Chapter 22

  ~ Through Hell and Back ~

  Alek had forgotten when the man in the adjacent cell had died. It could be he had died weeks ago. Months. Or it could be that he had always been dead. But it made no difference, for he hadn’t stayed a corpse long. Now, it was a presence. Crouched in the corner. It never slept, not really, and it never tired. Especially not here, in the dampness where the light refused to reach. The perfect environment for it to linger. To watch. To wait. If Alek ever made the mistake of falling asleep too close to the iron bars, he would surely wake up to see the prisoner gnaw on his flesh.

  But sleep was a difficult thing to find. The cold concrete floor seemed to pierce his ribs whenever he lay down. The crusty hairs of his unruly beard itched so much that his chipped nails made sure to keep it from growing too long. And his thoughts were flailing in the unrelenting need for sustenance.

  Water he could find. Slurping the ground or licking the walls. Or waiting for his captors to slide a bowl, in which the earthy taste was a reprieve from the moisture. But food… food came so rarely. Each time, it felt like perpetuity. An agony without end that took him to the darkest places of his mind. One time, maybe it was yesterday, he had contemplated luring his neighbour to rob him of his fingers. Or even an arm if hunger got the better of Alek.

  But he knew that the meat would sicken him and that his strength had left him long ago. He saw it in the way he could watch the bones move under his skin. In the way, every movement took hours for the will to be mustered. His skin had become pale, even under the orange glow of the lanterns that at times visited this place. Famine inhabited every corner of his spirit.

  He was left wondering if the creature watching him was but his own reflection in the mirror.

  To solitude, he had offered every memory. A currency he traded in exchange for another moment of sanity. Each dream revived, each life replayed. Hard times had come and gone. Some, where he had thought himself at the end of the tunnel. But here? The tunnel never stopped. The light never came. Perhaps he lay in the deepest region of limbo—the way out an eternity away.

  And in his torment, there was one who played a central role.

  The herald.

  That’s the only name he had given. A stupid name for a sociopath. Alek called him Moth.

  He came when it pleased him, wings of shadows when he descended upon this place. He would stand in the doorway, a harbinger of suffering. And his voice would carve its way inside Alek’s brain. Like a patient sculptor shaping a broken piece. But most of the time, he kept silent, listening to Alek’s visions and reveries.

  This time, though, he had spoken. Unseen lips moving behind a marble mask.

  “Tell me,” he murmured, drifting closer. “Have you dreamed again? Have they whispered in your ear?”

  Alek didn’t move. His body would only ache, and his jailer wasn’t worth the effort. He only breathed an insidious exhale.

  Moth knelt just beyond the bars. “You must surrender yourself. Have you not remembered anything?”

  “If I did”, Alek croaked, “I would not waste it on you.”

  “And yet you will in time,” he insisted. “That is what the lost do, in the end. They search for meaning. And I, Alek, am the only one left to listen.”

  The creature in the next cell snorted in agreement.

  Moth’s gaze swept away from it and onto him. “It’s funny, don’t you think?” he sang as he stood up. “How a man can be made to forget the sound of laughter, the taste of food, even the colour of the sky. But the love… the love is never forgotten.”

  Alek remained, but the words pressed against his skin.

  “Tell me, which is it that lingers in the dark with you?” Moth’s fingers brushed the iron bars, slowly jumping between the gaps.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Is it the lover you betrayed, or the friend you could not save?”

  Of course, they came to mind. Even after everything. Alek regretted confiding in his jailer when despair had made him weak. Now, the herald could weaponise the tales; torture him with regrets.

  Moth sighed. “Regret is a wonderful thing. A chain stronger than any steel, a shackle that does not rust. Even today, as you have lost all that made you a person, you’re still bound to it, dragged further down by its weight. And still, you refuse to let go. Do you dream of her? The way her hand once fit in yours? Is that why you hold on? Or perhaps it is the one who drowned, shaping your nightmares.”

  Alek closed his eye, but there was no escape.

  They couldn’t be sure she was gone. Rivers were an unpredictable force. And he had never abandoned the hope of her escape. Otherwise, all the torment meant nothing. But perhaps there was truth in the herald’s message.

  Perhaps he should let go. The pain he inflicted on himself had gotten the old wounds to fester instead of heal. Whether there was guilt or not, the past seemed to cling no matter what. Now that he had touched the bottom of the cruel sea, perhaps he could let the currents of forgiveness flow inside his open mouth.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Tap. Tap.

  “When you sleep,” Moth whispered. “Do they ever call your name?”

  A spark flickered inside Alek, and dry tears swelled in his fatigued eye. The voice no longer belonged to him, but it carried the meaning. “They do,” he rasped. “But they do not call for me as I was. They do not beg or plead. They remind me.” His clawed fingers curled against his palm. The pale mask floated forth in response, inches from the bars. “They remind me of what I did. Of what I failed to do—”

  “Then they are kind.”

  Alek raised his head from the wall. “What kindness have you known to speak so freely of it?”

  The wings that once flapped eagerly beyond the cell stayed still.

  “You speak of regret as if you’ve never tasted it,” Alek said with the slow energy drained from ancient reminders. “But I know, no man like you is free of sin. Now you tell me, herald— when you remove the mask, whose face do you see?”

  The jailer gripped the bars; this time, he looked like the one behind them.

  “You return, no matter how often I deny you,” Alek continued. “You preach of chains, yet you wear your own so well that you fail to recognise them. You listen to me weep for the past, but the tears are on your mask. Because you lack the strength to look at yourself.”

  Moth’s fingers let go of the bars. “You mistake me for someone like you and the rest of the forsaken,” he said. “I do not live in the past.”

  “No,” Alek agreed, tilting his head back against the stone. “You refuse to see its grip on you. You refuse every emotion, every relation. You’re just as twisted as I am, except you’re not even aware of it. You hide behind a mask because you have no shape.”

  “I do not hide!” the herald’s voice boomed in the jail, and the infected jumped. “You think you see something in me. Fragile, wounded.” He leaned in, the slits of his mask bathed in the lantern’s light. “You merely see your reflection. I wear this mask to remind the world of what it deserves.”

  With a hand, he grabbed the guise and slid it down. Scars and burns extended over his face, and where he should have looked young, he looked pained. His eyes gleamed with conflicting emotions. And maybe there was fear, the same Alek had known, but there was also fury.

  “You still grasp for the past, hoping to shape it into meaning. Hoping it will absolve you, make you whole.” His gloved hand rose, and he wagged a finger. “It never will. What you see on my face is what you made of this world. The only thing you get to do now is look at me and know that you will never again feel peace. That as long as I stand, as long as the Children stand, this world will be no haven for those who mourn the past.”

  This time, the finger pointed at Alek.

  “You mistake your suffering for righteousness.” Moth continued. “But suffering is no lesson. No debt to be repaid. It is just pain. The weak drown in it while the strong forge it into a blade.”

  Moth stepped away, lifting the mask once more. The pale visage swallowed the truth beneath, and the herald retreated.

  “Strength without purpose is just cruelty.” The words had escaped Alek unbidden.

  Its captor responded in the echo of the stairs.

  “Maybe so.”

  The lantern stole away the light. The cell returned to its idle state.

  And oddly enough, this time, Alek didn’t have to fight to fall asleep.

  Alek had expected a punishment. But in the weeks that followed, it took on a form unexpected. There was no way at first to track the days beyond the comings and goings of what could be guards. Even the animal in the cell next to him never seemed to sleep. It followed no cycle. No rhythm. It only stared. But he knew that time had indeed passed. His hair had grown, and the temperature barely increased. The moist layer that covered the walls had dwindled, and it could have been summer outside. And despite his fear of retribution, Alek was being fed more.

  Perhaps his jailer wanted to drag out the suffering, but it didn’t seem likely. For that, he could have simply kept feeding him as he had done. But instead, Alek recovered some strength. The bones retreated behind flesh, and naps hurt less. Dreams even came back to visit him. Or rather, a dream. The same one, playing over and over like a worn out cassette.

  A cold river, agitated with currents. Alek standing on the bank, chains holding him, rooted in the gravel. He would watch as the rushing waters eroded concrete and swallowed buildings. And every time he’d see her. Hair with streaks of red; eyes as blue as ice. She would gasp for air and struggle. But hands, hundreds of them, layered over each other, would emerge from the surface, pulling her down. And down.

  And every time, right as the water would enter her mouth, she’d manage a cry.

  “Alek!”

  And Alek would wake.

  He remained in this prison of stone and dreams, but no winds ever carried the moth back to him. At first, Alek had seen it as a blessing. That the absence of a voice and the lack of questions meant he could finally rest. But his existence stayed far from restful.

  In the putrid silence, he listened. For footsteps and the rasp of gloved fingers. And in the hours, he waited. For a breath or a voice. But the only words were his own, echoing in his skull. Torturing him more than any captor. And the only sounds were those of throaty breaths. In the monotony of pain and longing, Alek lost himself. Most pieces he had already traded, but time kept stealing the rest away from him.

  One morning—that’s what he called the part where they brought food—after having eaten, Alek rose. His limbs had forgotten their purpose, but they held. And in the cell beside his, the hollow man stood.

  Alek inhaled and walked closer. The hollow man did the same.

  Even in the darkness, the details were revealed. A face distorted always bent. Twitching and jerking to the side. Skin desperately trying to flee its own body, flesh rotten and pale. He wondered if those the man had known would still recognise this grotesque parody of a face.

  For a moment, Alek only watched. Watched the way its chest heaved. Watched the emptiness in those eyes. Watched the instinct take control when he held his arm toward the bars. In a second, the animal lunged and forced him to step back. Perhaps it had been sleeping all this time. Now, it was wide awake.

  Alek did not move. He waited for it to settle. Crooked fingers threaded between the bars. Arms extended, reaching for him.

  Then, Alek proceeded.

  He bent the right one until it snapped. And then the left one. Where the bones poked through flesh once he was finished. No claws would rake his skin. He was free to carry out the thought that had haunted him.

  It was hunger that drove him. But not for food.

  Alek stepped forward until he could feel the hot breath. His hands shot out, clamping around the swollen throat. The prisoner lurched, snarled, and fought, but Alek held as firm as his body allowed. He twisted its head until it was upright and forced his thumbs deeper into flesh, into sinew. Against the ridges of its larynx.

  Snarls turned to strangled noise. Flesh turned into meat.

  The corpse slumped, but Alek did not let go. He held it there, feeling the tension seep away. The silence that followed was true this time. Complete. Slowly, his fingers uncurled, and the victim collapsed to the ground.

  His fingers still shook. But they had held.

  And just as he watched his fingers tremble, a sound stirred the air.

  A melody.

  It crept into the hard-earned silence, winding through cracks in the stone. Thin. The notes floated, carrying distant meanings. Memories half-forgotten.

  A song.

  Round and round the world we go ~

  Past the river through the snow ~

  ***