by S. G Mark
“Lies! Fucking lies!”
Charlotte looked up, her anxious expression fluctuating between fearful and confident.
As the guards launched forwards to contain him, Jack beat against the glass again and again.
“Continue, Charlotte,” Henry urged, “Please be assured that Mr Lennox is restrained and cannot hurt you… again.”
Charlotte nodded vacantly and smiled, “We were friends, we worked together. I knew him for years, we would hang out socially.”
“And did you show Mr Lennox any interest… romantically… at any point during this friendship?”
She shook her head, “My faith in God was being tested at the time. I had no time for romance or trivial thoughts. My church leader encouraged me to focus on my self-healing in order to accept His love again.”
Henry examined the documents on his desk with a solitary finger, “You are a devout God’s Disciple member, is this correct?”
Charlie nodded.
“Is it not one of the key foundations of your religion that you do not partake of sexual relations of any kind before marriage?”
Charlie nodded once again. Jack was furious, ravenous with rage. How could she speak such lies?
“So knowing your religion, and knowing your vulnerability, Steven Lennox… under the guise of Jack Blackwood at this point,” Henry said, “Advanced on you despite your repeated and forceful objections?”
“Yes. He walked me home to make sure I was safe and insisted on making sure I got to my front door safely…. B-but when we got there, he charged inside… p-pined me to the g-ground… I told him… I told him no… h-he d-didn’t s-st-stop,” she cradled her head in her palms, sobbing erratically.
The guards gripped Jack’s arms tightly, as the anger built inside of him to dangerous levels. After everything he had been accused of, every twist on a tale, every lie the professionals had claimed, this was the worst. He couldn’t take to be accused of something so revolting, so heinous. He could understand Saskia’s perspective, but for Charlie to stand there so arrogantly and proclaim that he forced himself on her - when he had done everything in his power to let her down gently? It made him feel sick, though he was not quite resolved on exactly why - whether it was because she had volunteered this lie, or whether the CRU had coerced her into telling it.
“Ms Crescent, I understand this is very difficult, but the court needs to be aware of the horrendous situation this monster put you in,” Henry urged.
Charlie looked up from her hands and wiped the tears from her cheeks, taking a few deep breaths before addressing the court again, “He told me… He told me I represented my faith… my church… God’s Disciples. He… he told me… that he was… that he was r-raping me as a means… as a means to rape them.”
Jack was stung with shock. The guards restrained him, but he was no longer fighting back. Instead his focus was on the little girl in the room below, a pawn in an elaborate game. Check mate from the government who so expertly planned their move. His image had been cemented, for nothing would ever claim victory over religious hate so cruelly executed.
Sir Richard erupted from quiet contemplation, “Mr Lawrence, can you please remove Mr Lennox from the court immediately. The animal clearly cannot contain himself.”
The guards pulled him free from the chair, as he hung like a dead man at the noose. His fight had run dry. Matthew rose to his feet and nodded at the judge, who promptly turned to the court usher.
“Please escort Ms Crescent to a more peaceful location where she might recover. I think we have made her suffer enough already. Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning.”
That night in the cell was intense. The walls seemed to cling to his extremities, and the oxygen decreased with every painful breath. The guards had cracked a rib as punishment for his courtroom insurgence. But it was worth all the pain just to try and make eye contact with her; to try and make her feel the guilt he knew she ought to. The lies, so freely given. Jack knew in an instant that she hadn’t been persuaded to talk. It was revenge. The God’s Disciples had been controlling her for such a long time, they had probably persuaded her he had been the one to push her over the edge. The poor woman was mentally unwell and they had manipulated her like bread dough, casting her into whatever form they wished her to be. Today they wanted to plaster Jack in an image that no one could erase. Rapist.
Lying on his elbow for comfort, Jack stared at the blackness, recalling the most horrendous parts of his day. He shivered uncontrollably, a piercing draught through the cell door and a hollow realisation of what was happening. He could almost taste it, death. It was so close he could smell it, as if his body had begun to rot before it had even died. Flakes of skin broke free from his wounds, his ribcage groaned but either the pain had dulled or he had just stopped caring.
The day was coming. The trial could only carry on for so long before the pre-decided conclusions could be drawn. Judgement day, though for Jack that was long since passed. He had reckoned all he could and there was not an inch left untouched. Jack Blackwood knew exactly who he was, there was no film coating that justified his mistakes. It was as it was, as it had been for years. People - friends - had died, sometimes at his hand, sometimes because he was too late to save them. Everything he had done, or had failed to do, had been born out of survival, for not just his own life… but of a society he remembered as if it were from a dream.
At night he heard haunting screams from his fellow prisoners. The terrors. Jack could never ascertain if they were being tortured, or whether they had just woken up to find they were still here, and that this was it: for the rest of their lives. It amounted to the same torture. By now Jack knew there was more pain and suffering in what he couldn’t feel than what he could. What were bruises and scars next to a bleak future encrusted with death and decay?
Creaking disturbed him. Jack turned to see a figure standing tall above him. He hadn’t even heard the cell door open. Instantly Jack knew it wasn’t one of the guards, for they were dressed in a smart suit and shiny shoes. As Jack wriggled on the floor, the figure closed the door and paced the perimeter of the room; circling Jack like a hungry vulture. The footsteps echoed hollowly on the prison walls. A shaft of stray light trickled down on to the man’s chin.
“Who are you?” Jack hissed.
“I believe you’ve been looking for me for a long time,” the man’s voice was enigmatic, powerful.
Jack hoisted himself to his knees, cradling his fractured rib in his hand to ease the pain. He watched the figure roam around him, never completely seeing his face as the light fell in striations across his features.
Cast in black and white, the figure suddenly stopped and stared down at Jack, prodding him with a wandering foot.
“Poor little Graham, if you’d left him alone I wouldn’t have had to kill him,” he said, “But you just had to keep on burrowing… like a filthy rodent.”
Jack recoiled at once, “It’s you?”
His presence was intense, like a thick fog that threatened to suffocate Jack.
“Are they treating you well in here?” The Man asked, beginning to pace again, “I hear the trial is going terribly.”
“Why are doing this?”
“To you?” The Man shot a sharp glance at Jack.
“To everyone, to the country - for what purpose?”
The Man slowly laughed to himself, a private joke he seemed reluctant to share.
“C’mon, who else am I going to tell?” Jack smirked, pulling himself backwards against the wall. He wanted to keep The Man in front of him at all times.
The Man knelt down to Jack’s height and inspected him from close range. Even in such proximity, Jack couldn’t read a single line of his face. It was as if it consumed darkness, that he lived so deeply in the shroud that he had become a part of it.
“You know we’ve met once before,” he said softly, “A long time ago now. I certainly never expected to ever see you again. You were so weak.”
“Where
? Who are you? You must have a name?” Jack spoke, his heart racing in his chest. How had he not remembered meeting him?
The Man was inches away, and he felt his presence burning against his skin.
“Tomorrow you are going to be sentenced,” The Man said, “The trial will be over. The Revolution will be dead.”
“That’s what this has been about, hasn’t it? To kill it? To make me less credible?”
“Oh I’ve not even started on that yet,” he said, “This is just the appetiser.”
“What’s it all even for? What do you want from this? Does it turn you on, puppeteering others from the shadows?” Jack spat, “Or are you too pathetic to lead the country yourself?”
The Man rose to full height and flexed his fingers like a concert pianist.
“I’m going to go now,” he said, “We will not meet again.”
Taking a handle of the door, The Man grasped it tightly but before he opened it Jack launched his whole body at him. Clutching at his waist and arms, Jack sunk his nails into The Man’s skin.
“One day someone is going to put a bullet in your head,” he spat in The Man’s face, who retaliated by throwing Jack to the ground.
Landing on his ribs, he let out a yell of pain.
“Everyone has a mask, Steven,” The Man smirked, “Some of us wear it better than others.”
The door slammed shut as the shadowy man disappeared, leaving Jack lying, gasping for breath and nursing a bleeding lip.
The encounter left Jack shaken. He had finally met him, The Man. In a few short seconds he understood a little more of David White. The Man’s presence was overwhelming, almost intoxicating. The air around him seemed to stiffen and it became hard to breathe. Every second his roaming eyes judged and criticised, Jack could feel it even through the darkness. He felt like a specimen in a lab, and the scientist had left him with one excruciating question that Jack struggled to answer.
They had met before. The Man could literally be anyone. Was he in The Resistance? Had he met him sometime after he joined, or worse: before he ever appreciated what was happening to the country? Did it even matter anymore? Tomorrow was the day his future ended: the last moment in his life that he could predict.
Morning dawned, cranky and weary as the sun rose above the horizon and the skyline appeared as a steel silhouette against the pale flesh sky. It was just another ordinary day for so many. In a few hours, the great commute would begin for thousands of workers; bored school children would drag themselves to registration and millions more would wake up with empty stomachs that matched their empty cupboards, to begin another miserably monotonous day of job hunting, self worthlessness and that strange hollow sensation that something, somewhere, somehow was not entirely right.
Soon the televisions would flick on and the emptiness inside would slowly begin to fill with the refuse from the broadcasting networks, pummelling through more things to buy, more things to fear and more things to feel inferior about. And somewhere in a little dark cell, sat Jack Blackwood, upright against the wall, as he counted the last seconds before judgement.
He hadn’t even the energy to vomit, as much as he wanted to. His insides burned and squirmed. Sleep had not visited him last night; instead he had lain awake staring at the walls and trying to remember things he had long since forgotten. The feeling of a warm summer’s day; of childhood Christmases by the warm fire; the taste of food and the happiness of a paycheck, the excitement of a Friday evening. It was pointless, he knew that. Another pointless exercise, but with an alternative of dwelling on the inevitable, he thrust all his energies into remembering the best of his life. The times he was most happy, the times when he could really recall feeling alive. Though soon those times ran out and he found himself desperately trying to remember when he might have met The Man before and wondering, stupidly, if he could have stopped him then.
At eight-thirty, the guards arrived to rip off his prison clothes and dress him smartly for the impending - and final - public appearance. By nine, Matthew Lawrence arrived; a look of dull resignation about him. His tie presently being adjusted by one of the guards, Jack addressed him for the first time in days.
“Last day,” he said, “I’ll miss our chats.”
Matthew seemed to reflect on a matter he chose not to voice.
“What is it like for you?” Jack asked the lawyer, “The entire country hates me - but what do they think of the man they think is trying to defend me?”
The man straightened his own tie and scratched off a scab from his chin, “Not a great deal. C’mon, it’s time to go.”
Matthew urged the guards to hurry up. He didn’t even look at Jack, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
The great oak doors opened, and the glass box greeted him with comforting familiarity. As he was deposited into the chair and chained down, one of the guards reached for the drugs needle.
“No,” Jack said, “Not today.”
The guard looked to Matthew for guidance, who nodded curtly. The needle remained in its case.
“Thank you,” he said to his lawyer, receiving no response.
Looking down on the courtroom, Jack realised that they had arrived well in advance of everyone else. It was strange seeing the place as vacated as it was. Only the court officials were loitering, taking notes and presiding over the administrative business of the morning.
Matthew sat silently next to him, scanning over some notes that he had placed precariously on his knee. Jack gazed at him, finding him unusually interesting.
“What are you doing?” Matthew said in a tone of boredom, not even glancing up from his papers.
“When this is over, what will you do?” Jack asked, “Will you represent someone else?”
“I expect so,” Matthew droned, “It’s my job.”
“Do you like what you do?”
He seemed to hesitate before saying, “Of course.”
“What do you think of me?” he asked, “Do you think I’m that person they are accusing me of being?”
“What does it matter what I think?”
“I guess it doesn’t, not really,” Jack said, “But we’ve sat in this fucking box for the past month together. I’d like to think I made an impression. One to tell the grandkids about how you met the most dangerous man in the country?”
At last Matthew looked up from his notes and caught Jack’s eye. For a moment there seemed to be a connection between lawyer and client, one that they had never shared before. Idly, Jack hoped that it was because he had seen through the charade, that maybe reason and logic were victorious against the crashing tide of rhetoric and riotous, reckless hate emanating from the courts of justice below.
“You know I had a life before all this. I had a job just as dull and as pointless as yours,” Jack continued, “I was as ordinarily miserable as the rest of you lot. Sometimes I wonder if I miss it, others I wonder if I’ll ever get it back… and even though I know I won’t… Given the choice, I don’t think I ever would. Knowing what I know now, I don’t think I ever could.”
Matthew raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but remained silent. Meanwhile Jack pointed down to the courtroom, which was beginning to populate.
“That down there is a lie, everything they’ve said in there is a lie… but this ordinary life I had before hand? The one where I had no future, no ambition, no drive… that was the best lie because that was the only one that was ever truly believable.”
Without inviting a reply from Matthew, Jack sat back peacefully in the chair and watched as the crowd poured into the courtroom, their sandwiches primed for the finale. For a few seconds Matthew watched Jack from the corner of his eye, before returning his gaze back to his papers.
Henry Mendell and his prosecution team arrived last and the court settled down in anticipation of Sir Richard’s arrival. As the excitement quelled, Jack’s inside wriggled. Sir Richard was announced and as the man gathered his robes in his chair, he opened the session and instructed the courtroom to be seated. Th
is was it. The last few minutes of Jack’s life that he could envisage. After today there was nothing, just an empty coffin where his corpse might lie.
Sir Richard cleared his throat and sipped a glass of water before addressing the court in his powerful voice, drizzled in heritage and wealth.
“For the past month we have heard from witnesses from the accused’s life, allowing us to build a picture of the man behind the charges of terrorism, murder, treason, abduction, blackmail and bribery. We have heard from the testimonies of experts on how Steven Lennox executed the charges against him, how he exploited innocent members of our society for his own warped ideologies. What I have seen and heard is nothing short of repulsive and I can come to no other conclusion than that Steven Lennox was born evil. For thirty years this man has burned the lives of those around him, from his sister and parents, through to the innocent lives he wrecked on his path towards his so-called revolution. We have been recounted stories of rape and theft in his early years, and we know all too well the damage he and his terrorist organisation, The Resistance, have caused. Murder. Cold blooded bombings. Indoctrination. In this short trial we have been lucky to have been shared such an insightful viewpoint into this undercurrent of society. I am sure I am not alone in my passionate hatred of such abhorrent violence and the culture that Steven Lennox has cultivated on his path towards the destruction of society,” he paused for a moment’s reflection, before charging on with furious delight, “The task that has been entrusted to me by the laws of our country defines that I must sentence Steven Lennox in direct correlation and severity to the laws that he has broken. Premeditated murder numbers in the hundreds. Rape, treason, abduction - each and every single victim of this man’s crimes will forever be scarred with the psychological wounds he has caused and whilst each one these disgusting crimes carries with it a heavy burden on those affected, it is with a sour taste in my mouth that I concluded these are not the worst of his crimes. I call to you, the public in the courtroom, through to the millions viewing this in their workplaces and homes. I urge to you that the most dangerous crime this man has committed is to threaten each and every one of us. Freedom is something we can never numerate. It’s value is beyond the stars themselves, so to fracture that is a crime that is beyond the punishment of our current laws. To threaten our future, our society, our children - can justice ever be served?”