honeycomb magma

i.

The last time I visited, he was being barked at by one of the guards, who was pointing the way toward a cell behind the man. 

“Get in.” 

“But I wanted to—”

“Get back in the cage.”

“But, the flowers—”

“GET IN THE HOLE.”

The man finally backed up, haltingly. Every step looked as if it were made with his bare feet moving over a heap of broken glass. He peered over his shoulder with dread. But still he backed up. He had to. The guard was a mass that moved with complete confidence, and as he did, he extended a dark, ridged baton toward the man, a ruby electrode only inches from his sweating forehead. It was not in doubt what would happen if he were to press the trigger. Well, perhaps there was a little doubt. 

The man finally crossed the threshold of the cell, and the moment he did, the door was swung shut. It was a dirt-caked, rusted but solid steel grate of a door. It fit into the wall roughly, but once it was shut and the key turned, not even an earthquake could open it again.

The walls of the cell were dark with soil and shadow. Unlike the conventional prisons, this place was hideously dark, uneven, unfinished, organic, and cluttered. It was what an attic would be, were you to put it in the basement.

The cells were not of uniform size, they were not clean, they were not well-lit. They resembled cavities in a giant tooth, or perhaps the rooms ants whittle out of the earth. They held impenetrable shadows. In these rooms you did not just blanch from the lack of light, you forgot what sun felt like upon the skin. You began to be able to sense minute shifts of air and temperature, and often felt cold. As the dark pressed down upon your staring eyes, you still sought to see, to see anything at all. The outside world first bloomed feverishly in the mind, along with color and abundant sound. And then, after a while (you lose track of time) it fades. The world, the world you knew possible and which was once all that was real, grows further and further away.

In its place grows imagination…new ritual. Games, distractions, indulgences. You grow a garden in the dark.

Or so that’s what he told me. I’m a confessor, not a prisoner. And he and I are almost done. This is what I think to myself as I watch him today. He and I are almost done.

ii.

The next day I visit, it’s a Monday. Not that this matters to him, or to anyone in the Honeycomb. “Monday” is for people with schoolbooks or time clocks or fee rates or lunch dates. Not for denizens of the colorless dark. Not for the Prisoners.

But it’s a Monday in my world, a world of hot cement, of white skies, of photodegradable potato chip bags. And when I finally make my way to his cell block and my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I see that he is involved in another confrontation with another guard. He is, again, across the threshold of the door. I know that some reading this document may not know what the Honeycomb is all about, and I’d love to explain the particulars of this utterly effective and horrific prison, but there’s no time. I have to take notes on what is happening here, because I fear they will be needed before long.

The man is holding his arm out, as if to keep the guard at bay. Amazingly, the guard is not swatting him with his baton, or firing electricity into him. The faceless and heavily-armed keeper just stands, looming. I don’t imagine he’ll wait much longer. 

The man sounds a bit more insistent, though floating in and out of enchantment as Prisoners tend to do.

“I want to go outside.”

“Yeah? So what?” says the guard. “Get in the cage.”

“But…”

“Get in the cage.” 

“I had flowers. I touched them. I saw…” the man’s voice faded.

The guard’s sneer, even in the dusty half-light, was quite visible. 

“Flowers. You killed the flowers. That’s what you did, you lowlife.”

The man seemed to shrink a little at that.

“I didn’t mean to….I was trying, I thought, I tried to—”

“Who cares what you meant, Prisoner?” The guard thrust the baton into the man’s throat for a quick second and he doubled over, gagging. The guard did not move, only looked down at the man’s contortions without emotion. If anything, his lip curled only harder. “Get in the fucking hole. You don’t deserve to even dream of flowers.”

“But,” the man sputtered into the coal-dust blackness all around as he tried to stand. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m ready. I can do it, I can grow someth—”

The guard swung his baton quicker than a syllable can fly between teeth, and a sharp cracking sounded as it crashed into the man’s face. He staggered back and fluid flowed from his nose and mouth, black in the dimness. His hands reached behind him frantically, and yet careful enough to keep him from falling back into the cell. The man spoke through the torrent. He sounded stronger, despite the lisping, mushy effect of talking through split lips and blood.

“I’m not staying here anymore.”

“Oh?” asked the guard with all the sarcasm he could muster.  ”So you want to be free, Flora Destroyer?” 

It was the highest charge in the land, and the man flinched when he heard it. 

“That’s not true. I’m leaving. I can’t breath here.” The blood was still pouring over his chin, though clots had formed along the edges of its path. ”You can’t keep me here,” the man added defiantly.

The guard did not advance, only put his weapon away, sighing. 

Without a word, he slowly withdrew another weapon. It was the baton he had brandished the other day. The glossy black one with cruel ridges and gemstone electrodes. He held it up. 

“Well, sure. But you know the rules, Prisoner.”

The man stood up fully and walked half a step closer to the guard. 

“Yes, I know the rules,” he said, closing his eyes. “And I am not a Prisoner. I am a Gardener.”

The man smiled in the darkness.

The guard pulled the trigger.

iii.

I wasn’t climbing down the hole at the Honeycomb for another three weeks. A process is initiated when a case is closed. It takes three weeks to be completed.

I was to see a new person today. It was a woman this time. No matter. I see them all, hear from all of them. The stories are only variations of each other, no matter the sex, age, class, or race. These things are washed away if you take the light away long enough, anyway. 

Her voice sounded like all their voices do at the start. Broken. Quiet. Thin. Her thoughts were in the shape of all new admissions. They circled back to one spot, and you could only watch as they each transformed to mimic the shape of the last cramped path.

I found my mind wandering as she began and had to pull myself back into the moment. I couldn’t help thinking about him.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes. I am always listening.” 

“It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

“That is not for me to say.”

“I should be here. I deserve to be here.”

“Perhaps.” 

“It’s because of me the flowers are dead.”

“Yes,” I said, letting her declare her own guilt as is the tradition. The gravity of the silence that followed felt unbearable, today. I found myself adding words I hadn’t expected. “I hear a new crop was planted last week.”

“Good,” she said with feeling. “…as long as I’m nowhere near them.”

This was how it would go. Maybe until she stopped talking at all. That’s how it usually ends.

Usually.

I said nothing more, only listened to her. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m there.