This One's For You

This One's For You (a.k.a One Week)
The flame from the candle guttered slowly, almost going out. Its frail light cast six shadows along the bare cement walls, silhouettes dancing and leaping like they were almost free, but had one chain still holding them down - the bodies of the six people in the empty store room.
"So are we gong to do it, then? Starting tomorrow night, as planned?" When he spoke, he spoke slowly, so that the others could decipher his words around his thick accent. He exhaled softly, and the flame jumped suddenly, leaping high towards the ceiling and illuminating his face, sea-blue eyes that once always laughed and now were just cold and empty. He turned, the soft light playing on his hair, turning strands golden and wine-colored, ruby in the dimness. He was beautiful, the last of his kind.
"Yes, we will," one of the others answered. When the flame caught his eyes, it was like the blue core matched his gaze. The light on his hair was like fire on pure-white snow before it turned his eyes an impossible shade of violet. "We planned it all, and we will carry through. When was the last time that we did not carry through?"
"The time that landed us in here." His gray eyes flashed. He was sitting away from the others, hidden in shadow, the light sometimes illuminating a dark curl, the curve of his jaw line. He sat there, huddled over, his gray eyes throwing back the light like the eyes of a wolf in the night. "That was the one time we did not carry through, and we failed."
The fourth picked up the train of thought, like they were all sharing one mind. "We will carry through this time, and we will not fail." He seemed so out of place among this group, his voice so soft and warm, friendly. But his eyes were the same, cold gray that flashed blue in the shadows, icy and empty.
"But why? Why must we do this?"
If anyone was out of place, it was this one, this one with the inky black eyes veiled by dark waves, this one so young and innocent, shy like a schoolboy away from his mother for this first time. His voice was ever so soft, the worlds almost spoken out of fear.
"You know the answer to that, don't you?" His dark brown eyes glinted in the candlelight, so dark and deep. He smiled, white teeth flashing. He was handsome and charming, suave and smooth, but somehow not sly. "You know the answer," he said to the boy, then glanced around at all the others. "You all do. We will do what we have to do. Then maybe we can be free."
He glanced at the walls, at the shadows leaping and frolicking behind the bodies that created them, jumping and clawing for their own space.
What he spoke, all of the others also thought.
"We will be free."

Monday:

On Monday it was Gabriel's turn. He was the youngest, so it was his duty, his right. He'd sat in the common room with some of the other more 'well-behaved' inmates doing as he usually did, staring and brooding. Sometimes he'd sit with an old beat-up guitar that he'd managed to get from the guards, playing blues. Sometimes he'd watch the basketball games on the television that hung mounted on the wall just beyond the bars. Sometimes he'd write on some newspaper smuggled in, along with a forbidden pencil. But today he did nothing, said nothing, just watched the other inmates waste their days away, like he would.
As he stared out the barred windows into the courtyard, beyond the courtyard to the barbed wire topped fences to freedom, he let his mind run its course, thinking all the things that had to but would never be spoken aloud as words.
To all the people who hate me because of what I am, because I wasn't the same as you, because I wasn't your kind or theirs. To all the people who alienated me because I wouldn't choose one side or the other. To all the people who looked at me and judged.
He could remember it as clear as yesterday, living on that plantation in the long, low wooden buildings known as the slave quarters. The beating, the taunting and the teasing. Looking at his own reflection and hating it, because he was neither black nor white and couldn't choose to be either. Being treated like some useless, possibly minimally intelligent animal. He hated those people, hated them all, for what they had done to him. To the men with the white pointed heads and black holes for eyes, who had killed his mother. The men who tied him up to the other people and auctioned him off over and over again. The other people who had been the same color as his mother, shunning him and calling him white. He hated them all.
To all you people who thought I was a freak because you couldn't understand what it was I did. To all you people who treated me like I was a lab rat, always making me do things for you and never giving the one thing I asked for in return: help. To the man who was supposedly my father, destroying the only person in my life who loved me, for murdering my mother and turning me over to those monsters who broke me. To the people who thought I was just a sci-fi case and not really a person at all.
He sat there, dwelling in his hatred and anger, seething and waiting for it all the flow away. It never would. It was what powered him on those nights, those nights he did his job without heart or care. It was what made it so easy to be a killer.

Gabriel sat huddled in the empty common room, gray eyes casting a cursory glance at all the doors to make sure that none of the guards were coming. Then he lifted the pistol, conveniently affixed with a silencer, and nestled the nose against his dark curls. He shut his eyes.
To all those people I hate, all the people out there, this one's for you.
He pulled the trigger.

Tuesday:

The warden had found Gabriel's body on the common room floor early that morning when he'd ventured out of his luxurious quarters for a cup of coffee. The other well-behaved inmates were gathered just outside the common room door, peering in as the body was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled out of the room. A janitor moved in to clean up the mess, like brains and blood all over the floor were a common occurrence in that place. The guards hustled the inmates into the cafeteria where several were taken in for questioning.
"What's going on?" Thompson asked.
"Wolfe - he killed himself," Christian answered, watching as the warden bullied young Tobias into his office.
Thompson whistled. "Wow. How did he get the gun?"
Christian shrugged, gazing out at the scene with sad eyes. "Beats me."
He hated this, hated it all, this strict chain of command where one was the subordinate and one was the commander, where one was all-powerful and one was just a puppet. His gray eyes flashed blue as he stared down at his hands, gentle hands callused and nicked with small scars from years of fencing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually picked up a sword. Well, it wasn't like he'd be needing one any time soon.
His turn was tonight.

Singing was the one thing he'd always loved. He'd given up the sword after Anna had died, he'd stopped fighting in the ring after Flavia had been killed, but no matter what, he always sang. It was the only constant in his life.
He sat atop the wall beneath the stars, singing softly to himself. The words were soft and low, in another language he'd long since forgotten, but the song was one he remembered from childhood, one he'd been told his mother had sung to him.
It was ironic, but strangely appropriate, that the song that had sung him into his life would also be singing him into his death.
He sat atop the wall, having worked hard all night to saw away the barbed wire to make a comfortable spot to sit. He could go free, he could run away, but was team was a team, and they did everything together. As he sang he spun the knife on his fingertip, watching the blade flash in the moonlight. It was Beltane tonight. How funny.
After a moment, the translation of the words came into his mind.
Good-bye dear life, from old one to new. Good-bye dear life, from the kiss of midnight to the dawn and the dew. Good-bye dear life, for I'll never see you through.
His mother had sung those words as a farewell to youth and a plunge intomotherhood. He was simply taking the words for their literal meaning,
Again, ha ha.
Swinging his legs idly, like a little child sitting on the edge of the playground, he gazed out at freedom and smiled.
To my master, "live by the sword and die by the sword," this one's for you.
He plunged the knife into his chest and toppled backwards, into the courtyard.

Wednesday:

Keith wasn't the least bit intimidated when he was dragged into the warden's office for questioning; hadn't he already done this yesterday? The playful smile on his face did nothing to hide the coldness in his eyes.
"What is it now, sir?" he asked, stressing the honorific into sarcasm.
The warden glared. "On Monday, Gabriel Wolfe shot himself in the head."
Keith shrugged. "I'm well aware. He got blood all over my favorite spot on the floor. That's where I usually sit."
The warden sighed; could this boy never be serious? "Last night, Brandon Luttrell stabbed himself with a knife from the kitchen after attempting to escape."
Keith arched an eyebrow. "Why didn't he just escape, then? I saw the gap in the barbed wire. He killed himself because he wanted to, sir."
"You were...acquainted with Brandon, weren't you, O'Connor?" The warden leaned forwards, watching the boy's reaction with trained eyes.
"We were friends, I guess you could call it. So?" He gazed at the older man with empty blue eyes, eyes that were laughing in the picture in his file.
"How did you know he wanted to kill himself?"
Keith threw his head back and let out a roaring, raucous laugh, hooting. "It doesn't take an idiot to see that. You know as well as I do that Christian was more than capable of climbing that wall and getting out." The warden just stared at him, face blank.
Keith shoved the chair back, and it squeaked painfully against the floor. Dusting off his gray overalls with one hand, he reached for the doorknob. "Any more stupid questions?"
"Why did you call him Christian?"
Keith winked. "Look in his file."
And he walked out of the office.

Keith knew what was going on, and then some. He knew the warden wondered whether or not Keith had given Christian the knife - after all, he worked in the kitchen sometimes, right? But surely the guards would have seen him grab the knife, even if he were an amateur magician.
"Hey O'Connor," the guard called.
He looked up from where he was scrubbing a Pyrex baking dish. "Sir?"
"Come on, let's go take out the trash," the guard answered. Keith set the dish onto the drying rack, dried his hands on a tea towel and grabbed the garbage bags. Then he followed the guard out of the kitchen and across the compound to the two large dumpsters. He glanced at the guard, whom he knew was aching for a cigarette, and smiled to himself. Time for one last big trick from the amateur magician.
"Want a smoke?" he asked, reaching up and seemingly pulling a lighter out of thin air.
The guard stared with wide eyes. "Hey, were did you get that?"
But Keith just grinned and flicked the lighter, creating a flame.
Everyone fighting for the Glorious Cause, this one's for you.
He exploded in flames.

Thursday:

The job was halfway done, and now everyone was under tight watch, especially Tobias and the remaining three of The Six, as the other inmates liked to refer to them. But as Tobias sat in the library buried in a copy of The Lost World, the guards couldn't help but wonder, could this boy be next? He looked too small and innocent, a lost little boy searching for his mommy in the huge Wal-Mart.
He read, lost in his own little world of fantasy and dinosaurs, ignoring the staring guards but knowing they were there. He was reading, yes, but he was thinking, too. He glanced up at the barred window that let in bright sunlight and wondered what was going on in the forest beyond the trees, if his pack of wolves was maybe still out there, waiting for him to go hunt with them.
He shut the book and slid it across the table away from himself and sat back, curling up on the hard metal falling chair and gazing up at the ceiling, eyes glazed over as he daydreamed.It had been a long-time fantasy, to just become an animal and live a wild life, never worrying about human things, jobs, duties or emotions. Just living on the instinct and running free, it was a nice dream. To be a falcon or maybe a hawk and soar the open skies on broad wings, going anywhere and everywhere he pleased. If he just closed his eyes, he could feel the wind ruffling his feathers, the sun on his back as a thermal carried him higher and higher. It was a beautiful dream, one he'd had since he was a child.
No one ever understood the dream, not a single person save one, and now she was gone too, so it was back down to no one.
Just outside the door, both peering in the window, the guards watched the boy as he slept. He looked so young and innocent - how could he hurt anyone? Both guards had seen a lot of deceiving faces in their time, but never had one struck them as so truly innocent. The judge had alleged that he'd assaulted two boys with a baseball bat, but he'd claimed self-defense and lost. Maybe the judge had been wrong.
Then the boy opened his eyes and smiled at them, looking like a little child just awakening from a nap.

Glad the acting skills paid off, Tobias thought to himself as he stood up on the roof, the two guards behind him, gazing at the sunset. If they thought he was innocent, then they were truly fools. Or he should get a job and make it big in Hollywood.
"You know what my biggest dream is?" he whispered, his voice soft and like a child's.
To all the guys on my team, this one's for you. Last performance. This one's for you.
"What?" one of the guards asked quietly.
"To fly. To be like a bird and fly." He spread his arms, like they were wings, and tilted his head back to catch the last of the sun's rays. "I've always wanted to fly, to be free."
And when he flung himself off the roof, he could feel the wind rushing through his hair, almost like a thermal through his feathers. He could have wings, he could, but he wouldn't.
Guys? This one's for me, too.

Friday:

The last two of The Six were under even closer watch. In the storeroom where they'd always met before, four of the six constantly burning candles were extinguished. Angel had always had a flair for the extravagant, and was a great fan of the television series Survivor, so he wanted one small detail his way. Tonight, another candle would go out, the smoke curling upward from the black wick and fading like a ghost in the light of day.
"Name, please," the young, no-nonsense nurse asked, or rather, commanded, as she stood before him with a clipboard, pen poised.
"Angel," he answered.
The nurse looked up a him and pinned him with her steely gaze. "Name," she repeated, more forcefully.
"I'm not lying, it's Angel," he protested, an innocent expression on his face. She wasn't fooled.
The nurse turned and called over her shoulder. "Thelma, bring me the file on prisoner 527-386-09." Then she pinned him with that gaze again while she waited.
"Got it," the nurse in the background called. "What do you need?"
"Read me his name," she ordered.
"This guy must have been an illegal immigrant or something, because it says he has no birth certificate. The name on here is 'Angel', listed in quotation marks."
When the nurse glared at him again, he just shrugged, gazing at her with guileless eyes.
"Some angel you are," she muttered, reaching out to take his pulse.
He was charming and he knew how to use it. "It's short for 'the Angel of Death'. AoD made me sound like a druggie."
She arched an eyebrow, scribbling something down on his chart. "I'm not impressed."
He shrugged. "You don't have to be." He craned his neck to peer at her clipboard, but failed to read her messy doctor-like scrawl. "So, what's wrong with me?"
She didn't answer, simple countered with another question. "What have you been feeling? Describe your symptoms."
"Well, I've been having trouble breathing lately, you know, maybe from those cigarettes I mooch off the guards or something, and then my arm has been hurting." He frowned down at his left arm. "I must have slept on it wrong or something the past few nights."
The nurse paused and looked up at him. "What, you think I'm stupid? You're, like, twenty years old. There's no way you could be having a heart attack."
She didn't see him using his leg to scoot the box of syringes close, or use a sock-covered foot to lever up a single syringe.
"Really?" he challenged as he slipped out the syringe. She rolled her eyes and reached back for his file. While her back was turned, he jabbed the needle into his throat and injected a solid block of air. Suddenly his chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe... As he sank back against the wall, a lost thought flitted through his mind. To all the ladies, especially Dani, the lady of them all, this one's for you.

Saturday:

DJ sat in a cell all by himself, not a single thing in there with him. The guards had caught him in the store room blowing out a fifth candle and dragged him here, into this empty place, where nothing existed but him and the six walls. He sat huddled against the far wall, knees drawn up to his chest as he stared at the door. The guards had snuffed out the last candle as well, but he wasn't dead yet.
He heard the approaching footsteps long before any other human would have heard them and rose up, slowly, arms wrapped around himself.
The door swung open, letting in a sliver of light, and he lunged, throwing himself at the door and twisting out of the guard's grasp, sprinting down the cement corridor at full speed. He could hear the guards yelling behind him, saw the ones in front of him and tossed them aside, heading for the warden's office where he knew his tools would be. He had a job to do, and he had to do it now, because it was almost midnight and he had a promise to keep.
He made it into the cafeteria with the rope across his chest like the strap of a satchel, scrambling up the beams on the side of the walls to get up near the ceiling, up along the made of straight lines and corners in the rafters of the room. He worked quickly, hands shaking as he knotted the rope into a noose. He had the loop slipped over his head when the bright beam of a flashlight almost blinded him. He froze, the deer in the crosshairs of the hunter.
"Dylan?" It was the warden calling. "Dylan, son, come down here."
Rage flashed through him. "Don't call me Dylan!" he shouted. "And I'm not your son! I'm not anyone's son, you got that?"
He stood on the edge of the steel beam, gazing down at the cluster of people gazing back up at him.
"Okay, James - " the warden tried, only to be cut off again.
"Only my mother called me that, and she's dead because I killed her," he snarled. "I killed her because I hated her and I hated being called that."
"Then what can I call you? Because we need to talk," the warden answered.
"DJ," he answered, not relaxing. "People can call me DJ and still live."
"DJ, then," the warden called out, sounding relieved and a little confident. "Listen, I know life is along sentence and all, you being so young, but please come down -"
"You don't know anything about me!" DJ shot back. "Sure you have my file, you've probably had it read and analyzed, but do you know what it feels like to be raped and beaten over and over again?" He was tense with primal fury. "No one knows, because you've never had to suffer like that! Sure I let my brother die, sure I killed my mom, but the death that matters the most, that one was an accident. You know which one I'm talking about, the kid whose neck I broke. Believe it or not, it was an accident. You can tell the cops that when they ask about me. It was an accident." He leapt. As he fell, everyone turned their heads, but they still heard his neck snap, could practically hear it as his body swung.
And as DJ hung there, sucking in a last breath, he gave his final thoughts.
Hey, Death. This one's for you.

Sunday:

"Well, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Asia asked as she led DJ away from the morgue.He rubbed this throat where the rope burns were just beginning to fade.
"Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean I don't feel pain," he muttered.
Asia shrugged. "Hey, no pain no gain, right? Nice job, though. Look forward to a pay raise, yeah?"
DJ nodded. "Great. I think I earned it."
Asia pushed open the door, and they stepped into the night.
"Hey Deej, glad you could join us," Gabriel called out from somewhere in the shadows.
"I'll only reciprocate those feelings if you have real clothes for me," DJ answered, frowning down at his overalls and holding them away from his body.
He lifted his head when a pair of jeans was flung at him. He caught them with one hand, then trotted ahead of Asia and into the shadows to get dressed.
"I'm hoping we won't need a repeat performance?" Angel asked, stepping up to the edge of the light.
Asia shook her head, pocketing the empty magazine she'd ejected out of her Glock and slid in a new one. "No of course not. Now come on, let's go?"
Keith bounded up beside her, grinning like a mad fool, the old laughter back in his eyes.
"I did a good job, didn't I?" he asked.
She nodded, striding over to the shadows where Christian and Tobias were leaning against the car. "Of course you did, Keith. That's the five hundredth time you've asked me, and that five hundredth time I've answered you." She pulled open the passenger door. "Get in."
Keith, still grinning, slid in, Christian and Tobias on his heels. Asia shut the door, then popped open the trunk. Gabriel crawled in and curled up in the cramped space, making a face right before she slammed the trunk shut. Then she climbed into the driver's seat, DJ climbing into the passenger seat and rolling down his window.
(Hey Gabriel, what kind of music do you want?) Tobias asked, leaning forwards between the seats and reaching out to fiddle with the radio dial.
(What does it matter?) he grumbled. (I'm the one in the trunk, you Russian dweeb.)
Tobias scowled, turning on a rock station. (Don't insult my heritage, donkey.)
(Just how much should I expect in the way of a pay raise?) Angel asked while singing along to Metallica's The Unforgiven.
(I'll have to take that one to the director, after I file a report,) Asia answered. She winced when all six boys broke out into a wailing imitation of Lars Ulrich, both on the web and aloud.
The car sped along the deserted stretch of highway, towards the twinkling lights of the city in the distance.
As they went, Asia glanced up in the rearview mirror the rapidly fading prison. Then she grinned at her own reflection.
This one's for you.

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