Vagaries
The man shuffled down the hall in an orange jumpsuit, the letters "I.E.C." stencilled across the back. His wrists were cuffed to an iron hoop around his waist. A canvass bag cinched with a drawstring kept his head and face concealed. Thin yellow flip-flops slapped his soles with every halting step and the short chain that swung between his shackled legs resounded every time it struck the linoleum tiles. There was something of the Dickensian ghost in his approach that wanted only for the overhead fluorescents to finally expire.
A fire door was opened and the man stepped into a converted gymnasium. The cinderblock walls were painted a delicate green, like vintage toothpaste. Basketball markings were visible in patches on the hardwood floor, though the finish had largely been worn away. The wood was discoloured in a long path that led from the fire door to an exit at the far side of the room. The silhouette of a rearing horse was painted on the back wall beneath a motto proclaiming, 'Welcome to thoroughbred country'. There were bleachers on either side, and in front of these a row of folding conference tables that converged on a stage in centre court. The bleachers were empty, as were most of the seats behind the tables, but all three chairs on the platform were occupied.
An elderly woman was slumped in the leftmost seat, covered by a shapeless gown that hung from her frame like a sheet on a hospital bed. Her feet were propped on a milking stool and protected from the chill air by a pair of knitted slippers. She appeared to be asleep. Her head was bowed and the occasional drop of saliva fell from her open mouth onto the ball of yarn in her lap.
Beside her, on a wingback chair upholstered in a rich oxblood vinyl was a woman of early middle age. Her head, too, was bowed, though her busy hands belied the impression that she was asleep. A pair of heavy gauge knitting pins poked through a mohair cocoon like the clattering mandibles of some monstrous insect. Without lifting her head or suppressing the clatter, she glanced over the rim of her glasses as the accused stepped into the room.
To her right, a child of six or seven squirmed at her little writing desk. She wore a pair of patent leather shoes with crisp white ankle socks and a summer dress that fluttered at her knees as she swung her restless legs. Her dark hair was gathered high on her head and held in place by a red and pink elastic. She swiped periodically at the renegade strands that fell around her cheeks, hooking some behind an ear and dislodging others with the same impatient gesture. All the while, her eyes were fixed on the top of her desk where a claw hammer sat like a paperweight on her exercise book.
With a uniformed officer leading him by the elbow, the prisoner made his way across the room. Every now and then he stopped and turned around and his escort found it necessary to yank him forward by the hoop around his waist. The sound of his approach awakened the old crone, who jerked her head and blinked a few times, then reached into her lap and pulled out a heavy pair of seamstress shears. She paused for a moment, as though collecting her thoughts, then after a few false starts managed to sever the purple strand that stretched toward the hands of the woman beside her.
The clatter finally ceased as the younger woman set her knitting down and quietly instructed the guard to escort the prisoner to the silos. When she had finished speaking, the little girl jumped from her chair and grabbed the hammer. With her back to the man still shuffling toward the platform, she took a practice swing. In her nervousness she missed the desk entirely and the handle slipped from her grasp and bounced across the floor, and the embarrassed child had to scramble to retrieve it. She went back to her chair and put her head down and cried.
At the same time, a cluster of officials all closed their books and turned to watch as a technician rose from her place behind one of the adjacent conference tables. She had an angular face with deep-set eyes and the hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. There was a stethoscope hanging from her neck and what seemed to be a collection of pens in her pocket. As the prisoner shuffled past, she coolly pressed a syringe into his shoulder, and without a second glance returned to her seat.
The man took only a few steps more before his legs gave out. The little girl looked up for a moment, brushing the hair and tears from her eyes as a pair of attendants dragged him by his heels toward the exit. The woman in the armchair was already bent over a different piece of knitting and the sound of snoring had begun to carry over from the far end of the platform. The little girl turned her gaze once more to the hammer. Then the fire door opened and another prisoner stumbled into the gymnasium.
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Even with her eyes closed, the old woman could see the figures hovering around the room. Some were alive; others were not. Some had never been alive in the first place. Some weren't even recognizably human. It didn't matter whether her cloudy eyes were open or closed, or whether or not she was awake. Once such creatures had been seen they couldn't be unseen. And for all the horror they brought she couldn't will herself not to see them.
They weren't benign. Their teeth and tentacles, tubes and tongues and stings were functional. They gave no indication that they experienced any pleasure, but they were clearly driven by a corrosive hunger. Even now, she knew, some nightmare beast was clinging to her breast and dozens more had dipped their hooks and claws into her flesh, and soon the last of her reserves would drain away and then perhaps—perhaps—she would join them.
It was better not to know, not to think at all. But no one wishes for ignorance. And given her perception, the old woman could no more turn her thoughts away from the vacant, toothy stares than she could disregard the endless procession of criminals that passed her chair day after day.
Her own daughter accused her of speaking in metaphors whenever she pointed to the monsters that surrounded them. But her daughter was a fool—cheerfully promising to die on the spot if she ever caught a glimpse of the horrors her mother described. The old woman simply shook her head. Let her scoff.
In truth, she carried more than one distasteful secret in her breast. No one was spared for long, but she was aware that her daughter had been marked by one of the most voracious of the predators, and it would strike her down regardless of any glimpse she might or might not catch before the end—she wouldn't live to see her own ailing mother put in the ground.
In her youth, the old woman would have spoken. It didn't matter whether or not her listener took her seriously; no one could deny that illness and death arrived as promised. She was lucky not to have been born at a time when foretelling doom was cause for persecution. But her neighbours' respect was exaggerated. She could never be the oracle they proclaimed with such enthusiasm. Her singular gift was to see affliction for what it was. What nonsense to think she might similarly recognise the hidden secrets of the human heart. Yet there she was—propped up with cushions on a seat in judgment of total strangers.
She had lived long enough to know that nothing in her world resembled justice. She was unsentimental in her appraisal, and decided early on that any effort at fairness would be a charade. She was invested in the welfare of no one, neither the state nor the falsely accused. But she felt it was possible to be consistent, and believed there was some virtue in that. So she spent her days with eyes closed, listening to the rhythmic splash of leg-irons on the hardwood floor. There wasn't any need to look. Those who passed her seat without stopping or straying were permitted to continue on to the exit. The rest were pronounced guilty, their fate put in the hands of her crafty daughter. She didn't trouble herself to discover the meaning of the sentences the woman subsequently imposed. She didn't care to know.
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Despite her efforts, the woman in the wingback chair had grown impatient with the proceedings. Mother slept throughout the day and only rarely roused herself enough to find a prisoner guilty. Far too many were allowed to shuffle out the door to freedom. She would have liked to see the old woman removed from the bench—and could imagine her tottering across the room with her head in a bag, throwing herself on the mercy of the court.
But she knew the old woman commanded the public's affection. They called her `Mother', and begged to be told if their aches and pains were the doings of evil spirits. She humoured them, and they thought she was a saint. And when the daughter campaigned to establish a tribunal they agreed only on condition that Mother be the one to judge the guilt or innocence of the accused.
That suited the younger woman well enough at first. Her only concern was to see the guilty punished—and she had secured for herself the authority to impose what punishments she saw fit. She wasn't immune to the aura that surrounded the old woman and was foolish enough to believe that few would escape her notice. She didn't think Mother's health would permit more than a brief and symbolic effort anyway, and once the institution was established, surely Mother's permanent absence could be endured.
But the old woman's mental decline was even steeper than her physical deterioration. She had become so immersed in that awful mythology of hers that the real world no longer penetrated. How could she be expected to deliver justice? And yet she refused to relinquish authority or even consult—
The younger woman's train of thought was momentarily interrupted, as a fat, lumbering rat appeared from under the bleachers. The child beside her clapped with excitement as it dashed across the floor. One after another the functionaries flipped their tables in an effort to corral it—or possibly crush it to death. The prisoner flinched at the sudden activity and stopped in his tracks. The old woman cocked her head and reached for the seamstress shears. One table after another was overturned as the creature fled toward the stage, and the younger woman's quiet voice was all but drowned out in the racket.
The technician was already on her feet, and as the creature scurried between her legs, she stomped her foot with a crack that silenced the room, pinning the creature by the tail. It shrieked in pain and fear and snapped at her ankles as she she bent over and drained a syringe into its filthy back. Then she kicked it aside and emptied another into the back of the prisoner's neck.
The little girl nearly fell out of her desk in her excitement. She clambered down from the stage and scooped the creature off the floor. Then, cradling it in her arms, she climbed back up and brought it to a clothesline that stretched between the railings near her desk. She wrapped the end of its tail around the line a few times and tried to hold it place with a wooden peg. But it was an impossible task for her tiny hands and one of the functionaries had to scamper to her aid. At last the creature was left to dangle next to a half-dozen others, and the child returned to her seat with a look of profound satisfaction. It was only when she saw the hammer beside the wingback chair and the prisoner being dragged away that her eyes began to well up with tears. Then she put her head in her arms and sobbed bitterly.
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She knew she would be a princess some day. Everyone said so. Her prince would arrive and a hungry jackal would devour her wicked stepmother in a forest without leaves or sunshine. Only then would she be free to step out of her lonely tower. She didn't know when her hero would appear, maybe not for many years. But she would still be young and beautiful when he found her, or she found him, and what an adventure it would then be.
Her biggest fear was that she wouldn't recognize him, or that a cruel impostor would steal her heart before he arrived. She sometimes thought she saw the monsters her grandmother said were out there, especially when she stared at the top of her desk and peered out from the corner of her eyes. But she had nothing like the old woman's power to see inside people. They all looked the same when they came through the door, tongue-tied, in their ugly orange pyjamas, always wrapped in chains. They looked like criminals. It occurred to her that it might have been the same person passing through the door every time, over and over each day, traveling in a circle so big it only appeared to be a straight line. The idea made her dizzy, and she refused to think any more about it.
Still, she often cried herself to sleep at the thought that her prince might stay away—or that he might be dragged off by his ankles as she sat at her desk and daydreamed. It was a silly fear. Her prince would come, and she would know as soon as he stepped through the door that he was there for her. And she wouldn't bang the gavel, and they wouldn't drag him off, and he would never leave her. And the celebration would last for three whole days. The little girl stopped crying. She wiped her nose on her forearm and imagined everything that would then be hers. She would have a tiara, and a small dog for her lap. And he would carry a fob watch with a chain that stretched from one pocket to the other. And everyone she knew was going to be sick with envy.
She didn't believe in magic. But when no one was looking she planted a kiss on the nose of every rat she carried onto the stage. Their matted fur had the reek of garbage, and the ones that weren't already dead were apt to squirm and twitch and snap at her defiantly. It was enough to turn her stomach. But she rose above the disgust and made the effort a point of pride, a token of her love for the long-suffering prince. And soon it became a thrill, and at last the source of an inexplicable, aching pleasure.