A CLEAN SWEEP

 

An inmate in a SuperMax prison gets an unexpected visitor who alters his destiny

It’s 2 a.m.

    Arlen “Oafman” Oatman is clanging his way down corridor C of the Security Housing Unit (SHU), located in what is spookily called the Administrative Maximum Detention Center in Florence, Colorado. He’s bellowing like a bloated walrus. I pull my blanket over me and wrap it around my head.

 “RISE AND SHINE, BATS!” he brays for probably the hundred thousandth time this year, and clanks that black aluminum telescoping baton that substitutes for his manhood against the steel door of my cell. He drags it across the grate for good measure. When he reaches the end, he orders control center to throw the switch that bathes every cell in the SHU in the closest thing we ever get to sunlight, four hours after official lights out.

     Like the other guards on the row, he’s tasted the unadulterated pleasure of pure power over the powerless, and relishes in jarring us out of any escape into darkness we might welcome, by cutting our dark hours in half. I dream of grabbing that baton and wrapping it around his thick, pimpled neck and squeezing until his frog-like face swells to a bloody red and his eyes bulge. The Oaf gets his jollies watching us squirm under that piece of sandpaper they call a blanket, trying to block out the noise and light he wreaks on us night after unholy night. He still thinks it’s funny after 17 years.

     I’ve been here in the SHU for 23 years now. I spent 13 at Marion, another control unit prison, where penal construction and operation dictate that inmates remain in solitary confinement for 22–23 hours a day. No communal dining or religious services. Two hours of exercise a week. Narrow windows if you get one. Gray concrete and barbed wire is all we see. No clear view of the sky. Ever. A translucent film covers the only skylight. Lights go off at 10, on at 6, but if the guards want to watch, they never go off. Time, space, and reality have a way of surrendering in a place like this, with its 7 by 12 foot cells, poured concrete furniture, and lack of human contact. I eat in my cell. I bathe in my cell. Places like this are the last stop for the dregs of society like me. It’s where they store humans no one wants to think about anymore.

     The doc told me it takes about 6 days in this kind of seclusion for the guards to start getting sadistic and the inmates to begin suffering psychologically. The tremendous isolation, even with a TV, produces significant problems known as SHU Syndrome. He says it’s a clinical diagnosis that has been used as a defense at times. It comes with other hellish symptoms too, most of them obsessive. Hallucinations, paranoia, out-of-body experiences, OCD behavior, and extreme violence are exhibited in many who are held this way. I haven’t seen a single human soul in the last 17 years. I said “human” soul. My captors aren’t human.

     I have a TV in my cell, but any inmate knows not to get sucked into that unholy box if you want to stay sane, so we obsessively divide our time into quadrants– for entertainment, reading, writing, eating, sleeping, hygiene, cleaning, and free time. We are compulsive about our divisions. There are thousands more like me here, in this X-shaped compound that hides so many dirty little secrets, and thousands more in places just like this. Most will get out someday.

     I got here by a series of circumstances that don’t bear describing; I made a brutal mistake, a mixture of youthful passion, a green-eyed temptress called Jealousy, and a delusion of manhood, but I make no excuses. I never dreamed on that moonlight night so long ago that my life would become that of a caged animal.

Tonight, as I sit waiting, I understand it was my destiny.

 ***

      I was steadily losing ground in that winter of 2012. I had begun to lose my mind and I knew it. The hallucinations had begun again, the obsessive/compulsive behavior heightened, the all-encompassing rage, the terrifying nightmares, the crushing loneliness. I prayed for contact of any kind, a lawyer’s phone call, a letter, any way to save my sanity…

     I’d begun to leave my body again, but that was controllable, a skill I’d learned from other inmates back when I was still on the yard, and well-practiced. Early on, we learned to use the out of body experiences to our advantage. You probably think Astral Projection is a joke, but in facilities like this… it’s as common as stale bread… and our liberation. Each night we pinpoint coordinates and escape to freedom, attached safely to our bodies by a sliver of light, the silver cord. We sail the Earth, we traverse the galaxies. We’ve had years to perfect these nightly sojourns.

     I’ve raced owls across the face of the moon, hovered in eaves of local gin mills as pampered party girls and their slack-jawed admirers throw down whiskey and lemon drop martinis, peered from rafters at old lovers consumed in erotic dances with new partners, lingered over my mother (God rest her soul), in her restless and solitary sleep. I’ve visited places left behind and places unexplored, as single nights turned into decades. But at this moment, it was not enough to save me.

     That February, as florists took orders for roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, survival was my only companion, my bedmate, my mistress, my lover, the only thing left to me. I am a warrior and I was battling for my sanity when one day, my destiny came crawling.

     It was just after lunch, perhaps on a Wednesday, when I first spotted her, my face pressed to the grate, eyes trolling the expanse of hallway yearning for a breath of life. She was crouched in the hallway near the wall, legs tucked neatly under her, striving to make herself invisible in a blank landscape that offered no cover. Guards marching the expanse, lost in grisly daydreams missed her by inches. She was like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even in books. A pure white spider, her silvery hair lush and lovely, blending perfectly with the bland concrete. I could barely make out her diminutive form, but my eyes, which were trained on the expanse for any sign of movement, were able to discern that which most would never notice.

     This small snowy creature was magnificent. She was a rare gem and I knew it. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I longed to call out to her, to invite her in. I yearned for her company; I ached to touch her, to feel the beautiful fur on her long slender legs, to look into her eyes, to protect her. I prayed she wouldn’t leave me.

     I formed a plan. I would call her to me with my mind, will her to come. My intent was strong and I began at once to bombard her psychically. I repeatedly broke my routine to step to the grate and make sure she was still there; I coveted her. Somehow, I would make her mine. A day passed, then two. I waited, I willed; three days, and still she stayed.

     On day four, guards in combat dress maneuvered me to a barren duplicate of my own cell for exercise. They shoved, they taunted, I offered no resistance, my plan perfectly in place. Marching back, I prayed they wouldn’t trample her as I paused against that far wall to await the electronic opening of my cell door.

     I gently eased my leg up beside her and willed with all my might, turning giddy as she lifted first one furry leg, then another and another, and stepped aboard. I could hardly contain myself. I tried to control my trembling. I worried she would be discovered as my shackles were removed, but she’d moved up my leg to safety. I felt her feathery softness against my calf.

     Once alone in my cell I gently laid myself down and waited patiently for her to appear. I lay stone still, careful not to crush her. It was unbearable, the waiting. At last, she emerged from the depths of my jump suit and scrambled to the toe of my shoe where I admired her from 6 feet, 2 inches away. She was mine. I christened her “Shila.”

     As the days wore on, we satisfied our mutual curiosity about each other. She meandered over my expanse of cell, studying me. She began to come closer by inches at a time, until one day, her spidery legs again caressed my bare skin again, as she journeyed up my arm, to eventually position herself directly in the middle of my chest. She stared deeply into my eyes with all eight of hers. She had an aura about her that set her apart from common spiders. With my mind, I offered her my ear as a sanctuary and she daintily obliged, snuggling into the curvature. We were at peace with each other. I grew to love her.

     I still went about my daily rituals, parceling off sections of floor and wiping them clean, reading, writing, but now I had a living soul to keep me company. I spoke to her as if she understood, and my mind formulated her answers. She studied my diligence from many vantage points and understood my needs. She began to consume dust and cobs from the ceiling above, an objective my obsessive tendencies could never aspire to. In the evenings, she watched the television from my chest. She seemed content with my company.

     

     I was still engaged in my night flights, but now, I had someone to come back to. Soon, I yearned to take her with me on my voyages. I knew she felt me go. She seemed to sense the rush of energy escaping my body, her body quivering as I took flight.

     One night I launched myself out of body, then hesitated there, hovering above my still form, inviting her with my thoughts to join me. It was as if she’d been waiting for this moment. At once, a glistening web shot forth and twined around the silvery cord dangling beneath me. I watched with delight as she scrambled up the expanse, twisting her net around my energetic body and tying herself down. I launched us into space! We’d left the earth behind, sailing free across the universe when I suddenly began to feel her pull at me. Relinquishing my lead, I let her take me.

     Directly above a brackish planet this side of Andromeda, she changed our course, then gently set us down. I’d never actually landed before. I seemed to still have a human form, but it was pure energy. I took a couple of steps forward and tripped a silken string on the planet’s surface. An enormous vibration ensued and at once, from an expanse of holes that covered the planet as far as I could see, came trillions upon trillions of spiders, white, brilliant… mandibles gnashing as they converged on us. I was instantly aware of a sense of urgency which permeated the air and my terror knew no bounds.

     Shila rose fully up and her legs began to agitate, the others followed suit. A high-pitched whine filled the air, and my body began to hum like a tuning fork that’s been struck. In that moment, these being seemed to converge their energy and I felt them pulling me in. They revealed themselves to me in all their splendor; They enfolded me, petted me, sang their songs to me, wrapped me in silk, made love to me; they told me their story.

Known throughout the galaxies as “The Sweepers,” they’d come to this tainted star to eliminate darkness by devouring its negative forces before the planet imploded and died. The planet Vreiiiil, spoiled by corrupt inhabitants, was a greedy, careless, apathetic, brutal, inhumane collection of souls. Those who dwelt there and willfully caused harm in one way or another must be converted, for the planet to survive. For eons, the Sweepers had toiled, and one by one, the fetid creatures were swept clean, then left to begin their transformation.

     As the Sweepers conveyed their message to me, a sluggish mole-like creature clawed its way to the surface. A stank odor filled the air.  With no hesitation, Shila leapt into an orifice located in an area which may have been its head. I watched transfixed as the head, then the body, began to deflate like a balloon, until only a lifeless shell remained.
     Starting with the brain, she had consumed the living tissue from the inside out, leaving the husk of the creature, and then her regurgitated meal behind to compost the planet. After witnessing how a “sweep” was carried out, I now understood the end result of the mole creature’s transformation. Planet sustenance.  The Sweepers’ job here was almost done. Left to its own devices, the planet would heal over time.

     They were preparing for a new assignment. The elders would die, the young were ripening. Soon they would launch off the star’s surface toward a monumental cleansing of the next rotting planet.

Mine.

     Once there, they would need protection until they were ready to sweep. I was to be their captain. The Wayshower. My assignment:  To search the planet earth far and wide with my beloved, recognizing the faces of evil, seeking out those they would oppress and those who would have the courage to stand against them, and show Shila where they could be found.

     “Would I take up their cause?”  They asked? “Would I lead the charge?”

I’d seen evil incarnate. I knew its face line by line. Crease by crease. My skin crawled with the vision.  I nodded my assent.  My mind collapsed into the magnitude of the mission.  Before my thoughts could over-ride my assent, Shila secured our silken cord and launched us light years toward home.

     I landed upside down in my body and had to wriggle myself right, just as the lights blazed on in cellblock C. My lovely was curled around the ring finger of my left hand like a diamond.

    

After that, our midnight sojourns took on the immediacy of a mission. We journeyed to distant countries, jungles, hidey-holes, and caves. To governments, corporations, apartment buildings, and universities. Wherever evil lurked and mankind was in bondage. We sought out the tortured and wounded in houses, factories, schools, and prison cells, for they know the faces of evil. Those so pure or so broken, they see what others miss. They yearn for love. They will be the nurturers. All have joined our company. We have prepared the way.

     The landing has already begun. As I sit waiting, magnitudes of Sweepers have dropped to this home we call Earth on fine webs that stretch for light years. They have crept undetected into the arms of my waiting armies where they nest in safety until the signal is given.

     Oafman is trudging his way to my cell door. He commands me to sit straight as he readies the shackles for my ankles. I watch with quiet humor as Shila tap dances across his helmet, and steps off the face guard into his left nostril. He swats at her, but he’s slow. She is already halfway to his brain. I grin as the command bursts from my mind and enters the quantum field,  

 “LET’S CLEAN HOUSE, BABY!”

Oafman drops to his knees as he deflates. His helmet rolls to my feet where it stops, rocking like an over-sized child’s toy from my youth. “Wardens wobble, but they don’t fall down,” I chuckle to myself, giddily mocking the toy’s antiquated advertising slogan.

     The cleansing has begun. Shila strokes my temple with a furry pedipalp. Our destiny stretches out before us like a river of light.



~Taree Belardes
Jan. 25,2009

NycMidnight Short Story Comp 2009

Genre; Sci Fi
Subject; House Cleaning
2500words
1 week