Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome
by Egglesplork
Chapter 9
…
1.
…
Strange as it may seem, John Wright was still on the job. You know, John Wright—the newbie prison-guard we first met at the beginning of this tale? (He was the one getting the big fat speech from the big-fat warden.) Yes, it's that John Wright—the new prison guard.
Since John Wright was still considered a freshly minted prison guard, completely lacking in any sort of seniority, he was one of those stuck with many of the crap duties—like being on night duty, what they call the graveyard shift. (Ooh, scary…) It was dark when he signed in, and it would be dark when he signed back out.
At the moment, Wright was traversing the dimly lit concrete walkways among the upper tiers of this prison wing, his stride as brisk as his pressed uniform, pistol at his right hip and radio mounted on the right shoulder. The thick rubber soles of his dark shoes made no sound as he walked the hard flooring, and his radio was very quiet save for a low hiss of what could be ordinary background noise of the electromagnetic sort. On the other hand, the static could be from another kind of interference altogether—such as the sort of interference from the odd prisoner's activities.
Never mind that for now. Why was there the physical presence of a prison guard walking this entire tier of one-hundred and eighty inmates? Why did there have to be a human being walking around? A person would think that in an age of spy satellites and see-in-the-dark electronics that it would be easier, faster, and more efficient to just stick cameras everywhere and be done with it. In fact, that was the way things usually worked in most state prisons. Cameras are cheaper than people, and cheap is good as questionably understood by the cheap bastards who run the state government. Cheaper prisons make for more tax cuts, and all the politicians love tax cuts.
So…why have a person here instead of the usual camera? Remember, we are dealing with the odd prisoner. Doing the usual just won't do sometimes.
Truth is, video cameras sometimes won't work in this part of the prison sometimes. Why not, since the lights won't always cooperate either. Still true is how someone, somehow, has to see what goes on this part of the prison. And if it takes a pair of human eyeballs (still attached to a living human being of course) going up to the third tier to look around, so be it. A set of ears would help too, as would a hand or two to handle firearms in case things were going to Hell.
Wright's eyes and ears were taking in what little there was to see and hear. Though there was some light to see by from the dimmed overhead lights, the prison cells themselves were steeped in near darkness—showing the darkened shapes of inmates in bunks. He heard a few of them sobbing in their bunks, and one guy was on the toilet (taking a dump in the dark from the sounds of it), but that was about it.
Yes, that's it. Nothing much was happening. Nothing much happened for a good long while. Even though Wright was getting this really nagging feeling that something was wrong, nothing was happening. So it was maybe a big loud relief when his radio's speaker burst into life.
"Wright, this is Albo," hissed the communications radio mounted on his right shoulder. "Animal attack in…" Hsst! "Central yard. Get down here fast…!" Bzzt!
"Wright to Albo, roger that," said Wright, turning himself around and running for the stairwell down. The set procedure in this moment was to follow orders. His superior told him to get to the central yard in a hurry, and he would do exactly that—moving fast as someone who took enough steroids to supply a whole baseball team.
When someone is running, that person is not really thinking. Wright was running, so he was not really thinking. That means, he was not thinking about why his radio was suddenly making so much noise as he came closer to the bottom floor. It wasn't a radio malfunction, because he did a function-check on it when he signed in—doing the same for his pistol. He was also not thinking about how the Hell any sort of dangerous animal managed to get into the prison-yard, what this was all about.
Hold on. This is important. The only way that an animal is getting over two sets of eighteen-foot walls—walls topped with razor wire—is by using wings, damn it. Prison inmates can be called jailbirds, but they can't really fly. There are abso-forking-loutely no dangerous animals with wings anymore—unless a portal in the time-space continuum opened up and brings in some mutated flying dinosaurs from an alternate reality to raise some havoc. Such are reasonable expectations.
However, ladies and gentlemen, there are times and places in which we have passed far…far beyond reasonable expectations. When dealing with business about and around that crazy town of legend, things can get particularly screwy. It is very reasonable to consider things that are unreasonable.
…
Our prison guard made it out into the night. Out here, big dark sky above, the central yard was the size of a football field (albeit one with tall walls and guard towers). Big circles of light shone down from the towers, blazing down like stage-lamps to illuminate the so-called animals. Animals? The Hell they were.
John had the visual impression of stick-legged figures, vaguely human in form. They had on tattered red toga-robes that covered them from the tops of their heads to about mid-calf. It was hard to tell if they had arms or not because the tattered robes had no sleeves, nor did any sort of head poke out from the top. But he did see legs—skinny shanks of pale flesh covered with dark sores. Three legs… Each of those figures had three legs. And then he noticed something else wrong… The gaps in their robes revealed writhing masses of short tentacles.
Now, he was seeing it. It was just that his mind wasn't believing it. Seeing is not believing, because there are times when a person has a hard time dealing with complete craziness that isn't supposed to exist or happen. Between the raw images fed by human eyeballs to the intense think-meat of the brain, there has to be some kind of answer. It was just that this answer wasn't coming too fast.
When Wright was a little boy, he was in the woods one day and came across a very sick deer. The animal had a severe case of worms. These are not the happy-go-lucky slimy things that one picks out of the ground and uses for bait when fishing. Oh, gosh no… These worms were parasitic—nasty things that grow inside of living animals and sop up nutrients. The deer that little John-boy saw was so heavily infested with parasitic worms that whole patches of the poor creature's body were absolutely writhing with them, open sores all full of infection. What could the deer do, call for a doctor's appointment? Deer can't use telephones. Their hooves can't press those small buttons. Then there's the whole not-able-to-speak problem. John remembered running off to tell his father. Somehow, the animal was still around when John's father came around…with a rifle. He put the animal out of its misery. Darnedest thing I ever saw, said his father later to animal control people later.
Now this was the darnedest thing that John-boy Wright was seeing as a full-grown man—three-legged things that walked on three human-like legs but just weren't human otherwise. They weren't animals, either. Animals don't wear togas. And animals aren't supposed to have three legs. Two legs are okay. Four legs are fine. Any more legs than that, and they have to come in pairs. For an odd number like three, that makes no damned sense. Neither did the writhing masses of tentacles hidden by the raggedy cloth.
"Wright! New kid!" shouted somebody standing close to this entranceway. "Wake up! Get the fork over here!"
Training-bred obedience took over, and he snapped out of his shocked reverie. "Yes, sir! Moving, sir!" was his shout—moving over to the prison guard who called for him.
"Hey, Wright… See those ugly bastards?" said this other prison guard. "Things like that aren't supposed to exist. Take a good long look too, because after we blast them and burn their unholy corpses, it'll be like they never existed at all." The hand on his shoulder griped hard. "They do not exist. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir, I understand," said Wright, that training still strong. The state trains its prison guards in almost the same way it trains its state troopers. In fact, prison guards and state police train in the same set of massive facilities—those far-off facilities right next door to where the local Army National Guard does some of its own operations. Prison guards are not soldiers, yet they are damned well close. "I understand. They do not exist."
"Outstanding," said the other prison guard. "Take this shotgun." Wright accepted the dark-metal weapon. "Now join up with that squad and eliminate the threat."
"Yes sir!" exclaimed Wright, running over to comply. He joined up with the indicated group, seven other guards with one of them in charge.
They wasted no time in getting the job done—shotguns booming. Rifles go crack. Pistols go pop. (In all the movies and the stupid television shows, they make firearms sound like field artillery—which sucks for realism.) But when a shotgun speaks, there's no mistaking it for any other kind of weapon. And these shotguns were not loaded with typical ammo either. Hells no, these guards had slugs loaded into their twelve-gauge weapons, thick rounds big enough to punch holes in bears and elephants—even strong enough to put a hole through a car door.
Those creatures in tattered red togas were not bruins, pachyderms, or small passenger vehicles, but the shotgun slugs killed them all the same. The six creatures were ripped to shreds in seconds. One could barely hear their strange squeals over the noise of the blasts, so much loud blasting going on. Still, all that one needed to know was that the solid-slug rounds punched clear-through the creatures' tattered robes and grotesque scarred flesh beneath. Gobbets of flesh and dark spatters of oily life-fluid sprayed out and away. Some of the blasted chunks had bits of wriggling tentacles attached, tentacles which weakly squirmed before going still and quickly melting.
"Cease fire! Cease fire! They're down!" came the shouted command. Shotguns stopped firing. Things became much quieter. "Now comes the fun part. Make sure those ugly bastards are dead. Y'all know what to do."
Wright matched the stride of his fellow guards as they approached the fallen things illuminated by the spotlight. Courage and training kept him from being scared witless as he came closer. Having a weapon of massive power also helped. And before he knew it, there he was.
The toga-clad, three-legged things were even nastier up close. Having been blasted by a few-dozen rounds did not help their looks either. Splayed triple-sets of diseased legs extended out from the bottoms of tattered togas. Gaps in the ragged clothes showed dark holes in gray flesh. Their patches of tentacles were dark and disgusting. Thank goodness those things wore any sorts of clothes, at least—covering their nastiness. Otherwise…
One of the creatures let out a loud squeal, a sound which was cut off with a splunch as someone stomped its torso. Dark gobs of gunk spattering the pavement. "If it's not dead, stomp it instead," recited that other prison guard, looking to Wright. "They might not go down easy, but a good whack while they're down usually does the job."
They? What are they, these things? That failed to matter, because they do not exist. Wright just nodded in agreement with his fellow prison guard. "A good stomp," agreed Wright.
A pickup truck motored over to here and backed up—the vehicle's payload bed covered with plastic. Wright helped pile the creatures' bodies onto the back of the truck, thinking this to be one of the oddest moments in his life. They do not exist, he thought.
"You're with me, Wright," said another prison guard, grim-faced. "Since you're new, there's something you have to see. Get into the pickup."
Having already seen wonders enough to last him several lifetimes, Wright could not imagine what could possibly come next. He climbed up into the pickup truck's cab section, squeezing into one of the small rear passenger seats. This truck was one of those massive, gas-guzzling behemoths manufactured by the millions. But for all of its size, despite this truck looking big enough to carry a small car in its, the cab section's two rear passenger seats had next to no leg-room for a tall person. Prison guards are tall people too.
With everyone physically adjusted as best as possible, they got moving. Wright heard and felt this truck beginning to move—the rumbling engine powering this truck through the night-time prison-yard and through open armored gates.
Wright didn't see who was driving yet recognized him from his voice. It was Pullahein, another one of his superiors. Yup, everybody here outranks the new guy. Almost everyone could be counted as being among his superiors.
Said Pullahein, "Wright, just like we done said, we're goin' ta show ya somethin'. We're goin' to th' incinerator. Now, I'm gonna ask ya ta keep some things in mind. Some of the stuff that happens at the incinerator will be all in yer head. Lemme say that again. All in yer head. An' if ya start askin' questions, I'm gonna say it's the wind or maybe somethin' ya done ate a-fore it done been cooked properly. Red meat an' all. Gosh knows what kinda hormones are in that stuff y'all eat. Ya know how they allow a certain amount a' bugs an' chemical crap in that food? Maybe some of that went down the wrong chemical channels in yer digestive tract and done made it to yer think-meat, makin' ya hear things."
Now if Pullahein had just said something like don't worry about it kid or nothin' to worry about, Wright would not have worried. Don't worry about it. Nothing to worry about. Those are disposable words used too easily and too often—used when things go as usual. This maybe wasn't going to be the usual. Those things were not the usual, the dead creatures piled in the back of the very same vehicle he was riding in.
This truck turned off onto a short road still on prison grounds. "Up and at 'em!" said Pullahein. "Let's give this-here barbecue a beginnin'."
Wright got out of the truck and saw the place. Illuminated with huge electrical outdoor lighting, the big building which housed the incinerator was set next door to the penitentiary's electrical power-house—two huge industrial structures that dealt with a lot of energy at once. Big men in blue mechanic's coveralls came out of the incinerator building to help, bringing the biggest wheelbarrows that Wright had ever seen before. "More nightmare fuel, eh?" asked one of them.
Nightmare fuel… As if Wright wasn't just a little bit shaken enough about the big mystery. It was weird and bad enough they were already burning up dead things that would probably make some money if photographed or sent to some science lab. And yet more strangeness was on the way.
"Come on, Wright," said Pullahein, himself pushing one of those strangely large-bodied wheelbarrows heaped with even stranger corpses. "What're ya waitin' fer? Expectin' these things ta get up an' give ya an' invitation? They ain't gonna move themselves. An' if they do, we're gonna hafta shoot 'em some more."
…
While it was night outside, sky above and darkly forested around, the inside of this building was brightly lit with all the lights on—brighter than daylight. Everything in here was hard and rectangular, illuminated with the kinds of florescent lights used in factories. There was room enough to move the wheelbarrows and their strange loads past the front counter and down the hall toward the rear. The rear of this building was where there was this place's main attraction.
To Wright, the incinerator itself looked like an armored cylinder about the size of the truck. It was taller than him and someone standing on his shoulders. But he wouldn't dare do any sort of stunts like that, having people on his shoulders or anything, because that incinerator was hot. He wasn't even close to it, and he could feel the blazing heat coming from the thing's metal. Take a wrong tumble too close to that big thing, and a dude is cooked unless wearing asbestos suits. Two such mechanics in such clothes were actually here—in getups like teddy bears costume-players in coveralls. No one had to get close to the incinerator because a long powered conveyor belt did the carrying.
Pullahein pointed to a strip of reflective tape on the ceramic floor. "See that blue strip? Get yerself back ta there," he said to Wright.
Wright did so, standing behind the strip of blue tape on the ceramic-plate floor—a floor of ceramic plates because ordinary concrete might not fare too well if the fire from the incinerator was to get out of control. From here, Wright watched as Pullahein yanked down on a huge metal lever, revealing the big hot circular opening to the fiery incinerator's insides. Somehow, Pullahein wasn't affected by the heat even though the two mechanics in thick asbestos coveralls seemed to need them on.
A wave of hotness and a dull glow came from the open incinerator—the bright-hot whitish-yellow of the artificial inferno. Feel it, see it, and he could hear it, hear the rushing roar of the white-hot flames.
Was he hearing some…moaning? It wasn't out-loud and obvious. Maybe he heard some faint screams too. These weren't full-on screams that seemed to come from right here inside of this ceramic-floored room. It was more like they were off in the distance, coming from…the direction of the furnace. Were there things…still alive in there? He opened his mouth to say something and shut it.
Pullahein saw that hesitation. "Ya 'member what I done said, right? Hearin' things. All in yer mind, pro'bly."
Though Wright nodded his agreement, he could not help but stare at the roaring flames, listening into them too. As the strange bodies were riding the conveyor belt into there, it was as if the bright-gold incandescent inferno turned just a little bit reddish. Did things just get a little darker in there? He also thought the lights flickered.
Pullahein began speaking. "This-here incinerator is a gas-fueled dee-vice wit' an average burn of 'bout one-thousand eight-hunnert degrees Fahrenheit…or nine-hunnert eighty-two centigrade, dependin' on yer local parlance. 'Cordin' ta state regulations, the temp fer dealin' with bio-contaminants ain't but sixteen-hunnert degrees Fahrenheit. But we do what we gotta do in dealin' with this sorta funny business, goin' that extra mile. This case, we're goin' the extra three-hunnert an' sixty-six Kelvin. Nothin' gettin' outta that thing intact enough to cause trouble in this world ever again."
"What?" asked Wright. He wasn't asking about the distant sounds coming from the burning of the strange corpses, so he wasn't breaking that previous verbal command. "What the Hell are those things?"
"More questions? I thought Albo done told ya that these things don't exist," said Pullahein, smiling. "Not like yer gonna go blabberin' at the local pub 'bout this sorta stuff. Liable ta end up in a funny farm if ya do. Oh yeah, them funny farms are all fulla people willin' ta say that they take UFO rides with Elvis Presley an' sharin' fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches made by nine-eyed Gleeptarians hired to be his personal chefs.
"Anyway… Maybe it sounds a little touched in the head when I say this, but maybe them things ain't from around here. Maybe they done fell through a hole in reality an' ended up here by some kinda mistake. Them things ain't got the best of walkin' skills if ya noticed, their bodies so messed up from contamination and radiation that they get all twisted when they get born… Messed up before they been born.
"Ain't necessarily their fault, all things considered," added Pullahein. "Ain't their fault they ended up lookin' uglier than ninety-year-old Aunt Agatha in a shoe-string bikini. And it ain't their fault fer comin' here. Facts on toppa facts, though, they ended up here. We've gotta get ridda them soon as they do appear, too. They shouldn't exist. So, they don't exist. See? It makes its own kinda sense."
Wright was not going to question this line of reasoning. He was accepting what Pullahein was telling him, for now. The full depth of what he was being told probably wouldn't sink in until later. Too much was happening at once for him, too much for his mind to sift through and organize. He asked nothing further, staring as the last of the strange bodies in their ragged togas rode the conveyor belt—going into the circular opening of the man-made purifying inferno, distant sounds of distorted howling that was like nothing on this Earth.
…
2.
…
Night passed into day. In the penitentiary structure itself, the mountain-sized fortress-looking place, the inmates had another morning—one which was like almost ever other morning before. After the wake-up in this huge concrete fortress of a place, morning came with very little said between the prison guards about last night—and nothing at all about the same to the inmates. Most of the inmates themselves had slept through the night anyway. In doing so, they had the most amazing nightmares they ever had for a very long time. And at wake-up, everyone here felt that something big had happened last night. They were just a little bit restless. Sure, the inmates were still cooperative and relatively controlled. Still though, the whole feeling of something big having happened was a feeling that would not go away.
And it was exactly that which made the warden get his big fat business-suited self up out of his leather office-chair and over to a certain wing of this fine institution of human captivity. Accompanied by no less than five prison guards—all of those uniformed men with shotguns—the warden rode a seldom-used cargo elevator to the third tier of a certain prison wing. Inmates behind bars gave the warden some nasty looks as he passed by and did nothing else. Say or do the wrong thing in the presence of the warden, and there just might be a live firearms demonstration followed by a surprisingly red paint-job.
Three prison guards went a bit ahead, two more a bit behind, and the expensively clad fat man approached this upper-story jail cell alone. It had to be alone in dealing with the odd prisoner. The warden—the boss-man himself—did not want the prison guards seeing or hearing what happened at meetings like this.
The warden is big. He is also very fat. Now a person can add sweaty to the list of words used to describe him, because he was getting that feeling he seldom ever did. The warden is one of those big loud wealthy men raised from childhood to be in charge. Like his father before him and his grandfather in turn, going all the way back to the bad old days when his ancestors killed Native American men and raped the women, the warden was from a family of big men of big importance. He was used to being on top of whatever organization he was in, on top of the men who did the work, and on top of whatever woman he was screwing at the time. Given his massive girth, one could quite easily see that he also seemed to be on top of the food chain too.
But…this is different. No matter how many times he had to do this, he could never get used to this feeling. He was approaching the cell of the odd prisoner, and he wasn't feeling too good about doing so either. Good morning, meat.
"What!" blurted the warden, whipping himself around and nearly falling over this tier's walkway railing. A person wouldn't have believe that it was possible for such a huge dude to turn that fast. He did, though—turning around whip-fast. Someone had whispered those words to him, those frosty words carried on breath like icy wind.
Standing straight again and trying to regain his puffy confidence, the warden saw that his guards looked ready for some kind of action. They were clenching their shotguns, looking at the warden, waiting for the word to shoot something. Instead, the warden made an angry gesture indicating that they should just lower their weapons. Boom-sticks are of no use to things that might not really be there.
He just imagined it, that's all. Or maybe, the indoor air currents of this big place carried some words wrongly. Someone could have actually said, good time to eat from elsewhere in this building. Yes, that's it. And with those false comforts in mind, he resumed his walk to the cell of the odd prisoner—the front of the prison-cell itself wide open and welcoming as the open door of a professional office with an appointment in place. Except this was no visit to a lawyer or psychiatrist. This was the lair of him.
Then there he was. The odd prisoner was sitting in a wooden chair. His head was swaying just a bit—as if he was someone just enjoying the bliss of the moment. Head swaying, he stared into the pattern of symbols written on the wall…
It wasn't just written on the wall. No, it was more like the symbols were written into the wall—just beyond the slightly reflective hard lacquer painted into the wall. Those walls and the special lacquer are there to keep people from chipping their way out. But the odd prisoner didn't need to chip the walls to make himself a hole, especially when a hole in reality was even better.
"Warden, I would ask that you cease rubbing your hands together," said the odd prisoner without turning around. "The sound of your sweat-lubricated pathetic flesh can be an irritation. Put your hands at your sides. Stand up straight. What would your mother have said of such slovenly behavior?"
The warden straightened his back, a look of surprise on his face—not necessarily because the odd prisoner told him to do so, more because he was surprised that the odd prisoner knew that the warden was slouching without turning to look. Now he stared in slack-jawed amazement. People can joke about eyes in the back of the head, yet that just might not be a joke when dealing with the odd prisoner. And yes, his long-dead mother did have a thing about posture and habits even if nothing was said of her own habits, like her cocaine habit. (Coke, the pause that refreshes, his mother used to say in echoing soda-pop ads from decades gone by.)
When the odd prisoner stood up to turn around, his chair did the same. That is, the chair turned around too. A cold rush of fear thrilled through the warden when he saw that nobody touched the chair when it moved like that. Chairs are not supposed to be able to do that.
The odd prisoner just sat back down in the wooden chair as if it was one of the most normal things in the world. And the way he sat, sitting with such quiet ease and confidence, he may as well be in charge of the world too—reclining like a monarch upon his throne instead of a prisoner in a wooden chair. "Speak, man. What is it that you wish to say?"
Head bowed and hands clenched in front of him, the warden stood with pressed lips for a moment. "It's about last night…" He gripped his hands together more tightly, resisting the urge to rub them together and risk offending the odd prisoner. "Some things appeared in the courtyard, things that looked like they didn't belong there. They caused a lot of trouble for the guards."
"What-ever could you mean?" asked the odd prisoner. "You say that the things do not belong? I pose this line of questioning in a rhetorical fashion rather than a literal one. The things of which you speak were of no more consequence than a rose in a rock-garden or, inversely, a rock in a rose-garden. Not every thing can exist everywhere, yet circumstances can dictate that things can come to exist in places for set amounts of time. If they are germane or not is a matter of subjective considerations. So, I ask you again. What could you mean by what you ask?"
For all of his privileged and enriched upbringing, the warden barely understood what the odd prisoner was saying. He understood the rock-garden analogy, but he didn't catch on to the rest. "I don't think those things were any kinds of rocks or roses I ever saw before, mister. Like nothing I've ever seen before." Like nothing on Earth, was what he thought.
"Really now?" responded the odd prisoner. "Then perhaps you should get out more often. Why, I most certainly do. Travel is known for broadening one's sense of place, if not places. There are things in other places which you can only begin to imagine. Such other places and things are perhaps of the sort you would probably never wish to see. Yet they are there for those who seek enlightenment. Surely, a worldly man such as you can come to a rapport with the sentiment?"
No warden, chubby or otherwise, would ever want to hear of an inmate going out on a regular basis. And when the odd prisoner spoke of this, the warden knew it was just too true. He also saw how the odd prisoner was able to do it—the odd prisoner seeming to go into the wall and vanish. Worst of all, the security cameras seemed to work the best whenever the odd prisoner did leave. It was as if he wanted video-recorded proof of him doing that, of what he could do. "Please, I'm asking you to stop," said the warden.
"Ah, so you plead for me to cease," mused the odd prisoner aloud. "According to the sociologists of this world, every human relationship involves some form of dominance of one side over the other. It is quite clear which party of this relationship is dominant, is it not? Now, plead again as so my witness can be doubly assured of seeing and hearing this."
"Who…?" asked the warden, suddenly looking at the upper bunk and suddenly seeing the odd prisoner's cell-mate. The warden wanted to ask, Where the Hell did you come from? That would've been the wrong question, because Jimmy had been sitting up there this whole time. The odd prisoner somehow made it as so Jimmy wasn't visible or noticeable. Real-life magic…
Now the odd prisoner smiled. "You wish to plead? Perhaps we should bargain. What could you do to appease me? I should lower my trousers and bare my anatomical nether-regions as so you can pleasure me with your mouth. Power is quite an aphrodisiac, as you already know. It requires carnal release.
"Or rather, it could be that one of your young daughters would do in that regard. Their bodies are kept firm and desirable with the dual efforts of rigorous supervised exercise and cosmetic surgery. The one whose eighteenth birthday passed last week would be just the thing. Her ripe young teenage flesh would be an exquisite offering." He saw the warden's reaction. "Oh, come now. The child is illegitimate, after all. Of what concern is her well-being to you? You even deny her existence as an heir to your family's wealth."
Nobody was supposed to know about that child, nobody but the woman who decided to not get an abortion. It took no less than two hundred-thousand kept that damned woman's mouth shut, along with a cushy job in a state office that was near the state border. It wasn't even a job either, more like the woman showing up once a month to make sure her office was still there while her hefty commission made it into one of her bank accounts. A lot of other things about the warden's life were also supposed to be not known. Yet the odd prisoner did know. Why not? Anyone who can have eyes in the back of his head ought to be able to have eyes elsewhere—and not all of them on his anatomy.
The odd prisoner lifted his head a bit, nose up, looking like someone who has smelled something awful. He said, "Your ignorance is understandable if not tolerable. There is more to existence than the endless pursuit of wealth. Why, I have come to see wealth which has no equal in this world. I have seen massive palaces in which the very masonry contains powdered ruby and thrones of platinum. Servants bustle about in clothing threaded with silver. I shall not speak of gold, for it is a contemptible metal. As compared to emperors and empires, of power and worlds, you are truly pathetic. You are in a rather pitiful position to bargain."
Either the warden was feeling very stupid or he was just not believing what the odd prisoner was saying. He went back to what he came here to ask (or beg) for. "We're getting too much trouble. It's got to stop! Please!"
"You weak fool!" came a mighty sound from the odd prisoner, making the warden fall down. With that angry shout from the odd prisoner, all the walls and bars—even the air itself—resonated with the sound of the odd prisoner's voice. Oh yes, that surround-sound trick was in full effect. "You cannot bargain with those of my higher station. Furthermore, you cannot even begin to bargain. Anything you could ever offer of this pitiful world would be of little consequence when I have access to entire worlds. Unlike the carnal triumphs which part their legs for your base desires, I am able to give you a complete and utter no. Begone fool, lest your pitiful life be ceased here and now. Like so!" He made a gesture with his right hand.
Flick-flicker. With that blinking of the lights, two massive figures flanked the chair of the odd prisoner. They, the beings…were so tall that the tops of their heads nearly brushed the ceiling—heads wrapped tightly with black straps that could be plastic or leather. Their bodies covered with browned and patched material of a strange sort—what were likely large patches of skin from animals never seen before. Their hands were the worst, mechanical hands which clacked in anticipation of doing some severe harm.
It took the mightiest of effort for the warden to not scream his damned head off…unless he wanted it ripped off. This is what the warden saw would happen if he did make a noise—seeing the events in his mind as if it was actually set to happen. It would not end prettily.
First, if he did shout, those strap-headed things would kill the warden in the bloodiest, noisiest, most meat-ripping way possible. His fine suit would be torn to bits and scraps, as would the fat flesh beneath. As he was screaming like somebody being killed (which he would be), the prison guards would come in and start blasting everything in sight with buckshot. Maybe the odd prisoner would be hit, maybe not. But the warden had the idea that the odd prisoner couldn't be killed with mere mortal weaponry. (He thought that maybe it would take silver bullets or Holy Water. Then he remembered that such things are for vampires and werewolves, not people like the odd prisoner…whatever he is. It wouldn't matter because anything can kill a human being like the warden—especially mechanical hands.) Oh yes, and the strap-headed things with the mechanical hands would rip his head off in the most awesome way possible.
After all the fun was done, blood-spattered walls and all, the warden would be dead meat. That would be the end for him. Play the music and roll the end credits, black background with white letters scrolling, messages and words through infinite darkness...
None of that actually happened. Those things did not attack the warden. So the warden was not ripped to shreds. In fact…
Blink-flicker. Another right-hand gesture of the odd prisoner, and the situation changed. A swoosh of rushed indoor wind, and the things with the mechanical hands were gone. Vanished, disappeared, whatever you want to call it, they just were not there anymore. They didn't even say goodbye.
"Leave my immediate physical presence, you petty and weak man," said the odd prisoner. "Leave my physical presence in the knowledge that I have temporarily blessed you with your life. Yet know well that neither my patience nor mercy are infinite. This interview is done."
With a bitter look on his big fat pasty face, a face that looked even pastier because his suit was black, the warden turned and quickly walked out of the prison cell. He did not run. That would just be too much. He had already suffered too many indignities already, and being told no was the worst of all.
Outside and away from the opening of the odd prisoner's cell, the warden was feeling more like his big (fat) self again. "Shut up!" he yelled at the prison guards. Not that they said anything. They just looked to him as if they were going to ask him about what happened in the cell.
The prison guards would have to ask because they did not hear a word of the conversation in that prison cell. It was like the prison cell was the odd prisoner's domain, so much so that even the air itself obeyed him. The writings-covered wall definitely did.
Damned if they would believe the warden if he did tell them. The odd prisoner used super-duper magic-powers to find out about his life. (Uh-huh.) Then the odd prisoner made some big-bad boogie-men appear out of nowhere. (Gotcha.) Yeah, yeah, and they had mechanical robot-hands too! (Sure, buddy…)
Whatever the case, they did not hear the odd prisoner say no to the warden. While the odd prisoner could tell the warden what to do (like where to shove it when it came to requests), the warden was still able to tell everyone one else around here what to do. He told the prison guards to shut up, so they stayed shut-up and wordless as they escorted him back to the hidey-hole of his office.
