Cell 34

Chapter 10 ¦ Undated ¦ Letter from Mr. Frank Green to Dr. Henry Smith.

Chapter 10

Undated. Letter from Mr. Frank Green to Dr. Henry Smith.

Henry,

I know you will not have received my previous letter by the time you read this, nor can I read any replies until I'm back home, but I know not to whom else I can turn or unapologetically outpour my conscience.

A couple of nights have passed since my last letter. The cleaner, who kindly assured me that he posted it, visits me every few hours. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized he is wearing my old overalls. I still haven't regained my ability to speak anything other than a jumble of confused noises, so I have to write my responses to any of his questions. In my naivety, I had hoped for a flash of panic or concern, but it only elicited the unmistakably vacant smile of pity and a cup of weak tea. Deep within my desperate soul, the sight of my overalls comforts me.

The tea is the only thing keeping me awake at the moment. I figured my porridge was most likely being drugged, so I always empty my bowl into the flower bed below my window when nobody else is around. However, as the cleaner always pours a cup of tea for himself from the same urn as the cups he pours for me, I have continued to drink. This has the happy side effect of avoiding the prospect of being force-fed.

However, more than anything, the nights are the worst part of being imprisoned here.What little sleep I have is full of moving scenes fluttering around me, like a hundred thousand living photographs in a storm. They all depict dank and gloomy scenes of a murky city, with charcoal-gray buildings overgrown with slimy emerald vine-like algae and a viscous sludge. 

Tower blocks, which seem to have been put forth by the very earth upon which they sit, huddle overcrowded and irregular, like row upon row of crooked teeth, looming ominously over deserted streets and joyless town squares. I can't see anybody in this decaying place, wherever it is, but occasionally, I'll see flickers of movement. Whoever, or whatever, lives there is always just out of shot or out of focus.

If I'm careful, I can interact with these images. I can smell the salt of the ocean and even touch the dank stone of the buildings. One night, the dream was so vivid that my ceiling was ripped away, leaving me staring up from one of those empty town squares at rocky skyscrapers, except this time, they were full of glowing blue dots watching me. The thick black ooze dripped onto the floor from somewhere fathoms above me in the darkness, algae started to grow on the walls, and fish with glowing eyes like piercing headlights swirled around me. I swear, they even seemed to mutter amongst themselves as if they were plotting. I frantically thrashed at these demonic aberrations and tore at my walls. When I woke up, I noticed some scraps of algae under my fingernails. It was then that I realized I was losing my faculties.

But this is not what is most terrifying about nights here. The most horrifying thing is whatever lurks in the corridor after sunset.

Last night, when I woke, my eyes darted to the open door as they always do. I squinted to adjust to the darkness. My ears picked up a faint noise. A clicking, scuttling, cockroach-like noise, as if a hundred tiny feet at the far end of the corridor were treading as lightly as possible lest they wake the patients up. I sat up in bed. The scuttling stopped.All I could think about was the need to close my door. If it could hear me sit up, it would notice my feet patter on the tiles. So, I lay my blanket as softly as I could on the floor.I heard it take some careful steps as it sniffed the air hurriedly and animistically, desperate to locate which cell the noise had come from.

Holding my breath, I swiveled my body on the bed. A spring in the mattress gave a muffled squeak.

THUD