recoiled near the outside wall of the house, and kept himself clinging. Many cables broke, but some were still resisting. The creature was almost free. Before his eyes, it clung with arms to the remaining cables and pulled them. His body seemed to explode. Internal organs tattered zipped around the room. Only the trunk remained of it, with the rib cage in sight. His scream was terrifying, and the meat came to regrow. At that point, his concentration had to be so strong that maybe he didn’t even realize what was happening around.

  Then, suddenly, the last cables broke. Like a crazed rattled whip around the room. Nico’s eyes met those of the man. He didn’t seem scared; he was smiling. A flying cable hit him, and the man disappeared suddenly. Nico screamed seeing his body rolling down, getting lost in the dark.

  The creature was still regenerating when cables detached. Some hit him without doing major damage. But he lost the solid base that claimed; he found himself slipping. He clung to the floor, with strength, but even that was falling apart, breaking away. Below him, you could see the steel plate. Now the inclination exceeded fifty degrees. Soon the funnel would be completed.

  Nico felt grabbed by behind by his mother, who started to drag him up the steps. The railing broke away and began to move back and forth. Katia was screaming hysterically.

  “He’s dead! And we will be dead too if we don’t hurry!”

  Nico was too distraught; he was unable to think. His mother was dragging him by brute force.

  “Where… where…”

  “In your bloody Chamber! You said it is a safe, no?”

  The house was falling apart around them, but the exits still were all sealed. They did not reach even the top of the stairs that it collapsed, collapsing piece by piece, while individual steps fell into the void. Part of the ceiling collapsed and with it an entire room on the upper floor.

  The hallway in front of them was shattering. All the rooms on the second floor were plummeting towards the funnel. There remained only the steel walls that surrounded the whole building. The open door of his room seemed to invite them. There was salvation there, the shelter, the protection they had always wanted. They ran as they never did in their life because they felt the floor under their feet breaking apart. When they arrived, Katia jumped in first, but Nico had to turn around. Because he wanted to watch, he wanted to know.

  The house was gone. It was like being in a huge tank of steel. Failing the floor on which it laid, all the walls had crumbled, and with them, the rooms they supported. A fine powder filled the environment, like a mist. Nico looked down and saw the funnel.The steel floor slanted toward the center. It wasn’t easy to see it, but Nico calculated that he had at least three or four meters in diameter. That was supposed to be the mouth of the well. He was sucking in everything: furniture, cement, money. Yes, the banknotes of the man were scattered, they were flying in the air, and they were absorbed from that well as everything else.

  The creature was still there fighting. His nails planted in steel, uttering his terrifying scream, he opposed with all his strength. It was still a simulacrum of a human being, a skeleton barely covered with meat, because its reconstruction was interrupted by the disaster. He does not resign himself; he stood angrily. Then the last piece of plaster pulled away from the ceiling and hit him. Nico saw him disappear into that black well.

  At that moment, Katia grabbed him abruptly and pulled him inside.

  “Shut the damn door!”

  11

  There they remained for a long time. Hours.

  Without saying anything, without talking to each other. Nico had to assimilate the man’s death, try to understand. What purpose had his death served? He had wanted to believe until the end that it was possible to break free from his prison, but he didn’t make it. No one had ever succeeded. It was what he had to learn, that it was impossible?

  “You have saved my life again,” said his mother.

  Katia was lying on the bed. It was already a bit that the room had stopped shaking. Maybe it was all over.

  “I saved to myself I would say. I need you. You are the only one who can open the damn door, and hopefully, you can get us out of here.”

  Nico grimaced. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “You can control anything from that desk. Why not the doors? Max didn’t want you to die. Then he must have left a way out.”

  Nico went to sit at the desk, and Katia leaped to sit.

  “What are you doing? Do you think it’s already time.”

  Nico shrugged and switched on the monitor.

  “And if he didn’t die? If he is waiting for us out there?”

  “I saw him swallowed by the pit. He is down there, covered by concrete, four hundred meters below us.”

  “And if he can come out?”

  “We will not be here anymore.” He looked at his mother. “I doubt we’ll see him again. Not as long as we shall live. Maybe someday he will find a way to free himself, but we won’t be more alive.”

  Katia embraced herself as scared. “It is horrible to think that he is still alive. That he will never die.”

  “What do you know? Maybe he has a deadline; beginning and an end. Just we don’t know.”

  “Do you think you could let us out?”

  Nico was already trying. It sufficed to find the right point to press, he was sure.

  “Sorry about before. Maybe
I shouldn’t say… those things.”

  Nico looked at her. “That I was a thief? That Rocco…”

  She interrupted him. “I am like that, and you know it. You shouldn’t be surprised. I care more for myself. But it is normal; we’re not all like that.”

  Nico didn’t answer; he continued to work on the monitor.

  Suddenly the steel plates covering the windows rose. Outside it was still the middle of the night.

  “I should have been successful,” he announced.

  Katia ran to look out of the window. “Already? You’ve done it?”

  “You said that Max didn’t want me to die. It was not difficult.”

  “Do you mean we can get out? Did you open the front door?”

  Nico shrugged. “If you can get there.”

  Katia went to the door and tried to open it; then she turned cranky.

  “I forgot I need you.”

  Nico got up slowly, overwhelmed by fatigue.

  “Slowly, I wouldn’t let you get tired!” commented Katia ironically.

  When he had opened the door, she pushed him to the side and looked out.

  “Thank goodness; there is a passage.”

  All around the room, now remained a metal cube suspended in the vacuum, a boardwalk ran from it. The plates that protected doors and windows all raised the moonlight illuminated that desolation. Below them, you could still see the entrance of the well, but it seemed sealed. There was nothing left of the contents of the house. Katia saw a ladder attached to the wall of steel, to get down.

  “He thought of everything!”

  No, not to everything, Nico thought. In that room was supposed to be Max that was his plan. The initial program. Then he met him and everything had changed. He changed his priorities.

  “So, do you want to come? We must hurry, someone will have noticed what happened, and the police could come at any moment.”

  Nico doubted that very much. The whole house was a sealed cube, and what they thought was an earthquake, probably in the neighboring buildings was not even noticed. He was sure that the front of the house had not been affected. No, no one could imagine the catastrophe that took place there.

  “I’m not coming,” Nico said, and he went back into the room.