Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  “You all right, Mr. Fields?” Nathan asked.

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t.

  Leo made a disgruntled noise and kept eating.

  “You, Mr. Forge?” Nathan asked.

  “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Warden Bennett said you were in for the same crime. Did you”—he paused and inhaled deeply—“help people stop breathing too?”

  “No.”

  “Leo’s never killed anyone.” I defended the younger man. Leo was barely twenty, though from his build and the tattoos he might seem close to thirty.

  Leo shifted slightly, looking down and away, as if trying to avoid this entire conversation. Either he was embarrassed or upset I’d been the one to defend him. I shuffled through my memories and vaguely remembered adults of his race were expected to mount their own defense, physical or otherwise. Only children, runts as they were called, were considered weak and protected by the rest of the Tribe.

  By vocalizing this, I’d reminded Leo of his rank back home. And as their Tribe’s Great Beast, I stood above Roy in the hierarchy. I tried not to roll my eyes. No wonder the man and his entire family had bent over backward to help me. Not to mention the other people from Bottom Pit. The waitresses, Steven, even Muni’s nephew.

  A thought struck me and stayed for a moment. Hell. I had family. Not just a vague semblance of one. They were real people working together to make their lot in life better. We each had our quirks due to racial drives but still, we made it work or gave each other space.

  Rachel was a short woman who had always been cooking. Between her and Tal I’d gained people to look up to. Though Tal and I went through a strange reversal over the years, due to what I did for them.

  Each new member of Roy’s Tribe had been a headache. Proud, headstrong, but Tal and Roy had been an amazing centerpiece. Roy demanded his people to act proper, to overcome their speech issues. That classical veneer on his character was a result of Roy’s attempt at overcoming the natural drives his kind had. Self-discipline was everything.

  And I had descended into drunken depravity before returning to Bottom Pit’s doorstep. They stayed with me as I recovered. Followed me to a strange town and established false identities. I let the memories slip away. Now was not the time to dwell on stupid choices. Doing so would keep me in prison for the rest of my life.

  “How does this work?” I asked Nathan.

  “This?” He looked around with a half shrug.

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep your head low. Everyone else will do the same. Piss off the wrong group and they’ll force you to the other side.”

  “Does that include the Wardens?” I continued.

  There was a pause in our conversation. Leo’s eyes flicked left to right, appraising the small room and other prisoners. He seemed to be checking for unwanted eye contact by watching feet, hands, and body language. At least he had the luxury of really watching people. I couldn’t even look at my bread roll without some half-buried memory resurfacing.

  “Any group,” Nathan finally said.

  “So if we avoid them, they avoid us?”

  He nodded. “Mostly.”

  “You got enemies?” I asked. With three prior trips Nathan probably had all sorts of old buddies.

  “No”—he hesitated and shifted his gaze about the room—“friends, here and there.”

  I glared and shoved the last of the slop into my mouth. Rachel would be disappointed in their cooking. Maybe they’d let me do something with this meat. If I could get in the kitchen at least part of the meals would come out decent.

  Eventually a guard escorted us to the next section. There we were assigned chores, dull tasks where another inmate showed me how to mop the floors. Leo and Nathan got stuck with cleaning as well but in different rooms at different times.

  Hours passed and still nothing was quiet. People chattered and banged on metal pipes that rang throughout the halls. Guards rarely shouted but when they did people listened. Time passed while I swept a water laden stick back and forth. Me and the bright warning sign traveled in hops across the floor.

  It was near midnight when someone took over and promptly complained about the state of the cart. I shrugged, cleaning wasn’t one of my skills, much less when it’d been shoved into my hands earlier. This was my first day and already I wanted to punch people.

  The lights had dimmed on our block, but enough lit the walkways. Leo was already on a cot, meditating on the backs of his eyelids.

  Nathan barely made it back before a guard shouted a final warning. As the paper pusher slipped inside, our gateway locked shut with a heavy clink. I didn’t even bother to get up. Between mopping for hours, the drugs they’d filled me with, and the completely crappy food, I was willing to pass out in a room with one person I barely remembered and a complete stranger.

  I sat arms over knees on my bed and watched Nathan as he traveled across the small cell. A fresh bruise was forming on his face.

  “That a gift from your friends?” I asked while pointing with a finger.

  “Yeah. Best friends.” Nathan fake smiled and climbed onto his cot. Leo tensed for just a moment then relaxed once the other man settled. They both lay there, still as could be for different reasons.

  I was growing aware enough of my surroundings to tell a few things. Leo’s breathing was never truly at rest. His body stayed rigid and tense. Nathan’s eyes never closed as he faced the wall. And me, trapped in a scattered flow of past memories, didn’t manage to sleep either.

  4

  Landing

  “Get your guard up, runt!” A voice, gruff even years ago, echoed in my ears. It startled me from a dream where I dodged across a mat while sparring with another figure.

  The voice had been Tal’s. The other figure had been Roy. I blearily looked around and realized I’d managed to fall asleep, only to be plagued by more memories surfacing in conflicting waves.

  Nathan’s shiner was more obvious this morning. As the week passed, additional bruises and signs of scuffles appeared. A split lip showed up on day three. Ugly yellow and brown spots like fingerprints on his arm along with a slight limp developed toward the fifth day. Whatever was happening to him was none of my business. Nathan didn’t share, so I didn’t ask.

  People left me alone. That was normal. When I was on mopping duty they found reasons to take other hallways. When I ate in the lunch room, Leo was the only one to brave my presence. Even Nathan seemed to shy away after the first day.

  Leo did his job without complaint and followed orders given by the guards to the letter. His work was spotless and the results showed right away. By the sixth day he was allowed to call home, though he didn’t take the Warden Bennett up on the personal offer. I suggested, rather strongly, that Leo check in and see how things were going. It was more for my benefit than his.

  The guards kept watch. Their eyes were everywhere I went. Western Sector trained, and maybe not cold-blooded killers, but assuredly effective with all sorts of unknown tricks. Shitting in peace was impossible and awkward.

  I hadn’t got one decent night’s sleep since arriving. My bed frame was bent from where I’d panicked upon waking on day eight. Terrors, being out of place and uncomfortable, not in my home, each item a reason to be upset. Everything conspired to overload my mental pressure points. Worse still, these memory collisions were triggered by seemingly random events.

  “So, new pelt.” A voice intruded upon the silence Leo and I passed our afternoon ‘lunch’ with. The words belonged to a slender male with a twisted gleam in one eye.

  Leo raised an eyebrow at me. I was trying not to break something fragile from the intrusion into my space.

  “Which way you wagging?” the invader asked.

  I kept at my food.

  “Talking to you, fuzzball.”

  The new person speaking was lean and narrow. This wasn’t one wolf asking another about something. He body was too bunched and drawn. He worked out but didn’t stretch and clearly had no range o
f motion. I mean, I could feel the knotted muscles.

  “Yeah? That’s fine. You wolves are all the same. Assholes. Think you own the place. You guys shit in corners like dogs? Maybe mark your territory by pissing all over the tables?”

  Leo kept an amused eye toward the two of us. Our insulter addressed the young man and switched targets. “What you want, puppy? They say male dogs hump each other if they can’t find a girl. Bet you been keeping each other nice and warm at night.”

  The runt shifted from amusement to dangerous irritation. His body flinched and readied for a quick lunge. I shook my head slowly.

  “That’s right, sit. Stay. Good dog,” the newcomer said.

  As Leo had put it, no one was in here for selling cookies. This was a place for those convicted of racial hate crimes. People still pegged me as pack even after I’d removed Muni’s charm. I’d expected this sort of greeting earlier but we’d been left alone for almost a full week.

  “You shouldn’t mess with him, Spike.” Nathan Simms’s voice came from beyond the new guy. That was the first thing Nathan had said around me in days.

  “Why? Simms, he’s been bunked with you. The guys and I figure you wouldn’t be bunked with anyone really dangerous. You got someone pulling strings for you. All this meat’s just for show.”

  I glanced at Nathan and focused on the last of my food. Desperation kept me eating. The meat showed little signs of improvement despite my ranting at the cook about proper seasoning back on day four.

  “I know. Meatball here prolly humped some old lady’s leg in desperation. A broken face like yours must be begging the ugly hookers.” The other man sneered.

  My brow furled and brain tried to catch up. What was the point of pissing me off? Before I could figure it out the bell rang, signaling our return to work. Leo stood with his platter and I did the same, ignoring the obviously weak insults for what they were.

  “Fucking wolf, run away, keep that tail tucked in!”

  My senses were in enough to control to feel the other man get up and shake his head. A disappointed frown crossed his features while he navigated the lunchroom to another group of people. Their mutters were too hard to pick out.

  “Why ignore that?” Leo asked me quietly.

  I gave the classic shrug of indifference. There was no one answer.

  “It’s disrespectful. My father wouldn’t have stood for it. He would have offered a challenge.”

  “Your father wouldn’t even be here,” I said.

  Roy respected the rules too much and valued order. His view wasn’t based on actual law but a rigidly defined personal creed. I didn’t have his discipline despite years of being in the same house.

  “Still, why? You’re”–he stopped himself and gestured with his hands—“bigger than he is. Stronger. I remember how you fought my father. You could wipe the floor with half of this place before a guard even noticed. You could take a stand and push back.”

  Leo talked about that night in Bottom Pit where I’d fought three rounds back to back. I’d been drugged half out of my mind with rage following a barely remembered beat.

  “He had the balls to sit next to me.” No one did that. Leo sat across from me. Nathan had sat near Leo the first few days. Until then no one had come within three feet of my presence.

  “That wasn’t bravery, that was stupidity,” Leo said.

  “So he lives.” Unsorted memories flipped through. The new person, Spike, had been trying to do something. As a trap, it had been obvious, but the actual aim I didn’t understand. And what kind of stupid name was Spike?

  I turned away from Leo and wandered down another path. My cart and mop were waiting somewhere else. Somewhere between cleaning the bathrooms and the cafeteria my mind zoned out again. By nightfall a few pieces had finally formed enough to play out more of the past.

  That night, in my dreams, I existed in pure nothingness. It was endless. Then things flickered as an audible chime swept across the landscape. I was aware again but had opened my eyes for the first time only to see a big fat void.

  My fingers were curled around a bundle of strings. I looked over and watched as the gathered mass thinned. Some were old and decayed; others faded out of existence entirely and vanished as I studied them. Even more burned at far ends that wound into the darkness.

  A sensation hit me. My other hand curled around soft skin. I wasn’t alone and had been traveling through darkness with someone important. No one else existed in this bleak space. I remembered longer hair, a young girl who had maybe been five. I knew I was older, and someone important had yelled at me to keep her safe.

  I struggled to remember where I’d been before the darkness. A small hint came through in the form of a voice. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, old or young. It sparked no memory. It was as if the voice stopped existing altogether and simply unwound itself from existence. The last note was a lingering tone of ‘run.’ We ran. Then staggered. Then finally wound down to a shuffle.

  Then we walked. Our exodus went on for so long that every sensation whittled down to two sets of legs trudging toward the far edge of nothing. We were exhausted beyond sanity. Each step more impossible than the one before it. Numbness tingled every limb.

  My hand curled around a space I couldn’t feel. A voice shouted. I turned and found my hands empty where there had once been objects. No colors of connection, no knotted cords guiding me home.

  Fingers curled as I looked around. Every spot looked the same. Who had the other person been? A sibling? Focusing was too difficult, breathing was labored, the air heavy enough to be liquid. My thoughts were murky. Only a whisper of importance told me they were family. We were all that was left after...

  ...after what? What were we running from?

  The chime of awareness carried on, traversing the empty landscape toward a destination I couldn’t see. I tried to pull on my senses and feel the world where my eyesight registered nothing. Tactile feedback was strange. Nothing felt right. Normally, air was never stagnant, pools of hot and cold would stir it into motion. What surrounded me was still and unhindered. Almost like there was literally nothing about me.

  A big fat dark nothing. Then there was light. Faint, but brighter than anything I’d seen in an eternity.

  I looked about in confusion, only to find my hands were still empty. Quickly I turned and turned again to try to find the person left behind. No one lay on the ground. No fallen friends, sign posts, just nothing. Only me and the bright light in the distance existed.

  It brightened. My mouth failed to form words. To scream across the land, but the noise that should have issued forth was muted, and vanished as it left me. Numb thoughts registered. Where was she? I had to take care of her and bring her with me across this land.

  I’d failed. I was alone. Even the voice telling me to run hardly existed anymore. My body shook, eyes watered, everything felt unreasonably cold. Whoever they were, they had been the last link to the old world. Now even that was gone.

  The space rattled. Something huge approached from far away. It was immense enough to shake existence. I spun and looked toward the looming light. Vibrations gnawed at my hearing then elevated to a boring drill on my skull. It got stronger still and the light grew in size along with the noise.

  My senses overloaded from wave after wave of feedback. I could see it now, and feel it. With the light was a wall of energy moving like a wave. A tidal wall a mile high raced too quickly to escape.

  I ran anyway.

  More shouts bubbled away into nothing. My feet failed to find purchase. I fell and pain that didn’t exist slammed through both arms. My body fell to the side. The wall behind was almost upon me, growing to an impossible size. Everything rattled in time with the wall’s rush. Existence grew brighter. The pounding jackhammer of noise worsened.

  I reached for a horizon. The other person out there needed me. They were gone, and I dug at the ground, pulling myself along without any thought but escape and finding them. Finally the destructi
ve noises and tactical feedback proved too much. I wrapped my arms around my head and curled into a ball.

  The wave reached me. A second later my body swept up high from the ground. Something stranger than water surrounded me. I screamed and echoes rippled as the sound died. Another wave rushed behind the first, surging me even higher. My senses went crazy. Everything around me was flickering through different densities, different states of being. Pieces spun wildly, caught up in something huge beyond comprehension, I tried to find sanity.

  Near me was a concoction of existence. One moment it was a patch of grass, floating free from the earth. Then it spiraled away and shifted into a duck that quacked. Another heartbeat passed and even the duck was gone, replaced by another series of animals and finally dirt. I reached out to grab the clump of land, then it shifted to a statue. That, too, fragmented under my grip and slipped off into other parts of the wave.

  Larger pieces formed into chunks of land and slammed together like a jigsaw puzzle. My arms flailed as I swam through the strange substance toward something solid. Somehow I moved forward, by will or luck.

  Moments later I was firmly riding a piece of earth. My vantage point gave me a slim sense of security in an ocean of madness. I gulped deep breaths and looked past colliding pieces of existence in an attempt to find her. The one I had lost.

  Howling tore around each solid object, as if daring them to finish forming. In a fit of rage the item would spin apart just to form a new combination. My hands white knuckled onto the platform I anchored to. I, and the earth beneath me, spiraled. Dirt formed into bricks. Bricks formed into buildings. Some were torn down. Some were replaced in a blur with things seeming more modern. Ghostly figures who might be people tromped through, oblivious to my existence. Then more people, chattering at high speeds. Others swinging their arms up in down in labor. Those figures, too, vanished, as large metal carriages popped by.

  I was afraid to blink and afraid to move. At least the earth beneath me hadn’t disintegrated like everything else. Still the landscape transformed. Each piece looked increasingly solid compared to the one before it. The howling noise slowly lessened in intensity.