Unexpected Release
By Heather McDonald
The three-inch thick, steel-reinforced door to my solitude opened with a distinct and sudden thud earlier than usual. I sat, in my confortable, though not attractive, desk chair, the works of Ovid lain before on what I had come to call my alter. It was a steel writing desk adorned with books, papers, opened letters, writing instraments, and a wooden ruler: my tools. I am what many would call an artist. I write poetry of many descriptions, compose prose as well.
I raised my eyes from the Metamorphoses, Book the First, to regard the intruder to my sanctum.
"Mr. Battle," came the gruff voice from the now open door. It was Johnson, my night security guard. High profile, maximum-security convicts were given their own personal guards at Maxville Maximum Security Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane Super-Villain. I always thought that was far too illustrious a title for hell. They feed you meagerly, give you amenities sparingly, and are very frugal in their personalities. Johnson was no exception to the latter.
I heaved a resigned sigh and looked upon my watchmen. He was an older gentleman, perhaps in his late 40s, with a receding hairline and a gut that hid his belt from view. Thankfully, he did wear a belt, though on occasion, he was want to share his unsightly bum with the rest of the inmates and myself. Ah, the woes of incarceration.
"Yes, Johnson?" I responded, not keeping a bit of annoyance out of my voice. I was typically only removed from my cell for showers or the rare visitors I was recently allowed to have. It was only six in the evening: after visiting hours, but before my nightly trek to the showers.
"You have a meeting with the warden. Let's go." Was Johnson's rough reply. Johnson was never much for words, which always saddened me. I didn't get many visitors, so I was often wanting for conversation. Johnson, a very good man and a good guard, was never want to comply. He was much happier sticking to his short responses and telling me how things were going to be. I was not allowed a paper, so I often missed knowing what was going on in the outside world. Not that it ever mattered, of course, seeing as this was one thing Johnson would never share.
"Yes, of course, Johnson," I stood and retrieved a scrap of paper from my desk with which to mark my place in my book, did so, and turned to the door. Johnson entered manacles already in one hand, and a cattle prod in the other. I have yet to determine why they think me such a threat. Sure, in my younger years I often made examples of small towns or rest stops, but not anymore. Not sense…ah well that is all in the past. Shall I carry on?
He approached me and I held my hands out for him to chain. There was never any use in fighting. The entire facility was enveloped in an anti-superpower field. No one's powers would operate anywhere on the premises. They were safe from my flames. Not that I would ever use them against innocents again. Xiu Mei and shown me the error of my ways.
I heaved a quiet sigh when the thought of my now ex-wife flitted through my mind. She had grown tired of waiting, and I couldn't blame her. She had been my lifeline, my solace. She was an angel.
I remember when I first laid eyes on her. It was in China. I had been laying low in order to avoid any unnecessary contact with a few of my ex-fellows from my years at Sky High. She had apparently gotten a call from the States stating that Hellfire, as I was known by then, had eluded capture in Maxville, Massachusetts and had fled the country. Regardless, my cover had been blown and there was no mistaking that my time as a free man was soon coming to an end.
She found me at a small bar in a run-down part of Beijing. She entered in a flurry of movement and the flapping of a brilliant cobalt cloth. She spotted me immediately, and all I could do was stare. A goddess had come for my capture. Her hair was long, straight, and coal, but flowing. Her eyes were a dusty shade of brown and glittered with her thirst for justice. It was useless to contest her glory.
Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic, but that is how Xiu Mei, Lady Serenity, first appeared to me. She was a Valkyrie, and I would have been a fool to stop her. I surrendered. Maybe that's why we sat and talked the way we did. I bought her a drink and we simply talked. We discussed our differences, why she did the things she did and vice versa. She grew an understanding of me, and I of her, and she stole my heart. She let me go that night, and I still don't completely understand why. Perhaps she felt a bit of humanity left within me, or perhaps she found a spot of fertile soil in which to so the seed of it. Whichever, I am forever thankful to her.
I may have been arrested for crimes I had committed in the past, but one thing was certain. Xiu Mei, my love and my wife, saved my soul.
"Are you done staring off into space, Mr. Battle?" Johnson pulled me out of my memory. He did that often, though I'm not sure now if he realized it, half the time.
"Yes, Johnson," I answered, feeling a bit embarrassed for daydreaming again. It happened quite often, but who could blame me? I spent almost fourteen hours of any given set of twenty-four, alone. If I were sleeping, I could dream of the family I'd left out in the free world, but they were only that dreams. I had been sentenced with four consecutive life sentences, with no chance for parole until after my third. Seeing as I would most likely live the life of a normal human and not rise again to live out my next three lives, I would never see them again. Sure, Xiu Mei comes to visit every so often, but I have yet to see my son.
Warren. He was only eight years old when my past had finally caught up with me and I was forced back to the states and into solitary confinement. Xiu Mei won't speak of him. She would only ever say that he attended my alma mater, graduated, and has now become what I did not have the stability of mind to become: a Hero.
I allowed Johnson to lead me out of the cell and down the hall. I allowed my mind to wander once more, or perhaps wonder would be a better term for it. I was deeply confused as to why the warden would want to see me so late in his day. I am far from his favorite inmate as I have, more than once in the past, allowed my temper to get the better of me. I thought during the entire trip from my cell in third-floor block F to the warden's office on the first floor, but I could come up with no solid conclusion save to lecture me again for trying to strike up conversations with my guards. I sat through that particular topic of lecture many times in the past, and had almost learned it by heart. I was deeply hoping I was not about to hear it again.
When I was lead into the warden's office, however I was surprised by whom I say there. Dr. Levins smiled at me from his chair across from the warden's desk. I returned his gentle smile and allowed Johnson to show me to the chair to Dr. Levins' right.
The Warden sat in his usual chair of dominance from behind his desk, a dissatisfied look playing across his features. He had the look of someone who had just her a nasty spot of bad news, and my stomach tightened a bit in anticipation. Dr. Levins, my psychiatrist, however, seemed completely calm and perhaps a bit excited. Now whatever could make Dr. Levins excited and Warden Powell dissatisfied was beyond my imagination, but the answer had a fifty/fifty chance of being good for me in the end, so I sat patiently and waited to hear whatever news the two of them had to offer.
"You may be wondering why I've had you brought here, Mr. Battle," Warden Powell began. He leaned forward on his desk and pitched a tent with his fingers. He often assumed this posture and I believed it made him feel superior to whomever he was speaking to. It only annoyed me.
"You seem to have read my mind, Warden." I responded. His useless prattle and Napoleon complex wore on my nerves like very few things did.
He nodded and continued. "Dr. Levins has just returned from a very interesting meeting with the DA and Supreme Court Justice Reynolds."
"You see fit to tell me the outcome of a meeting, Warden?" I asked. It interested me that Justice Reynolds, the man who originally sentenced me, would have anything else to say about my confinement. I had taken many lives in his hometown and I knew a grudge when I smelled one.
"Yes." Warden Powell said. "You see, Mr. Battle. Dr. Levins has completed a report on your psychological reevaluation that he's been conducting for the past eight months." I knew if this evaluation. All the inmates were subjected to it every five years to determine whether or not they remained mentally unstable. I was of the belief that I had been better for many years now, and I had simply been waiting for the rest of the world to come to the same conclusion. I nodded my understanding that he could continue.
"I have come to the conclusion that you have made a full recovery, Mr. Battle." Dr. Levins spoke up.
I turned to regard him with a look of surprise. I had been hoping for this day since I had come to reside at the penitentiary, and every year that had passed since my arrival, my hopes had faded. I didn't think this day would ever come; yet here it was.
"The DA and Justice Reynolds have agreed to lessen your term to ten years, including time served. As of today, Mr. Battle," Warden Powell paused here, perhaps for a dramatic effect that was lost on me. "You are a free man."
Free. A thought that had never touched my mind since the day the gavel fell at my sentence hearing. My throat constricted and my mouth filled with cotton. Freedom. Life. My life. I could have it all back. I couldn't make the thought stick to any part of my brain. It was as though it were made of oil. Free. The word kept rolling back and forth in my head, trying to find some niche to cling to. Today I was free. My breath began to quicken and my stomach clinched.
My wife was lost to me. I had not seen her for eight months, since the day she had come for a visit to ask me to sign her divorce papers. She had fallen in love with another man, an ordinary citizen. I was happy for her. She had finally found someone who's past would not ruin her future. But she never spoke of Warren, my only son. What had become of him? He was a Hero now, I knew this much, but what did he know of me. How would he react to know that his father, the terrible Hellfire, was free to walk to streets again? Did he hate me? Did he loathe me? Did he even really remember me? These thoughts began to race through my mind with a thousand others and Dr. Levins and Warden Powell looked on me with mixed expressions of apprehension and excitement.
The events that transpired after this bit of news are a blur in my head. I know that my things were brought to me, my cloths, the cloths I had not worn in ten years, and I changed. I looked like a normal person again. I was given my other personal effects: books, notebooks, my watch. And I was shown the door. I didn't know where to go, but I did know that I could not live my life on the streets.
As I walked aimlessly, from the penitentiary, my mind once again strayed to Warren, my son. He was a hero; he had become what I could not. Could I now? Could I swallow my pride and fight the good fight? Did I have what it took to protect the same people I once hated so much, I had desired to destroy them all? Could I? And what would it matter? Would they care? Would they still fear me? Would they fear me all the more, knowing that the same hand that stuck fear in their hearts now handed their lives back to them?
Would they hate me? Would changing save me? Is there retribution for a soul the entire world has damned?