No Word in Death's Favor (Part II)
As he follows The Guide deeper into The Underground in pursuit of Satisfaction, The Runaway encounters two faces, a Madman, and a Fallen Angel.
I apologize for being a little late in delivering this one, but here it is. It is Part II of a three-part short story, so if you have not already, be sure to read Part I. All three parts will be available to both free and paid subscribers. Enjoy!
Soon, they entered a round, elongated chamber. The stream of sludge continued along a divot in the floor before entering the mouth of a tunnel on the opposite side. Virgilio followed it unceasingly, his measly headlight first expanding to match the breadth of the room, then contracting to brighten the tunnel on the other side, not turning, not stopping, looking only straight ahead to the furthest reaches of his flashlight. The Runaway followed and dared to look around.
When The Guide's light passed, he couldn't help but notice two dim red florescent lights hanging from the low ceiling, two fogged and withered bulbs, buzzing, peaking out from the bottom of two stainless steel cones, sending blood-colored light down on two faces - one of a male and another of a female, faces on heads propped up on pillows. And IV packs hung on hooks from the rungs of a corroded metal ladder that disappeared into the mouth of the vertical tunnel above. The ladder separated two beds, only by two feet, and the IVs fed translucent fluid through tubes entering the male and female's veins through the bend opposite of their elbows. And sterile baby blue sheets wrapped tightly around their torsos, leaving only their arms and their shoulders and their faces exposed under the cylinder of rose-colored light. Both the male and the female wore goggles over their eyes - thick goggles, not with lenses, but like blindfolds, black mechanical masks covering the section of their faces between the middle of their noses and the top of their eyebrows. And they wore headphones too, headphones cupped around their ears like muffs, held tight over their scalps with a headband, as not to let in non-artificial noise.
Were they unconscious? The Runaway did not know. He could not know. He knew only what he saw, and he saw only what he knew. The faces did not look asleep, but neither did they look awake.
Heads still, they vacillated between a range of emotional expressions - pure bliss to horror, restfulness to teeth-grinding anxiety, tender affection to scathing rage - as if they were experiencing one feeling - pure and unaffected, untarnished by any other - one at a time, but only for a split second before they experienced the next feeling in the same pure and uninterrupted intensity.
As The Runaway passed, the female's mouth began in a soft, upward curl, her fair-skinned unblemished cheeks relaxed and, painted rose-pink by the light, pursed and began to tremble, then let loose again and opened wide and let out a loud guffaw that echoed off the heavy chasm walls, then opened even wider and released an ear-piercing scream. And the male, in his own fashion, did the same: smiled and frowned and laughed and cried and screamed and shouted and sighed and all else, all one after the other, the two performing in an orchestra of raw sensations, made up of silences and screams, and the noises followed The Runaway through the mouth of the tunnel as he followed Virgilio. They followed The Runaway, echoing off the concrete walls, and they followed him indefinitely, for once he heard them, he could not unhear them, and so he went on, behind The Guide, hearing every scream and bellow and cry.
Virgilio said nothing of the goggled faces. He said nothing of the sounds of pure delight and horror and misery and hilarity which, no matter the distance, they could not escape. He merely continued, and so did The Runaway merely continue, mind on his destination: Satisfaction, which he knew he wanted. At least he thought he knew. But what if that was it? What if what he just saw was what he'd come here looking for? Surely, it wasn't, but what if it was?
"That wasn't it, was it?" he asked.
Virgilio, as always, without looking, without altering his ever-fixed, ever-forward gaze, answered "No."
"That was diversion," he said. "Diversion. Not Satisfaction."
The Runaway was relieved, albeit still haunted by the noises he could never unhear, now pained further by his stiff calves and the aching soles of his feet, which never fit quite properly into his Walmart-brand tennis shoes that were now drenched in the lukewarm sludge that leaked through the mesh to be absorbed by his woolen socks and wash over his toes. He - relieved, tired, haunted - continued behind The Guide.
He continued until he was caught off guard by a pair of hands outreached through iron bars, hands which grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt by his hip and pulled him backward. Virgilio kept walking. The Runaway screamed, but it was as if The Guide did not hear. He never heard. He always kept walking, even as The Runway fought to tear himself free.
"Tell me why you're here!" a mad voice breathed into The Runway's face. "Tell me! I need to know!"
Up until that moment, The Runaway had not even thought to look. He'd been too startled to look. At first, he’d been distracted by the haunting sounds of the male and female, that goggled pair of sensation-torn subjects. Now, he was caught off guard by The Madman's hands outstretched through the bars, the same bars through which a new silver-whisker-patched face - a Madman's face - stared out at him with wide and bloodshot eyes, and smiled, showing a set of straight yellow teeth.
"Tell me!" he demanded again, and he shook The Runaway with all his might as if to shake the answer out of him like one gets the last bit of chip crumbs out of a bag. "Tell me!"
There was a light behind The Madman too, another red orb illuminating his cell, and that's how The Runway was able to make out the contours of his face, to recognize the depths of his madness. He was mad and stuck in an unspacious room carved into the side of the sewer wall, separated from the tunnel by the metal bars with no way to come or go. In the cell, there was no bed. There was no chair. There was only a desk full of scattered papers and a table topped with glasses and beakers and tubes and bottles, both empty and full of multi-colored fluids and smoky gas. Yes, it was a cell, but also a lab, the prison and lab of this mad scientist who held The Runaway's shirt ever-tightly in his grasp, begging (no, thirsting, starving even) for an answer, foam emerging from the corners of his crusted lips. Meanwhile, Virgilio was growing further away, leaving The Runaway behind.
"Why duyu care?" The Runaway asked.
"Because I need to know! I have to know! I will die if I don't!"
"My business don’t matter to you none, now let me go!" shouted The Runway, finally prying the end of his t-shirt free.
"Please!" begged The Madman. "Please!"
But The Runaway did not listen. He ignored The Madman's pleas and allowed them to blend in with the rest of the echoes, and he followed The Guide and his Devil and his smoke.
"Please! Facts are my food! Knowledge is the only thing that keeps me alive, is it not? I am begging you please to tell me why! Let me study you! Be a subject of my experiment, for the sake of my life and for the sake of humanity, you must!" But soon, The Madman's words turned to miserable and inarticulate cries, and The Runaway carried these cries with him as he went.
The Runway was not intelligent. In fact, some would say he was stupid. All Runaways were stupid in some way or another, even if they were geniuses. Stupidity is a prerequisite to becoming a Runaway, for one who is wise has nothing to run away from, for he wants nothing but wisdom and already has it. The Runaway was stupid, but not too stupid. Runaways cannot be too stupid either, because then they would think they already have what they want, or think they don't want what they don't have, and their ignorance would keep them where they are. So, The Runaway wasn't smart, but he was smart enough to be a Runaway, and he was also smart enough to catch onto the fact that The Guide, the demonic Guatemalan Virgilio, did not like questions. So, this time, when The Runway caught up to him, he asked nothing and said nothing, and left the encounter with The Madman in the past where it belonged.
The shallow sludge stream left them as it spilled into a grate underfoot. Light spilling from another hole in the ceiling illuminated what laid at the bottom of the fall: a barebacked and long-haired man sitting waist-deep in the pool of rippling sludge, knees rising out of the water like a two-island archipelago, his forearms wrapped around them, hands locked together on the other side. He could not see the man's face. Only his back, which bore tattoos resembling a pair of angelic wings, was visible, though the wings were smeared with green-brown sludge, and wet strands of black hair clung to his skin. But he could hear the man’s song. Yes, his song. He was singing a song with what was at first unintelligible lyrics, a song of melodic moans rather than meaningful words, almost humming, almost crying, in a slow, deranged performance that only added to the cacophony of noises that clung to The Runaway's memory.
When The Runaway paused to look down upon the sludge-matted one-man choir, the Fallen Angel stood, his legs muddied, rising out of the water. He stood and showed him his tear-stained, sludge-stained face. In fact, his tears broke paths into the muck caked to his cheekbones, much like a river over epochs carves canyons into the face of the Earth. And when his tears left his wet chin, they fell and became one with the sludge pool. The Runaway stared as the singer clasped his fist over his heart and outstretched his opposite hand, as if a performer in an opera, and he wailed finally in verse, which The Runaway could understand:
"Once, I pierced the boundaries of Eden And tasted Paradise’s waters sweet. I sang myself into a god, And many apples did I eat. First, I was in the garden all alone, Naked and in a solitary bliss, Deaf to all but my melodies And to the sneaky serpent’s hiss. Then returned the One Who rules the heavens. He spoke in an authoritative tone: ‘Get up! You do not belong!’ when He found me sitting on His throne. I stood up, approached Him, and we wrestled, But my lyrics’ beauties could not withstand The awesome power of His wrath And the holy strength of His hand. He beat me and sent me out of the gate, An exile from that great garden and all Those precious fruits I long to taste. Away, I began to fall. But when I hit Earth, it could not stop me, And I fell further than I had risen. I fell into the Underground And I landed in this prison. Many times have my songs lifted me again Up to the land of milk and honey’s peace, And every time, he sends me back Here where all of my pleasures cease. Here, I rise and fall, rise and fall, Rise and fall again. How long has it been? When was I ever anything? I don’t know. I’ve forgotten when."
And this transitioned to another chorus of indistinguishable moans and weeps and whimpers, tuned and pitched, weaved into something resembling a song, which The Runaway did not wait around to listen to. He left and walked swiftly to catch up to The Guide, who was already yards ahead of him.
Yet, the noise, as always, lingered, and the Fallen Angel rhymed one last time:
“Beware! Beware! O hardened Runaway! Death’s a fine trickster! A magnetic vice! He’ll promise you Satisfaction But all sweet dreams come with a price!”
And the song went on, but the Runaway did not listen. Instead, he let it fall into the other noises. He let it fall into the other noises because it was a song he was terrified to hear, and though it was softer on his ears - softer, more like what his ears were made to hear - than the pleas of The Madman or the vacillating expressions of the poor male and female with goggles on their eyes and headphones in their ears, it was by far more unsettling to his soul. It was unsettling to his soul because it forced him to understand he had a soul. It made him think about who he was and where he came from. It made him think about home, which is where The Priest had told him to go.
But where was home? The Runaway had no home. That subsidized apartment, paid for in part by his Poor Momma and in part by the government (now only a faint memory) was never a home, but only a place where he lived. He'd never had a home. A home is where one belongs. He'd never belonged. No matter where he went, he felt as if he were in the wrong place. So how could he even dare to listen to The Priest? How could he listen to that black cleric who begged him with blood on his hands to turn back from The Underground and back into his life, which, to The Runaway, only seemed like an outer layer of Hell, a layer of Hell that could only give him nothing, whereas here there was Something: a promise (at least a promise); a promise of everything, which he intended to follow to the very end, whatever that may be.
L.W. Blakely is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of The Wayfarer, a newsletter where he publishes literary fiction, criticism, and musings. Learn more about L.W. and The Wayfarer on the About page, or (if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read) consider subscribing and sharing his work.