[Original Novel] Pressure 2: Dark Corners, Part 1

For about thirty seconds immediately after waking up, everything from the dream was crystal clear. Then as usual, it began to recede into the distance until he could make out only the largest, most distinctive details. The same every time, at once maddening and intriguing. And for that blessed moment James couldn't remember who or where he was. In all ways, his favorite part of the day.

Every effort to describe this feeling to his therapist so far had missed some crucial aspect. She was a sweet girl, Olivia. No more than 22 with a thick head of blonde curls that might’ve enticed any other man. Smart, too. But try as she might (and she was earnest in her attempts) she couldn’t understand when James described it to her.

He’d resigned himself to the realization that the English language doesn't yet have a word that captures all of it. The best he could do was to liken it to waking up on the curb, hung over, as memories of what you'd done to wind up there slowly trickle back into your brain. There's a moment of panic where you desperately pray that none of it's real, that you're still dreaming, only for the reality to set in soon after. Lisa. The divorce. The new job. Belusarius.

The one small condolence was that the dreams were beautiful, and never failed to move him. Over the past several months since Lisa left he'd begun experiencing recurring dreams, at first depressive but then increasing in charm and comfort each night to the point where he came to prefer sleep over waking life.

The therapist provided for one hour each week under his benefits package quickly picked up on this and refused to write him prescriptions for sleep aids. “An escape”, she said. “A crutch”. Perhaps. But surely, there are those who need one.

“It's just depression. I've been there, but I didn't turn into a sadsack like Jim. He needs to nut up and get over it.” The voice was unmistakably Rodney's. Eavesdropping from behind the corner James thought back on every past altercation with Rod.

After entertaining an unusually detailed revenge fantasy, he caught hold of himself and was overcome with embarrassment. Rod was right, and it stung. But not half as much as what followed.

“Yeah, I know. I've been his friend since he started work down here. I'm doin' my best to pull him out of this funk but he's not trying to recover. Eventually you gotta cut people like that loose. Sink or swim. Either they snap out of it, or...” silence followed.

Cray didn't intend to take the discussion in such a morbid direction, but there it was.

The unvarnished opinion of Cray Martin, the only trustworthy person aboard the Belusarius so far as James was concerned, although suddenly that seemed in doubt. He considered rounding the corner dramatically to confront them, but thought better of it and with a dull sigh James set off for the warden's office.

“Prisoner transfer. This one's special, that's why the detail is so big.” The more of it he took in, the wider his eyes became. “You're seeing this right. Did I say transfer detail? It's practically a parade. His face has been all over the news recently, odds are good he’ll be recognized. So the main consideration here is balancing between what's adequate protection against vigilantes, and avoiding a procession large enough that it'll attract media attention. Now you're gonna ask me why this guy’s such a big deal.”

James looked up from the tablet, still wide eyed and gormless. “Well okay, maybe not you. I can count on you for that. You're not the inquisitive type. But you might be in harm's way on this one, so I'll let you in on a secret. This is the same fucker that gunned down all those mechanics back in June.”

James did vaguely recall the shooting, but in his condition it took awhile to process everything. In the meantime he chewed thoughtfully on a pen and dwelled on last night's dream. The warden didn't need his feedback, it was a one sided exchange from the start, so he let the short balding Iranian continue ranting in slow motion as the imagery came flooding back.

The sun felt supernaturally warm, without burning his skin.

A field of sunflowers stretched out before his mind's eye, swaying gently in an imaginary breeze. Everything was conspicuously larger than life.

The world around him was drenched in color too rich to be real, smells were intense and pleasant, and the light seemed to have a substance to it such that he expected some physical sensation to follow as he passed through a sunbeam.

And because he expected it, there was.

The field alone was intoxicating, but he'd become desensitized to it recently and begun exploring. The first discovery was a small grassy hill topped with a single weeping willow. Once he'd seen a familiar silhouette reclining beneath it, which vanished the moment he swept the branches aside. Hinting, coyly, at something he dared not wish for.

“Rustler, pretend to listen when I'm talking to you. This is no routine transfer. Aside from the fact that this guy's certifiable, there are going to be family members of the deceased looking to take a shot at him.”

There was no hostility in his tone. Of the three, James was on uniquely good terms with the warden, especially in recent months. If he understood why James was increasingly sedate and incurious as of late he didn't express any concern over it.

The warden was the sort who explained, lectured and corrected, but did not discuss, inquire or argue. The quickest way to his heart was silent obedience. James felt capable of little else, and simply wanted to be done with the scheduled transfer so he could trudge home and sleep. The field of sunflowers returned, dimly, every time he so much as closed his eyes.

By the time he reached solitary confinement his head was back in the game, as the tablet displayed a long list of special procedures that demanded more of him than simply going through the motions.

It was oddly refreshing, and James wondered whether he might actually be taking pride in his work. Then the stench hit him.

Smelled like a primate house, easily as much a part of the isolation wing's character as the salmon pink wallpaper. He'd read somewhere that salmon pink was chosen because it had a subliminal calming effect.

Made sense on the face of it, awfully difficult to feel like a badass in a pink cell. Red had the opposite effect, yellow induces hunger, and so on into effects so specific that it made him doubt whether any of it was genuinely scientific.

Special procedure 1 described a process of rotating guards about four times as frequently as normal. There was no explanation offered as to why, just that no single guard should remain close to the cell for longer than one hour, without a ten minute break between shifts. Special procedure 2 required a similar rotation of guards monitoring the prisoner by closed circuit television camera from a remote location, such that observation was continuous and unbroken.

Again, nothing in the way of an explanation for it. That might've bothered someone else. James swiped a finger across the screen, turning the page. “The prisoner is known to vocalize. Do not actively listen or engage the prisoner in a dialogue. During transfer, he is to remain gagged and blindfolded, in addition to wearing the included helmet.” James raised an eyebrow, then glanced around. “Helmet?”

The door was square rather than the usual rectangle, really more of a hatch in appearance. The other side proved to be coated in foam. James soberly wondered whether it was to prevent self-harm, or for acoustic isolation. Or both. It was easy to see how a man could lose his mind in here.

In that respect, the chamber's contents didn't disappoint. It took most of a minute for his eyes to adjust before he spotted the pale, flabby mass huddled in the far corner.

It was bleeding, James' first cause for concern, and closer inspection revealed that it was also not merely shirtless but fully nude.

On the nearest wall it became apparent that some sort of elaborate patterned inscription resembling the sonogram of an unborn child had been etched in a dried fluid James suspected was blood, but did not care to confirm by touch.

Rather than waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting, he instead shone a small penlight on the emblem and discovered it to be comprised of intricate, repetitious sentences which all read simply “The flesh and blood of innocence”. Over and over, looping back on itself, to create the larger image.

“Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord, for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.” James bolted upright and became as still as possible, suddenly reminded of the other presence in the room. Did it really speak? Had he imagined it? Tense seconds passed. “Listen, I'm gonna get you some clothes, but then we're-” the pile resolved into a corpulent, hairy nude figure and turned to face James.

“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”

James felt transfixed by the figure's gaze.

What little light came in through the hatch window cast the contours of his naked body in sharp relief, and also put a glint in the man's eyes that James had only seen before in wild animals. The man stood quietly, neither threatened nor provoked by James' presence, which he misinterpreted as an invitation to approach.

Before he felt the blow, he was flat on his face with the full weight of the prisoner atop him. Amatuer fuckup, he thought. Hardly the time to scold himself but it was a welcome alternative to terror. When it occurred to James that the man might've fashioned a shiv and could be moments away from using it, he set about feverishly planning how to flip the man off of his back and brain him with a baton to the temple.

He wouldn't get the chance.

“The flesh and blood of innocence. The flesh and blood of innocence. May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.” His breath was hot and moist in James' ear. “The flesh and blood of innocence. To kill them all would make me God.”

He sat for a while on James' back, breathing heavily, and when James tried to dislodge the man he offered no resistance. Simply rolled off and settled into a pile as before. However, the shaking wouldn't subside so easily. Even if he'd been armed it was doubtful that he could shoot the quivering blob, despite the close range.

The shaking spread to his legs. There was a powerful, lingering feeling of violation.

James began dictating from memory to the inert mass of flesh before him that assault on a prison official was a federal offense, and detailing the punishment typical for that infraction, but gave up halfway in. Whatever possessed this man to attack him had since left his body, which now lay motionless on the cold damp floor of the cell.

“The fuck happened to you? You've got blood on your face. Did he getcha?” Cray doted on James, examining him for any signs of injury. An unexpected show of concern in light of what he'd said that morning. “I'm fine. He's demented, got the drop on me but the moment I fought back he went ragdoll. I think we're going to need a wheelchair”.

The two secured the cell door, then retrieved a hospital style folding wheelchair from storage. They found the man exactly as they left him, slumped against the far wall of the cell showing no signs of life save for respiration and a pulse. “It says he needs a helmet. Will this cut it?” Cray dangled a standard issue guard's helmet by the chinstrap. James shrugged. “Looks like a helmet to me. You put it on him.”

3:19pm. Impossible to believe, but only six minutes gone since the last time he looked. The day that refused to end. Rodney finally joined them at the security gate separating the isolation wing from admissions. “Heard you got jumped”. He was visibly amused, but straightened out when Cray spoke.

“Don't start nothing, Rod. We've got another hour packed together in the sub from here to the Tartarus, gonna be close quarters in there.”

James' ears perked up at the name, but between the security gate and the docking terminal he'd lost interest.

Just vague recollections of the word Tartarus, nothing he could pin down, he was too exhausted from the fight to care.

The outer hull came into view as they crossed C deck, always a startling sight owing mainly to the two enormous borosilicate glass domes looking out into the black abyss.

They resembled bulging eyes and served a similar purpose, the station's analogue to air traffic control towers.

From these twin vantage points, subs were either directed to vacant docking collars or authorized for departure. There was literally nothing else to see. The ocean beyond was a featureless black panorama against which the occasional sub, illuminated by exterior lights, stood out with absolute contrast. Like watching cargo capsules docking to one of the space stations, save for the absence of stars.

“You okay in there? Nod or something”. With the gag, blindfold and helmet in place it was difficult to be sure. “He's still breathing. It's all good”. Cray glared. “What? We only gotta deliver him alive. Anything else is extra”. Today, none of Rod's antics were bothersome.

Could be acclimation, though doubtful.

James didn't want to believe it was the depression. He was never one for drugs and struggled to accept that a man's fundamental personality could be changed by neurochemical means. That seemed like vanity now.

All three sat shoulder to shoulder in the spherical cockpit of the transport sub. A second, independent pressure sphere just behind theirs held the human cargo.

This special configuration could only be deployed by airlock, which ate up around fifteen minutes as the chamber flooded around their craft, then painstakingly equalized. “Is it supposed to creak like that?” Rod's usual routine never took him outside the station and for once he was showing some vulnerability.

“Relax, it's normal. The dual hulls are designed to flex as the pressure increases. We just went from 14 pounds per square inch to seven thousand in about the time it takes you to download a brownload.” Rod snorted, and the two continued trading off-color jokes while James compressed himself against the bulkhead. It was enough to quietly endure it so long as it ate up time.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 2!}