What follows is an account of true events as related to me by a Correctional Officer serving honorably for the last twenty years. He's currently a Captain, having worked his entire career in Georgia State Prison.

_______

"Robert Adam Lane the Third. You gave your soul to Him on May 7th, 1989, and it was a lie. A lie that you told the whole time you held your breath in that brownwater river. A lie you smiled out at that those holyrollers on the bank. Lies are mine, Lies are mine. Mine." The last "mine" trailed off into a phlegmy wheeze.

These words were clearly audible, despite the man lying face down and away from the windowed door to the isolation cell. The heavy steel meal-flap was standing open to facilitate communication and accommodate feeding times, but usually the cell's hard surfaces made an echo that distorted every sentence into chaos. This man's words, though, were not only audible, but guttural, far deeper than the inmate's normal speaking tones.

"I am His. I am His," Robert whispered, his voice tight and his chest light from raw fear.

There was no way for the inmate to have known his full name, and there was no way for him to have known that dark and shameful secret that Robert had never spoken aloud.

_______

He was just a kid when he was baptized. He didn't really understand the significance or the need until he and his wife had their first son. Introspection accompanied late night feedings and changes; the need for something greater and a higher purpose drove him to accept the religion he'd long ago been a part of, but had never really had be a part of him.

He had taken the job in the county's number two industry. First was farming, chiefly cattle. Second was the State Prison.

He had been on the job for three years when he encountered Simmons, David R., Number 200400097. Simmons had transferred in from another facility, and he was on year two of a six year sentence out of Atlanta. He had been in medical isolation for most of his incarceration, and he was now in disciplinary segregation for his own safety and the safety of others. Medically speaking, physically, there was nothing wrong with him. Psychologically, he had several diagnoses that required a small buffet of medications morning and night.

Robert's encounters with Simmons had been completely routine. Meals were delivered, medications were administered, the head count was conducted. No conversations ever occurred outside of "Good morning, please, and thank you."

However, every day, each and every single day that Robert stood shift in the isolation unit, Simmons would "act out" between 2 and 2:15 pm. These episodes mostly consisted of shouting, dancing, stripping, and speaking in tongues or singing. No seizures or convulsions, no physically damaging behavior ever presented itself and necessitated that restraints be used. One could practically set their watch by when these episodes would come to pass, which was in itself odd...because inmates in isolation had absolutely no way to tell time.

To make matters even more interesting, after a few weeks, Robert's supervisor claimed that the episodes only went down when Robert and one other officer were in the building.

There was no exterior window nor any way for Simmons to have heard or seen when Robert was working a duty rotation in Isolation, until Robert himself came to the door.

Some days, Robert never went into the cell blocks, instead, he worked solely in the control room...and still, the episodes presented themselves at around 2pm.

____________

Robert never told anyone at work about what Simmons said. He did his job, day in and day out, and he did his best to pretend that nothing had happened.

He always tried to avoid being in the cell blocks around 2pm.

For several weeks, this worked, until one day, time got away from him, and he found himself doing a head count...at two fifteen.

When Robert came to the window, his heart stopped.

Standing stock-still with his nose inches away from the reinforced glass, Simmons was completely rigid, absolutely, perfectly tense, and on the balls of his feet. Every muscle in his naked, wiry frame was taut, as though his whole body was experiencing a cramp. His eyes were saucers, opened as wide as they would possibly go, and they constantly rolled. Around, around, back until only the whites would show, and then back down, and around and around.

When Robert's eyes met his, Simmons stopped his eyerolls. Silence filled the cell and the hallway.

Laughter, slow and low, greeted Robert, and then that same guttural voice that had haunted Robert for weeks, spoke.

"Adam Lane the Third. Would you like to see what we do to this man when no one watches? Let us show you."

With that, Simmons head-butted the reinforced glass window. His forehead hit with such force that the steel door shook in its frame, and Robert was amazed that the glass didn't spiderweb. Twice, he hit the window, and before Robert could call for support to get Simmons restrained, a fourth and fifth impact sounded on the steel edge of the windowframe, and as suddenly as the assault began, it ended.

Simmons regained his tensed pose on the balls of his feet. His eyes, still wide as saucers, met Robert's. Blood slowly poured from large gashes above the inmate's eyebrows, covering his face in a red mask. There was absolutely no expression, no indication of pain, anger, or distress.

Perfectly impassive, Simmons stared.

Robert broke eye contact and walked on.

A short time later when medics arrived to clean him up, he had curled up and was asleep on his cot, and at final meal-call of the day, he said "Thank you" to Robert in his normal speaking voice as though nothing had happened.

Robert could barely hide the shake in his hands as he handed over the tray of food.

_________

Robert had grown up in the Pentacostal church. His grandmother, 93, still went every Sunday and Wednesday, and twice a month she attended Sunday School.

Robert was driving her to a Wednesday evening service when he told her about Simmons.

Her hand, covered in parchment-thin skin and decorated with liverspots and bruises, gripped his on the steering wheel. He drove with his left as she, with surprising strength, took his right hand in both of hers.

"Don't let him in, son. Don't you let him. He knows when those b'long to Jesus come 'round. He smells it. He hates it. You pray on it, yhear? You pray to Lordjesus, I'll pray with you. You pray with me today and you lookit that man in the eye the next time he acts the fool. You lookit'm and you tell'm to give you his name by the will of the Lord. He will. You ain't gonna unnahstand him, son, but he will. He'll do it if you're right with th'Lord. Get right, boy, and stay right. And you get clear. You stay away from that'un."

His grandmother was telling the truth.

____________

Weeks went by, and Robert heard nothing unusual out of inmate 200400097. Just when he was beginning to think that the whole thing was a strange game, something happened.

Simmons had maintained his routine of "showing out" at around 2pm daily. By coincidence, and not design, Robert had not found himself on the floor at these episodes. Ever since the day he'd rammed his head into the doorframe, Simmons had been nonviolent, only whispering, yelling, or singing to himself during his regular shows.

It was mid-song that Robert entered line of sight for Simmons. Abruptly, the singing stopped, and Simmons faced the door.

"I don't like it when you're here, Lane."

This came out as all one word, a husky whisper, but still that deep tone that was so unlike every other time the prisoner spoke. "Lane" became "laaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyynnnnnnnnnnn" in the latest attempt to rattle the officer.

Angry, Robert faced the inmate. "Hey. By Jesus, tell me your Name. Who are you? By Christ, what is your NAME?" Robert shouted the last word, and the echoes filled the concrete hallway.

Simmons recoiled as though struck. He looked to be in physical pain, but Robert heard him speak. The jeering, cheerful face was pinched, and a word came from his lips in a rasp. Robert heard it clearly, but he couldn't understand it. It sounded foreign, it sounded alien.

It sounded Other.

"I have heard your Name. Never. Speak. To. Me. Again."

With that, the inmate curled up into a ball on his bed.

That was the last time that David R. Simmons ever spoke to Robert A. Lane, III.

___________

Robert Lane's hand shook as he snubbed out his last Marlboro Red. A collection of them sat bent, burned and broken in the silver ashtray between us. We both leaned our elbows on the pinewood picnic table where we'd shared a meal and a story.

He thumbed through the pages of the book by Malachi Martin I'd been reading before he sat down to eat with me today. Cover fluttering in the wind, "Hostage to the Devil" had gained its own seat at our table as he put it down next to the remains of my chicken salad sandwich.

"I don't need to read about this in a book or see it in a movie, man. I've seen it in real life. What scares me most, though, is that it has seen me."

And if in the time that's gone

I forget you and move on

Worry not, my faithless lover

You still live in both line and song

I hear you in the lyrics

I see you in the shows

I'd forgo all media

But you know how that goes

Every so often I cry

And feel the loss anew

There was such a time

When I saw only you

My heart is bound with wire

And walls protect it thus

But I have faith that it will heal

From the memories of us

“Roses are red.”

(That’s what the rhyme said,

or rather, it writ

with poetic wit.)

“Violets are blue.”

(Would you pick that too

if yours was the choice

first giving this voice?)

“Sugar is sweet.”

(This never would meet

U.S.D.A. rules,

for label-craved fools.)

“And so are you.”

(A flourish so true

that angelic glee

would surely agree.)

Take each first line

from stanzas assigned

to end with quatrain

of loving refrain.

Or

Think up your own

with lyric home-grown;

a customized slant

like following rant?

Roses are red

and yellow and pink.

If you don't bring flowers

I'll think that you stink.

Violets are blue

or purple sometimes.

If you write me poems

then I prefer rhymes.

Sugar is sweet,

which I quite enjoy,

so candy is dandy

when making your ploy.

“And so are you”

fits oddly, at best,

for opening line

of poetry quest.

Many’s the time

these lines have been used.

Hope that my playing’s

not left them abused.

I’m having fun

to add to the queue

of “Roses are red”

and “Violets are blue”

Lilly sighed heavily and threw the flowers to the ground.

Her plans hadn’t gone exactly the way she intended. The wolf had been the easy part. The spell she had gotten from the old woman in the village had worked exactly as promised. She had stood around in the woods with a basket of raw meat for a few hours before the smell had attracted the large beast. Within minutes he had been hers to control.

They had gone over the plan for three days before they began. She had set off to her Granny’s house with a basket of cookies, and met the wolf on the trail, just like they rehearsed. A single word sent him off to Granny’s cottage. He was supposed to eat her, and Lilly would have been able to take possession of the cottage—the insurance money would have made her comfortable for the rest of her life.

What she hadn’t counted on was Granny. How was she supposed to know that the horny old woman was a cradle-robber and had seduced the woodcutter? No one had told her that he was shacking up with her grandmother!

The wolf had barely escaped alive, and Lilly, who hadn’t even had time to take off her red cloak, had been forced to leave the cookies behind for the two who were now sharing the bed that should, by all rights, have been hers.

The very thought made Lilly shudder.

She sighed and turned to the wolf. “So, tell me more about the three pigs who are building those cute little houses with the great view…”

(c) 2017 - dustygrein

If I could carve up these words

into something close to

beauty

or

truth

I would shape them into nocturnal arrows

send them flying east

past Ursas of varying pitch,

through mazes of simple stars,

whose only purpose was wishing

instead of advising shepherds or

wood wanderers or

wayward cowboys,

All looking for guidance

from a careless Venus

rather than an orb of incandescence.

Underestimated in strength

her wavelengths

are l o n g e r

less visible to uncomplicated eyes

they are heat

they are combustion

and radiation

the fire of 110 suns.

a pillar of the sky

That these lines could

resonate across limitless space

strike deep with truth

remind you of your brilliance;

that you are not just a star out of place,

low on a foreign horizon,

borderline between stability and variability,

but a tempest of fire

fusing elements into substance

moving, expanding,

preparing to slough off a common shell

to unveil your true brilliance.

"Write you lazy ass."

"I don't wanna."

"Falsehood. You do wish to."

"Fine, but I don't feel like it."

"Also untrue."

"Not so, I am not feeling it. Plus this video game is fun. And there is some stuff on Youtube I need to watch."

"You don't NEED to watch it."

"I kinda feel like I do. At least they aren't cat videos."

"Why don't you finish that story you started?"

"I lost my flow. It isn't coming to me anymore. Plus it sucked."

"I liked it."

"You would, ego much?"

"What about your book? You need to finish that rewrite."

"That sucked as well. Too much passive voice. I can't figure out how not to write like that."

"Just restructure your sentences."

"Oh! I didn't realize it was that simple."

"Don't start."

"Bugger off."

"You need to write you lazy ass."

"I know."

There's the kind of inward seeking

That is reflective navel gazing

Straining the bounds

Of getting up and over

You find yourself

Doing the rounds

Months later

Trying to uncurl

As you bring your eyes forward

Letting your body unfurl

Stretching muscles you'd

Long since retired

Do feminine wiles expire?

Coy can be learned

When one has incentive

After being burned enough times

Don't flatter my quirks

And feed me lies

That no longer works

In spreading my...

Sigh

Do I even have to say it?

Savor my levity

Don't waste my time

This girl's big on brevity

As there's continued uncurling

Soul tired, but still unfurling

And I, sorely needing to breathe

Get up and brave the air once more

Since the world moved on, men sometimes found themselves needing to be moved.

One such man moved no more.

What passed as whiskey slid from the dirty glass and down the throat of the saloon's newest patron. He placed his still-warm revolver on the scarred wood of the table and he grimaced at the blank expressions looking back at him. Relaxing in his chair, he stared at his audience.

A few lanterns hung from hooks above the tables, and the firelight from the hearth cast what should have been a warm glow across the room. The smells of a spicy stew, the sour scent of homebrew, and the coppery crimson odor of violence all mixed to create an altogether unwelcoming atmosphere.

His gaze swept across every man and woman in the bar, and each pair of eyes turned away from his own. One girl even made the sign of the cross, and he could hear the whispered prayer to the Manjesus.

Silence, except for the crackle of logs from across the saloon, was the only other sound.

He spoke softly.

“I’ve done what I came here to do. This man did what he came here to do.”

With that, he kicked the corpse on the floor.

“The killing is done, and you’re better for it."

The air was still.

"I’ll soon be leaving.”

A lone voice, barely more than a whisper, responded: “Thankee-sai.”

Stony faces and sad eyes turned away from the Gunslinger, and he poured himself another drink.

His hand almost didn’t shake when he reloaded his Big Iron, but no one seemed to notice.

He thought it would get easier, but the weight of every soul he sent on still threatened to crush him down more firmly to this earth, even as it spun beneath him.

It was an odd thing, that.

Even as he felt pressed, even as he felt held down by each drop of blood he shed, he knew that the world was moving on, but he wasn’t.

He was being held in place, frozen in a time the world had left behind.

The Gunslinger left a silver coin on the table when he finished the bottle.

Calmly, he walked out into the night, continuing pursuit of the man in black.

Sluice Warrington was growing more and more annoyed with Rez, especially the man's side-street studio with its clitter clatter of canvases and layers upon layers of dust and paint-pocked floors as mindless as a Jackson Pollock. But worse, he hated how the man's oil canvases would sell for upwards of five grand; how entropy spawned celebrity. It seemed the more Rez became a mess of a human being, the more potent the paintings he pushed into galleries and living rooms and furniture stores and government buildings, while Sluice kept a tidy space—white and rounded as an Apple Store, clean and clinical as a nurse's ass—debarring his passion only on canvas, releasing himself like a frothing inmate given knife and vein—and made nothing. Not a quarter on skulls fading into moons, not a dime on robed figures biting into babies, not a nickel on statues wearing human skin, not a penny on nude women exhaling trails of beetles down their necks. But no one wanted truth anymore. No one wanted darkness. They wanted lazy pleasures that took a heartbeat to decipher. Rez's slurred landscapes, his blotted horses, the slop he called wildflowers and slabs of meat he called people, that sold.

But no longer! thought Sluice as he nailed up a shelf in his studio. Onto this shelf, Sluice piled the most obscure books he could find—travelogues of strange seas, manuscripts by madmen, maps, codices, scrolls, books of lost alphabets, ideas, and animals, illustrated stories about historical monsters, portents, prophecies, addendums to the Bible and Koran, alchemic recipes, pamphlets from an English secret society called the White Cloak, the lost diaries of Turriciano, Alan Moore's Providence (it was a good read), and heaps and heaps of spellbooks—any Sluice could find—from scratched out equations on toilet rolls to black blood volumes with poison green titles to crackling leather barely protecting crinkling vellum slips. It was in this search that he finally found what he was looking for: an edge.

The time was opportune, too, for Rez had reached a new tier of nuisance. The Bed Springs Fine Arts Museum was exhibiting a collection entitled: “Rez, Resurrected,” featuring his series of graveyards that looked like gray teeth on green lips. During the opening ceremony, Rez had attributed little depth to his works, describing them as: “Pretty, aren’t they?” and focusing instead on process. This was the worst of it, that someone with such talent would be an idiot. Only Sluice recognized “Rez, Resurrected” for having all the subtly of ape excrement.

But finally, inspiration. In a manuscript made from animal skin—the pages scrubbed so thinly they were translucent—Sluice found a text black as burns and slashing wildly as knife strokes. The manuscript's language had been lost in the loams of Persia, but he could read it legibly, although this induced migraines. Into these petrified layers of Sign and Sorcery, he peered. Most of it was murky as a cauldron, but here and there surfaced insights into the nature of magic, and the entire work seemed to promise to end the reader's sterility and that half-abominated world of near-but-never fame. Instead, the reader would be elevated to Subcreator, to really shape a Work from the materia, to make art that lives and pumps. Every artist before had been a neanderthal, grunting through the rubbish of language, smearing shadow people and spears on ill-lit caves.

So Sluice read and read, and read all over again. His day job at an IT firm assisted his mediation; the dull, tedious investigation of a computer’s interior workings and those codes which can bring configured metal to life helped him understand how script might Signify; how language could lunge from petty black symbols into systems of reality. He read through swollen eyes and a thunderous cavern of bone and finally he was ready and went to his wife and said: “It’s time we had a child.”


He did it. There were certain preparations. The candles were bloodmeal; the paste between the mattresses a viscosity of crushed raven, frog bile, and peaseblossom. He drew sigils in notebooks which he carefully placed about the room—the diagrams’ energies not deterred by the roofs of their binding. The Endless Words were uttered under his breath, and in the throes of passion, when the muttering would have discouraged the mood, he thought the Endless Words articulately, repetitively. The process gave him headaches, prolonging the creative process and letting him dive deeper and deeper into her folds. When he was done, he laid lustily in perfumed sheets as she sat on her back, legs in the air.

The early days of her pregnancy were normal. He read the book often. It stayed, this manuscript, by the bed, and he consulted the text as if it were a child-rearing guide. The words were less legible now, revealing only glimpses of truth which devolved into blaring, world-tearing headaches. Sometimes he felt the thinness in the air, or the quiet sound of movement, or a gonging noise like the heartbeat of some alien pressing its chest against his ears. But the reading wasn’t as helpful anymore. The process had been completed: the canvas had been her, the paint the black text, the brush his tongue slapping against teeth. The Great Work, hidden beneath her bump, needed to ferment like alcohol.

His wife was always hungry—she would eat loaves of bread in the check-out aisle and could never keep a stocked fridge. She also felt impressions of the art within her. She complained of dreams that there was a parasite in her belly—sometimes it appeared like a squid thing with the face of a spider, or a plated beetle coated in slimy horns, or a bundle of worms whose heads ended in an array of needle-roots piercing the womb lining. Did all pregnant women feel this way? Feel slowly eaten alive from within? Her stomach swelled larger and larger but her legs, butt, neck, etc., all remained thin. The baby was gorging itself on her—sipping her nutrients through the straw in its belly. Sometimes it pressed against the womb, and the impression pushing out of her skin wasn’t a foot, but something like a sliding eel. But Sluice didn’t want an ultrasound. “We can’t afford it,” he said. “You lost your healthcare and most of our income is going toward student loans and I’m afraid in three months we’ll be out on the streets or moving in with your parents.” But Sluice said this with a gleeful intensity and his eyes didn’t match the sour news. Instead, the narrow bands of blue around his engorged pupils glittered in anticipation and she thought—he’s excited about the baby.

But she was worried about Sluice and the darkness of his appetite. Sluice avoided his friends, especially Rez. His nights were spent at home, dozing, or reading the crumbles of paper he called “the Manuscript.” There was a smugness there despite the black bags bordering his eyes and the strained, rashy complexion of his skin. And a patience, too, which exceeded all compassion and bordered on the stoicism of a scientist cultivating a petri dish. They did not have sex—he didn’t feel comfortable pressing against the bulge too harshly.

Sluice kept reading, and the book kept revealing new layers of text until he thought he must be at the organs of the thing, or digging against the bones. The further he pressed his face into the Manuscript, the more Signs he uncovered, until he realized this book was an autopsy of sorts—an unraveling of the corpse of the cosmos.

The day came when he was dreaming about ruins that a text buzzed on his phone: [Hurry. Now. Having contractions.] Sluice rushed out his cubicle past confused glances, his phone pressed to his ear. “Sluice,” she moaned over the phone while he stood in the elevator. “This doesn’t feel right.” “There’s blood, Sluice,” she said as he pulled his car from the lot. “And—And something else.” The exit by the toll booth was accompanied by a series of moans, almost in pleasure. By the freeway they’d curdled into fulsome screams.

When Sluice pulled up to his driveway, the house was like an egg cracked open and poured into a pan. The wall to the living room had shattered into tufts of concrete and insulation foam and the veins of electrical wires. Coating it all were smears of what could have been jelly, only they stank of umbilical fluids and maggots. Sluice examined a series of craters on the driveway and, with the satisfaction of an artist who, masterpiece complete, must put away the tools, went inside to put away his wife.

"I don't chase."

The threat was implied as a statement of fact. She didn't need to see a weapon or hear specifics to know exactly what he meant.

"This is the second time I've spotted you on my property. I know you've been here more than that; I only installed the cameras after you made off with some expensive items I had out in my shed."

She hung her head, not knowing what to say.

"If I call now, it'll take at least thirty minutes for deputies to get here."

"Please, don't! I'm sorry!  I don't want to go to jail!" The tears began, and her remorse was limited to the act of being caught, not the act of stealing.

But he couldn't know that.

Right?

"Oh, good. Waterworks. There's nothing better than crocodile tears. I love those." A chair scraped across hardwood, and he flipped it around, sitting across from her. He leaned across the backrest, studying her as the two of them sat in his kitchen.

Impassively, he watched her cry, propping his head on the palm of one hand.

He waited, and eventually, she realized the tears weren't working.

"Why didn't you run, when I surprised you?"

"I was afraid."

"You were afraid? So you just followed my command to head inside?"

"I mean, I didn't know if you had a gun, or something."

He just smiled at her in response.

"I never threatened you," his demeanor was completely relaxed, utterly in control. His chin was still propped, elbow resting on the midcentury vinyl-and-chrome chair.

Wiping her face clean, she cocked her head at him and scoffed. "Whatever."

"Really? 'Whatever'? How old are you, girl?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Bullshit. Maybe twenty-one."

She rolled her eyes.

"There it is again. Disrespect. Is it a generational thing?"

"It's a what-the-fuck-is-this thing." She cocked her head, giving him her best street-smart attitude.

"This is me catching a burglar. A known thief. You've hit me twice that I have proof, and at least once more that I don't."

She laughed, "So sue me."

His slap was a wake-up call; her ears were left ringing, and her gasp was more from shock than pain.

He resumed his relaxed posture, chin resting on palm.  "The next one knocks you out of that chair, right on your ass."

She sat in stunned silence, touching the tender red mark high on the side of her face. Her ear was actually flushed and burning where his fingers caught it.

This time, real tears threatened to crawl from the corners of her eyes. She whispered, "I'm sorry," and meant it.

"I'm not calling the sheriff's office."

Ice lanced up her spine, and her whole body tingled with the first touches of true fear.

He continued, "I moved way out here in the country to get away from people like you. Hell, to get away from people in general, but especially thieves. I've lived here, closest neighbor three miles off, for twelve years. Nobody bothers me. I don't bother anybody. As far as the eye can see, this is my land. My forest. My fields. My orchards."  He went on. "A year ago, you came here. Power tools went missing. Two months later, I caught you on camera stealing an ATV, that time you brought help. A scraggly looking little guy." He raised an eyebrow at her, like he was waiting for commentary.

She chimed in, "Casey. He was my boyfriend, until he took off six months ago. Bastard hasn't been back home or called me. I figure he ran off with Lisa; she left with him, I think. Fuck him. Fuck her, too."

He grinned.  "He came back here again without you."

The dots slowly connected, and that icy lance spread across her again, this time leaving her feeling nauseated and causing her to actually shiver.

"What did you do?"

"I'm sure that I don't know what you mean,"  His posture and tone didn't change.

His first words since coming to the kitchen resurfaced in her mind.  I don't chase.

"Let's focus on you and me." He brought her back to the present. "It wasn't long ago that I installed motion-activated cameras. Real-time monitoring, alerting, the whole nine yards. That's how I knew you were back. So, here we are."

"Here we are," she weakly responded.

"Now, the question is, how do we move forward?"

Desperation began to claw its way up her spine in the wake of the cold fear. Without thinking, she blurted, "Why don't I just, y'know. Blow you or something, and let's pretend this shit didn't happen. How's that sound? Everybody likes a blowjob, right?" She tried to fake a smile.

His face didn't react. He still sat there, chin resting on his hand, watching her.

"The thing I like most about this old house," he finally stood, sliding his chair back under the table, "is the basement." He held out his hand to her, like a gentleman helping a lady stand. Confused, she took it. He motioned towards a door that she previously thought led to a pantry.

Seeing no alternative, she walked ahead of him, opening that door and seeing a brightly lit set of stairs before her.

He kept talking as they began to descend the stairwell, flourescents overhead flickering a little, indicating the need for a bulb to be replaced. "This house used to belong to the coroner, back in the sixties. He took his work seriously, and he had the basement converted into a kind of morgue. I mean, it's fucking weird, but look what I've done with the place."

With no warning in his tone, without a whisper of extra sound, he kicked her down the remaining steps, and she landed in a heap on the polished concrete floor.

It was then that she saw Lisa.

Before she could react from the shock of seeing her acquaintance chained to a wall, before she could even really respond to the pain of her recent fall, the man had dragged her by the hair to a spot just feet away from his other captive. After a feeble struggle, wrists were clad in irons, and he scooted out of kicking distance.

He smiled as he began to ascend the staircase.

Turning back to the women, he calmly spoke before shutting out the lights, leaving them in utter darkness.

"Welcome home.  Mi casa es su casa."