Everlasting clicking of keys....

 

 

They finally let me have a typewriter, the scratching on the walls must have been keeping my fellows awake at night.

So here I sit still incarcerated, still afraid, and still writing, the writing is the only thing that gets me through any more, the long slow boredom and the pervasive fear that hangs in the air like a bad odor. Wondering when they will stop feeding me, or how long until they just beat me a little too hard and leave me to die out in the cold hard courtyard.

 Seven years by my estimate, counting the seasons as they pass like a strong wind, the winters are only a little colder than the summers, the snow falls a little heavier in the fall, and the guards rotate once every three months or so.

But all that could be wrong, perception is nearly impossible in here, with the daily torture and the mind games, half the population doesn't know why they are here, the other half seems to enjoy it.

The cell next to mine swings open and I hear the man begin to cry like a broken woman, the barking of dogs and the rough laughter of the guards tells me the game is about to begin.

Crying turns to hoarse screams and I can just make out the guards as they talk to each other in some foreign tongue, I used to be a college man, I could identify any language by ear but I never heard this before, a strange mix of German and Polynesian.
I type slower now, I don't want to disturb the guards while they are at play lest I turn their wrath on me, I can still recall the 'fun' they had at my expense a month ago. I've finally begun to sleep again and my stomach still turns at the thought of my cell door sliding open and the shadows of those giants blocking out the harsh red light of the prison proper.

I don't know what to write, because I know all my correspondences will be read, re-read and then burnt so I must be careful with my words, this type-writer, old and black, a heavy monolith of keys and ink could be my undoing, but still I can not help myself and so I keep typing even through the pleading and weeping of the man in the cell next to me.

He goes quiet and I shake my head, you don't want to be quiet while they play with you, screams are the best, begging brings a dirty smile to their faces and a little bowel movement will let them now that you are really feeling the strap.
But silence will only anger them more.

The man yells out and he begins to pant and howl, they must have stuck him with something, another long scream and he finally goes quiet for real, the dogs bark and pull on the chains, the guards laugh and let them eat, the man wasn't yet dead and finds air enough to scream one last time, his final sounds echoing through my stone cell like a trapped bat bouncing through my head and finding its roost in my mind.

I didn't know his name, hell I didn't even know what he looked like but he was my brother and now he's gone and all I can think of is whether or not the guards are still bored enough to visit the old writer in the cell next to his. Sweat beads my brow as I type faster and faster the noise of the round keys as my fingers crash into them sounds like rolling thunder but I don't care.

I just don't care.