by Gregory Dark
“But … ” Susie stammered, her resolve evaporating like a mirage in a heat-wave, “I thought you were my defence lawyer.”
“I’m also the chief jailer,” said ‘Mum’, with pretty much the same world-weary – or Susie-weary – condescension of ever.
“Consider yourself extremely fortunate, young woman,” said Justin as Susie started following her defence counsel/chief jailer from the room. “You have just enjoyed being processed by the finest justice system in the universe. One which I consider it a privilege to serve.”
“Wait, wait,” said ‘Mum’. “We can’t do this. Not like this.”
Susie sighed an enormous sigh of relief. Finally! Finally the nonsense was over. She’d be reunited with her Sufrogs. She’d find it in her heart to thank the Snow-it-alls for their hospitality, and then – post-hastest – they would together whoosh back to Earth.
“Chains,” said ‘Mum’. “She must have chains. You can’t have a prisoner in solitary confinement without chains. It wouldn’t be seemly.”
Emos brought chains. These were attached both to Susie’s wrists and to her ankles. Their length was so restricted it forced her to bow her head. That was deliberate. Her humiliation was complete.
One of the Emos, Susie saw, was Dremo. He didn’t even look at her.
Susie had never been more alone in her life.
Chapter 29
It was through the far doors of the snowball room that Susie was this time ‘escorted’. Despite the fact that she could only hobble – and that clankily – she found herself phalanxed by six pengrins: two before her, two either side of her, two bringing up the rear.
If the corridors the other side of Snow-it Hall were unadorned and somewhat forbidding, those this side were completely forbidding and designed to ooze forbiddingness and hostility and horribleness.
The aloneness that Susie had felt increased with each hobbled, jangling, mangling, manacled step. Even through her terror, Susie was able to see that this debasement was an act of cruelty. She was able to see that justice is not served by such cruelty, that not even vengeance is so served. She saw that the debasement occasioned by such treatment was not of the person being cruelled against, but of those being cruel. And of those others who, in their own name, allow cruelty to be perpetrated. Cruelty, Susie saw, could not be tolerated by civilisation. If a society allows its officers to be cruel, or countenances official cruelty, that society is one of barbarians: the greater the cruelty the greater the barbarism.
They came to a rusted iron gate. From its far side, another pengrin appeared with a giant key. This it inserted into the lock. Amidst much squeaking and some judicious pushing, the gate heaved its heavy way open.
This gave onto some steep steps, slithery with slime. On the damp walls a few meagre candles gutted their desultory life. Susie put her hands on the wall to steady herself. It was like touching an eel just plucked from the water. Behind her, pengrin beaks pushed her on.
They were plunging into a darkness made more absolute by the presence therein of the feeble, flickering light from candles. The air, stale anyway within Snow-it Hall, here was rank. It was, it felt, the same air as breathed by the dungeon’s builders.
They passed through a barred door, which led to a further flight of steps. They passed through a second barred door. Deeper they slithered down slithery steps. Deeper they clanked and clanged and hopped and hobbled. Deeper, deeper.
Deeper sank Susie into woe and depression. This was to be it, her life from hereon in? A sunless life, a funless life? A smileless, a cuddleless life? A loveless life?
There was no noise now. There were only the clanks of Susie’s chains. But these echoed around invisible catacombs with such force that they returned to Susie with the violence of supersonic jets.
Oh, and there, another clank – a duller clank, this one – of the barred gate being locked behind her. This too hurtled between a hundred unseen walls before screaming back at her.
They got to the last step and turned left. Another barred gate. About half-a-dozen Emos had now joined them. These seemed to know where they were going. The pengrins likewise. To Susie all was just blackness – literally and figuratively.
They arrived at a wall of bars. These gave onto cells beyond them. They stopped at the first. The door was wielded open. Unlike that at the top of the stairs which squeaked, this door cranked. It was an ugly sound – a knife-on-whetstone sound, a fingernails-on-blackboard.
The Sufrogs, en masse, were unceremoniously hurled within. They clanked along to the next cell. This door too was cranked open. A pengrin removed Susie’s chains. Then she too was shoved within.
She collapsed onto a straw palliasse. A tear trickled down her face. She was frightened and so alone. So frightened. Soooo alone.
From somewhere in an invisible distance a clock boinged nine. They were the boings of doom.
This was it. Her life was over.
Chapter 30
The hell it was!
Yes, this was Hell, but that’s not what she meant.
Her life was over? The hell it was! That’s the Hell she was talking about. Her life was most assuredly not over.
Not over, most assuredly.
A voice spoke to her, “You will be all right, Susie.” This was not the voice of her soul, nor that of her inner self or conscience. It was a stranger’s voice. But, as with so many such voices, it had a familiar ring. But she had no need of it. She would be all right. She needed no stranger’s voice to reassure her. She was going to be all right. She’d make sure of it.
She became aware of the tiniest of breaths. She then became aware of the flimsiest of rays. There was a griddle high in the wall, a narrow slit though which air was now gently entering and the sliver of milky light was gently creeping.
It meant life. It meant her life.
And whilst presently in her life there was nothing as positive as hope, the existence of life meant there was, at least, the hope of hope. Sometimes it is only the feeble and the flickering match which separates us from darkness. For as long as it flickers we might find the stub of a candle.
The clock boinged again. It boinged ten. Like those at nine, these too were the boings of doom. As were those at eleven. There was no twelve. Susie never found out why, but Snow-it-all time was divided not into twenty-four units per day, but twenty-two, divided into two elevens.
On that first night she slept fitfully and fretfully. But she did manage, at least, to find a few hours’ rest.
The clock five times had boinged its boings of early morning doom when a key rattled in the lock of her cage. One Emo brought in a green mush, which was her breakfast: It was the same sludge she’d tried at the snowball: ‘pearidge’, a ‘porridge’ made of peas.
She knew she had to eat, knew – if the guttering match were to ever light the candle – she had to keep her strength up. She ate. And she yucked. She forced herself to eat again. And again she yucked. In fact, she yuck-yuck-yucked.
Then she started to laugh.
Well, she thought, that, at least. At least she was allowed to yuck in peace, with no tickings-off or anything from her mother.
She could have got home-sick at this point. But she wouldn’t allow herself to. She simply stood in the middle of that path and debarred herself entry down it. She ate more pearidge. And she laughed some more that she yucked. And that she could yuck.
Hard labour consisted of intensive courses in snow-it-allism; snow-it-allery; emocracy; snow-it-allism and emocracy, in emocracy, on emocracy; emocracy in snow-it-allism, in it, on it – and so forth.
She was in a class of I-knew-its in which 31 and 32 had again been returned to their position as favourite. It basked on this return to status, one of whose privileges was being allowed to smirk, openly and flagrantly, in Susie’s face. Susie, being in solitary confinement, was not allowed to answer back – indeed to react in any way. Being in solitary confinement, those around her could not be there. She had nothing therefore to react to.
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Thus it was that for days her days passed. Pearidge for breakfast, roast peas for lunch, peas on toast for supper. This interspersed with endless hours of snow-it-allery in its various guises. The only indication of the passage of time: the clock boinging out its boings of doom.
Each night when her peas on toast were brought, an Emo asked her to sign the bill. On the first occasion she asked the Emo why. But the Emo had shrugged a frightened shrug and had scuttled away.
She asked Momma why. Who replied that not only was the Vis-all-seer the brightest, the wisest and the best, she was also the kindest. Sometimes in her kindness she would grant prisoners amnesty. It was, however, only fair – only equitable – that, in common with Emos and pengrins, prisoners should pay for their food and lodging. Before they left jail, therefore, a bill was presented to them.
And if they couldn’t pay? Susie wondered.
Then, of course, they were re-arrested, Momma told her.
“And imprisoned?”
“Of course.”
And how, Susie wondered, were the prisoners supposed to gather together the money to pay? Given the fact that they were paid nothing.
Snow-it-allery required initiative, Susie. If prisoners were to survive outside the dungeons they would require such initiative. Without it, maybe they deserved no better than the dungeons. Maybe, indeed, their survival depended on them being in the dungeons. It was – because the Snow-it-allest was also the Snow-it-kindest – the kindest thing to do to those poor unfortunates. Susie herself, if she were to look closely at herself, was, she would see, yet another manifestation of Snow-it-all justice: If she was in the dungeons it was because that was the best – the kindest – place also for her. No-one was not endungeoned who should not be.
Except for her, Susie insisted.
Especially for her, she was corrected. It is only the penitent who can be amnestied. The impenitent are too capable of re-offending. And penitence has to start with accepting guilt. How do you atone for a crime unless you accept you did it?
“I DID NOT DO IT,” Susie yelled. Which outburst cost her that night’s supper. It was a device she used on several subsequent occasions when she simply could not eat another pea.
Each night once the plate was again removed by an Emo, a voice would come to her in the darkness. Each night the same voice. She felt she knew it, the voice, from Earth. But she also knew that now she had heard it so often, that voice could easily have blurred around the edges into a thousand different ones.
“You are not alone,” the voice would say to her one night. “You will be all right,” it would say on another. It was a woman’s voice, a mature one but not an ancient one. A kind voice, a gentle voice.
To begin with, Susie had found it profoundly irritating. As time had gone by, however, she had found – first – comfort in that voice, and – later – reassurance. Latterly she had found she needed that voice, as an infant needs his goodnight kiss.
It certainly did not tell her that all was all right with her world – the dankness of the walls and the scratchiness of the palliasse would too soon have given the lie to any such sunny-side-of-the-streetism. But it did hone her resolve – hone and deepen it. It gave her the courage to have courage.
It is sometimes that which requires the most courage of all.
Chapter 31
Days didn’t divide into each other, they didn’t even slide into each other. There was just a jollop of days into which you stuck your hand and pulled one out. They were all samey and pointless.
And mostly cheerless.
Just as a nuclear apocalypse, however, will not totally destroy all life on Earth, so not even the most sinister of circumstances will or can completely destroy all joy. Always there will be cockroaches, always cheer. Cockroaches bury themselves in the most sordid places; cheer also nestles in unlikely niches. Humans must have cheer. They must have laughter. They will find it anywhere.
Just as Susie forced herself to eat the pearidge, so she also forced herself to find cheer. She would find it in the way an I-knew-it got too clever in class, or an Emo would get confused over the bill. Even in the way that the slime on her cell walls had started to solidify and to form itself into interesting curlicues of eccentric hues and textures.
To begin with, her cheer had been ousted by vengeance: What she wasn’t going to do to these Snow-it-alls when she finally got free. What she wasn’t going to do to Mr E for having suggested this nightmare of a trip to begin with. What she wasn’t going to do to her grandma for having bought the stupid frogs in the first blooming place. What she wasn’t going to do to her mother, and to Phil – just for being her mother and Phil. And back again to the Snow-it-alls and the I-knew-its and the Emos and the pengrins ... as for Ma’am Elaide, the Snow-it-allest … It was indescribable what she wasn’t going to do to her!
She let the anger boil and bubble within her. It was a witches’ cauldron of toad-like venom and secretions and yuckiness. As corrosive as acid. … As corrosive, yes, as acid. She started to feel unwell with the anger, started feeling her insides hurting from the corrosiveness of the acid. If she was going to survive she had to find another way.
Another blooming way.
She forced herself to find laughter.
She marched up and down in her cell. Like a tin soldier, left arm and left leg swinging together. “Cold is not cool,” she repeated to herself. And laughed, remembering her woe on the football field. Remembering what she then thought of as woe. “Cold is not cool, cold is not cool, cold is not cool,” she shunted, steam-engine like, chuffing backwards and forwards, steam streaming from her nose and her mouth as if she were a steam engine. And she laughed and she laughed and she laughed.
And the laughter was not corrosive. Her insides felt hugely better for the laughing. All of her felt better for it.
This enraged the Snow-it-alls more than anything else she did. Those punished did not find cheer, they did not laugh. That is an abnegation of punishment. As such, Susie’s laughter – as well as being healthy for her – was a punishment for her punishers.
They didn’t even have to see her laugh. If they had seen her laugh they would have punished her again for that. Her demeanour had told them she had laughed. Therein lay their punishment. When Susie understood that she redoubled her efforts both to eat and to laugh. Their punishment, she saw, for so wrongly and so grievously punishing her would be that she survived it.
She therefore had to survive not only for herself, but to avenge herself on them – all of them who had made of her life the most monstrous and monstrously unfair existence that it was. And it was that the vengeance worth its exacting.
As usual, the clock had boinged six. They were boings no more of doom. They were just boings of boings. It no longer grated on Susie that the key scraped in the lock. Her eyes were adjusted to the dungeon’s permanent murk. It certainly wasn’t home, but the Hell it was had become a familiar one.
The pengrins brought in her … wow! … special day! … macaroni peas! An Emo had brought her the bill to sign.
“Just double-check the total, prisoner, before you sign,” said the Emo, in a voice bristling with authoritarianism but downed too with a reluctant gentleness.
“What’s the difference?” Susie asked, closing her eyes, and scooping the noxious food into her mouth. “I can’t pay whatever it is.”
“I really must insist,” the Emo said.
With a sole-deep sigh, Susie let her metal fork fall clangily on the metal plate. “Pen?” she asked. This was proffered her by the Emo.
“Do read it carefully,” it said.
Beneath the usual meaningless squiggles, random numbers in unexplained columns, there was some tiny sparrow-like writing. To begin with, Susie thought these were just ink dribbles or blots or doodlettes, but she could see the Emo stabbing at the hieroglyphics with its finger, careful to disguise the action from the watching, but disinterested, pengrins.
She squinted. And then she s-q-u-i-n-t-e-d. Finally the
tiny blobs started to dance into some sort of shape. Finally they danced into readable shape: ‘Help is at hand,’ they read.
She looked enquiringly at the Emo. She read its forehead. Dremo! She started to squeal. But very quickly clamped her own hand over her own mouth. The pengrins heard that stunted squeal, but were far too disinterested even to seek a reason for it.
Susie reached for Dremo’s arm. Surreptitiously, she squeezed it.
“If you would sign it, prisoner,” Dremo said. Susie did so. Dremo withdrew. Susie forced herself to finish the macaroni peas. The pengrins grabbed the tray. She heard their footsteps echo behind her, heard the key scrape, heard the bolt lock. But she knew she was not alone. She wondered indeed in her not-aloneness whether the other voice would return to her.
“See,” said that voice. “I told you all would be well.”
“Who are you?” Susie asked, who continued to be less confident about the outcome’s eventual “well”ness than the tone of the disembodied voice indicated it was.
“I’m Syllabylly,” said the voice. “I am here to help you.”
“Not simply by getting me out of this dump, I suppose? I mean, that would be too simple, right?”
“I don’t have that power.”
“No, I somehow figured you might not.”
“It’s not how I can help you.”
“Of course not. My fairy godmother would have to be one of limited power. That stands to reason.”
“I am an oracle …”
“Or my oracle, whatever,” said Susie. “You’re not going to give me a frog, are you?”
“Frog?”
“Just a thought.”
“I’m not your fairy godmother. I cannot control. I can only advise. I can only solace.”
“So, what would you solace right at the moment?” Susie asked, sprinting towards petulance. “Could you, for instance, solace me … oh, I don’t know … a key, for example? Or could you solace me Mr E here?”
“I could advise you to be nice to Dremo,” said Syllabylly. “Dremo might just provide both.”