“Here we are,” Ada said. “This is the Warden’s office.”
It was the only permanent door Molly had seen in the entire prison. It was still made of the same shimmering glass material.
“Do I go in?” Molly said.
“If you want,” Ada said. “But you’re wasting your breath. That is if you had any breath to waste! Listen, this might be of use to you. Are you familiar with the six stages of grief? You’re perhaps over the first stage already. Shock. The shock of having died and coming to this place. I would say you’re now in the denial phase. From here, you will go through every stage; anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. But go, try speaking to him. You never know. You might be the first person he’ll listen to.”
Molly took a deep breath and wondered how many people had opened this door. And how many had come out with nothing to show for it. Still, she had to try. Sam and Casey’s lives depended on it.
She knocked on the door.
“Come,” the voice on the other side said.
Molly took a deep breath and entered.
Chapter Three
The office was large and had a sofa that wrapped around the front convex window and leaned over the universe. In the center of the room sat a large table. The legs came directly out of the floor, again made from the same glassy substance as the rest of the prison. Sat in an identically designed chair was the obese Warden.
He was on the phone and gestured with his forefinger for Molly to enter.
“Oh yes, they are all doing quite well,” the Walden said into the receiver. “Yes, that’s right. There’s no need to worry about budgetary constraints. There’s no food here, no restroom facilities, nothing that need cost us anything. Yes, I’m quite happy with it too. And the fact that the prison continues to grow by itself makes it easier to support as many prisoners as you want to send here. Actually, I’m about to speak to one of them right now.”
He winked at Molly.
“Yes sir,” the Warden said. “I’ll get onto it right away.”
He smiled and hung up the phone.
“So, how can I help you?” he said.
Molly’s mouth was packed with cotton wool. She suddenly didn’t know what to say.
“Please, have a seat,” the Warden said.
“Where…?” Molly said.
She turned to the space in front of the desk, where a moment ago there hadn’t been a chair. Now, there was one. She lowered herself into it. It was surprisingly comfortable.
The Warden pressed his fingertips together, elbows resting on the arms of his chair. He was waiting for Molly to begin.
“I, uh, think there’s been some kind of mistake,” Molly said.
The Warden leaned back in his chair. It groaned under his oppressive weight.
“What kind of mistake?” he said.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Molly said. “I don’t think I’ve done anything bad enough to have to be here with all these criminals.”
“Criminals?” the Warden said. “I don’t see any criminals. I see regular people going about their daily lives and, unwittingly, committing offenses against the law of nature.”
“I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong,” Molly said, beginning to find a backbone. “If you can point something out, the reason why I’m here, perhaps I can better understand.”
“It is not up to me to decide where you belong,” the Warden said. “You came here because you did something in the past that requires penance.”
“But what?” Molly said. “What specifically?”
She was beginning to get warmed up. Perhaps Ada was wrong and there was a chance she might get out of here. If no case could be made against her, she would be free. The chances were they picked a random number for each prisoner’s sentence. No system was infallible. It was possible someone somewhere had made a mistake.
The Walden pursed his thick lips, leaned forward, and put his chunky fingers on his Filofax. His fingers moved with lightning speed, zipping through the wafer-thin pages. He came to one and then stopped.
“Ah yes,” he said. “Here we are.”
He took hold of the page and pulled it out. The small sheet of notepaper, so thin it was almost invisible, grew into a long strand, like unspooling toilet roll.
“In the past, I can see you’ve been a very naughty girl,” the Warden said. “But you’ve mended your ways of late. A good job too, otherwise you’d have been looking at a sixty-year sentence as opposed to a six-year one.”
“What does it say?” Molly said, mouth dry.
“Why don’t you come take a look?” the Warden said.
Molly was slow in getting to her feet. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was written on that flimsy piece of paper. But if she wanted to stand a chance of getting out of here, she needed to see it.
She edged around the table. Her eyes flicked to the letter opener, its razor-sharp edge glinting with starlight. It was made of the same glassy material as everything else. If she could get hold of it, could bury it in the Warden’s flabby neck…
But she pulled her eyes away and focused on the task at hand. She still might be able to talk herself out of this situation.
“Can you see?” the Warden said. “The writing is quite small.”
Quite small? It was impossible to read. An ant would have struggled.
“Here,” the Warden said. “Try using this.”
He extended a magnifying glass. Molly aimed it at the sheet of paper, focusing it until the writing became clear.
At the top was written her name. Then, her date of birth, her current address, and then…
Molly gasped and stepped back from the desk.
No, it wasn’t possible. No one had access to this information. No one…
Underneath ‘Current Address’ was written her address with Sam. Not so shocking. Anyone could get access to that information these days. But what was underneath that…
Her previous address before moving, and her previous address before that, all the way back to the address where her parents had brought her home as a baby.
Molly’s hand shook. It even had Casey’s parents’ address where she had slept once when she had lost her house keys and couldn’t get in. And there, Sam’s old address, from when they had started dating. And there, and there! All the addresses of all the men she had been with over the years.
Even Molly didn’t have access to this information.
My god…
Molly didn’t need to see more to accept the document’s authenticity, but she couldn’t keep herself from checking what else it had written about her.
Date: 18th June 1981.
Incident: Fighting a bully.
Details: Molly attacked a bully who had been teasing her for the past six months. Having had enough, Molly struck back, using both fists to break the bully’s nose. The bully got angry and slapped her. [For further details, see Billy Henderson’s report.] Molly was then seen to by Nurse Phillips, who gave her administrative care. However, she was inebriated at the time and made a mistake, leading to a slight scar on Molly’s left temple. [For further details, see Sally Phillips’ report.]
Molly fingered the scar she knew to be present on her temple. She could still feel it.
She read another incident:
Date: 23rd September 1981.
Incident: Deliberate harm done to a relative.
Details: While playing with her cousins, Molly thought it funny to build a tripwire. While they went running around hopping and skipping, her cousin, Denise, tripped and fell. She hit her lip on the concrete, causing it to bleed profusely. She had to have two teeth removed and five stitches in her lip. Her brother, Michael, was also implicated in the design of the trap. However, it was Molly’s idea to install it.
The events went on like that, cataloging all the things Molly had done over her lifetime. She didn’t get to the serious ones, the ones she had carried out when she became a police officer. She had seen enough.
>
“Is it all present and accounted for?” the Warden said. “Or has there been a mistake?”
“Who are you?” Molly said, shaken. “What are you?”
The Warden let out a puff of air.
“I am the Warden,” he said.
He smiled at her, a broad grin like a clown from hell. If it wasn’t for the bright lights, it might have looked sinister.
“We are the physical representation of justice in the universe,” the Warden said. “There is nothing we miss, nothing we do not take into consideration when calculating your sentence. It is quite fair, I assure you. Though, it might not seem all that fair from your perspective.”
Molly’s eyes moved back to the letter opener on the desk. If she was quick, she could grab it and slit the Warden’s neck right open. Then, she could make her escape.
Her hand began to move toward it but didn’t make it even halfway to the blade before she let her hand fall. She couldn’t do it. Not to someone innocent. If not a person, the Warden was at least still alive in some ways.
“Very good,” the Warden said. “There’s still some hope for you yet.”
“What do you mean?” Molly said.
“You could have used this letter opener to slit open my throat,” the Warden said. “It may have even passed through your mind. But you did not take action. Some prisoners do, and those are the ones that end up staying here for a very long time. They did not learn and made the mistake of repeating the actions from their previous life.
“My neck has been sliced open thousands of times, tens of thousands. My eyeballs have been plucked from their sockets, the blade shoved into the small of my back. But I am still here. I cannot die again. Like you. And though you cannot die, I assure you, you can feel pain.”
For the second time, Molly felt unsteady on her feet. She had come close to making her task even more unassailable, succeeding only because of her instincts.
“I need to get out of here,” Molly said.
“I’m afraid there is no getting out of here, not until you have served your time,” the Warden said.
“No,” Molly said, “you don’t understand. It’s not for me. It’s for my friend, Casey, and my boyfriend, Sam. If I don’t get back to them, if I don’t go help them, they’ll end up dead. In here, with us.”
“What will be will be,” the Warden said, turning back to his desk.
“I’m not sure you understand,” Molly said. “If we don’t do something, they will both die.”
“Then your problems will be over,” the Warden said. “They will be here with you, and they will no longer need to be saved. Death is not something to be afraid of. Life is.”
Molly couldn’t believe the coldness of his statement. How could such a person be allowed to rule over this place?
“Please,” Molly said. “I need to warn them. I need to protect them. They are in danger.”
“The time and influence you had on Earth have come to an end,” the Warden said. “You are here now. Consider your past. Let your future take care of itself. Your time here will pass quite quickly, I assure you.”
His expression shifted into a big smile.
“Thank you for coming to see me today,” he said. “My door is always open.”
Sure, Molly thought. As open as your mind.
As she turned to head back to the door, she spotted something hanging over the edge of the desk. The telephone had a crystalline wire coming out of it. The wire had been cut and wasn’t plugged in.
So who was the Warden talking to earlier on the phone? Had he been talking to himself?
And this was the Warden of the prison. If he was this nuts, how crazy were the rest of the inmates?
Chapter Four
“How did it go?” Ada said.
She’d elected to wait outside the office for Molly. Was she being friendly, or did she want an afterlife-long friend?
“As you said it would,” Molly said.
“I’m sorry,” Ada said. “But the Warden has never let anyone leave.”
“But I can’t stay here,” Molly said. “I need to get back. There must be a way out of here.”
“How long do you have left on your sentence?” Ada said.
“Six years,” Molly said.
“That’s great news!” Ada said brightly. Then she frowned. “Isn’t it?”
“My friends are in danger right now,” Molly said. “They’ll be here within six days if I don’t do something.”
Molly was having a panic attack, hyperventilating. She was going to pass out if she wasn’t careful. She breathed in deep and put her hands on top of her head to expand her lungs.
“Breathe,” Ada said. “Breathe.”
Molly tried to shake Ada off, but Ada was having none of it.
“Come sit down,” Ada said.
She led Molly down a corridor and into a large room at the back of the building. Here too was a gorgeous scene, of the twinkling stars in a careless night. Playing beneath them was a game of basketball.
Ada sat Molly down on the floor. There wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere. Molly calmed down, Ada fanning her with her hand.
“Better?” Ada said.
“Yes,” Molly said. “Thank you.”
“That’s the first panic attack I’ve seen in many years,” Ada said.
“No one panics here?” Molly said.
“No oxygen,” Ada said. “We don’t breathe, eat or… anything else. That’s the only positive thing about being here. No pain. Before I came here, I was in agony. Medicine hadn’t developed enough to prevent it. So, I lay in bed for two years in the worst pain imaginable. As my sickness ate at me, turning my bones soft and into mush, it spread into my limbs, into my internal organs. I was being eaten alive, and no one could do anything to kill the pain. That was, until the French Revolution came.”
“I’m sorry,” Molly said.
“Don’t be,” Ada said. “It’s not your fault.”
“You live a completely dislocated existence here,” Molly said.
“I’m afraid that’s actually the purpose of us being here,” Ada said. “With no other stimulation but our minds and memories. To encourage us to think about all the things we’ve done.”
“It’s horrible,” Molly said.
“There are worse ways to punish us,” Ada said.
“How?” Molly said.
“They could torture us forever,” Ada said. “Thankfully, that one fell out of fashion. Or they could have elected not to give us our projected bodies back. Or our minds. Forcing us to relive the same torturous memories over and over for eternity.”
“Hm,” Molly said. “You might be right there. I can’t believe you’re here. You don’t seem the type of person to deserve being here.”
“Perhaps I’m not now,” Ada said. “But there is a lot of evil you can do in ninety years if you put your mind to it. And I certainly did that.”
“What did you do?” Molly said.
“Things I’m not proud of,” Ada said, looking at the gnarled knuckles of her fingers. “You live long enough, you realize the kind of person you are. I’ve been here now over one hundred fifty years. The only way to tell how long we’ve been here is the countdown.”
“The countdown?” Molly said. “What’s that?”
Ada turned and pointed to the giant latticework of flapping panels that made up the countdown to each prisoner’s sentence.
“The countdown of your sentence,” Ada said. “It doesn’t tell us the sins we’ve committed, though you can make a pretty accurate guess sometimes. If someone is here for over fifty years, there are only so many crimes they could have committed.
“The good thing about being here so long is I get to see how the Earth is developing. People come here from recent times and I like hearing about the major events. I like to hear about the developments, how the world has changed. It seems that the people change so fast. And it’s speeding up!
“When I was a kid, the only way to get around was
by horse, boat or train. Now, there are machines that can fly! I saw the train under London once, but now they say they’re all over the world! Under lots of different cities. Change is speeding up, and it won’t be long before we’re reaching for the stars. Who knows, maybe they’ll even get here one day.”
“Is that what you’re waiting for?” Molly said. “For them to come here?”
“No, not really,” Ada said.
“Can I ask you something?” Molly said.
“Go ahead,” Ada said.
“What are these evil-looking guards for?” Molly said. “What are they supposed to be guarding us from?”
Ada smiled.
“My girl,” she said. “They aren’t here to guard us. They’re here to keep us in. No escapes. Not ever.”
“I don’t believe that,” Molly said. “There’s always a way out. Always.”
“Not here,” Ada said. “Many have tried, but all have failed.”
“I’m going to be the first,” Molly said. “My friends are relying on me.”
That’s when Molly looked up and saw Ada’s position on the Countdown Clock.
“You’ve got the longest sentence?” Molly said. “You’ve still got another eighty years to go! What did you do?”
“I didn’t have all those years before I got here,” Ada said.
“You got them while you were here?” Molly said. “By behaving badly?”
“That’s one way,” Ada said.
“Is there a way to reduce your sentence too?” Molly said.
“Yes,” Ada said. “There is. But it won’t help you much with your goal.”
“Why?” Molly said.
“Because you want to get back to Earth,” Ada said. “Reducing your sentence here will result in you leaving with the guards, not returning back to Earth.”
Molly shook her head. She thought she was onto a winning strategy.
“Are you afraid of dying?” Molly said. “Is that why you don’t want to die?”
It only occurred to her after the words were out of her mouth how ridiculous they sounded. Ada was already dead. But still, she had some spirit here, some semblance of life. Once she left this place, she would essentially cease to exist.
After/Life: Anger: A Paranormal Ghost Romance Page 2