Hold the Light

by Ryan Sherwood

Randy paced about the dirt, thinking about his trial and wondered if it compared to the other prisoners' trials. The case was cut and dry to the jury and to the courtroom. All agreed to make an example of him and decided on the swiftest and longest punishment, ensuring that no one corrupted the sanctity of their society. Everyone, including Randy's public defendant, participated in the frame-up.

  But Randy was just glad that Betsy was in Boston. No matter how tough those years of living from orphanage to orphanage had been, it was better than living among this crop of fools.

  Randy kicked dirt around the yard until every inmate headed back his cell. When he returned, he saw his cellmate standing next to his cot again, breathing heavily, looking like he hadn't moved an inch since morning.

  Randy read the day away until lights out. He put the book under his bed and breathed a sigh of relief knowing that his cellmate might be gone tomorrow.

  Randy couldn't sleep for the second night in a row, troubled by the monster just a few feet away. His stare was worrisome, like he knew something that Randy didn't. His bed moaned under his restless mass. A lupine groan seeped past his lips as he looked at Randy. Dread percolated in Randy's eyes. The hulk was planning something.

  "I'm coming Veronica," the convict said at nearly a whisper. "Just one last loose end to tie."

  His words shook the room. Randy slowly turned and looked at the hulk. His bleach white eyes cut the air with a gaze that was heavier than stone. Their gazes locked and froze Randy and just as quick as it began, the convict closed his eyes and turned his back.

  Randy's brain seized and his heartbeat and breathing fell flat. Roll call was the only sound that stirred him and he floated like a tired ghost through the motions of a normal day as best he could, trying not to think about the coming night. Two days worth of lost sleep threatened to take him at any moment. He instead thought of seeing Betsy again.

  When they were let out into the yard, Randy went straight for a guard to ask about his cellmate's impending execution.

  "Is he going to the chair?" Randy asked.

  The guard nodded and Randy handed him a small bundle of payment.

  Night quickly came and found Randy sitting on his bed, eyes fixed on his enormous cellmate, alert and ready for anything his fatigued body could have thrown at it. The man did the same in return, except he was convulsing. He looked like he was having a religious experience, or about to swallow his tongue.

  "He knows he's going to die. It's in his ugly eyes. Oh God what is he going to do to me?"

  Randy panicked.

  As his fit died out, an almost puerile smirk wiped across the convict's teeth, and Randy's stomach filled with cement. Innocent commotion echoed from down the hall, and Randy hoped it was the guards coming with a priest to drag him to his eternity. If that was them, he would be safe again.

  The Goliath sat across from him Indian-style and mumbling. Randy's spine straightened. The convict wrung his hands and glared down. Sweat hung on Randy's lashes, dripping in front of his eyes. The corpulent glob dangling from his eyelash interfered with his concentration, and he wiped it away, fixing again on the convict.

  But he was gone. A blur was in his place and Randy looked up to see him sprawled out in a leap. The giant was airborne for a second before he landed with a massive thud that cracked bedsprings and pinned Randy down against them. Huge hands closed in over Randy as the convict's fingers spread out like netting. The pinning pressure stole his breath and Randy couldn't even think about breathing.

  The convict crashed a dirty cracked hand over Randy's mouth, clamping down on it like a vice. Randy's mind raced and he tried to scream, but nothing escaped his tightly covered mouth. He wished he could move his arms and legs, but he couldn't even feel them. They strained to beat on the hulking convict with all their might. Randy went limp and tried a different approach. He tried to squirm loose but the convict adjusted and just applied more pressure.

  Every futile attempt at freedom was shed off until the massive hand moved away from Randy's mouth. Randy gasped, greedily grabbing in air, ready to hurl out a scream with his exhale, but the convict's mouth came crashing down onto his.

  Terrified and bewildered by the unexpected kiss, Randy thrashed about, his limbs finally responding to his commands, but he couldn't break free. It was like a building had fallen on him. The convict took his pointer finger and thumb and pinched Randy's nose shut. His mind raced even faster as he prayed the guards would burst in and save him. He tried to conserve what air was left within his lungs and he prayed that he would live, had to live to see Betsy again. After this night, living was a curse he wished he never wished for.

  With his nostrils pinched shut, his air supply and pulse shallow, Randy clenched every muscle he had left to strike out in one last violent shot. Instead, the convict seemed to predict his move and responded by shooting a gust of breath down Randy's throat. The long breath emptied the hulk's lungs and soul. A gale, no different, even worse than the wind of the tornado rushed into him, shaking him with shivers of pain, terror and cold. Ice seemed to form and crystallize throughout his body, stinging inside his veins, chilling every muscle fiber and freezing his organs. Frigid grips clung to his chest and climbed up his throat clinging like a tongue to a frozen pole. Whatever blew inside him began to pulse and breathe and struggle for a foothold, vying for power over everything alive inside Randy.

  His internal workings felt instantly rewired. Nerves and fibers severed and reattached in new ways, shocking his system. His heart pounded irregularly, and he tasted sulfur in his mouth. It was as if he was pure ice and his clammy fingers pumped frozen blood yet his skin felt ablaze and his mouth ready to vomit fire.

  A faint blue glow emanated from between their faces. It grew brighter. Randy's ears began to attune to faint yells that rattled in his ears, coming from the guards at his cell door as they fumbled with keys.

  A cold calm settled over his senses and everything was muffled. Randy could hear nothing beyond the echoing phrase from the convict as his words haunted all the nights of the rest of his life.

  "Have the gift."

  The guards entered and ripped the pair apart without hassle. Smothered under the officers, the giant burst into laughter, not putting up any resistance as he was shoved out of the cell. The heels of his boots squeaked along the polished floor as they dragged him away. Randy didn't understand but it felt like someone had cut an umbilical cord. Randy frantically reached for the convict, stretching out for an explanation that he wouldn't receive.

  The air turned deathly quiet as the man's muffled echoes of laughter and the squeak of his shoes, dissipated down the hall.

  Seconds crawled into minutes and still Randy couldn't budge. His chest and head felt like stone. Randy was entranced and could do nothing but stare out of his cell. Somehow, he could still see the convict. It was like a vague, shadowy impression, but Randy could see and feel the guards strap the convict into the electric chair. He could see the convict smirking as they placed the wet sponge on his head and feel the water drip down his face.

  In the hushed prison, even the simple unavoidable noises were impeded.

  No-one coughed or shuffled, no crickets chirped, no wind blew. The same haunting silence hung around the execution chamber. Randy held his breath and witnessed the guards rattle off the convict's judgment. His lungs felt like caving in until the silence was frightfully broken with a roar. It was a deafening scream from the massive convict that quickly turned into laughter. It hit Randy's ears like a brick shattering a window in the middle of church. Nothing felt right; even the air tasted wrong.

  Then reality shifted into a blue spectrum and Randy could feel himself outside his cell. He recognized Ken standing in front the convict reciting condemning lines to him. Every other guard watched the clock and eagerly anticipated both of its hands to connect on midnight. The convict simply chuckled some more and licked his lips happily like he was tasting freedom.

  The lights in the prison dimmed as electricity wa
s passed into the convict's restrained body. Ken stood watch.

  Strange vibrations blurred Randy's vision and shook him awake. Randy blinked and rubbed his eyes, unsure of his experiences and why the world had seemed so blue before. He sniffed and noticed a stench. He could taste it; the sulfur stink was thick and palpable. Randy could never forget that smell.

  Chapter 19

  After that night the color of the world looked different, almost blue. Randy couldn't ascertain much about what the convict did to him and what he put inside him. It was just a kiss, the strangest and worst thing he experienced, but just a nasty kiss. So why was he cold all the time?

  Why was he relentlessly freezing and shivering in his cell like he was in the Artic and spending most his time under the covers of his cot, rolled up in a ball for warmth?

  But the worst of it was the missing time. He would blank out for minutes at a time, every day, only waking a short time later with memories of new places. And those memories were soaked with pain. Days became unbearable, as he couldn't shake an undeniable and untraceable depression. Every time he searched for the source of his melancholy, it seemed to sense Randy's persecutions and fled deeper inside him. The battle with his depression and the strange feelings and memories inside him, consumed Randy and often left him in a comatose stupor. No one came near him, some fearing he was contagious and others fearing he was possessed. The drabness of his cell was the only scenery he saw for months as Randy battled with his spasms. As inmates and guards walked by him, they gazed in-between the bars, some waiting for improvement, some waiting for evil, all waiting for a change in the expression on his face to be something other than frozen hatred.

  Randy's sanity quickly began to slip. With every one of his spasms, there was something else that seemed to accompany him. All he could figure was that with each convulsion, his consciousness was whisked away, leaving him with random foreign images. And the trips felt so real.

  Nightmares constantly plagued his days and nights forcing him into sleeplessness. The only way Randy found to keep even the slightest hold on his sanity was to deny everything that happened to him, playing his problems off as some constant malfunction of his brain. The more he pushed the visions and the convulsions away, the more day-to-day life became bearable.

  The essence that had pervaded his chest often paced about it, bumping into his soul, like it was casing the cell it was trapped in. But when it stopped, it sat like a lump as heavy as stone. Over time it stretched up and wrapped around his throat with a vice grip, making food hard to swallow and breathing difficult. Between the clamping points of his chest and throat, a mysterious flow of loneliness pulsed in cold waves that Randy understood. He craved his family, and the entity inside him felt the same for its own, whatever that was, but had no one left other than Randy. Sharing the common goal of yearning for home, Randy decided they would reach that goal. The second he made this pact, he felt unholy, and that made it all the more appealing. If God was going to forsake him like this, than who was Randy to deny his fate?

  Almost everything he loved was stolen from him anyway and this was the only way left to get back the one last thread of his life. Randy had to get out and to Betsy.

  Word spread like wildfire around the prison about Randy's insanity, and all the officials decided he had to go. Ever since he rejoined the population, conversations and contracts were made to kill him, but not a one could be carried out. Not a soul in the prison wanted to risk their spirit trying to take his.

  On a gloomy late summer day, over a year after he had arrived, he was out in the yard stumbling around, talking to himself, stopping after every convulsion to yell at the sky. After every cry he felt satisfied, and the other inmates backed away. His eyes zeroed in on a random guard along the fence. No one, not even Randy, knew what was transpiring as he approached Ken. Randy poked his finger rigidly against the guard's uniformed shoulder. Officer Ken turned to see Randy suck his lips in under his teeth. The black bags beneath Randy's eyes were deep enough to be fissures.

  Randy yanked on his own greasy hair, violently ripping out clumps and dropping them to the dirt. Then his hand moved down to his chest.

  "What the hell?" Ken stepped back.

  "It's in here," Randy said grabbing and scraping at his chest, "I can't get it out but it's here!"

  "G-Get back."

  Randy grabbed the guard's hand before he could draw the baton, "Help me get it out dammit!"

  "Get the hell away ..."

  Randy's right hand sunk beneath his denim shirt and dug at his skin, busting buttons into the air. Randy held Ken's hand beneath his own and stared into his eyes. The guard's eyes gorged open as Randy, holding Ken's hand to his own chest, forced them both to tear into

  Randy's skin. Blood pooled around both their fingernails as flesh tore away. Ken kicked and yelled, but Randy held him closer, hearing and feeling nothing outside his head and chest. Other guards emerged from behind Randy in a gloomy fog of shouts and rifles. Nausea climbed into Ken's throat and his head swam. Randy forced Ken's fingernails deep into his skin until Ken's nails scraped Randy's sternum.

  "Help me," Randy pleaded teary eyed as he forced them to curl their fingers around a bloody slice of flesh and tear it off. Ken shuddered and fainted.

  Guards tore Randy away and pummeled him senseless, leaving the strip of Randy's flesh in Ken's hand as they carried him away.

  Chapter 20

  Randy became a violent anomaly. A decision was quickly implemented that sent him to the sanitarium wing of the prison were the nights were coated with screams.

  Randy wasted away there. Among the madmen, constant howls drowned his convulsions and screams, as he became lost in his arcane mind. Denial soon followed, leaving him standing next to his bed in a stupor, no longer a threat to himself, just to everyone else. When the hunger pangs were overwhelming and the previous day's rations had already rotted, Randy carefully crammed food past his lips, hoping to swallow enough for him and the gift to live off of. He barely lived.

  His eyes had aged beyond his years, but his body had not. Other than his eyes, it appeared that age had abandoned him. The years spent in the sanitarium starved his body of hope and stretched on as one long night. Calluses hardened over his senses and dulled his concerns as he felt none of times effects.

  On his last night in the sanitarium, far beyond the telling of time and known only because he was forced into it, Randy felt the first reverberations of life in ages. The air shook painfully in his ears and warmth tickled his flesh.

  Then it hit. That was all his warning. His existence, for that was what it was, far from life, shook from its catatonic stupor with a huge explosion that shook the atmosphere and sprinkled dust from the ceiling. The mote sparkled in the moonlight and fell on his hair.

  The jarring blast ripped through Randy's wing, tearing off the front of every cell down his block and engulfing the patients. The inferno was instant and surprising. Brick crumbled and wood burned. The few inmates that survived smelled freedom and danced around the conflagration. Panic immediately gripped the sanitarium.

  Randy didn't budge an inch during or after the explosion.

  Small bursts of flames lit his cold eyes and singed his beard. The heat barreled down his cellblock, devouring everything but never invading his cell. Inmates ran by, pounding on the shattered wall that was left in front of him, until billowing smoke chased them away. The gaping hole before him that used to be his cell door sang to him to run, but his feet wouldn't respond. His escape route was laid out before him, but the chilling wind that flowed through froze him solid and took him to the familiarly haunted destinations he knew all too well.

  He was drenched in sweat, the fire ready to burn him alive, while the gift kept him busy elsewhere. Flames salivated at the sight of him and crept into his cell slowly, sending smoke ahead to choke him, but the blue light still needed more time. He stood waiting for it. Burning the top of his ears and singeing his hair, the blaze was ready to devour him when, p
icked up and pushed from his stupor by all his body's instinct, Randy broke into a sudden sprint as the fire engulfed the entire cell behind him. The hallways crumbled at his feet as he ran. Dark ash flakes snowed from the ceiling and black smoke ballooned, gulping peaceful air into its hungry belly. Patients and orderlies fought among the rubble of the corridors.

  A convulsion hit Randy in mid sprint and bounced him off a wall and onto the ground. Dull hums ebbed and flowed in his ears, and his head rang with pain. Disoriented and exhausted he tried to stand, when a massive silence confused him. The anarchy hushed for a moment and swept throughout the sanitarium in a pulse. The calm air was eerie until the surge passed and a huge explosion followed. The world shook and Randy fell back to the floor, rolling limply into a corner at the end of a dead-end hallway. Pushing off the rubble that covered him, he watched the corridor surge brightly with fire, spitting about the hallways, ripping everything apart. A massive fireball bloomed, hurling itself towards Randy like an angry sun broke loose. Heat tickled his skin yet again as the fire pulsed closer. Randy sat immobile. The blaze raged even closer and Randy's body grew cold, deathly frozen, as a chilling breeze passed below his skin. The gift inside him began to stir yet again, blowing frigid gusts about his innards. Then the fire and Randy met. The lapping flames bit at his nose until the blaze suddenly lurched back and disappeared, leaving the complex dead and silent.