It must have been a
bad dream. I woke up being told that it was. The others had made it seem like
it had been an odd shared dream, but nothing more than that. No one had a dream
of a grotesque figure with oddly lined faces grasping at them with faux hands
like I had. Each had remembered that they were taken back to their rooms in a
sleepily, alcoholic stupor. I shrugged off my fears of Inglehart and his
monsters as being nothing more than fear induced nightmares. I had spent the
entire trip to Inglehart’s prison reading his reports on the atrocities he had
seen.
The nightmares must just have been
those catching up with me.
I was told to report to the Tower’s
psych ward to begin my studies. The hallways were subtly changed as I walked to
the corridor which would take me to the offices. My bag was slung on my left
shoulder with all the books I could find on prisons and psychoanalytic
punishment for criminals. Echoes of my footsteps rang through the hallway.
Finally reaching the tunnel’s opening one which was, as Bart had pointed out to
me, hidden behind the pillar barely a mention that there could have been a
staircase if a person was not careful I went to my home for the next several
months.
The office was quite large and gave
me a good view of the isolation cells which had made Inglehart so famous on
multiple display screens. My office was underground and, as Bart explained to
me over coffee this morning, the outside glasses offered only a hallway and
nothing more from there.
“It’s so odd to think that they have
the glass which is only ever used for the occasional patrol,” Bart had said in
his musical voice. “After all, wouldn’t something like your work –” motioning
to me with the hand holding the bacon covered fork “—benefit from actual
watching of the prisoners?”
I nodded as I sipped my coffee, but
explained the working of what the glass, especially the one way view of it did.
It was like when you see a camera in a store, I told him, the camera for the
most part will keep order. You only need to catch one of every four criminals
to ever enforce order. Along the lines of–
“Big Brother.” Bart finished my
sentence for me. I had nodded then, but I had looked at the time and rushed out
the door. As I looked now at the screens, this authoritarian view of these
criminals – thought the scum of the earth to me at that point – scared me. I
had never noticed the nausea of being able to watch all of these people all of
the time. See their mistakes from the objective god view. Correct them as they
went about their day in a lobotomized zombie way. Even from my view upon them
now, I could see the scared and nervous actions.
****
The view I had gave
the expected results as I had been told the idea. If a prisoner put his hand
through the bars I was to record it, their name and report it. As it happened,
the prisoners would be given a shock or something, I couldn’t see from what or
where – if there had been a generator, it was hidden – but it was highly
effective at keeping the people where they were and in the cell. Operators were
the only voice I had to interact with for the nine hours I was in the viewing
room, excruciating boredom allowed me to work on my thesis and to think of the
night before.
From my vantage point, I couldn’t be
sure of the humanity of the prisoners. I suppose that was the point, though.
The more you know of these prisoners, the more a person wished to help them. We
had been told before coming here of the crimes these men had committed.
Rapists, murderers, cannibals and paedophiles had been the justification from
Inglehart to bring into this place. Since isolation and possible violence from
other prisoners in other prisons may have been perpetrated, the powers that be
had allowed a small segment to be taken to this dark Tower in the wastelands.
I could not understand what had
driven these men to do such things. I supposed that’s what made me so obsessed
with understanding them. I counted the days until Inglehart had promised me by
the letter he sent to place me into a clinical position with the prisoners. It
would come in weeks and I would speak, interact and see these monsters face to
face. See the Grenwich Killer, a man who had killed six women and used their
flesh as fish bait; speak to the Ilium Clown, a children performer that preyed
on the fat children he worked with. These men had become my obsession, not in
the perverted way of wanting to emulate their atrocities, but what drove them
to do it beyond the court transcript of the Ilium Clown’s step-father making
the Clown his second in the polyamorous marriage or the Innsmouth Eater by
having delusions that his father was the Devil himself. These were the nurture
side of the crime, the parts we can see and point to as a way which they could
use as a means of getting a lesser sentence.
I wanted more, I wanted into their
synapses. Look at the brain chemistry; see if we could fix them. Explain why
people could do evil by more than just stating that people were evil. I
counted the days until I could sit and speak to these monstrous people and
understand why. I just didn’t know that, despite his false pretentions,
Inglehart had been working with this for years. That his way of understanding
was archaic, hate driven and more appropriate to the Medieval Ages rather than
a time of rational thought and reason. This man was a monster.
****
The days past like
this for some time. It had been weeks since we had gotten to this prison. A few
of us had gotten on each other’s nerves as our dreams became worse and worse.
Bart had been the first to bring up his nightmares to me. He said that in his dreams
there was always a grotesque monster at the foot of his bed. Bart always
confirmed just how bad it was getting in the nightmares; he was waking up in
cold sweats and kept seeing that monster getting closer and closer to him.
Bart’s mental health finally broke
three weeks into our work. I remember the morning since I was supposed to
finally be working in the mental health clinic. Bart had not woken up before me
as he normally did. I ground the coffee and knocked on his door.
Each knock was met with silence.
I continued to knock at his door
until I finally had the courage to open the door to his room. His warm purple
walls were covered in blood as Bart lay on his bed covered in the gore. The
colours of the walls were distorted as the scarlet was only made darker by the
warm walls. I must have screamed since Gary came rushing out of his room with
tousled hair and in a bathrobe.
They had been sleeping together.
Bart and Lana, that is. They had been experiencing separation anxiety and
stress from their work here. They had relaxed by the occasional round in the
bed. Gary confirmed who Bart was sitting in when Lana’s room was empty.
Bart was only laughing and as the
faceless guards grabbed him, he said laughing to me, “I got it. I got that
fucking ghoul.”
****
The weeks progressed
on from here as would be expected. Gary and I were given a week off and a
psychological examination along with mandatory grief check-ups. Gary was his
only because he had lived with them, Bart was my friend and Inglehart was surprised
at the amount of grief I was feeling.
He sat in front of me in his office.
The crimson walls, chestnut cabinets all ended in his pale, slight frame.
Disbelief covered his face as he was chewing the words over in his head.
“Withdraw?”
The deep voice seemed to echo in the
room, or just in my head. I tried to form the words. I failed at explaining
that I had everything I needed, failed to say that I needed nothing else and
just stumbled over the words not forming in my mouth.
“You want to at least look at the
clinic and our patients.”
He never said prisoners, only ever
patients. As if he was trying to cure them.
“You will need to communicate with
them and find out the rehabilitation. Allow the cute to soak into your system,
look at the way we have cured the evil within them.”
I should never have told him that
fateful word, that damn yes.
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