The Voyant. He was Barry YATES.
He didn’t struggle and there was no change in his expression. He looked the same way: morose, terrified, mute. They surrounded him on every side and since he didn’t struggle, there was no need to move him roughly. They led him out of that room and into another, the place where the exercise of the day was going to be finalised.
Dale shut his eyes as he could hear the multiple blasts echoing into his ears. About a hundred bullets had been wasted on the elderly man. As he opened his eyes, tears burst out and he couldn’t hold it. The next time they came here, they weren’t going to find this skull anymore, they were going to find another. Michael rushed up to Dale and hugged him.
‘Happy birthday’, he said smiling.
‘You ain’t no bud no more, so you should stop crying. You are twenty-one today’, Pierson said and hugged him.
Barry was also there too smiling at him. He had just escaped by a hair’s breadth. In this case, it was a matter of surnames. If only the man had mentioned Schlesinger, Dale wouldn’t know what would be happening now.
They were all made to return to their cells and since they were now eighty-nine, the wardens shuffled them across the cells which made Dale move to Cell Number twenty-three and now he was opposite Tristan who was number sixty-six. By the time Dale reached the cell, all the materials that belonged to the late Barry had been packed away and he felt a little sober as he walked into the room. He dropped his own load on the shelves and unfolded the bed to sit on it.
The Voyant had the luxury or perhaps, had been cursed with the power to know beforehand that his death was next. It was more of a luxury, more of a blessing, the rest of them had gone blindly into that room not knowing what to expect, if it was their turn or not. He gripped the steel of the bed and sighed, he arose and walked over to the sink and splashed the algid water all over his face. It was a relief to know that he and his friends were going to live longer and he felt a strong confirmation that one of them, if not him would make it out during the game of The Redemption before the next Toast.
Just then, his eyes sighted a piece of paper. He picked it up and there was something written on it. It had a date that showed that it had been written on The Free Day.
Hello Friend. That was what the letter began with. Dale sat and started to read with keen concentration. Just as he would have been eager to hear words from The Voyant’s mouth, he was to read his words scribbled clearly on the paper.
‘Tristan Klyce. Follow me’, the officer called the next morning during breakfast and Tristan followed immediately. He followed him down the stairs and he led him down a different alley, they walked and walked till they reached a door. Pushing it open, Tristan found his way among the other prisoners that were there from other wards.
‘There’, the man said and pointed to a glass wall demarcating the room from another room. Behind the glass, he could sight Samantha even though she didn’t look like Samantha. Her brown eyes were now slightly swollen and there were bright red spots all around it. There were heavy wrinkles on her face and her complexion had lost radiance and gone from bright orange to a flat, colourless skin. He wasn’t sure who looked worse between both of them. He grabbed the telephone with which he was going to be allowed to communicate with her.
‘Hello dear. Is everything okay?’
She didn’t reply, she just looked more and more distressed at his sight, watching him through the glass wall. Although he didn’t have any scars, seeing him in that orange uniform was dispiriting enough.
Tristan looked down at her belly, the baby bump had grown more prominent.
‘How’s he doing?’
She nodded and now she was on the brink of tears.
‘Hey don’t do that’, he said and touched the glass, wishing he could touch her and console her in his arms. ‘How did you make it here, early this morning?’
‘I arrived at Hustarbull since last night, stayed with Aunt Deborah’, she replied through her own telephone.
‘There is nothing to worry about, stay calm. Nothing wrong is going to happen’, he said and felt bitter for telling that ironic lie.
‘That’s not the point. Is there anything right about the future? Is he going to meet his father? Are you going to ever get to speak to him or hold him or laugh with him’
Tristan fell silent. He wished he could control his future or answer any of those questions.
He heard the officer coming closer to him. ‘Time’s up’, he said.
‘Take care of him. I love you’, he said and dropped the telephone in its box before he was carted away back to the diner.
‘Is everything okay, Tristan?’, Humphrey asked from his own table.
Tristan waved his hand at him and gave a forced smile.
He remained silent and unruffled till the end of the meal. Till the end of the day.
‘Is it possible to escape from here?’, Tristan asked Peter as they stayed in the relaxing room.
‘Escape? It’s impossible to escape out of here. Some people have tried in the past though and I witnessed two occasions’. ‘One of them was my friend. He was innocent too and he felt really sad about being here. Just like everyone of us had been when we first reached here and experienced the ritual that was performed in here. But he had taken a step further’.
‘It was a Free Day and we don’t know how he did it or made it to the very extreme of this prison. The last time we saw him was when he was climbing the barricade, he was close to the top already but he couldn’t make it out, he was shot in the leg making him freefall from about sixty-feet. He had landed on his face. All we saw was blood and bones’. ‘No one knew how he made it that far. That was the closest try in the four-decade history of this prison, he was close to making it out. The rest of them who had attempted to make it out of here didn’t go far, before they were found out and killed on the spot. There was one of us who had planned to squeeze his body through the metal bars during midnight but he had forgotten that there were cameras everywhere and they were watching us every single hour’
Tristan nodded and sighed sullenly, he buried his hands in his palm, deep in thought.
‘Tristan? Are you going to tell us jokes today?’, one of them had asked and the rest of them had echoed it with excited voices.
‘No, not today’, he said.
There was another game of The Redemption and it had taken another person, not even from the fifteenth ward. Peter mentioned that no one had been redeemed from the fifteenth ward for the past seventeen months, seventeen episodes.
Four weeks ago, they witnessed another Death Toast and it had come, fully-packed with all the horror and misery in just one room, and added to that was the shiny skull of The Voyant facing them. The governor was there again and he had overlooked the whole event as if he was the ruler of the Roman empire watching gladiators wrestle and kill themselves, feeding on the atmosphere of trepidation. Another one of them had died, his name was Callum.
‘This magic trick, I don’t actually don’t have a name for but the person who had taught me about it had called The Transformation Trick but I don’t like the third word in that name, it is shabby because I am certain that the few times that I perform the trick everyone tells me that it is not a trick, it is real sorcery and that I am a wizard but it is a trick. Of course, I will say that’. ‘I think I would just let you figure that out’, Dale said as he began his rendition.
He walked towards one of them and picked a cup that contained water. ‘I usually do this trick very few times and this might be the only time you will get to experience this. So, I want you to watch with all intent’, he said. ‘I think for this trick, we will not be needing the water and so I am just going to siphon it out’. As he spoke, he slowly turned the cup upside down and the water was gone.
‘Wait, wait, wait. We haven’t started the trick yet’, he said and everyone fell silent. ‘Now usual magicians would need props and things like that and have a proper stage and a stage manager but I will take it a step further. In here, we’ve got no props but that doesn’t stop me’. Dale said and then he threw the cup up to the ceiling, some of the people had closed their ears expecting the loud sound of the cup breaking apart but what had touched the ground was a thin, brown cloth of fleece.
‘That’s only the beginning’. He touched the brown fleece with his index three times and the fleece seemed to wrap around as if there was something under it and then the fleece transformed to be a brown giant tailless rat and the screams from everyone was mighty.
‘In order for our pest not to escape, I am going to produce a cage for it’, he said and with his hands, a metal cage was moulded over it. More cheers, more shouts. ‘This is the final part of the trick or perhaps sorcery display’, he said and some of them laughed. ‘Em. My good friend, Carreras, can you mention one item that you believe will be impossible to make, for me to transform this rat too’
‘An AK-47 rifle’, he said and everything agreed.
‘Hmm. Good catch’, he said and smiled. ‘I think this is the point where a distinction between being only a deft magician or a real wizard is clear’, he said and placed his palm over the cage of the rat. Slowly and slowly, there was smoke and then there was a real gun.
‘That’s all for today’, he shouted and transformed the rifle back, almost immediately, into the mug with water still intact in it. Dale kept smiling while everyone shouted in downright awe, staring at him wondering how he did those things and some of them went over to touch the cup and wonder if it was really an ordinary cup. Later on, they wrestled for who to drink the water in the cup.
Everything seemed to be going rosy. Dale, Tristan, Barry, Pierson and Michael learnt to laugh every day and accept the fact that they might never leave Boorbunk despite the fact that they had done nothing wrong to get in in the first place.
Then, the next Death Toast came.
The chains were still bound to their wrists and Dale was standing, sweat trickling down his head unconsciously with the taste of the chilled red wine he had just taken frothing in his mouth. It was his sixth experience in this room, his fifth time of seeing the governor arrive as a dignitary.
He picked up one of the planks and gave it to the officer. Although everything seemed to be happening very quickly, in Dale’s eyes it looked like everything had been paused and was in slow motion.
The officer, without dawdling or teasing them with the first name called first, he proclaimed the full name of the person. ‘Michael Bergmann’