O'Brien sipped a glass of wine, savoring it before swishing it down his gullet.
He was, for lack of a better term, the king.
He could not be stopped. Big Brother—the Party—was incorruptible. He knew it as an easy, simple fact.
He breathed out, reveling in the absence of a telescreen.
He was king.
Martin entered. O'Brien could not see his face, but he heard the shifting of the feet, the gulping in the silent air.
"Yes, Martin?"
"It—" He gulped.
O'Brien felt a twinge of impatience. "Spit it out, damn you."
"It's the proles, sir."
"What about them?" That twinge was becoming a definite ache.
"They're singing, sir."
O'Brien stopped. Singing? The animals? And yet, very faintly, in the distance, he could hear something that might be construed as a song.
"Singing."
"Yes, sir."
It was of no concern. "Well, shut them up, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
O'Brien sat. Not in silence, for the sounds of crashing and shattering resounded around him. Not in comfort, for the wine and cigars had run out months ago.
He was king. And kings, even pseudo-kings, must take the treatment afforded to them.
If it wasn't for that wretched song…
He clenched one great fist as the music echoed off the halls. It was not the Hate Song. It was not the popular one—the song of an April day—either.
What could they be singing?
He clenched the other fist. He was the dead. What did it matter?
The door burst open. He smiled genially. "Hello."
And the music lashed out at him.
The prison was not silent.
It aggravated O'Brien quite a bit. The prisoners talked. The guards talked. There was screaming and crying and shouting and—
O'Brien pressed a hand to his head. Kings, even deposed kings, must retain their dignity.
A rap on the bars quite near his head sent him nearly jumping. If someone had informed him of this situation a year previous, he would have laughed. Him, O'Brien! Jumping at a little noise?
He looked up into the blue eyes of Winston Smith.
The silence stretched out as they gazed at each other. Then Winston, breathing heavily, clutched the bars and whispered four words that evoked—something—in O'Brien's heart.
"Two. And two. Makes…four. Two and two are four."
And then he turned and ran, running from the man who had tortured him, running from fear, running from prison and rats and starvation. Winston Smith ran.
O'Brien laughed, a trickle of blood dripping out his nose.
"Last words?" asked the crisply-dressed man.
"No use," the gruff prison guard interjected. "He went mad near two weeks ago."
The man frowned, peering over his glasses. "Who was he?"
"O'Brien. Worked in the Ministry of Love—tortured and killed and betrayed. In my opinion, he's getting his due."
The man shrugged. "Well, it isn't my call. It's up to the Council of Proles—you know that."
The guard rolled his eyes. "Sorry, sir. Just my poor, humble opinion."
"Oh, stop it," the man snapped. "Will you just kill him already?"
The guard shook his head. "Fine." With a quick, practiced move, he pushed the mouth of a pistol to O'Brien's neck and jerked the trigger.
O'Brien's eyes rolled into his head as he collapsed, one word on his tongue.
Silence.
The crisply-dressed man shook his head in dismay. "Well, that'll be a damned mess to clean up. Look at him, anyway—you'd swear he was smiling." He scoffed. "Bloody damned Inner Party. They make such trouble when they're just blood and bone like the rest of us. Just blood and bone and an abnormally large ego."
The guard shrugged. "What's it matter? Come now—one of those old men is doing a reading."
"A reading?"
"Yes—poetry."
"Banned poetry, I presume?"
"Not anymore."
And as they exited the gray cement building, a fragment of song seemed to drift in, and for a moment, one ray of light touched O'Brien's twisted face.
And then it was gone.