Alade (Irunmole Saga)

by Jean-Marc Akerele

  3 I stood before a federal judge dressed not in the handcrafted suits that had once been the pride of my extensive wardrobe, but in a faded orange prison jumpsuit, shackled hands and feet with two formidable looking U.S. Marshals standing on either side of me while the final tally of charges with which the government would indict me was read. I listened halfheartedly as my useless court appointed lawyer interrupted the prosecution from time in a feeble attempt to counteract the rolling juggernaut that was the Department of Justice on a mission to slowly crush the life from me and ultimately break me. It had been two months since the fateful day of my arrest and just as Agent Reese had predicted, I had lost everything; all my so-called friends had turned their backs on me and even my high-priced lawyer had abandoned me after a few initial consultations, claiming that my six-figure retainer fee had been used up and that he would need more money to represent me. With only an incompetent public defender to represent me, I had been denied bail and had been remanded to the custody of the government, to be held until my next court appearance in the Washington D.C. Central Detention Facility (CDF). Here I stood now, miserable and in despair, knowing that there was no hope of me being released and knowing that I would be making the horrible journey back to the CDF with its full body searches and inefficient processing procedures which ensured that an inmate would be miserable one hundred percent of his or her time there. I looked out into the gallery of people sitting in the court, the family members, the loved ones and victims of those of us standing in front of the bench awaiting judgment and for a moment my heart swelled with happiness and with hope for I saw a face shining out the darkness which had already begun to envelop me, a face from a time and place which I had turned my back upon so long ago. My father, as usual, was impeccably dressed, but he did not smile, after all what was there to smile about seeing his youngest child here in this room under these circumstances. Yet what was truly remarkable was the fact that he was here in this room at all among the multitude of humans with which he had nothing in common, and experiencing as they were also experiencing the pain of seeing a loved one in this predicament. I wanted to cry out to him, to thank him and to apologize to him for bringing him to this joyless reunion but all I could bring myself to do was nod. And as my time before the judge ended, and the Marshals began to escort me out, I saw another face in the crowd, a face which quietly warned me to abandon this hope and to embrace my despair. Silently, I watched as Raziel approached my father and spoke softly into his ear, and when she was done speaking he looked back at me one more time before taking her arm and quickly leaving the courtroom. And with that, I knew now that I was truly alone.

  I sat in my cell contemplating beating the hell out the filthy cellmate that the correctional officers had seen fit to deposit in my cell, but knowing that this would simply add fuel to a fire that was already raging out of control, I turned my attention to the floor and quickly wiped it down with a rag and soap and water, before beginning my morning set of pushups. Jail was not nearly as bad as I had expected, especially since one usually only hears of all the horror stories such as prison rape and murder. But I had quickly learned that if you kept to yourself and minded your own business, at the same time making it quite clear that your silence did not by any means make you weak, and then most other inmates respected you and left you alone. I was not due to go before the judge for another two more weeks so I made the best of a messed-up situation and spent my time reading and exercising. I knew now and had accepted that I would fall, and that the darkness which must eventually envelop me had not yet fully arrived, so I was on constant guard for it and as a result spent much of my time studying the other inmates and slowly relearning the powers which I had abandoned so long ago. These powers were not so much the ability to manipulate and change reality as the Gods did, instead they were more like a powerful empathy and a telepathy that allowed me to read my surroundings and everything in it as easily as a children’s story. I knew what people wanted before they did and could use this to manipulate my surroundings to my advantage, for nothing was hidden from me. I healed quickly from injury, and my strength far surpassed that of even the strongest human, yet emotionally I was much less sophisticated than most humans, in some ways very childlike and naïve because of the idealistic world view that my clan had held so dear. I meditated often, thinking carefully about the coming storm, and after my next disastrous court appearance in which more charges were added to my indictment, I became resigned to being in jail for a long time. My next appearance was not for another two months, and I knew now that when the time came I would not be going home. Jail would be my home now and it was time that I began to explore my surroundings and embrace the despair that was waiting to take me to dark places. Agent Reese had told me to become a power in this world that was not my own. I was now ready to take flex my wings

  Smell defines the soul of a prison. The multitude of stories which swirl in the fetid air are grand testaments to humanity’s ability to manufacture and contain despair so efficiently, while turning a blind eye to the damage it continues to cause to the very society that this system aims to protect. I was no different than any other prisoner for I too felt the violence and despair which perpetually hangs in the air of a prison block, but because I knew that I must follow the journey mapped out for me to its conclusion, that of my total and utter fall from grace, and despite my being caged like a wild animal, it seemed that for the first time in many years I felt free. The beauty of life in prison for a creature of chaos such as me is that it puts life in perspective, in the sense that the structured, orderly way my days were conducted forced me to learn how to accept my unconditional surrender. There would be no going to the corner store for a bag of jelly beans when the urge grabbed me, nor would there be any Sunday night HBO shows to enjoy, and there would be no sex, unless of course you were of a certain persuasion. So what did one do? Did I rail out against my unjust imprisonment and challenge the correctional officers at every opportunity? Or did I take out the seething rage and frustration which all prisoners feel on my fellow inmates? Well, challenging the guard would have gotten me thrown into solitary confinement and most probably beaten, while constantly aggravating my fellow inmates and disturbing the little peace they have made for themselves would have earned me a “Bethlehem,” a righteous piece of steel between my ribs, or worse. Instead of fighting my imprisonment I learned to quiet my unquiet mind. I learned to sit in silence and observe the scents, sights and sounds of my new home so that I could better quantify it, understand it and in time master it.

  My presence in the block did not go unnoticed, and the inmates who ran not only that block, but in reality, the prison itself began to send out feelers to me. I was new, exotic, and strong so they wanted to know what I was about, what I stood for and most importantly what advantage I could bring to them and their respective factions. It has always been my nature to do my own thing which has always earned me the label of “eccentric” or “odd” but in the prison world this is not necessarily a good thing because it calls attention to you, which you do not necessarily want. I knew that the time was rapidly approaching when I would be tested so I continued to work out and read as many books as I could lay my hands on to forget about the inevitable. Don’t get me wrong I was not antisocial, and even though I kept to myself, the obvious differences of my race made me stand out; I had an unidentifiable accent, my eyes were set at a strange angle, my feet were a little too large for my body, I was heavier than my size and height should allow, my skin seemed to absorb light and I gave off the strange energy that all possessors of ase unfortunately cannot hide. I felt eyes on me and could sense the curiosity that I had inspired. Therefore, one afternoon when I had left the chow line and sat down at an empty table to eat my lunch, I was not surprised when an inmate, who I knew was called Tim, pointed at the seat opposite me then sat down when I nodded back in the affirmative. “Goulash again,” he said angrily, without looking up from his tray “Do you want mine, because I can’t eat this sh
it? I’ll trade you your cake for my goulash, what do you say?” I looked up at him and nodded my assent and we quickly traded foodstuffs and sat back down to eat. As I devoured the protein represented by the disgusting goulash, I could feel him watching me, so I looked up and met his glance. He smiled nervously, and said “You’re not from here are you? Where are you from?”

  “That’s a little personal isn’t it,” I said smiling, “After all we have only just met, though you did give me your goulash.” He continued watching me, not knowing where I was going with this so I continued, saying “You’re right I am not from here.” He seemed relieved that I did not snap at him for his rudeness and because of this he then proceeded to talk my ear off as if my apathy had opened a floodgate of verbal diarrhea, which as I would come to learn is quite normal in prison, since the rule is to be extremely self-absorbed because you are in here by yourself. Prisoners will have conversations consisting of each one talking exclusively about themselves and their case and not even noticing that the other person is doing the same. It is as if each person is performing a monologue within the confines of what should have been a dialogue. It could be at times very amusing. I soon learned that he was in prison for drug distribution. He had been selling Oxycontin pills to cover his own heroin habit and had been caught in DEA sting and was now, thanks to federal statutes and the three strikes rule, looking at fifteen years for trying to sell a few pills. It was a sad story that I was to hear many variations of in prison, especially as I began to open-up and socialize more and more. Everyone had their own sad story and everyone, of course, was innocent. Tim though, was unusual. He did not whine about his situation, indeed he not only seemed to accept it, but he was genuinely happy with his place in the world, in this world behind bars. There was an energy about him which was different from the others, and I began to suspect the hand of Chaos in his presence in the same block with me. He knew everyone, and when I say everyone I mean everyone, from the other inmates in the prison, the various correctional officers, and even the Warden of the facility himself. Everybody liked Tim because he was a decent person who had simply struggled with addiction all his life and now was about to pay for his latest mistake with a fifteen-year stretch. He had been in and out of prison all his adult life and knew so many of the people in the prison administration that they treated him like one of their own. I could say that I remained friends with him out of loneliness and camaraderie but if I did I would be lying, because the fact is that I saw an opportunity that I could not miss and if I was to rise through the ranks in this brave new world I had to make my mark, and Tim provided me with an opportunity that I could not resist. For as I studied him with my growing powers, I had learned something truly remarkable about him which could, if managed correctly, greatly help me in my rise, something that I don’t think even Tim himself realized. You see, my race, like many others, has its adventurers and its outcasts, who wander far from home and from time these wayfarers, in their loneliness, sometimes mate with humans. Usually, due to our physical differences, no offspring results from the mating, but we do have enough genetic similarities that occasionally, for whatever reasons, perhaps it takes a certain celestial alignment, or certain biochemistry, a hybrid child is born. Tim was one such child, the offspring of a human woman and one of my people and as a result he possessed our sacred power, ase. Because it had not been nurtured, in Tim’s case it manifested itself only as unusual charisma and empathy and for humans it made him as irresistible as bears find honey. It also made him crave drugs, because without the full dose of our heritage, his mind was not equipped to process the reality that his ase was trying to show him, so by dosing himself with various recreational drugs he was spared the vision which was slowly turning him crazy. It provided an opportunity which I could not afford to miss. I would need to cultivate this sacred energy of his, I needed to make it grow in strength, I needed to enhance and elevate it to the point that it would fill him so completely and then I could rip it from him as it consumed his mind and add it to my own. In this way would I feed the darkness and despair that was steadily growing within me and open the doorway to that dark place where my Gods would have me go. For months, I had sat in my dark thoughts meditating, and quieting my unquiet mind until I had heard the sound that I was searching for, the wretched sound of madness that emanated from the dark place which all of my race had long ago learned to seal off, and ignore. This was not a power to be trifled with, for it was this same dark power that has fueled the greatest atrocities on this world and even if we wished to cross that threshold, the Gods in their wisdom had made the doorway impervious to ase so that even if one of us was tempted, the door could not be opened with its power. But I was no longer like my people; I had fled and learned to feign humanity and in doing so had adopted much from them, including their incessant curiosity which had now led me here to this doorway and the means to open it, so that could step through if I was to complete my fall into the place where my Goddess’ gift to me could rise to the fullness of its strength and I could one day be reborn. I began to talk to Tim every day; I began to subtly teach him how to strengthen his ase and to explore the bounds of this energy without him even being aware of what I was doing. The breathing exercises and meditation techniques I taught to him as a way of escaping the walls around us, and the physical exercises that I shared with him I disguised as yoga. The moment they let us out of our cells until it was time to lockdown he and I hung out together and I whispered words of power and madness into his ears which he welcomed into the brightness of his soul. I watched him carefully as my seed began to take root and his power began to blossom. Soon I would be able to reap what I had so secretly sown, and I allowed him free rein in exercising his strength, letting him introduce me to the other inmates who mattered and letting him use me and my strangeness to impress them and the correctional officers. I knew I would soon need their help for what I was planning. I quickly was in great demand because of my intellect and my eclectic life experiences, and not long afterward all sorts of requests were flying my way every day; help me with writing a legal brief; help me write a letter to the judge; help me come up with a plan to smuggle 500 kilos of cocaine into the city. My dark ase charmed them, my dark ase manipulated them and in my despair my corrupted ase fed upon them. Since both the inmates and officers did not see me as a threat I was left alone to my own ends, and so being often alone it was inevitable that one day one of the most influential of inmates in the block, approached me with a proposition, one that would not only cement my place in the hierarchy, but would place me closer to the threshold and to opening the door I needed to walk through. Agent Reese had told me what I needed to do and I sensed that my chance had come. But for it to work I needed Tim to come to the fullness of his power, I needed his skills with other humans as well the skills that I had been subtly teaching him about manipulating ase to make this work, for if it did he would bloom, he would blossom and I could rip it out of him and devour it utterly and be on my merry way.

  I met D’Andre Rogers in his cell after the four o’clock count. I sat down on the stool at the desk and faced him as he began to speak. “Do you know that you have quite a reputation out there in the world? From what I understand you were the man to go to get things done. Has that changed? I know that you have shit hanging over your head now, but you know what? Once a player always a player and I see a major player sitting in front of me despite the circumstances we are in.” I smiled and looked carefully at him, probing him mentally and using my skills to gauge his sincerity, and seeing nothing sinister there I said, “What is it you think I can help you with?”

  “There is some information that is relevant to my case, but more importantly to the running of my business. I need it and I need it immediately. Can you get it for me?”

  “Why not ask your lawyer? Surely any documentation could more easily come through him. Besides, my network is not what it used to be. Why do you need me? What are you not telling me?”

  “The information is on
a thumb drive, my lawyer will not bring it, believe me I have asked.”

  “Go through your regular routes. We both know that all the drugs on this block come from you. You don’t need me.” “No, you are right, I am not telling you everything, but I will say this; your reputation is one of honor, you are man of your word, and you are discreet. With my normal routes, I cannot guarantee those things.”

  “And what makes you think I can? For that matter, what makes you think that I have any means of doing anything?”

  “Tim.”

  “Ah.” I stood up and stretched my legs for a moment looking at the drab grey walls of the cell and its poorly stacked steel bunk beds, and then eased back onto the uncomfortable metal stool. D’Andre was studying me quietly, trying to gauge which direction in which I was bending. There was never any doubt that I would do what he asked because this was the opportunity I had been looking for, so I looked at him gravely and said, “Tell me everything.”