“My side? Lemme tell you something. My family’s blood is twice as pure as whatever yours is, or should I bring up your cousin?”
The voices faded out, however, as a man in a black cloak bent in front of Isaac. “You want to see some magic?” he asked.
Isaac looked up at the man, wiping viscous snot from his nose with the back of his hand. Slowly, he nodded.
He smiled at the memory. It’s funny what he’d gotten used to over time. The insane had become the normal and the normal had become what had formerly been the unthinkable – the smell of bacon gone, replaced by the fragrant aroma of piss soaking into a dirt floor. The part of his mind still capable of shame yelled at him: Coward! But it was overruled by the rest of his mind, too busy with survival to worry about miniscule things like pride and dignity.
Isaac slid down the wall opposite the bunks. He was living something not worthy to be called a life. To continue this façade was easy, routine. Wake up, exercise, watch others die. Repeat. Never try. Never change. One day it would be his turn, and he’d be nothing more than brief spectacle in a prison devoid of anything better. A simple recipe, but as he looked at Prisoner Twenty-Two, he saw change - change in the form of blood.
One move, one action, one second, and Isaac could provoke the guards into a rage, his death all but assured. The thought bounced around and, with a feeling of surprise, Isaac found that he was almost happy. Hope had blossomed anew.
Tomorrow, he would do it.
His eyes were twin buttons of black, eyes that had once belonged to a hard man. He remained against the wall, feet sunk into the floor. Tomorrow. The eyes of the hard man returned for a moment in time as he gave himself fully to the idea.
Tomorrow would be his last day.
Dradenhurst:
“Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”
Plato
Crymson
The swish of the whip’s tails split the air as they arched and gained momentum, finally cracking against her dusky, sweat-covered skin. Harsh, grating sounds tore at her delicate throat, a vocal acknowledgement of the bodily infliction. The tails whistled. “God!” she gasped.
Blood dripped, morning dew on a blade of grass. Crymson’s grip on the whip tightened, its rawhide handle cutting small rifts in her hand, knotted cords dangling from its end. One more strike and the sin would be purged; God would have his due. She swung. Red ink the color of confessional pamphlets welled beneath her skin.
“Dammit!” She clapped a hand to her generous mouth and looked at the whip, but then shrugged and grabbed a grey towel from the corner of the bed, its posts carved in intricate whirls, cloud-spun tornadoes.
The towel scraped against Crymson’s skin, its roughness a reminder of her holy vows of poverty: ceremonial, as far as she was concerned. A dip in the unadorned water pail next to her bed, and the towel’s coarse fibers turned soft. She pulled it away from her open wounds and wrung it over the pail, the liquid an imitation red.
Her dress, slim and powdery blue, slid over her head. Narrow slits up to her knees were cut on either side, and the material from the waist up was form flattering, cinched together in the front with a column of knots. Sleeveless, the material ended at the edges of her toned shoulders, and the back of the piece boasted a hood, rarely employed: standard dress for a priestess of the Cao Fen, though she’d taken liberties with its hue to cut a more vivid contrast between it and her skin.
She ran a quick hand over her buzzed head, wiping away the early morning fuzz and lingering hair follicles. Morning ritual completed, she gathered her things with a bend of her knees, conscious of the taut cuts.
Crymson swept out the door and into the hallway that led down the old but well-maintained stairs to the foyer. She passed pictures of generic landscapes, painted in dull greens and browns, but noticed none of them. As she walked, she arranged her face into something more suitable for the morning’s entrance. Her eyes, a mixture of pine needles and a river’s bottom, narrowed and glazed over. Her mouth flattened into a hard line, and she