The prison was hell. It wasn't the walls, or the bars, or the chains - or even the mind probes that made escape so difficult. It was more the psychological certainty that escape was impossible - that once we were there, we were there for all eternity - that kept us inmates imprisoned so securely.
But perhaps in reality, there had never been any restrictive securities and all that kept us here was in our minds so that, if we had been strong enough, we could all evade the guards, slip through the bars, walk out of the doors and eventually breathe - after how many years, decades, centuries it seemed, the clean, untainted air of freedom
Yet the beatings and the tortures were real enough, the cigarette burns on sensitive parts of the body leaving red, charred scars like smallpox lesions, the insertion of sharpened matchsticks under the fingernails, electric shocks to the genitals... Pain exquisite enough to assure any recipient that this was far more than the product of a hyperactive imagination or a physiological reaction to specifically-placed suggestions.
I, more often referred to as inmate number 7438629, made my bid for escape, that evening when, for some unaccountable reason, my shackles were left unfastened and the grim, grey steel door to my cell was ajar.
I padded along the darkened passages, having taken off my shoes, the soles of my feet feeling the cold and damp from the stone flags. Every shadow was a menace, every sound an echoing threat. Moonlight through the occasional barred window created disturbing patterns of discovery and I was accompanied the whole way by the familiar sounds... groans from the prisoners in the cells, occasional guffaws from the guards. But I bore a charmed life. The doors seemed to open at my touch without their customary rusty shriek almost as if their hinges had been oiled for my benefit. And at the final great gate - the door to Hell itself - 'Lasciate Ogni Speranza, voi ch'Entrate' - the guard had taken the opportunity to slip outside to smoke a crafty fag in the privacy of a stone buttress, leaving that impassable obstacle open and inviting.
I slipped through and was away into the night like the dispersion of a faint aroma in the evening breeze.
Once I'd managed to escape, I made the immediate decision to head for the Big City. I would be pursued - I knew that - but once in that dense warren of streets of packed houses with their overhanging upper storeys so close together that sometimes even looking straight up it was difficult to see the sky - in the company of others who, like me, were fugitives from authority - perhaps - just perhaps, I could evade recapture until - well, until what?
My future plans were unformed though I had a few vague ideas.
I had no money to start off with, but that was no problem... I was no stranger to crime and of course had no conscience. Women who walked the streets with their handbags casually hanging from their shoulders were easy to rob from. A swift snatch and usually the victims were too surprised, too shocked to do anything more than give a startled shriek while I was off, my trainers slapping the pavements, my getaway into the twisting alleys and narrow streets carefully planned.
But these forays obviously drew attention to myself and that was something I couldn't afford. I tried to alter my appearance, sometimes brushing my hair forward so that it hung over my eyes in a brown fringe, then pushing it back so that it exposed my wide forehead, and what someone had once called my grey, candid eyes. At the beginning my 'wardrobe' was limited. In fact I only had the regulation brown cotton trousers and jacket buttoned to the chin, but I found clothes drying on lines stretched across back gardens and was able to vary my costume with some jeans, a T-shirt, pullover.
I slept in shop doorways - as did many of the other homeless - and, as the weather was fine, I suffered no hardship. In fact the stone steps on which I lay seemed almost softer than that of the floors of the prison cell from which I had escaped. Nevertheless I realised that when the summer ended and the first rains of autumn began, I would need somewhere which at least had a roof overhead.
It all came down to money - of course, everything came down to money. The invention of the Devil? I must check sometime. The contents of the women's handbags were rarely much over twenty pounds often very much less and I didn't understand the small rectangles of plastic which so many of them seemed to carry in their purses. Were these some form of money, I wondered. There was nobody I could ask, not without giving myself away. I had been so long out of the world. Things had progressed - without me.
Towards the end of my second week of liberty, though, I made the acquaintance of Bennie.
"I'm B-Bennie," said this young guy coming up to me in the street, a twist of dirty brown hair falling over his eyes. A pinched face, nervous mouth and a slight stutter.
I nearly rapped out my prison number, '7438629,' so instinctive had it become, and had to dredge into my mind for my own given name. I couldn't remember how long it was since anyone had called me by it.
"I'm . . . " I came out with it after a pause which - to my own ears at least - sounded a touch suspicious. "I'm Reggie."
"I haven't seen you around," said Bennie, "not b-before a couple of weeks ago." It seemed as if b's were a particular problem for him.
Was he fishing for information, I wondered. He'd obviously noticed me. Could he be a spy? An informer? For the authorities?
"I've just recently come down - from up North," I said.
Bennie smiled and, as he did so, his face was transformed. He suddenly looked very young, very vulnerable. "I like it 'up North'," he said. "It's where I come from. Do you know Chesterly-le-Street?"
"No," I said, In fact I had never in my life been further North than Watford.
Bennie looked disappointed, crest-fallen, his eyes sad, his mouth turned down so that once again he was a grubby little tramp with clothes that told of poverty and despair and trainers that gaped at the toes.
"Still," he said, "you've b-been 'up North'" It seemed to be some sort of consolation to him and I felt unaccountably guilty as if my lies had demeaned myself in some way. I mentally shrugged the unwelcome conscience away. It was not something that I was used to feeling, didn't think I still had one. Bennie could be useful to me, I thought. The boy, though obviously easily fooled, must be at least to some extent streetwise. He would know for instance what these pieces of coloured plastic were which everyone seemed to carry around with them - and how to use them. He would be able to explain the ins and outs of this modern world and any explanation I gave for my own lack of knowledge would be readily accepted.
"You got anywhere to kip?" I asked, and for a moment saw a twitch of alarm cross Bennie's face. Christ, I thought, the boy thinks I'm after his arse. "Just that it's bound to turn colder soon and I wouldn't mind a bit of shelter." The boy's face cleared - a cloud passing - and I thought how credulous he was.
"Gotta cellar," he said, coming closer and lowering his voice. His breath was sweet and his body didn't smell rancid like many of the other homeless and I wondered how he managed to keep his mouth fresh. "Come on. I'll show it to you."
We went together across the City, through the darkening gloom and shadows of evening to a derelict factory site. It had been leveled mostly though there were still a few parts of walls left, standing like carious teeth against the sky. In the shelter of one of these, some pieces of industrial rubbish had been piled. Bennie - after carefully looking round - removed a piece of corrugated iron and revealed a hole leading down. There was a flight of stone steps and at the bottom a door. He pushed it open.
It was so dark inside that at first I could see nothing but I heard the sound of a striking match and by the light of a flickering candle, I was able to make out the details of Bennie's 'den'. Against the rough brickwork of the farthest wall he had piled up some boxes as if to make a bookcase. In these were heaps of newspaper colour magazines, salvaged no doubt from dustbins. Another two boxes on the centre of the room provided a 'table and chair'. A chipped crockery plate and, laid neatly on either side, a plastic knife and fork.
There was a large mattress covered with some ominous-looking stains and a blanket, neatly folded, lay at the top. A poster of a pop group, I assumed, adhered rather precariously to one wall. The floor had been 'swept' clean somehow and all the 'furniture' was carefully and methodically placed.
Bennie looked at me with an expression of pride on his face, his mouth an uncertain smile. He was asking for approval. I recognised how I had been honoured by being allowed to share the room and was sensitive indeed to the honour.
"Marvelous," I said. "You've made yourself a real little home."
Bennie flushed with pleasure. He hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Do you want to stay with me here?"
I looked around at the mattress, the single 'chair' and plate and knife and fork. "It's your place," I said. "Just for you."
Bennie suddenly looked very young again. "It's lonely . . . at night . . . on my own." The words seemed almost forced out of him as if he was admitting to some sort of weakness.
I thought of the help Bennie could be for me. With him on my side, perhaps I could outwit the 'authorities' and even if that wasn't possible, there was always the other plan, the one where I `turned' Bennie so that the authorities 'approved'.
"I'll get some fish and chips for us," I said, "for supper," and Bennie smiled.
So that's how Bennie and me got together. Don't misunderstand me. There was nothing like that between us. OK. We slept together on that mattress and occasionally I felt his young body against mine and I held him - for comfort, to show that at least someone cared but I went no further.
Did I though? Did I care? I saw him as my protege, my pupil. Did I care that I was trying to turn this innocent young man into a hardened criminal? He did have some initial reluctance, a product no doubt of his upbringing - he came from Protestant/Labour parents - but my powers of persuasion were excellent. I explained how unethical it is for the rich to have possessions and the poor not - and it did not take long for him to see the justice of relieving the former of some of them to provide relief for the latter i.e. us.
Number 17 Cadogan Square provided a practical example of this. A carelessly-left open fan light on the ground floor provided ingress for someone of Bennie's slight frame and once in, he was able to open the door to let me in.
I remember his eyes shone with a mixture of fear and excitement as together we explored the 'Aladdin's Cave' I had selected for our attention. Our feet sank into thick carpets. "Cor," Bennie said and I had difficulty in dissuading him from removing his shoes. I was never sure whether he wanted to feel the carpets on his bare feet, or because he felt his dirty shoes might soil them.
Small objects were what we took. Money, of course, and then nothing which was of obvious great value - these would be difficult to dispose of without arousing suspicion. Nor did we take bulky TV sets or videos but small decorative pieces which would slip into our pockets.
There was one picture, the frame of which I thought was valuable. It had a photo in it of a family, mother and father (presumably) standing with their arms around three kids, a smiling boy and two girls. Bennie seemed loth to take it but I insisted he put it in his pocket. He looked at the picture carefully before he did as I said and though he obeyed, I noticed he had a tear in his eye.
I felt sure that in time he would become less sentimental.
We sold the stuff - or at least pawned it - because we obviously never intended to redeem it again. The photo frame got £50 so it was obviously worth considerably more. I noticed Bennie had removed the picture - which was sensible but later I saw he had stuck it on the wall where he used to look at it from time to time with an expression which seemed in an odd way by be both sad and happy at the same time - a sort of longing. As if the people in it were his own family.
I almost felt sorry for the kid. For that's all he was, though he said he was twenty. When he took his clothes off, which he sometimes did to sleep on hot summer nights, his body was almost that of a young teenager, thin and angular, the ribs showing all down his chest. He was shy too. When he undressed he always turned away from me so that I saw only the vertebrae of his backbone standing out, the thin cheeks of his arse with a dimple in each side, the flesh white. He needed feeding, filling out, putting some flesh on him.
But he kept himself clean, washing himself thoroughly every day in the public lavatory and he brushed his teeth night and morning.
We soon exhausted the money we'd got from selling the stuff from Cadogan Square.
"Are we going to do another job?" he asked. "'To even out the discrepancy in our situations'."
I recognised a phrase I had used and laughed.
"I've got a better idea," I said.
I explained the idea, told him the plane, coached him in the smile, the body movements. He was a quick learner, a natural.
"And then what happens?" he asked - but I wouldn't tell him. He would find out soon enough. I wondered how he would take it.
So we waited that night while the shadows lengthened and the street lights came on and the people of the dark came out. We stood there outside the pub - the one with the reputation and the guys who went in singly and came out in pairs. And I tipped Bennie the wink when I saw the prosperous-looking one. Bennie smiled at him and stuck his hips forward so that his lunch bulged provocatively. He put his thumbs in his jeans' pockets and his fingers outlined his groin, emphasising the swelling of his cock and balls.
The guy noticed of course and caught Bennie's eye. As I had taught him - such an apt pupil - Bennie gestured with his head to the dark alleyway behind, where I waited, and then went towards it, the guy following.
Bennie walked past me, ignoring me as I stood in the pool of darkness but the guy saw me and started back so I had to stop him or he would have escaped. I brought the half brick down on his temple, hard, just above the right eye, and he slumped to the ground without even a groan. But Bennie gave a half-gasp, half-cry and fell on his knees beside the body.
I pushed him aside and felt in the guy's jacket breast pocket for his wallet. It was fat and the leather was soft and silky between my fingers.
"It's OK," I said. "I've got it. Let's go."
But Bennie was still kneeling there and his hand was on the guy's cheek, stroking it.
"Come on," I said but he wouldn't move so I had to grab hold of him, under his armpits and lift him to his feet. He was light, nothing to him and for a moment I held him against my body, his back against my chest and I could feel him shivering.
"It's all right," I whispered into his ear. "He'll just have a bit of a headache when he comes round." I doubted, though, whether I spoke the truth.
That night we lay together on the mattress under the blanket, Bennie's body enclosed within my body, my arms, my legs. His shivering stopped eventually and his gasping breath calmed and became deep and even. But I didn't sleep and I couldn't understand why. It was not as if I hadn't killed before so why was I worried at this one?
When the morning came, grey and with spatterings of blustery rain, I found there was over 300 quid in the wallet. The guy had obviously been prepared to buy something and I wondered - too late - whether I should have let him pay for Bennie's services rather than taking the money with such violence.
I feared that Bennie might have been upset but it seemed as if the sleep had washed away the terrors of the night. Even when I suggested that we might have killed the guy, his response was calm and not what I expected at all. Had I got him already?
"I thought so," he said. "He felt dead."
Two weeks later we stole a car. It was Bennie's suggestion and I was surprised. Of course cars were a complete mystery to me but not, apparently, to Bennie who said he knew how to drive one. He thought it would be a `giggle' to take one - something powerful, something fast. He was turning into a right little tear-away, was my Bennie. I ought to have been pleased but somehow I wasn't.
Already he had lost that innocent, vulnerable look. Now his thin face looked pinched and ferrety. There was sometimes an almost sly look in his eyes, and they wouldn't meet mine,, shifting away when I talked to him. He looked like a naughty schoolboy who has been caught doing something wrong.
The Lotus GTX was in the car park. It was so easy, it was laughable - almost as if the owner had wanted his car to be stolen. For a moment I had a strange thought that everything - from my escape onwards - was just that bit too easy, had perhaps been part of a design, a conspiracy - though who was behind it or why, I didn't want to think.
Bennie climbed into the driver's seat, sinking back into the luxurious upholstery as it clasped him like the arms of a beloved. "Come on, Reg," he said to me and I climbed in beside him.
He didn't grate the gears. We moved smoothly off. He was right. He could drive and I wondered where he had learned. The tarmac slipped smoothly beneath us. Bennie flicked a switch on the real wood dashboard and music played, a pop song with heavy pounding rhythms and a chorus of boy singers with strangulated falsettos. But the tune was catchy and Bennie sang with it. I saw his face, lit intermittently as we passed the street lights. He was transformed - back into the way he had been - like an angel's in paradise, his eyes gleaming, a smile on his mouth.
"It's like flying," he said and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. We approached a turn and negotiated it without slowing down, the tyres screaming.
It was at that moment that this old guy stepped out from the pavement. He must have been deaf as we were making enough noise, Bennie jammed on the brakes. The tyres squealed again but this time with a different sound. The man heard, turned, saw - and had no idea what to do... He hesitated, seemed about to run on, then stepped back. Bennie twisted the wheel but the car hit him, then skidded across the road, straight into the wall on the other side. The windscreen shattered, pieces of glass catching the lights like a shower of sparks. The bonnet crumpled. Bennie's body went forward into the wheel and I heard his ribs crush. For a moment the high, almost sexless, singing went on. Then it stopped.
And the only sound now was Bennie's ragged gasping breath.
I of course was uninjured. I looked at Bennie. His face was pale, his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain, and the agony of trying to get air through those shattered lungs. His T-shirt was covered with blood and as I watched, the breathing became more intense, more like soundless cries of pain. I held him in my arms and watched the last gasps, hoping that my arms around him would perhaps comfort his dying moments.
His mouth opened in one last convulsive spasm; his eyelids fluttered and closed. His body was still warm against mine but I knew he'd gone. A drop of water suddenly appeared on his cheek and I knew I was weeping, the tears dropping onto that upturned face. That was odd. We are not supposed to be able to weep.
The light from the window was suddenly obscured. A figure stood there, outside the car, a figure dressed in a uniform I recognised. After all I'd seen it so many times, been tortured by devils wearing it - over the uncounted centuries.
"Well done, 7438629, he's ours now. You did a good job."
"But he's dead," I said foolishly, as if that made any difference.
"Yes," said the officer. "So he's ours for eternity. Thanks to you. Bennie is a thief, accomplice to the murder of the guy in the alley, joy-rider who has now killed someone himself. You'll get your reward. Might well be put in charge of Bennie's punishment. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you? Causing pain to that young, fresh body?"
"You Devil," I said, and the officer's eyes gleamed, as if I'd paid him a compliment.
I held Bennie's body to me, but I could feel it getting lighter as if the essence was being removed.
"No! No!" I said. "It wasn't Bennie. I killed the guy in the alley. The old bloke we knocked down was just an accident. I persuaded Bennie. He's innocent. It's all my fault."
"Do you mean you're sorry?" he asked. "You . . . repent?" He seemed to have a little difficulty coming out with the word and when it did so it sounded as if it had left a disgusting taste in his mouth.
I clutched the almost empty shell to me. I kissed his mouth. It felt soft - but cold to my lips . . . And I had never kissed it when it was alive and warm and . . . able to respond. I cried for his wasted youth, for the innocence I had destroyed, for the fact that, underneath it all, I had done it so that I might be spared.
I looked at the officer, saw the expectation in those glowing eyes, knew that, if I admitted my guilt, I too would be lost, but the thin body in my arms had more claim on me than I knew.
"Of course, I repent," I said. "He was innocent, and I spoiled that innocence..."
"Then I have you both," and his voice was raised in triumph. He stretched out his arms to take us and then, just as he was about to touch he stopped and his face twisted as if a mortal agony had clutched him.
A wild wind roared down the road, bending the tree branches, stripping the leaves and blowing them into curlicue dances. Then came a deep rumbling, like an earthquake and the very substance of the road seemed to weave and shake as if a giant had one end of it and was twitching it. As this died down the car burst into flame and we in the middle of it, though it did not burn.
And after the wind and the earthquake and the fire there came a voice.
A still, small voice.
"You shall not have them," said the voice.
4074 words.