He could see it again and this time with enough clarity which was only a plus to the nightmare. It was as if he was standing in a distance watching his helpless twelve-year old self. The man were circling around him in the centre of the road, with guns in hand, only one had an hammer in hand. Everything had rushed him all at once as he was sleeping now, like a spear in his head.
He was shaking, struggling to come out of it but his eyes were still close. He was vibrating and so was the metal he was lying on with his teeth out, groaning mildly, willing to burst out.
The men circling, the cold touch of the man on his head, the inky-black of the hammer’s head brimming in the moonlight. Everything rushed in at once yet again another really merciless pierce. His hands were clinging hard on his wrapper and he was shaking even more, the ever-increasing sound of the steel bed said it all.
The man had put off his mask… gave him the scariest smile he had ever been hit with in his life…positioned the hammer in his head…let out something like a roar…raised the hammer and was bringing it down to the side of his head.
Dale screamed out and fell off the bed, sweat all over his body still feeling dizzy like he was still in the dream, waiting for the nightmare to come off completely so that he could feel something, his breathing came really hard and he kept gasping for air as he lay on the ground face directly to the floor. His mind couldn’t get clear of it, it kept bringing back the torturous nostalgic past in the most alive way.
It later left him like a ghost and now what he could feel was the cold all around him, on the ground and in the air, keeping him wrapped in an unwelcome and icy plume. He tried to stand up and sit on his bed but he couldn’t. He felt sick, he felt paralysed, the cold was unbearable. He had a terrible sore throat; the type that wasn’t nice enough to make you spit out yellow phlegm, the type that was dry and overbearing, taking over the whole neck and throat region making it difficult to speak and he could tell that for the whole day he wouldn’t be able to eat. All his limbs were taken over by fever and he couldn’t really do anything with them. He wondered how he was going to cope throughout the day, he wasn’t sure if the wardens could give an off-day if the inmates got really sick or if there was an hospital around there. He moaned as he crawled with all his efforts to grab his bed. He stretched his hand to his bed for support but it didn’t reach it, he tried again and when he grasped the excruciatingly cold steel of the bed, he pulled the rest of his body up and sat on the bed, laying his head on the wall. He looked over at the sink at the side of the room and he wondered how he was going to get to bath that day with the usual chilling water that would probably have become ice. He shut his eyes and quickly opened it again when his brain was about to replay the dream he had just seen. He couldn’t sleep, he just sat there lifeless feeling the tremendous stings of the flies biting all over his legs and hands. With all the blisters he had accumulated all over his body since he had come, he seemed used to them, or was he? No one really gets used to pain, it wasn’t like jokes that got stale to people, it was felt afresh with equal intensity each time.
After some hours, the lights came up and then he could hear the rowdy sound waves bursting through his head from the loudspeaker. He didn’t get up, he just lay there, crying silently, hoping something would shield him from the cold, he was starting to think he was going to freeze to death. He had a sore face and he couldn’t move.
The doors opened at once and it was time for the daily count, he tilted his head to the opened bars as he could hear the boots of the officers walking in. He clutched his fists around each other and then got up and walked two steps out of his cell as ordered. He knew for sure that very soon he was most likely to slump and he knew that if he did, he might never stand again. His eyes were half-close as he could see the man walking up to him.
‘Ninety’, he heard the man say but the officer was still staring at him with bloody eyes. Dale heard him say something.
‘Stand right before I break your leg!’, he shouted again and Dale shrugged his back off the wall, trying as hard as he could to make sure that he wasn’t resting against it and then he placed his both hands beside him. He could still feel the man’s eyes on him, he wondered if there was something else he needed to do but he wasn’t even minding that at all. He was already struggling to breathe, to stay normal. He could see the man still saying to him and now more men had come to his presence.
‘Why haven’t you changed to your prison clothes?! Why haven’t you bathed? Are you deaf?’, he could hear echoes all around but he couldn’t even muster anything or tilt his head. He just raised his hands in the air to signify… whatever it could mean.
Before any other thing, he felt the hit of the block on his head. Blood trinkled in large volumes right into his left eye. There were more hits with the clubs on his stomach and groin, he fell.
BLACK OUT!
What awoke Dale later on was a splitting headache, so hurtful that he thought some of his head was already crushed out. He raised his hand slowly to his head to his forehead and he could still feel dried blood on his face. He was in his prison cell, put on his steel bed.
‘Aah’, he cried and turned his head away, it was like the hammer he had been hit with eight years ago was struck on his head again.
‘Dale’, he heard the whisper of someone from outside his cell. He recognised the voice but he couldn’t turn his head or say anything. ‘Common, bud. Can you hear us?’
They were all there, the four of them but he couldn’t do anything. He just raised his left hand up to signify he could hear them.
‘Oh! I know you feel really hurt but I hope you get well soon’. ‘Please, get well soon Dale’, another one of them said.
Dale shut his eyes again and slept off or maybe fainted, the next time he opened his eyes it was probably midnight again. He seemed to have gotten better, the pain in his body had decreased considerably except in his throat. It felt so heavy as if there was a cavity in it or as if there was a goitre developed over his throat. He couldn’t speak, he just raised his hand and touched his neck that had a hyper-increased temperature as if it was boiling.
‘God, I WANT TO GO HOME’, he cried again and placed both of his palms on his face, feeling miserable. There was still the problem of the headache thumping in his head from the club his head had been it with.
It was the next day and the lights had come on. Dale forced himself to walk out.
‘Eighty-eight, eighty-nine…’, the man walked towards him. ‘Ninety’, he said and it was clear that he was as sick as a dog. The man then walked away from him.
They all marched to the diner and the hunger in Dale’s stomach seemed to be more than the sore ruling in his throat. He was going to force himself to swallow. Tristan and the rest of them hugged him and they looked at him, looking scared for him. The terrified look they gave him made him feel as if he appeared worse than he thought. Tristan wiped his head with his hand and when it withdrew it from him, his palm was painted in red. There was still blood on his head, he hadn’t bathed for the past two days, he couldn’t.
As Dale looked at them, they didn’t look okay too. They also looked extremely thrown off balance with the harsh weather that Boorbunk Bay punished the prisoners with but they were strong, stronger than him. Not really. They were only strong enough to help him. It was always like that, all those times when he had this devastating nightmare that got him sick, they were always there, not as if they all didn’t have shadows they battled with but because they cared, they loved him enough to carry his burden with him.
They helped him to the diner and Michael tried to feed him. ‘Common, eat’. Dale nodded and collected the fork from him and then ate its content. He knew swallowing was going to be a really big deal, probably the hardest activity he was going to take part in that day. He chewed it for a lot of minutes and then with a lot of saliva, he launched it up into his throat, hoping it didn’t get stuck. It went down and Dale coughed.
‘Take’, Barry passed a cup of water to his side. Dale drunk the water until it was half-empty. He took more rounds of the food, following the same procedure; chewing, chewing, chewing, closing his eyes to swallow, hoping it went through, opening his eyes and coughing, then drinking water.
The officer arrived again and he looked around them. ‘Tristan Klyce!’, he shouted and Tristan stood up. The officer left the room without saying any other word and Tristan followed him quickly. Tristan didn’t return until the end of the breakfast time.
‘Time’s up’, the officer shouted and then walked in. ‘In a straight file, walk out one step at a time’
‘Common, Dale. You’ve got to get up’.
The officer suddenly sighted the five of them and they could all see fierceness build up in his veins and body. ‘Hey, are you deaf?’, he ran towards them, scattering through the tables, handling the blackjack well in his hand. The rest of them had fled away leaving Dale on his seat. The metal came crashing down on his head numerous times and the whole place was rented with wails from Dale.
‘Come here’, he said as he dragged him with his cloth with force. Dale could see his blood drool from his scalp to cover his face. He fell and stood up again many times, the man kept pushing him around rigorously. He was dragged down the stairs and taken to the dumpsite. ‘You are going to work here for the next one week. You’d better clean that blood away from your face and start work or else you will be taken down to the hole!’, the man said and left. Dale remained on the spot, dizzy, breathing hard, hoping not to faint, using his palm to mop the viscous crimson liquid away from his face. Moving his hand through his hair made him feel like his hand was in a bowl full of blood.
Dale bent down and placed his hands on his knees, he shut his eyes and couldn’t help crying. He grabbed his spade and got to work.
He was sitting here now at lunch, watching snow fall outside the glass walls at one side of the diner. It was December and if it was the second day of the month, it meant he was clocking twenty-one on that day. He managed to smile and with the drying blood, he scribbled a giant 21 on the table. Of all the things he enjoyed in his life, it had to do with birthdays. Birthday cakes, birthday presents, birthday parties. He especially loved birthday surprises more than any other thing. He kept staring down at the two figures right in front of him beside his food. It still seemed so astounding and not quite in a very good way that he was actually was getting older. He still felt like he was still sixteen, he really didn’t wish he ever grew older in his life. He wanted to preserve his young look for as long as he could. No wonder Groundhog Day was his favourite story but he was twenty-one, anyways and as far as it was his birthday, he was happy. It didn’t matter if he was feeling weak or if cold blood was still plastered all over his face and on his chest or even if the cold he was feeling was choking him.
The loudspeaker struck him out of his sweet daydream, reminding him of where he was, reminding him that birthdays weren’t celebrated in there.
The same orders and they were at work again but he was in the dumpsite in the cold with more work to do. Snow adding to the refuse filled over everywhere, more landfill to clear. He looked over at Carreras at his side and it was then he discovered that he was not the only one suffering in here. He could sight him with his one good hand trying to move the refuse with all his strength. He was sweating really hard and he didn’t look comfortable in anyway. The flesh in the second arm kept jingling about of its own course, as if trying to reach out. He could see Carreras curse under his breath as he dropped his spade and cleaned his face from the sweat about to drip from his eyelid into his eye.
‘Carreras? Are you alright there?’
‘Not really’, he replied.
‘It’s okay’
‘What about you? Are you okay now? I saw you yesterday, I was so scared, you looked so down. I thought.. I thought you were going to die’
‘Yeah, I am better now, thanks. We’ll be fine’
‘Yeah, we will’
Dale held the handle of the spade and helped Carreras with his part.
The Death Toast was in two days’ time and it was no longer news anymore, it was written on everyone’s faces that something really bad was about to happen. Something that was going to take away one of them, any of them.
‘Hey, don’t dwell on it. It’s a one-in-a-ninety probability, we will make it through. All five of us’, Tristan said while they were in the relaxing room. Michael looked the most scared of them and of course as expected, Tristan looked the most relaxed. He seemed so cool with everything, even with the news of a likely death.
As for Dale, he wasn’t scared for himself, he was scared for his friends. Dangerous fear, Uneasy fear, fear as cold as ice, fear as hot as fire, burning really wild in his heart. ‘Hey, Dale’, Michael said and put his palm in his. ‘I want you to keep calm. Know that anything that happens here is fate’, he said with his eyes staring right into his. Dale nodded and tried as much as possible to make those words make an effect. KEEP CALM! KEEP CALM! Dale could remember hearing someone else saying those words to him. He could hear the words again but louder in his head, making more meaning, feeling more alive. It went away again and he focused on Michael’s words. KEEP CALM! KEEP CALM! The second sentence, however wasn’t helping matters, it aroused worry.
Fate, in this case wasn’t a comforting word in anyway. He wasn’t seeing it as a more escapable one-in-a-ninety case, he saw it as a five-in-ninety chance, a one-in-sixteen chance. Dear Lord! Death didn’t seem as far away as Tristan had explained it.
‘Let’s go’, Pierson alerted as they could hear the rattling of the whistle piercing through the atmosphere. Dale went into his cell and sat on his bed, with his mind in retrospection of what they had been talking about earlier. The lights went out quickly.
Dale walked over to the sink and watched his face with the chilling water, watching the now blooded water run into the drain. He removed his blood-filled shirt and moved his fingers around the wound that had been inflicted on his chest with the club. His teeth were chattering together in discomfort as he could feel the outside cold striking through his body and particularly smiting through his wound.
Another twenty-four hours passed and then…