Life Sentence

Day 1535

The cold floor of the cell doesn’t bother me anymore. When I first landed here, I couldn’t sit without flinching at the feeling of the frigid pavement against my thin jumpsuit. Now, the floor felt more welcoming–and more comfortable–than the cot in the corner.

I looked out of the barred windows, if you could even call them that. It was a 4x4 hole in the wall, cut out of the stone to give us some semblance of fresh air. Thick iron bars kept us inside.

The sun was starting to set. I could see a small patch of the orange clouds through the hole. The sun’s light bounced off the bars as it moved in the sky, making a shadow that stretched along the floor. I tried to bask in the sun’s warmth, whatever I could gather from so far away. From indoors, forever.

Dinner will start soon. The fat guard with the long cane will beat it against the iron doors. The sound will ricochet through the hallway. They’ll call us names and tell us to get out and line up outside of our cells. Then the fat guard will turn around and search everyone for any contraband: cigarettes, weapons, books. We were not allowed to have anything from the outside world on our persons. If I am lucky, I will go another day without them finding these pieces of parchment.

I wonder what has changed since I last was home. Is the bookstore in the marketplace still open? I haven’t read a book in years. I miss the feeling of the paper in my hand, of the smooth leather binding holding it in place. I hope I haven’t lost the ability to do it.

I can hear Solomon praying from next door. The walls are thin; I can usually hear everything that’s going on in his room. Not that he made much noise. He had a steady routine every morning: wake up, pray, then do his daily stretching. We get breakfast delivered, and he prays over his tray of slop. He prayed over every meal. The guards would behead him if he did it any louder—he had already been warned once, and that’s as generous as the King is willing to be. One more incident, and he’s gone. He doesn’t know I can hear him through the wall. I wouldn’t tell anyone.

The main gate at the end of the hall opened. I could hear the guard’s footsteps before he even banged his cane against a single door. Once he brought his bar to the first door at the end of the hall, I instinctively stood up and waited in front of my own door.

I stepped out as the iron door slid open, my bare feet scraping against the cold concrete. The fat guard patted my shoulders, chest, and legs to make sure nothing was hidden by my uniform. When he came up with nothing, he grunted and moved on to the next cell.

Sometimes I think the guards get disappointed when they don’t sense any contraband, and ecstatic when they do. They get these looks on their faces that I would never see otherwise; their eyes sparkle with the excitement of a child, their cheeks become flushed, and some of them are even bold enough to don a smile as they carry out their punishments.

Solomon stepped out and waited patiently next to his door. If he were at all annoyed, it didn’t show on his face. The guard patted him down with extra force. They always were extreme when it came to disciplining him. Maybe it was them singling him out as our leader, maybe it was his rap sheet of prior offenses against the King. He was not the King’s favorite subject. Before his imprisonment, Solomon had thrown rotten produce and excrement at the palace, followed His Majesty’s carriage while shouting his protests, and was caught giving spiritual advice that extended beyond the King’s beliefs. He was a real thorn in His Majesty’s side, and each time he was caught, he cleverly ran away to a hiding spot known to nobody.

I followed Solomon the day he led his march to the palace. That march ended in the siege of the palace, which only lasted for a few hours, before royal guards captured us and threw us in the dungeon. Two days later, we were all shipped to an island in the middle of a vast sea and forced into this prison reserved for the worst offenders in the land. High treason, of which we were all found guilty, placed us amongst them.

The prison was a former stronghold of the King’s army. Hundreds of years ago, after lasting hundreds of battles and attacks, a devastating earthquake brought the building down. For decades, the island sat abandoned. The King then had it rebuilt and converted into a prison. Its location made it virtually inescapable; the rough current was impossible to swim through, and the closest piece of land was hundreds of miles away. There was no growing on the island, for the soil was untenable and rocky. It was the perfect place to put the worst of the worst, the people that you had no plans of letting back into the outside world.

The fat guard was at the last cell now, all the way at the end of the hall, staring daggers into the prisoner that occupied it. The man had a small, wiry frame, with facial hair growing in patches along his chin. His uniform hardly fit him; it was practically hanging off his body. His face looked nervous.

Placing a hand on his side, the guard moved it up and down his torso. He moved further down his leg, then down his calf, eventually stopping at the ankle. He felt around for a few seconds, then placed his hand on something firm, hidden between his foot and his shoes.

The guard turned red.

“What is this?” he shouted, gripping the man’s leg until his knuckles went white. The man cried out in pain. “What. Is. This.” The guard rolled up his trousers and revealed a knife stuffed into the man’s sock.

I held in a gasp, drawing in a sharp breath instead. The guard raised his cane, and the man put his arms over his head to protect himself, but the guard moved at the last minute and aimed for the knees. The man stumbled to the ground and cried out.

“You swine! No weapons allowed!” The guard shouted as he beat the man with the cane. He hit the man’s side, legs, and arms. He didn’t stop, despite the man’s pleas to let him go, to stop hitting him, that he had learned his lesson and would never do it again.

Solomon kept his head down. His lips were moving ever so slightly, and I could tell he was in prayer. My heart started pounding to the rhythm of the man’s beating. The sounds of his bones breaking filled my ears. His arms lost all feeling, and he lay still on the ground, his chest barely rising and falling. Blood pooled around his body.

When the guard looked up, everyone except him kept their head down. My stomach turned as the man’s blood formed a river, flowing across the cold concrete and touching my toes.