The Light and the Stone
A slit in the door, the sole lonely finger of the outside world, and two men divided by chains.
He sobbed and wailed, tears rolling down his face like beads of sorrow as he held his head in his filthy hands. His world was this cell, a box so removed from reality that it could have been hurtling across the universe.
With an effort, he heaved himself up and steadied himself against the cold stone wall, using his free wrist to wipe his face. He’d been crying for a while. Tears had begun to drip from his chin and down his bare chest, creating streaks like tributaries as they washed away the dirt on their journey to the ground.
His sole respite from the darkness was a small slit high up in the wall—not big enough to look through and far too high to reach. It allowed a single, solitary beam of light to shine across the room. The beam stalked across the cell like a sundial, reaching its zenith halfway across the floor and then fading into nothing as the sun moved. It must have been a full moon, as the light across the floor had a brilliant, silver glow.
He shifted his weight, stuck out a leg, and tried to inch his toes toward the light. He was determined to feel it on his skin, but his shackles made it feel impossibly far away. Ignoring this, he pressed on, stretching further and further, teetering, outstretched toward the beam. He had almost reached it when his foot slipped against some straw, sending him crashing to the ground. His wrist pulled violently against the chain, cutting deeply into his arm.
His wail was loud.
He clambered back up from the icy floor, nursed his bleeding wrist, and smashed away his food bowl in anger. It skittered across the floor like a whippet and smashed against the opposite wall.
“Hey, what the fuck are you doing? That almost hit me, and now I’m covered in that shit they pass off as food,” growled a voice from across the darkness.
He bolted upright, surprised to hear a voice; he thought he had been alone all this time.
“Hello?” he whispered at the void, expecting no reply.
“...And stop your fucking crying. It’s pathetic. Nobody wants to listen to a grown man cry,” the voice replied, the guttural sound of throat clearing punctuating the end. This new voice was gravelly and hoarse, like a well-worn instrument that hadn’t been cared for in years.
He stopped rubbing his wrist, opened his eyes as wide as possible, and peered into the darkness. He could almost make out the faint shape of a person sitting against the opposite wall, but he couldn’t see more than an outline.
“I’ve been trying to get out of this place since forever, and your whining is going to attract attention. Not to mention it’s fucking annoying.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I wasn’t alone. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been here. Who are you?”
The response came like the crack of a whip and just as fast.
“It doesn’t matter who I am, and I don’t give a fuck who you are. Misery will eat you alive if you let it, so you better shut your mouth and stop crying.”
It was like being scolded by a father—stern, paternal, and strict. The voice in the darkness stopped and was replaced by the sound of shifting and scratching.
“What are you doing?” he whispered across the room.
A deep grunt came back without a response. The scratching noise was now accompanied by the occasional sound of stone hitting against stone.
“Hello? Answer me!”
There was a loud sigh and then the voice replied, “I’m hitting the wall. I’ve found a loose stone, and I’m trying to push it out, but I need to chip away the mortar. I think my chains are attached to the outside wall of whatever this cesspit is they’ve put us in...”
“...Stop talking!” he hissed as the sound of footsteps approached the cell.
They both went silent as a golden filigree of light danced under the door from one side to the other. The light wasn’t enough to illuminate the cell, but it was just enough to see the silhouette of his cellmate on the other side. The footsteps stopped outside their cell, an eternity passing as the occupants held their breath, frightened that their plan had been overheard. With a shuffle of feet, the light continued its way down the corridor and disappeared.
They were alone again.
“I want to help, but I can’t get free of this restraint,” he said, jangling his chains as if to demonstrate their existence.
The chains made a horrible sound, like the rattle of a thousand ugly chimes as they clattered and banged together—a reminder of his bondage and his inability to even stand freely. The sound of the chains seemed to stir something in him though, something he’d thought lost, giving him the strength to try and prise them from the wall. With a significant effort, he angled his body weight, braced himself against the wall, and pulled with all he had. He wanted to find some weakness in the metal, some imperfection he could exploit to free himself, but the chains would not relent.
“It is no use. We’re going to die, we might as well be dead already. The rats will eat us!” his voice manic and angry.
His mind swam with anger, frustration, and exhaustion. Fresh tears began to make their way down his face as they matted his beard and dripped to the floor. He huddled into his corner of the cell, sobbing and flicking away tears. For the brief moment that his tears crossed the moonlight, they looked like shooting stars against the dark, bringing a momentary beauty to this pitiful scene.
“How long have you been in here?” he sniffled, half expecting his cellmate to chide him for crying. He was met with nothing but a grunt and more sounds of stone on stone.
He swaddled himself in what rags he had to keep warm and sat in contemplative silence against the corner of the wall. All conversation had stopped. The exertion of struggling against his chains and the loss of water from crying made him tired. He began to close his eyes, the tapping of stone like a metronome from the opposite side of the room, the cold lulling him to sleep and chilling his breath.
He slowly opened his eyes, the crust of sleep heavy on his lids. He was on his side, his arm aloft and shackled at the wrist. He scrabbled at the filthy floor and pushed himself up, steadying himself against the wall and pushing upright.
The cell was eerie, silent, even more silent than it had been before. The sound of silence was deafening, and even the sound of rats was gone. Where was the tapping?
“Hello? Are you there?”
There was no reply. He shuffled to try and peer again into the darkness to find the comforting shape, but his eyes were bleary from sleep and he couldn’t see a thing.
“Answer me, are you still here?” His voice was getting shriller and more desperate.
As his heart pounded, a wave of nausea washed over him at the thought of being alone. Where did he go? Was he taken in his sleep? Is he dead? His mind raced at all the ways he could have disappeared.
After an uncomfortably long time, there came a reply.
“Where do you think I’ve gone? Floated away or something? I think you’d have known if I’d escaped or been taken away, as you can’t be that deaf.”
“I was worried that something had happened to you, that you’d died or something, or they’d taken you. I don’t know.”
“I was resting my eyes, okay? It’s taking a lot to get this stone loose, and I’m starving!”
“Have you managed to get it loose yet?”
“We wouldn’t still be here if I had, but I don’t think I’m far from getting it out.” His voice was immediately accompanied by the rhythmic tapping of stone.
He wanted to feel the walls for himself, scrabbling his hand in the dark across the smooth stones and the mortar between. The wall where he sat had a polish from years of prisoners’ backs wearing down the surface from their sweat and the friction of moving against it. He could feel the mortar in between the stones, running his finger across the edges and feeling its roughness in the dark. Some of the mortar fell off in his hand, brittle and dry like sand that was too far up a beach to be touched by a wave.
The sound of chipping across the room was louder now, insistent, less concerned about the guards and more concerned about breaching his box. He wanted out and he was going to get there. He smiled as he thought of fresh air, living, and being free. He’d be able to go back to his life, even if it was just a homeless life of begging for food. Anything would be better than this cell, its smell that raped your nose and stabbed at your lungs like poison. He shifted his weight to sit up and jangled at his chains, his hand still firmly restrained against the wall.
It dawned on him.
“Wait, how am I going to follow you?” he said worriedly. “I’m chained to the wall, and you are too.”
“Shush, will you? Why do you have to talk so loudly? Someone will hear you!”
He struggled against his chains as panic began to settle in. He could be left alone at any moment whilst his cellmate managed to escape, unable to follow him to freedom. Why was this fair? All he’d done was take some old food thrown from someone’s house—some moldy bread and vegetables that the guards accused him of stealing. He couldn’t even remember when it happened, but he remembered the fury of being imprisoned giving way to the emptiness of being alone, the feeling of isolation that gnawed at your very being.
The sound of scratching and chipping from across the room continued with a sound of labored breathing. His unwilling companion was clearly finding his pace and had got the rhythm right to get out of here, but with every chip the panic rose that he would be left alone. Two nameless people, trapped in this freezing cell, and soon there would be just one of us. His heart rate picked up and he pulled at his chains, trying to tear them from the wall.
“Hey, stop that!” the voice from across the room called out. “You’re going to get us killed!”
He wasn’t listening, pulling ever harder and hitting the wall with his palm, incoherent babble coming out of his mouth as he strained to free himself.
“I won’t be left here to rot; don’t you dare leave me!” His emaciated wrist strained against the metal of his restraint, cutting into his flesh and causing blood to run down his arm. “I’m not being left here. You’ve probably managed to get your cuff off somehow, and I’m not having you get out of here whilst I rot in here, forgotten. Why won’t you help me!?”
His tone had become accusatory and paranoid, his words spitting out of his mouth with anger and contempt. I deserve to be free more than he does, he thought. He wouldn’t be left here by himself in this cell.
There was a loud crunch of stone grinding against stone and a loud thud. Air rushed into the cell, dispelling for a moment the foul stench of their surroundings.
“I’m out of here!” he shouted as the sound of chains rattling filled the cell, him continuing to rip his hand against the cuff as the other man somehow escaped his own.
“DON’T YOU LEAVE ME“ he bellowed, kicking his feet and flailing around, spit flecking from his mouth, wild with anger. “I’m not rotting in here alone, you bastard!“ he screamed with furious spit shooting from his mouth. He strained at his chains and pushed against the wall as if he was trying to drag it to the other side, teeth gnashing and spittle shooting from his mouth as he shouted obscenities and tried to get to the other side of the cell.
With that, the door to the cell flung open and torchlight flooded the room, making him close his eyes as brilliant light blinded him after being in almost complete darkness. In the doorway stood a solitary guard, his torch held aloft as he looked down on him, a pitiful scene of a near-naked man made of nothing but sinew and bone thrashing with anger.
“Quit your yelling. You’re not going anywhere,” he growled.
The torchlight flickered about the room.
“HE’S NOT GETTING OUT IF HE’S GOING TO LEAVE ME BEHIND!“ he screamed, thrashing his leg toward the opposite side of the room as if he was trying to kick at something.
The guard swung his torch to the opposite side, casting light on the side that he couldn’t see. Sat there was a corpse, long since dead but shackled to the wall just the same as he was.
“You think he’s trying to escape, old man?”
The guard laughed and turned around, muttering to himself about madness.
“Yeah, he escaped alright,” the guard snorted to himself and made his way back out of the cell, slamming the door behind him and putting back the bolt.
He was truly alone.