Prison - Part 1

    Prison - Part 1

   True black inside the maze. Darkness can be a kind of light after a time: it has many of the same features, after all. It engulfs, it blinds, it covers you. Mauve spectres danced around the torch whilst eyeless sockets were illumined by misplaced light. Jan was there. Her breath clouded in front of her and dissipated. The walls were damp, and bore markings she couldn't read. She ran a hand along one of the walls, fingernails catching moss and grit but she didn't care - she was already caked in grime. The torch was not yet dying, she had time. She knew she could be dreaming. She kept going, underfoot something soft like sand or carpet, loose with detritus and she kicked dust as she walked. At her side something heavy - sword? No: baseball bat. What the - ? but something moved up ahead. She stopped, the torch in her right hand suddenly no longer a tool for seeing but one for being seen, and she trembled conspicuous in the orange.
   Nothing moved. Breath held, she was conscious of tiny sounds. Something dripped nearby, irregularly. There was a rushing, faint but audible, like cascading water very far away. And... something else, something rhythmic, dull in the background. Mechanical? Or organic breath of something massive... and the blackness shifted, movement giving form for a moment to something hunched at the edge of her vision.
  She wheeled, switching torch to left hand and drawing the sword, no, damnit, the baseball bat, and held it out to probe the dark. She watched its tip shake, and the bat was a needle indicating her fear, its minor tremor the visual readout of the hammering of her heart.
   The terrible darkness persisted. To breathe at a moment like this would be sin, would mean death.
   Something shuffling, adding to the familiar sounds. The dripping stopped. What, what? Wooden stick sturdy in front of her, ready to swing: she aimed it at nothing.
   "Fuck," breathed in the blackness. Sister Mary isn't here to chastise her now. She knotted something deep inside herself. Resolve is a wordless decision.
   The shape made itself known bathed in gloom, contours of opaline black manifested something crouched, hobbling yet massive, and the bat jogged madly in front of her, she releases a noise that should have been a word. A moaning grumble as the shape, finally lit, showed itself. Recognition sparked in Jan.
   "You."
   Low, choked voice. "Me."
   The person is familiar, a woman, eyes cast down, face half hidden by hair that looks orange in the fiery light. Why do I know you? Jan can't think: before here this place with the wet walls and the cold air and the endless night there had been... what? A city? That's only a guess, a grasping at something she can't remember. Forget reality anyway, there's only this now. She raises the bat a little - she could bring it down and crack open this bigger person, she realises. What are those bumps under the woman's hair...?
   "You know me," croaky voice like no other. Has she heard another voice like that? Has she ever heard any other voice?
   "Keep away from me," wooden bat waved in front of Jan like a sword. The woman had a few torn clothes, and her skin was pitted and worn and her nails ragged. She looked up, and her eyes were inky white. "Don't make me fucking kill you," Jan whispers. It felt as if all noise had ceased.
   The woman's face split open in a grin. "You're alone," she said. "My child, you're alone in here."
   Jan, unable to read the blank eyes or the wide grin, the yellow teeth, the poised tongue, the broken lips knew nothing. The voice was not unkindly but that face, that face was a grim anchor to her vision in the void, and she couldn't look away. There was something rotting inside her, she knew it, and shit shit shit need to do something or else she knew, she knew she would die. There was nothing else to do, and her adrenaline was her ruler. She moved forward fast, brought the bat down, felt the impact of the blow in her wrist and her shoulder, and the grin and the face were smashed. The woman didn't cry out, and Jan heard the crack as something - some part of the head, maybe the jaw - broke, and the figure she had hit slumped. At the end of the wooden bat was a red smear. Jan realised she had herself cried out upon the impact.
   The silence returned, and then, slowly, the noises she had been conscious of before the thing had appeared. Easier to think of it as a thing, now that it was lying face down and motionless. No more to shuffle and worry her. Jan felt her insides pounding blood through her faster than ever.
   "Fuck," she said again. Sister Mary hadn't liked violence either. Wait... Sister Mary? Who...
  Brain pain, and Jan leant against the wall, dropped the bat and crushed her eyes closed behind her lids. Not her real sister, no. She hadn't had siblings. Who had she been with? Who had she been? She remembered mountains, but - no, not mountains. Buildings so tall they kissed the sky. Cars, people, a rush, screens, the digital, implants, doublesight. But these were just feelings. Could she recall what a screen was? If only she had some way of showing herself these things.
   She sat, and she floor was cold. She breathed regularly for a time, letting the panic seep away. She kept looking at the shape of the woman. Dead? Probably not. Just out of action, immobile. Jan knew she should move. Up again and she picked up her torch and looked at it for the first time. Fire or just... light? Electric. The word came back to her but the meaning was still missing. Fire meant heat and danger, and this torch was cold. It was orange and the gauge told her it would last another two bars out of its possible ten. No notion of how long that was. Off she crept, breath still clouding, leaving the woman behind her to be clothed in darkness once again.