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we were the kings and queens of promise;
Prompt
An empty space existed between the bones of his rib cage.
Cavernous hunger ate his stomach, mangled worms that gnawed at his atrophied muscles and the deeper parts of his soft red stomach. He felt the acid of his belly chew away at his sides, ravenous and insatiable.
His throat was dry.
The ceiling stared back at him. The same four walls, gray and gray and gray. The same black bars, fifty-seven, thick as two and a half of his good fingers. The same small barred window. The same view of a rushing river fifty feet below. The same floor, cold and desolate. The same him.
Swamps of bruising, black and blue and coated with a thick residue of dried black. Fingers mangled, twisted sharply to the right or left, broken, bits of bone with red of meat. His throat was dry. His head hurt. Everything hurt.
But when he closed his eyes, spots of lights danced in the darkness.
England
England they whispered England what are you doing Play with us England
What are you playing he asked.
We are playing games England We are playing Clock a Clay
What time is it he asked
It’s time England
His fingers screamed in pain and agony and twitched and cried and whimpered.
He did not.
Twisted shoulder the broken sinews the bulbous heinous elbow broken and his ankle throbbed. His ribs breathed and gasped and wheezed and dragged and crunched and sobbed.
He did not.
They had done things to him that he tried not to remember. They had done the things and they brought him down to the cold room. They had tied his hands to a steel sewer pipe and left him to die.
The rope chafed across the skin of his wrist, the dried flakes of his hands touching the rusty scaled metal. His fingertips were numb. He thought about ribs. His own, mostly, white and broken and jagged. He thought about his lungs and how they must seem like balloons and when he shifted the weight off his numb broken leg he thought he could feel the sharp ridges of his broken rib cage press against his balloon lung, slowly scarring his insides.
Are you all right, asked a hurrying hobbit. Funny little fellow. He was carrying a load of wood. What would he do with that in the middle of the day? Funny fellows.
Yes, said England. What time is it.
Middle tea time of course.
Of course.
It was peaceful at the Shire. He walked slowly because the sun was too bright, shining directly into his eyes. The fields of farmers stretched for eternity beyond the kind, sloping green hills. In the little houses, the smell of tea wafted out and the hobbits began to strike up a song in the distance. It was a song about tea.
Funny little fellows.
He walked with shaky legs until he could walk faster. Then he did walk faster. He walked down the winding dirt road that ambled slowly into the darker forest, patient and filled with songs. In the distance, he could hear the sound of horses clip-clopping and the drunken song of men and their inns and ales and a little beyond that, the sweet serenity of the elves and the thick song of the dwarves and the strange hum of the beyond.
It was dark and a little cold, like always, but he rolled slowly to huddle beside the cement wall. It was a bad idea because his body ached and wheezed and gasped but he did not in the pain of the new wounds, opening up and splitting him apart.
If he could move his broken fingers, he would press them along his sides to find the gaping wound and slip into the flaps of his skin and run his fingers along the meaty muscles that were atrophied and weak and he thought that if he had his embroidery kit, this wound would be clean. But it was not, so his head rang with the hum of elves.
His throat was dry.
He thirsted but the room was dark and cool and no food sat by the fifty-seven thick black bars, not even his empty chipped plate. No dinner tonight. No middle tea time for him.
Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep. Spikes of pain brought him back. Another long night without any voices or footsteps. Only the passing light of the sad moon. The light was sad. He tried not to breathe when it pressed upon it because the weight of the moonlight hurt. It pressed along the slight askew of his jaw, traveling to the bruises of fingers around his neck, whispering down to the spaces of his jagged ribs, down and up and pressing.
It was cruel.
Minutes passed like years and centuries passed like seconds. There was no time. There was always time. Shadows flickered on the walls and he bled to death and back again. The night was silent. Though the night was never silent, not with the faint twinkling of fairies whispering behind the walls of his cell.
A half-inch of gruel appeared in the bottom of his chipped bowl.
He refused to drink like a dog, refused to crawl like a beast. But his legs could not stand, and he was hungry. He was thirsty. The ceiling became an oppressive force within him.
Never, never, never. The words sang like a bell in a castle and suddenly he was sitting on a cold, unmarked chair.
The feast laid out at his feet was fit for a king and his round table. A knight dressed in green sat next to him and his beautiful wife, beside. An old woman sat with her wrinkled hands on the table and a noble young knight, clad in his armor, ate the food with relish.
He tried to stand, but the knight in green shook his head and said that he must stay until at least new year’s, only the best guest room. But the bed would spring up and try to kill him so he could only refuse the generous offer, but when he looked outside, he could only see the bridge of swords illuminated in their gaunt terror.
The time passed by and he felt catatonic, only the pain of his wounds jolting him awake from his half-stupor. He did not sleep. He did not drool. He did not eat, but felt himself wasting away, but he said nothing. His collarbones grew sharp and pronounced until it felt like they cut him. The bruises on his wrists grew mottled black and green.
Day after day. The room did not change. It was sometimes dark. It was sometimes light.
This was all a dream.
His hands grew numb.
He grew sick and feverish. His head felt numb and his rib cage stood like the monuments of Stonehenge. Nobody came into his cell, not since the last time he had leapt up like a frenzied beast to bite and claw and throw them down but they took him back and threw him into the ground into the quiet of his room.
Just the silence of him.
England
England Puck has a message
What is it he asked
He says it’ll be over soon and Don’t be afraid anymore and He’ll come soon
But he wasn’t afraid
There’s nothing wrong with admitting it, said High King Peter kindly, and the horses trotted down the road to the lantern that stood high above in the forest.
I’m not afraid. England studied the smoothness of his hands.
If you were, then. The high king turned to smile at him. Aslan will see you soon.
Another long night.
He choked on his own grueling vomit and could not move, his limbs aching and numb and sharp and painful. He tried to drag himself off the ground, to prove that he could fight, but his mangled hand twitched and spasmed at the thought. His body bruised and broken could do more for him.
His arms were numb.
Twenty-seven cracks in the room. Sometimes they crawled for him. Black snakes slithering in jagged lightning bolts across the floor and they opened their mouths and tried to swallow him whole.
So many days, so many nights. Sometimes he talked to himself. He used big words. He used little words. Sometimes he pretended to be other countries. Most of the time, he didn’t. He wrote novels in his head that could have claimed the Nobel prize. He cured the common cold and he traveled to the depths of the Antics, all while running his sandpaper tongue over his chafed lips.
He felt like he was going mad.
The world must have moved on without him. Had it been centuries? Had it been days? Had it been three years and eighteen days? Did they remember him anymore? At the world meetings, he had sat in the second seat to the right. Did they remember that? He sometimes had brought scones. Shitty scones. Did anyone miss them? He wanted to scream at them to remember him. Remember him! He had fought wars! He had baked their bread! He had kissed them! He could recite all of Shakespeare in a second and he drank ale at night! He had brothers and sisters!
Ah, were they dead now?
The gruel churned in his stomach.
One day, he knew. He knew that all was lost. He knew he had gone mad because his fingers were all fixed, and he could grip them into fists against the rope, even if the wounds dug deep.
Come on, said Peter Pan. I’ll take you to Neverland.
But he could not fly.
Now you can. A sparkle of Tinkerbell’s dust landed on his nose and he nearly sneezed, but his shaking ribs would not be able to take that.
He looked up to the clear blue night sky, where the moon hung in the air and the shadows of pirate ships passed across her gentle reflection.
England
England come to us
He closed his eyes and breathed the cool night air, and he heard the chorus of voices, like tinkling bells, that encouraged him and loved him and they all waited for him, and they grew louder and louder, more hurried, old friends, new friends, crooked hands and broken feet, and he loved them.
Wait just a bit longer, he told them. He was coming, he was coming.
The bars on the window had been broken, likely by a little boy's shadow. He climbed easily to the top, flexing his fit fingers, and watched the rivers rush by below. It would kill him. The current would grab his feet to pull him down and drown him. The battered racks would tear him from limb to limb. The impact of the fall itself would flatten his broken ribs into his precarious lungs, popping the balloon. His wounds would tear open and he'd bleed and bleed and bleed.
But the fairy dust shimmered on his fingers.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could see them. Glimmering, their voices soft. There was falling snow and the crescent of a castle behind the hill, and the flickering of wings, and they were waiting for him. Fairies tugged at his clothes and giggled against his cheek, and they felt warm, their eyes dark and bright.
He smiled at them.
And he jumped.
An empty space existed between the bones of his rib cage.
Cavernous hunger ate his stomach, mangled worms that gnawed at his atrophied muscles and the deeper parts of his soft red stomach. He felt the acid of his belly chew away at his sides, ravenous and insatiable.
His throat was dry.
The ceiling stared back at him. The same four walls, gray and gray and gray. The same black bars, fifty-seven, thick as two and a half of his good fingers. The same small barred window. The same view of a rushing river fifty feet below. The same floor, cold and desolate. The same him.
Swamps of bruising, black and blue and coated with a thick residue of dried black. Fingers mangled, twisted sharply to the right or left, broken, bits of bone with red of meat. His throat was dry. His head hurt. Everything hurt.
But when he closed his eyes, spots of lights danced in the darkness.
England
England they whispered England what are you doing Play with us England
What are you playing he asked.
We are playing games England We are playing Clock a Clay
What time is it he asked
It’s time England
His fingers screamed in pain and agony and twitched and cried and whimpered.
He did not.
Twisted shoulder the broken sinews the bulbous heinous elbow broken and his ankle throbbed. His ribs breathed and gasped and wheezed and dragged and crunched and sobbed.
He did not.
They had done things to him that he tried not to remember. They had done the things and they brought him down to the cold room. They had tied his hands to a steel sewer pipe and left him to die.
The rope chafed across the skin of his wrist, the dried flakes of his hands touching the rusty scaled metal. His fingertips were numb. He thought about ribs. His own, mostly, white and broken and jagged. He thought about his lungs and how they must seem like balloons and when he shifted the weight off his numb broken leg he thought he could feel the sharp ridges of his broken rib cage press against his balloon lung, slowly scarring his insides.
Are you all right, asked a hurrying hobbit. Funny little fellow. He was carrying a load of wood. What would he do with that in the middle of the day? Funny fellows.
Yes, said England. What time is it.
Middle tea time of course.
Of course.
It was peaceful at the Shire. He walked slowly because the sun was too bright, shining directly into his eyes. The fields of farmers stretched for eternity beyond the kind, sloping green hills. In the little houses, the smell of tea wafted out and the hobbits began to strike up a song in the distance. It was a song about tea.
Funny little fellows.
He walked with shaky legs until he could walk faster. Then he did walk faster. He walked down the winding dirt road that ambled slowly into the darker forest, patient and filled with songs. In the distance, he could hear the sound of horses clip-clopping and the drunken song of men and their inns and ales and a little beyond that, the sweet serenity of the elves and the thick song of the dwarves and the strange hum of the beyond.
It was dark and a little cold, like always, but he rolled slowly to huddle beside the cement wall. It was a bad idea because his body ached and wheezed and gasped but he did not in the pain of the new wounds, opening up and splitting him apart.
If he could move his broken fingers, he would press them along his sides to find the gaping wound and slip into the flaps of his skin and run his fingers along the meaty muscles that were atrophied and weak and he thought that if he had his embroidery kit, this wound would be clean. But it was not, so his head rang with the hum of elves.
His throat was dry.
He thirsted but the room was dark and cool and no food sat by the fifty-seven thick black bars, not even his empty chipped plate. No dinner tonight. No middle tea time for him.
Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep. Spikes of pain brought him back. Another long night without any voices or footsteps. Only the passing light of the sad moon. The light was sad. He tried not to breathe when it pressed upon it because the weight of the moonlight hurt. It pressed along the slight askew of his jaw, traveling to the bruises of fingers around his neck, whispering down to the spaces of his jagged ribs, down and up and pressing.
It was cruel.
Minutes passed like years and centuries passed like seconds. There was no time. There was always time. Shadows flickered on the walls and he bled to death and back again. The night was silent. Though the night was never silent, not with the faint twinkling of fairies whispering behind the walls of his cell.
A half-inch of gruel appeared in the bottom of his chipped bowl.
He refused to drink like a dog, refused to crawl like a beast. But his legs could not stand, and he was hungry. He was thirsty. The ceiling became an oppressive force within him.
Never, never, never. The words sang like a bell in a castle and suddenly he was sitting on a cold, unmarked chair.
The feast laid out at his feet was fit for a king and his round table. A knight dressed in green sat next to him and his beautiful wife, beside. An old woman sat with her wrinkled hands on the table and a noble young knight, clad in his armor, ate the food with relish.
He tried to stand, but the knight in green shook his head and said that he must stay until at least new year’s, only the best guest room. But the bed would spring up and try to kill him so he could only refuse the generous offer, but when he looked outside, he could only see the bridge of swords illuminated in their gaunt terror.
The time passed by and he felt catatonic, only the pain of his wounds jolting him awake from his half-stupor. He did not sleep. He did not drool. He did not eat, but felt himself wasting away, but he said nothing. His collarbones grew sharp and pronounced until it felt like they cut him. The bruises on his wrists grew mottled black and green.
Day after day. The room did not change. It was sometimes dark. It was sometimes light.
This was all a dream.
His hands grew numb.
He grew sick and feverish. His head felt numb and his rib cage stood like the monuments of Stonehenge. Nobody came into his cell, not since the last time he had leapt up like a frenzied beast to bite and claw and throw them down but they took him back and threw him into the ground into the quiet of his room.
Just the silence of him.
England
England Puck has a message
What is it he asked
He says it’ll be over soon and Don’t be afraid anymore and He’ll come soon
But he wasn’t afraid
There’s nothing wrong with admitting it, said High King Peter kindly, and the horses trotted down the road to the lantern that stood high above in the forest.
I’m not afraid. England studied the smoothness of his hands.
If you were, then. The high king turned to smile at him. Aslan will see you soon.
Another long night.
He choked on his own grueling vomit and could not move, his limbs aching and numb and sharp and painful. He tried to drag himself off the ground, to prove that he could fight, but his mangled hand twitched and spasmed at the thought. His body bruised and broken could do more for him.
His arms were numb.
Twenty-seven cracks in the room. Sometimes they crawled for him. Black snakes slithering in jagged lightning bolts across the floor and they opened their mouths and tried to swallow him whole.
So many days, so many nights. Sometimes he talked to himself. He used big words. He used little words. Sometimes he pretended to be other countries. Most of the time, he didn’t. He wrote novels in his head that could have claimed the Nobel prize. He cured the common cold and he traveled to the depths of the Antics, all while running his sandpaper tongue over his chafed lips.
He felt like he was going mad.
The world must have moved on without him. Had it been centuries? Had it been days? Had it been three years and eighteen days? Did they remember him anymore? At the world meetings, he had sat in the second seat to the right. Did they remember that? He sometimes had brought scones. Shitty scones. Did anyone miss them? He wanted to scream at them to remember him. Remember him! He had fought wars! He had baked their bread! He had kissed them! He could recite all of Shakespeare in a second and he drank ale at night! He had brothers and sisters!
Ah, were they dead now?
The gruel churned in his stomach.
One day, he knew. He knew that all was lost. He knew he had gone mad because his fingers were all fixed, and he could grip them into fists against the rope, even if the wounds dug deep.
Come on, said Peter Pan. I’ll take you to Neverland.
But he could not fly.
Now you can. A sparkle of Tinkerbell’s dust landed on his nose and he nearly sneezed, but his shaking ribs would not be able to take that.
He looked up to the clear blue night sky, where the moon hung in the air and the shadows of pirate ships passed across her gentle reflection.
England
England come to us
He closed his eyes and breathed the cool night air, and he heard the chorus of voices, like tinkling bells, that encouraged him and loved him and they all waited for him, and they grew louder and louder, more hurried, old friends, new friends, crooked hands and broken feet, and he loved them.
Wait just a bit longer, he told them. He was coming, he was coming.
The bars on the window had been broken, likely by a little boy's shadow. He climbed easily to the top, flexing his fit fingers, and watched the rivers rush by below. It would kill him. The current would grab his feet to pull him down and drown him. The battered racks would tear him from limb to limb. The impact of the fall itself would flatten his broken ribs into his precarious lungs, popping the balloon. His wounds would tear open and he'd bleed and bleed and bleed.
But the fairy dust shimmered on his fingers.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could see them. Glimmering, their voices soft. There was falling snow and the crescent of a castle behind the hill, and the flickering of wings, and they were waiting for him. Fairies tugged at his clothes and giggled against his cheek, and they felt warm, their eyes dark and bright.
He smiled at them.
And he jumped.