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Untitled
Jim
Baines walked along the well-polished corridor.
His two new boots squeaked loudly in the
stillness of the oppressive night. The blister
on his right heel throbbed and he longed for
eight o’clock in the morning when his shift
would come to a merciful end.
It was quiet tonight; too quiet. Peace at nine
pm always preceded mayhem at midnight. Baines
knew it was going to be a long, long shift.
He slid the hatch back on the door to room
forty-three, on the top level of B wing. Miguell,
prisoner, number 36045379, lay sullenly on his
bunk. Chapman, above him, snored loudly. These
two rarely gave any trouble.
“Night lads, lights out in fifteen minutes.”
Neither man answered. Baines moved along to the
next cell. This one was currently occupied
solely by Neil Hutchens, doing a three stretch
for assault and battery. His wife’s lover, it
was said, walked with a limp and had developed
an irritating stutter.
Hutchens lay on his back, his right hand moving
furiously on his engorged penis.
“Now then, Hutchens, that’ll make you go
blind, you know.”
“Fuck off, you bastard. Can’t a man get a
minute’s privacy in this madhouse?”
He never slowed his pace, never stopped what he
was doing, and as Baines shook his head in
disgust, the other man’s sperm rose in a milky
arc, to land on the pale blue government-issue
bedspread.
“Dirty git,” Baines muttered as he moved on
down the corridor. The other man insolently rose
one soiled finger in salute of the retreating
officer.
Baines felt the hairs on his arms begin to rise
as his hand rested on the grill of the next door
down. The man in this room went by the name of
‘Lightning’. None of the officers or fellow
inmates ever referred to him by his real name of
Carruthers. This was one of the oddest, oddball
mothers on B-wing, Baines thought. He steeled
himself to slide back the grill and make eye
contact with the man within, who quite frankly
scared the shit out of him.
The grill slid back with a nails-on-blackboard
squeal, and the officer shuddered. His balls
contracted, and every hair follicle along his
spine stood to erect attention as it prepared to
play pin-ball with the droplets of perspiration
that were making their way down the ridge of
vertebrae from the base of his neck. Why the
hell did he always let this weird fucker rattle
him? Because, he answered his own thought,
Lightning was criminally insane with a capital
I, and about as predictable as a nest of vipers.
Baines took a deep breath and looked through the
grid. Sometimes Lightning would be crouched
below the opening, and when the grid was slid
open he would rise from his squat like a
screaming banshee and frighten the bejesus out
of whichever screw was on the other side.
Knowing he was likely to do it never stopped the
duty officers from screaming out in shock and
jumping back like a girly confronted with a
spider, and the anticipation of knowing he might
be there waiting only made the act more jumpy.
Sometimes he’d have his filled piss pot in his
hand ready to throw at the grill; on other
occasions – if the tea urn had just done its
rounds – a boiling cup of tea would be thrown
into the eyes of the looker. Of course there
were other cons on the wing; in fact all the
other cons on the wing were violent in varying
degrees, but the difference with Lightning was
the fact that it was pure sport. His acts were
cunningly thought out in a dance of psychology
that always seemed to give him the upper hand
against the screws. For all his antics,
Lightning was cold, as cold as a corpse’s
todger on burial day. He had a keen
intelligence, one that was turned inward. Nobody
ever knew what was going on inside the cynical
head of Lightning.
Tonight, Baines let out his captive breath in a
long low expulsion of relief. Lightning was
sitting in the centre of his cell. He had taken
to doing this more and more often. The general
consensus was that he was waiting for the
officers to let down their guard and approach
him unaware. Lightning liked blood, especially
other people’s and most especially if it
flowed freely from an open wound in the most
sensitive regions of a screw. Baines was rather
partial to every drop of his blood and was
particular when around Lightning to make sure
that it stayed within his ample body.
The crazy bugger had played this stunt before;
sitting for the twenty three-hour duration of
his lock up in the lotus position, demanding
that he not be moved or molested in any way.
When four officers had entered the cell
mob-handed because he seemed not to be
breathing, he had become enraged, and body parts
flew, decorating his cell in a garish modern art
tableau. Of the four officers, three were
hospitalised and the other had fresh flowers
placed at his graveside by his mother every
Sunday.
Life for Lightning meant just that; he would see
out the rest of his troubled days plotting and
scheming in the six-by-six cell.
“And God help society if he ever gets
loose,” thought Baines.
He was about to slide the grill home and move on
to the next cell when something held him back.
His head, already turning to the left, snapped
back to stare through the hole made by the open
grill. His body became immobile. His blood sugar
level plummeted and he felt his toes turn to ice
crystals in the thick thermal socks he wore for
night duty. At that moment officer Jim Baines
was paralysed. His eyes were locked unblinking
and rigid towards the naked prisoner sitting on
the freezing cold cell floor. Baines was scared,
he didn’t know what the hell was happening,
but he knew it sure as hell had something to do
with the sociopath sitting in front of him like
Hari bloody Krishna.
At first his conscious mind refused to
acknowledge the pale green light emanating from
the man before him. It wasn’t as though it was
alien green, or exorcist’s puke green; in fact
it was barely perceptible, only one hue deeper
then mere air. As the light strengthened it
still didn’t take on the gaudy glow of
Halloween, but Baines could no longer deny that
it was there – pulsing in a subtle aurora from
Lightning.
As much as the officer willed his body to get
the hell out of there, the more some unameable
force compelled him to stay rooted to the spot.
Baines’ mind wasn’t programmed to work on
the supernatural or anything above a simple
man’s understanding. He thought about the
World Series and pizza and how many pints he
could piss up against the bathroom wall the
following night when he got to play out with the
lads. Green lights pulsing out of freaky
prisoners were just way beyond his mental
capability.
Lightning’s eyes snapped open. The snap was
silent, but to Baines it shot him with the same
velocity as a round from a sub-machine gun.
Although open, Lightning’s eyes were rolled
back within the sockets, his pupils turned into
the back of his head so that only the whites of
his eyes were on view. Baines was more scared
than he ever thought it possible to be. Scared
beyond screaming, or vomiting, or trembling. The
simple man understood the meaning of the word
‘petrified’ for the first time.
As he watched the scene playing out in the cell,
for a split second an ‘overview’of Lightning
appeared in front of the prisoner’s body, a
sort of second image of the man, again
translucent like the green light, almost not
there. Had Baines been a drinking on duty type
of man, the phenomenon could easily have been
attributed to double vision, but Baines knew
that there was nothing wrong with his eyesight,
only with his body that was being controlled by
the man locked in the room beyond the grill.
The overview image hung for a second, shimmering
in front of Lightning, and then he inhaled. The
long whooshing sigh that followed seemed to suck
the overview into his body, the two visions of
the same man became one and the prisoner’s
eyes fell so that the pupils rolled into their
proper position. He fixed the paralysed screw
with an ice-cold stare. The jagged scar that ran
from forehead to chin and gave the prisoner his
nickname seemed to throb in time to the pulse at
his temple. His skin had become pallid and
gaunt, causing the scar to bulge in an angry red
ravine that coursed its way along the man’s
face. There were rumours as to how Lightning had
come by the scar. Some said that he had indeed
been hit by lightning and that it had turned his
mind, but the general consensus of opinion gave
its vote to a pub brawl involving a large broken
bottle.
Lightning seemed diminished and exhausted, but
his eyes danced with evil and malice.
“Aah, my dear Mr. Baines, sir” he said, his
voice dripping with languid sarcasm. “You
think these feeble barriers can hold me down?
Surely you know that you can tie me up, but you
will never hold me back.” the prisoner’s
words melted into a laugh that held only venom
and disgust for the screws that he so obviously
saw as beneath him.
“I travel to places that only your worst
nightmares could take you to the threshold of.
Can you imagine, Mr. Baines, the world that I
play in when I fly free?” He didn’t wait for
the officer to answer, not that the officer
could in any way attempt to answer. Baines
wanted only his own freedom. Lightning’s
ranting insanity held him prisoner, and the
crazy man’s words cavorted through his mind.
He didn’t want to be part of Lightning’s
nightmares, he didn’t want to partake in the
other man’s playground, he wanted only to
close the grill and get away from the power that
held him captive. Lightning was still talking at
him in riddles.
“… The places I go, the things I see, the
deeds I do. Can you even begin to imagine what I
do when I am free of these manacles? This
pathetic establishment that deigns to think it
can control me; this is merely my resting-place.
I have learned things, you see, Baines. I have
used my mind in the ways of the old; have
learned to harness my power and control my
destiny. What would you think if I told you that
I stay here only because it is convenient for me
to do so? You would think me mad, would you not?
But tell me, Baines, who is the more insane? He
who uses his intellect to its full capacity, or
he who trundles round his wheel like a
frustrated hamster? I tire of you, little man.
Go turn your wheel.”
Lightning spread his palms on his knees and
closed his eyes. His breathing became shallow
and he seemed to fall instantly to sleep. Baines
felt a tremor move through his body and it was
as though the air that had closed around him to
hold him rigid fell away. He turned from the
man’s cell and ran along the corridor, his
too-new boots squeaking all the way to the staff
room.
“Bloody `ell, Bainsey,” said Bill Jackson as
he mopped his slopped cup-a-soup from his
uniform pants. “ `oo’s chasin’ you? Clean
on, these pants were, an’ now look, you’ve
made me slop all over `em.”
“I’m outa here, Jacko. I’ve `ad it with
this place. Tomorrow I’m giving in my notice.
I’m too old to be coping with these crazy
bastards any longer.”
Baines made himself a strong cup of coffee and
tried not to think too much about what had just
happened. Maybe it was just a stitch or
something that had held him immobile; a bit of
indigestion. Yes, that must be it. No more liver
and onions for him before coming to work.
He could no more contemplate the thought of
completing his rounds than he could embrace the
prospect of indulging in a quiet game of chess
with Lightning. He rubbed the aching part of his
immense chest as he tried to regulate his
breathing and calm his frazzled nerves.
Jacko turned on the television and raised the
heat of the gas heater from medium to high.
“Just going for a piss, Bainsey. Won’t be
long.”
Baines sat down in one of the two battered
winged armchairs and prepared to wait for the
evening news. The last programme was nearing its
bleating conclusion. It was one of those
bleeding hearts documentaries. This one was a
tired old rendition of the conditions and
depravation afforded to the children of the
Rumanian orphanages. This latest appeal for the
good and Christian to reach deep into their
mothy pockets was being shot live via satellite.
Tormented naked bodies rocked in demented
turmoil on filthy shit-laden beds. Large brown
eyes, beaten and robbed of intelligence, stared
at the no doubt wholesome bodies of the camera
people. The film crew breathed shallowly against
the stench in the interests of some good footage
to send back home for the housewives to tut
over. A sombre voice in clipped, well-educated
tones did a reasonable talk over, while at the
orphanage, children screamed and rocked and
shit.
The camera angle shifted and the voice-over was
saying that although conditions were indeed
still poor and aid was still not getting
through, much had been done to aid the fight by
one lone man. The camera pointed to a naked
child of about ten; a man leant over her cot and
stroked the child’s arm soothingly to calm
her.
He stood and turned to face the camera. His
smile was one of pure benevolence, his eyes
shone with the love of his fellow man. “ I am
a simple man,” he began. “I know not the
ways of the rich and the famous. I just do what
I can to help my children.” He smiled slightly
as he used the possessive suggestion in
reference to the orphans. “I made my first
rescue some years ago in a country not too far
from here, when I was blown up by a land-mine
while saving an eight-year-old boy.” At this
point he fingered the savage scar on his right
cheek for effect. “Since then I have dedicated
my life to helping these children in need. Like
all men I have sinned. The good Lord knows how I
have sinned.” He gave a self-deprecating
little smile that gave the impression that the
man himself was merely being modest and that he
believed himself to be wholly incapable of the
tiniest sin going.
Lightning leaned forward, right into the camera.
His face filled the television screen, his eyes
shone with a blue intensity of emotion that had
never been seen in the prison, and his scar
pulsed again with the vein in his forehead.
“There are no barriers that can hold me. The
mind is a vast playground that can be harnessed
and used for good or evil.” He smiled into the
camera, with a look that emanated goodness and
love. That sincere-looking expression snaked
through Baines’ blood and made him feel as
though he had been crawled over by a
rattlesnake. “I have chosen to use the gifts
that God gave me for the good of these poor
innocent children who have no defence against
the evils of man.” Again, the ‘butter
wouldn’t melt’ smile. “Man can turn in his
wheel like a frustrated hamster, or he can break
through the barriers imposed upon him.”
Lightning leaned even further into the screen
and winked. Baines was in no doubt that the wink
was meant solely for him. His mind tried to work
out how one of his prisoners, who was locked in
a cell not five hundred feet from where he sat
could somehow be transmitting a live broadcast
from Romania. He couldn’t make the connection,
but what he did know was that there were a lot
of helpless people in grave danger if he
didn’t do something about it. He shook his
head to try and make some order of his muddled
thoughts. Who would he call? What would he say?
He leaned over to the table and lifted the
handset of the telephone, dialled nought for an
outside line. Maybe he ought to start with the
governor. How the hell was he going to make her
believe him, though?
A draft blew slightly to his left and he assumed
it was Jacko back from the toilet.
“Hey Jacko, you’ll…” he stopped
mid-sentence. Lightning’s overimage was beside
him in the room. Gone was the smile of love.
Without the protection of the enforced steel
door between them, Lightning looked more evil
and more dangerous than he had ever appeared
before. The fact that he had no substance only
heightened Baines’ fear, and his left hand
rose instinctively to rub the right side of his
chest.
The overimage turned to the television screen.
“Such raw material to play with, don’t you
think?” The voice came not from the apparition
of Lightning but from the air of the room
itself. The pain in Jim Baines’ chest
increased and spread until it engulfed his body
and head.
“I’ll get you, you bastard” were the words
that died on his tongue as he took his last
breath. |
