Chapter 2: DAY TWO: The Prison
Stoki woke up on guards' hitting iron chains in the door. It was ten past seven, the time when all prisoners in the incommunicado cells had to arouse in order to undertake an eight-hour labour in the mountains. Two huge, dog-like jailers in the door of each cell were holding heavy fetters, waiting the ostracised prisoners to come out.
The prison had neither been an interesting place to abide, nor a comfortable section to work in. For the captives, it's a penal retribution that they had to endure. For the guards it was fate that brought them there to play the noble role of society's protectors or, to exaggerate, society polishers who shielded the land from subversive viruses like Stoki.
The air was fresh and stimulating enough for the chained prisoners to work vigorously as stipulated, yet neither the bright rays of the sun, nor the bluish sky was of any consequence or enjoyment to the inmates. The work was physically demanding; they were ordered to extract valuables under miners and then drag them up to a far depository, which was superintended by a stout fat commander.
Having not eaten anything yet since the meagre lunch ration of yesterday, stoki and others were deadly starving, not as much as they were parched. Few drops of water given to them were not enough even to cool their dry tongues for a while. His stomach rumbled and his bowels turned into biting snakes that made his belly flesh a lovely place to sting.
Today was yesterday or was it tomorrow! Every day was the same as the previous day. Time stood still the very moment they crossed the prison's gate. Life for such people, if they happened to know something called life, was just a day, because few of whom could survive the inhumane conditions of the prison .One day under rocks was enough for their skinny bodies to wither away as a lemon leave in one of autumn's storms. However, death was the only breeze that made the steady clock move a second or two depending on whether you're a senior or still a junior in the grim institution of the Devil, the Jail.
While other prisoners craved such moments to speak with one another, Stoki, as he was a child not like other children and a husband not like other husbands, was a prisoner not like other prisoners. He was a man of few words. For instance, once he was ultimately enforced to converse with one of the inmates, who asked him to pass a shovel under the circumstances of work interactions, he found himself lost for words as though life had robbed him of his instinctive linguistic faculties of communication just as it did before with his freedom. His thoughts were articulated in an absolute random.
Spaced out, he started with the conclusion and then jumped back to the introduction and, in the midst of this strenuous process of interpersonal communication, he found nothing to say since he had forgotten what he was talking about, not to mention that he basically didn't fathom the statement made by his interlocutor.
"Was it a question requiring an answer or an exclamation waiting my reaction ?" he asked his invisible fellows with whom he eloquently spoke .
The Devil gave remarks like, "don't answer him even, and fool! Scowl at him, spit in front of him and pass by – ridicule him before he does "
The Angel, in his sluggish and classic manner of speaking, replied "No! It's morally wrong, remember the golden rule, treat others as you wish to be treated yourself – say what you know with respect"
For Nagger, seldom when she bothered speaking, since it was one of her peculiarities to intervene exclusively in moments after all improper actions had been done or when some valuable things had gone. She was adept at reproaching and saying what was better to be done or how mistaken Stoki was when he let such and such be bygone.
All in all, the situation was deadlocked and Stoki relished the suggestion made by the Devil: stay quiet, murmur a bit , and go by.
The prisoner believed that Stoki was crazy
"The poor man suffered from amnesia, dementia. Or aphasia is it!" said the prisoner that seemed to conflate terms and conjure them up just to sound smarter.
Ironically, at night in his dungeon, Stoki couldn't stop speaking as if arguing with some friends or enemies, but during the day, he turned tongue-tied like a baby in his first stages of acquiring language, babbles and telegraphese but no recognizable meaning.
Nonetheless, most prisoners and jailers, with whom he vehemently rejected to befriend, excused his weird demeanours for one single reason: that he was prematurely an old man in his seventies, though still as strong as any free man in his thirties .His sunken face was, for the most part, pale and pensively wrinkled bearing all scars of life experiences which detracted the golden skin from its smoothness and the white hair from its roughness.
When the due work was over, they were carried to the inescapable place, released from the yokes, and locked in after taking their daily ration: one jug of water, half roll of black bread and a mixture of undercooked, raw food in a woody pot. Other prisoners existed on this meagre diet for long till their bodies shrunk; from beyond, you could hardly discriminate them from a bunch of standing skeletons or dusty robots with clusters of glimmering metal.
Stoki's cell was very incommodious, very ugly, very squalid, very disgusting with a musty stench stinking from every corner. No illumination but subtle beams of the moon coming from a small square window in the size of an ordinary man's hand. He was cooped up in the squarely dungeon like a violent rambunctious pig kept alone in a shed.
He was not treated with deference as a human being, rather he was regarded as an inanimate object to that degree that his presence caused trouble and it's better to cast him away like rubbish, or even less , since some factories had its use by recycling it and recalling it to life in a new form. So why not doing the same with criminals by means of rehabilitation and regeneration? Returning a bad crime for a worse, brutal one would just multiply crime rate instead of diminishing it. After all, redressing a murder with another, even in the name of justice, is not morally justified.
Darkness, greyness and loneliness were the title of every night, since it is the most opportune time for his unbidden, torturing, and haunting memories to show their spiky horns .And nothing could blot them out as they began
Stoki rested on his bed with his head down. Three days left before the announcement of the final judgment. The memories of his unhappy childhood infiltrated into his mind. Words cannot encompass what he passed through or what was still waiting for him.
The moment he opened his bright eyes like a sunflower full of life, his father closed his under the sharp blade of a French guillotine, owing to his brutal crimes against humanity. One of which was against Stoki himself. It was when he assaulted his mother and inhumanely raped her in the dead of the night. Stoki couldn't stop inquiring what she had to do at that late time, but it was a frivolous question to ask, for he found himself in the orphanage wrapped in rags with two scraps of paper written on them this iota of his partners' mysterious history.
The most impressive statement in the letter was the last one: "Whatever the Devil does, the Angel always triumphs in the end". Apparently, Stoki's heart flattered to the quote, but his mind still could not fathom its meaning.
With the passing of time, he easily understood that he belonged to the unwanted, unwelcome and unfavourable, neglected social stratum, simply because he was illegitimate like a devil in the world of angels. He knew well that he was a media victim that was misrepresented. Wasn't he the person who had no cultural identity; the animal that couldn't be civilised; the barbarian kind of man whom psycho-pathologists despaired of; the residue that stemmed the economic growth of the country? He and the like only spoiled the modern outlook of the country. The society where he was brought up was horrific as hell, after it was meant to be a paradise.
The place of consolation, commiseration and collaboration dived down an abysmal mire of insolent reproaches for the unwanted, insolent offences for the unwelcome and insolent isolation for the unfavourable. He just didn't fit in the society where he was thrown into, and just bore a big grudge against that society that un-tolerated, un-aided, un-sheltered the un-wanted, un-welcome and un-favourable people.
As the street trained him to be, Stoki became like a dirty bomb that could culminate the environment with its blast, or like a parasitical being on a dog feeding on its meat and blood so as to survive. Theft missions, as his primary crimes, were carried more stealthily than his father. The moment required a hereditary skill to live among wolves, or why not to be the leading wolf himself, frightening the authority and instilling terror and horror in the hearts of those called citizens of the state , protectors of the state and elites of the state. Each one of them was concerned only and fully with growing his business and pacifying the hungry by re-echoing the old aphorism that "today was better than yesterday and tomorrow would be the best of all".
In the age of forty, he accumulated a great deal of money by means of robbery, kidnapping and even drug trafficking. Of great importance was his self-centred kind of character that left him a precious chance to enjoy his life to the fullest without entailing the mandatory necessity to share it with others.
His partners and fellows were not, for his luck, creatures of flesh and blood that placed the rich on their heads like a golden crown, and, under their feet, stamped on the poor like an invisible rat .But they were mere shadows in the day and real shapes in the dark. The Devil was designated as his left hand with which he planned all his mischiefs. In his right was the Angel ditched, though still strong and full of hidden light.
Stoki still could not sleep by now. Memories incessantly cued one another with no end. He recollected how he lost his security whilst searching for ways to cater for his basic needs , and when he felt the innermost cavity of his heart that cried for belonging , intimacy and the warmth of a real family , he found himself not suitable for that kind of life .
In the distance he saw happiness fleeting away like the victim of "The Man and the Mirage" tale. The moment the man said, "I found it, I found the lake to quench my thirst", the mirage escaped him to a farther distance and howsoever he rushed he never caught it for the simplest reason that it basically did not exist. The heat made the man parch to death, duped into believing that the pool was just a metre away before he flopped down and passed away. Stoki was concurrently like that man. As he married thinking that happiness was on the door, destiny took him back to the desert of his unloved self, which were dissolving into pieces in the darkness.
"Whose fault was it? Who was to be blamed? My parents, my wife, society, life or myself," he asked.
The question was contestably hard to answer, for each of them had contributed in the degeneration of his life. It's true that he was born by mistake and neither society nor his wife was there for him when he was in desperate need of security and love. Hadn't he followed the same treacherous way of his father; he could have changed the path of his life to the better, and had he had a son, he could have taught him the same techniques to play the same criminal game that always ended up with death.
"I made the same mistake" Stoki thought with tears in his eyes, "I am tired inside. My daughter Laura will suffer just as I did, unsupported, poor and lonely. NO!"
Laura would inherit the burden and the gloom as the only legacy left after her parents.
If only Stoki had had a chance to recall himself to life. His body had not yet been buried underground, yet the aura of suffocation caused by the heavy air in his dungeon gave him an uncomfortable feeling that his flesh had already wilted, leaving bare bones lain down with no soul to move them. And the slower the clock ticked, the graver the horror of death grew. The bleakness of the place and the desolation of his soul made him reflect deeply in his innermost stale thoughts that were no better than his bland, colourless emotions.
"I still have a chance to escape death if I am found to be insane, he thought. They took a sample of my blood and soon they will come to investigate more in the matter. I don't know the exact time when I turned insane, but I am not insane. I can count from one to hundred thousand without mistake. My memory is still strong. I am not insane", Stoki shouted and his sound echoed in the distance.
I prefer to die with dignity than to be spared and injected with drugs like a dog, he thought.
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