Prometheus

A long time ago, before I was the enigma you see before you, I used to work on that holy house on the hill. Yes, the house of demigods, the home of the world-splitter, the home of every human’s master—Division’s Castle. I was a simple guard at their jailhouse, getting simple jailhouse-guard pay, and who wants to live like that? I wanted better. So I did little things here or there to earn extra. I brought extra food for prisoners, or food in general to the prisoners who could live without it but still loved the taste of meat. One day, Bason, a massive man with fur around the outside of his face that reminded me of a monkey, told me that his clique wanted him to break out and that if I could get him out, they would give me a hundred thousand drops.

Of course, I accepted.

Of course, I got caught.

Life imprisonment was my sentence. The “trial,” and I hope you can taste the sarcasm when I use that word, only took about fifteen minutes. Nevertheless, I was sentenced. However, a man like me must always have the upper hand.

Escorting me through those large, empty brick halls would be another jailhouse guard. As soon as I started my dastardly deeds of bringing contraband in, I made sure every single guard felt indebted to me. Whether that was including them in my schemes, tossing them some extra cash for the holidays, or even getting them to fall in love with me. The girl who escorted me and held the keys to my handcuffs was the latter. Raleigh. Such a pretty name.

Raleigh had tears on her pale, chubby cheeks, and I had a smile carved on my heart because I knew I would escape. I knew Raleigh adored me from the moment I saw her. The way her gray eyes struggled to keep eye contact and she would just break into a smile if we talked for longer than a couple of seconds. I had a wife and kids, so of course I told her that I would leave them for her soon.

I’m sure she dreamed of that future. After a walk that would have been silent except for her restrained whimpers, we arrived. She opened that cell. My new home and grave, a small five-by-seven room covered in hay. In the center was a hungry-looking hole fit for a human body to sleep in and eventually die in. The stench from the last body still made its presence known.

I matched Raleigh’s big, pleading expression with my own. She looked to her right toward the stairs leading up. Footsteps signaled someone was coming near us.

“Just hit me. Make it look like an accident,” she said, full of passion.

Always aiming to please, I made sure to leave a bruise as I knocked her to the cold floor. The other prisoners cheered. I ran downstairs.

Technically, no back door existed to sneak out of, but I knew something would be deep down there that could aid in my escape. Unlike in every other fairy-tale prison, the Heirs didn’t keep their biggest and baddest prisoners in the lowest, darkest part of the castle, nor did they keep their weak political prisoners whose spirits they wanted to break down there. It was a third option I didn’t quite understand yet. I heard that third option, though. Only during the late-night shift, when I was doing my rounds, and only if I was alone. It was a voice.

Grand speakers were installed inside the wall to drown out the voice. Speakers bigger than I am. Probably, the size of three men stacked on top of one another. The speakers played white noise, a long, monotonous humming that filled the ears and shook the body, a sound that fondled the brain. I clenched and unclenched my jaw to fight against the all-consuming noise.

I preferred the sound of white noise over the voice.

As a guard, I was often commanded to go as far as possible until I heard that voice. I guess to make sure it was still there. Once I heard that voice, I had orders to run back up to the top of the steps.

This time, I would not rush back. I would find the voice that the Heirs buried at the bottom of their basement, and I would get that thing, by deception or demand, to help me escape. I believed if the Heirs had hid it, it had to be powerful.

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As I ran down the steps, I knew what it would say, and for some reason, the anticipation of those words scared me. My throat was dry, and my heart thumped in ominous expectancy.

It always said the same thing in the same tone and never begged for food, though no one ever fed it. It had other wants.

“Can someone please come to storytime?” it pleaded.

I stopped. I didn’t believe it myself, but I stopped. The jailers’ footsteps chased after me from above. If I stayed on that step, they would grab me and bring me back to that horrible cell. Yet I stayed. I found myself taking big, gasping breaths, and it must have found me the same way.

“Can you please come to storytime?” Its odd, desperate, masculine voice was predatory, like a grand uncle who couldn’t be trusted around children.

I stood on the step, staring at the dark, twisting corner, waiting for it to bring me farther down. I didn’t know how far I would have to go on those rough gray stone steps that were half-painted.

Did the voice scare the painters so much they couldn’t even complete a job for someone who was surely a dream client in the Heirs?

I could not bring myself to run forward, but I walked.

“Are you coming to storytime?” The voice, purposely flat, dripped with hunger.

I opened my mouth to speak, and my throat punished me—dry and burning. I massaged my throat for some comfort and tried to form some spit to relieve the pain.

“Please. Come. Please. Come. Please come,” it said with a hypnotic bullying pull.

I obeyed. Maybe I walked for hours. Eventually, I stopped hearing footsteps from above. My ex-colleagues in the jailhouse could go no further. Yet I heard more voices. A choir, perfectly in tune.

“Please. Come. Please. Come. Please come.”

Finally, I arrived at the bottom of the steps. I expected a cage like the one I was supposed to be in. Instead, a large wooden door stood before me, and to the left, a torch with an impossibly bright fire, impossibly lit. Surely, any flame down there would have gone out years ago.

I never should have picked it up. A large, solid feeling in my stomach shook and screamed at me not to. It’s that feeling, that instinct we all get that danger is nearby, but we ignore it so often, it ends up being nothing.

Despite the feeling, I reached for the flame that threatened to blind me because I wanted to escape. I refused to sit in prison. It was lighter than I thought.

The voice was silent. The whole tower was silent. My imagination roamed in hell, anticipating why the voice didn’t speak anymore. I imagined it foaming at the mouth with excitement, careful not to speak because it knew I could feel its debased hope with every word it said.

This creature, this monster who owned the voice, would be massive. I knew that. I imagined a gray thing of a man hugging himself with glee.

The door creaked open without any effort or movement on my part. Hot air molested my skin as it stampeded through the door and up the steps. It left only darkness in that room. I feared that the darkness would swallow my torch.

There was nowhere to go but inside. My eyes were peeled, looking for that grabby ancient man or men. My hands clutched the rough wood as I prepared to use the torch as a weapon. The torch—a sinister thing—baited me. The flame weakened, shrinking, shrinking, the farther I went inside the… was it a cell? I couldn’t tell. I knew darkness and wet heat surrounded me. Dark, dark, and darker.

The entry I came through looked like a small square that I could never reach. The door slammed shut with a body-shaking boom. The flame whooshed, alive again, leaping into the air, lighting the whole room like I had a star in my hand.

The flame crackled, danced, and worst of all, illuminated the room to torture me. I saw it, the owner of the voice. I was in a cell much larger than what I expected, the size of a stadium, with a complete floor instead of a hole for a grave. Coming out of the walls, floors, and roof, like a horrible infection—no, more like fungi—were mouths. They had no order and were surely a mutation of some kind because they were so flawed.

The white teeth of one mouth bit into the pink lips of another. One mouth could never close or open because another smaller, mutated mouth spoke inside it. They clung together like some dripping, sticky web, and they spoke in perfect unison.

“You’ve come to storytime?” they asked.

At the door, as embarrassing as it was, I let out a soft moan, like a child in need of comfort. I wished then, and maybe I still wish, I had stayed in the cell where they put me. But the fire in my hand, that great traitor, gave me some unnecessary confidence, and I was bold enough to speak.

“I want to leave. Can you help me? I can provide food.”

“No food. No drink. No love. Please. Please. Just your ears are all we need.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, and I waved the flame back and forth, showing its reach and might.

“No, you misunderstand. Just to listen. Listen, then you’ll leave.”

“Listen to what?”

“The story of why. The story you all ask yourselves since the world changed.” His voice dropped to an eerie whisper and whistled out the words.

He unleashed a bone-chilling wind that made me shiver but did not hurt the flame. The flame brought no warmth.

“I want to tell you why God sent the Orange Rain.”

“O-Okay.”

“Thank you,” the voice said.

The flame disappeared, and darkness kissed every inch of the room.