Blib blib bloop blib weeeeeee…
The strangest sound arrests my attention. I turn my head toward the source of it. It’s the wall. Of course it’s the wall. This room is all wall and no space. I get closer to it, though I should probably be doing my best to get as far from it as possible.
Something is definitely happening to the wall. It is sort of… bubbling? It is certainly moving in a way I have never seen solid material move before. Just as I am about to touch it, there is a POP!
A thing tumbles through the wall. It is pink and round and fleshy and shiny and kind of gross, covered in a thousand weird egg bumps.
“Oh FUCKING CHRIST!” I scream as all of the bumps open up and blink at me. The thing is covered in eyes. There’s fucking eyes all over it. They all close again, all but two which remain open, staring.
“Sorry,” it says. “I forget how strange I look to you. Believe me, if I could take another form, I would.”
“What the fuck are you?”
“They call me Ham. I’m a prisoner trying to escape.” He boings up to stand on two little pink feet.
He is a shiny basketball covered in eyes, propelled by bouncing around. I should be horrified, but when you are completely alone, you will take anything as company.
“I am also a prisoner, but I can’t escape. How did you get in here?”
“I understood that the wall was a construct, and not objective reality for a being of pure consciousness.”
I think about that for a second. “That’s not useful to me, because I am not a being of pure consciousness. I am made of the same stuff the wall is.”
“That is true. Being condensed into matter is inconvenient. Maybe I can keep you company, and maybe there is no need for either of us to feel so alone? Maybe the walls will not feel so much like walls?”
“If you could get in here, you could get out of here,” I point out. “Why would you stay inside with me if you didn't have to?”
“You’re human,” Ham says. “Humans are rare and interesting. I can spare a little captivity for you. Tell me your story. Tell me who you are, and how you came to be here.”
I slide down the wall and sit. Ham sits in front of me. He has very small feet on the underside of his body, which he tucks in to sit cross-legged. He’s gross and adorable all at the same time.
It has been a long time since I attempted to tell anyone my story. But I suppose I have nothing but time now, and nothing but words to furnish the empty space between us.
“My name is Sylvia, but I am called Silver now, because my daughter couldn’t pronounce the name when she was small and it wasn’t safe for her to call me mom.”
“How cute,” he says. “You have kept the name your child gave you.”
“It is all I have left of her.”
“She is far away?”
Do I say the words? I never say the words. I don’t know that I have ever actually said them out loud before. I’ve thought them many times. Too many times. I’ve thought them over and over. They’ve been the only thought in my mind for a decade.
But there’s something about this… thing. It’s not that it looks trustworthy. It’s that it feels familiar in some way. Safe.
So I say the words for what might be the first time.
“She is dead.”
Warden
I check in on my prisoner. There’s a video and sound feed direct to her room, naturally. No prison can hope to run effectively without surveillance. The sound reaches me before the picture does. I hear chatter.
It’s not coherent. It’s language, but not any language I’m familiar with. When the video appears on screen, I see that she is sitting on the floor, talking to herself. When I turn up the mic so I can hear what she’s saying, her words are strangely garbled, as if coming to me through an un-language filter.
Whatever she’s speaking is not being translated properly. I frown, attempting to run several filters. Usually I have no problem understanding humans, and vice versa. We have a genetic propensity for forming the same basic language constructs. Human speech is clear as day to a scythkin. Usually.
I wanted to give everybody some space before I returned to her. Scizzor still isn’t entirely convinced of the mating plan, and I have other prisoners to attend to. I am at risk of being swept off my bladed feet by that compelling little human.
But I cannot have her speaking in tongues to who knows who. Something is going on.
I take myself back to the cell and open the door without warning. I expect her to be startled, but she’s not. She’s standing up, thoroughly annoyed and glaring at me in that imperious way humans have when they feel they are in the right. It never occurs to them that they’re never in the right.
“What do you want?” She meets me with a hissing growl.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Myself. What does it matter?”
“Something is going on here, human. Tell me what it is before I am forced to interrogate you.”
She glances at something behind her, which is not an easy feat for a human whose eyes are located in the traditional position at the front of their head. I know instantly what she is trying to not look at.
“Ham!”
The squishy ball almost escapes my grasp. I catch him by one of his short little legs and drag him back before he can slide through the wall.
“What were you doing in there?”
“Just talking,” he squirms.
“About what?” I want to know what happened when she was talking about whatever it was she was talking about. It has not left her in a good mood.
“Did you hurt her?”
“I listened,” he says. “Maybe you should try listening too. You might discover something about your prisoner which matters.”
I drop Ham. His incarceration here is largely self-imposed anyway. I turn my attention to Silver. It is her defiance I care about, her secrets I want to expose.
“What were you talking to Ham about?”
“None of your business.”
“Do I need to drag it out of you, human? Do you need to be made to be honest?”
“You don’t want to know what I told Ham.”
“Yes. I do.”
Silver
He has me in his grasp. He is holding me down, pinning me in place to stop me from having my secrets. This is the most invasive violation he could ever attempt. But I don’t know that I will resist that hard. Maybe he should know what set this all in motion.
“Tell me, Silver.”
“Silver’s not my name. It’s Sylvia.”
“That is what you told Ham?”
“That’s not his name either.”
“I know, but for ease of reference…”
Her face crumples up in annoyance. “You don’t even want to know why I’m called Silver instead of Sylvia, do you?”
“Does it matter?”
She spits out a human curse. “You’ll never find out what I said to Ham, because you don’t care.”
“There’s no need to give me attitude, gurl.”
“There’s all the need.”
“I misspoke. If you give me attitude, I will punish you, and then you will tell me what it is you told Ham.”