Cell 14-D

CW: Mental health, abuse, gore

The man counts. Has counted. Will count until counting becomes the sound his mind makes instead of thinking.

Cell 14-D measures nine feet by five feet by seven feet high. These are the dimensions of his universe. They do not change. They have never changed. They will not change until he is removed or until he is bones. Or until something else decides.

The walls sweat. Pacific salt eating through concrete and steel and the idea of permanence. His tongue knows the taste. His skin secretes the same bitter mineral. He wonders if he is becoming the walls or are the walls becoming him. The cell makes no such distinctions.

The cold comes from below. From the hole in the floor that serves as a toilet. From the corners where shadow pools like liquid. The cold should not be there. The island is temperate. The bay is mild. But the cold rises anyway. Will rise until the cell crumbles into the sea. He shivers. Naked. No blankets. No clothes. No protection from the cold or from what the cold brings.

Day fourteen. Or day forty. Or day four. The slot in the door opens twice. Bread appears. The slot closes. This is how he knows time passes. This is how he knows he is alone.

He eats the bread. The bread tastes of mold and fingers and the mouths of previous prisoners. He cannot tell if the bread sustains him or if he is sustained by something else. Something that feeds on his eating. Something that grows fat while he grows thin. This is how he knows he is not alone.

He pisses in the hole. Shits in the hole. Drinks from the cup when the cup appears. His body performs its necessities without his permission. It has forgotten him. It has always known he was temporary. It continues its ancient rhythms while his mind fractures against the walls like waves against the Rock. While something watches from the corner.

Or he thinks something watches. Or nothing watches. Or watching and not-watching are the same thing in this darkness.

The silence has texture. Weight. Presence. It presses against his eardrums until they ring. Until the ringing becomes music. Until the music becomes breathing. Until the breathing is not his own. He holds his breath. Counts to ten. To twenty. To thirty. The breathing continues. Has always continued. Will continue after his own breathing stops.

The thing in the corner does not move. Or it moves only when he does not look. Or there is no thing in the corner. Or the thing is the corner itself, is the cold itself, is the darkness made substance and hunger and patient inevitability.

His hands go to his throat. They find his pulse. They count. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten. They start again. They feel for something else. Something that might be hands or might be cold or might be the last prisoner who died here touching him the way drowning men touch water.

The dark is not absence. The dark is thick and fluid. It fills his mouth when he opens it. It enters his lungs when he breathes. It deposits itself in his chest and his stomach and the hollow places behind his eyes. He is drinking the dark. Has drunk it. Will drink it until he is the darkness. Until he joins the thing that came before him. Until he becomes the thing that waits for whoever comes next.

Outside the door the guard walks. Boot heel on concrete. Rhythm older than speech. The rhythm of the kept and the keeper. Rhythm that predates Alcatraz and will survive it. The man listens. His whole body listens. The guard cannot hear the breathing. Cannot hear the thing that might be real or might be madness. Cannot hear or does not care. The guards know what lives in 14-D. Have always known. Will never speak of it.

In the darkness something glows. Red. Faint. Like embers. Like eyes. Like the last thing men see before they stop seeing. He stares. Does not stare. Cannot tell if his eyes are open or closed. Cannot tell if the red is real or if his mind is inventing light to fill the void. Cannot tell if the eyes blink or if he blinks or if blinking matters when there is no difference between sight and blindness.

The cold pools around his ankles. Climbs his calves. Reaches for his knees. He understands the cold is alive. Or he understands he is dying and the cold is the first symptom. Or he understands nothing and never has. The cold has form. Fingers. Breath. Memory. It remembers the last man who sat naked on this floor. The man who died here or went mad here or both. The man who became part of the cell's inventory. Who feeds it still.

His father did time. His father's father did time. His father's father's father did time in ships and mines and the holds of vessels crossing dark water. He understands now what they understood. That prison is not the cell. That prison is the body. That the body has always been the cell and always will be. That some cells have tenants who never leave even after their bodies are removed.

The guard's boots stop. The slot opens. Light invades. His eyes bleed and weep and remember what they were made for. The bread appears. The slot closes. The dark returns. Like mercy. Like the only friend he has ever had. Like the thing that is not a friend and has never been and will consume him eventually with the inevitability of tides.

The thing speaks. Or he speaks to himself. Or the walls speak with the voices of everyone who has suffered here. The words are not English. Not any language he knows. They are the sound concrete makes when it remembers violence. When it holds screams like water holds salt. When it releases those screams into the ears of whoever sits in the dark long enough to hear.

He answers. Or he does not answer. The thing in the corner shifts. Or does not shift. Or shifting is something his mind invents to explain the way the cold moves. The way the red glow brightens. The way his skin crawls with touch that might be fingers or might be ice or might be the feeling of going irrevocably mad.

Time collapses. Expands. Becomes meaningless. He is seven years old stealing bread. He is thirty-five on the Rock. He is sixty and still in this cell or dead and still in this cell or there is no difference. He is the last prisoner in 14-D. He is every prisoner in 14-D. He is the thing that waits in the corner. Who welcomes the next tenant with cold and breath and red eyes in the dark.

His mind performs tricks. Shows him his mother's hands kneading dough. Shows him San Francisco lights across impossible water. Shows him the thing in the corner rising. Walking toward him. Reaching for him with hands or claws or shows him nothing. Shows him everything. Shows him the difference between madness and haunting is a distinction only the sane make.

The hole in the floor opens deeper. Or it has always been deeper. Or depth is meaningless when the hole leads not to sewage but to wherever the previous prisoner went. Where all the prisoners who died in 14-D go. Where they wait in the dark and the cold and feed on whoever joins them. Where they are fed by the cell itself. Where the cell grows fat on suffering and time and the dissolution of the boundary between flesh and stone.

He no longer remembers his crime. He no longer remembers his name. He no longer remembers if he entered this cell alone or if the thing in the corner came with him or if the thing in the corner is him, shed from his body like skin. There is only the count. The walls. The dark that has mass and weight and purpose. The cold that climbs toward his chest. The breathing that is not his own or is only his own or is the cell itself respiring. The red eyes that watch or do not watch or watching is what this place does regardless of eyes.

The guard's bootsteps fade. Return. Fade. Return. This is the rhythm now. This is the music now. This is the only sound in the universe that is also the last sound in the universe that is also the first. The guard does not open the door. Will not open the door until the days are finished. Until he is tagged and marked and forever changed by what lives in 14-D. Or what does not live in 14-D. Or what lives and does not live in the space where such distinctions lose all meaning.

His hands shake. They have always shaken. They will shake until they are still forever. Until they become the hands that reach for the next prisoner. Until there is no difference between reaching and being reached for. Between haunting and haunted.

The thing in the corner whispers. Or the cell whispers. Or he whispers to himself about the thing in the corner. The whisper says: You are not the first. You will not be the last. The cold is ours now. The dark is ours now. You are ours now. Have always been ours. Will always be ours.

He does not know if this is madness or truth or if madness and truth are the same word in the language of solitary confinement. He does not know if he will leave this cell in two days or two years or ever. He does not know if leaving matters when part of him will stay here forever. When part of him is already in the corner. Already cold. Already red-eyed and patient. Already waiting for whoever comes next.

The cell holds him. Has held him. Will hold him when his body is gone. Will hold some fragment of his mind or soul or suffering. Will add it to its collection. To the thing in the corner that is not one prisoner but all prisoners. That is not haunting but the accumulated weight of human degradation given form. Given cold. Given breath. Given red eyes that glow in darkness that should be absolute but never is. Never has been. Never will be.

He counts. Has counted. Will count until counting becomes prayer. Until prayer becomes the sound the cell makes. Until he cannot tell where his voice ends and the cell's voice begins. Until there is no difference. There has never been a difference. There will never be a difference.

The cold reaches his heart.