Alexander Smith - Lockdown

I knew already that Carl Donovan was many things, but he was a terrible liar. I found myself smiling inside, although a sliver of that smile must have escaped through my eyes because Donovan caught it.

"I don't know what you're so happy about," he muttered, but that tiny smile was contagious, and took strength from the adrenaline that still pounded through our arteries. He flashed a wide grin at me, all white teeth against his dark skin, and gave me a gentle cuff around the back of the head. "You crazy, you know that? You belong in here, no doubt about that."

I just nodded. We sat in silence for a few minutes, our heartbeats gradually slowing and the rasps disappearing from our breaths. It wasn't long before I saw movement below, and walked over to the bars to see the crowd of blacksuits head back across the yard carrying the wounded kid between them. He wasn't moving, and there was a thin red line on the stone floor that trailed behind the group as they disappeared through the massive door.

"Are they taking him to the infirmary?" I asked, quite pleased with myself despite everything for remembering the posh word for a prison hospital.

"Something like that." Donovan clambered up into his own bunk and lay facing the ceiling. "Anyway, lockdowns this late don't tend to finish until morning, so I'd make myself comfortable if I were you. Be lights-out in an hour or two."

I looked around the cell and tried to imagine what I'd do for an hour or two. The thought felt like a weight pressing on my chest, and once again I found myself panicking at the idea of spending the rest of my life in this tiny cell. The sensation ran up through my body, and when it reached my brain it was so powerful that for a moment I saw lights popping on and off before my eyes. I wanted to tear through the bars and fight my way back to the surface so I could be free again. Instead, I just stamped my foot against the floor, so pathetically that not even Donovan heard it. The feeling ebbed from my body, unsatisfied, and I collapsed on my bunk.

"So is that what you do all evening, then?" I asked eventually. "Sit and stare at the ceiling and rot away quietly?"

"Pretty much," he replied, laughing. The bed squeaked as he turned over. "To be honest, with jobs and all you're usually dead to the world by lights-out, so you don't mind the peace and quiet."

"Jobs?"

"You'll find out all about it tomorrow," he replied. I could hear his voice starting to slur, like he was drifting off already. "You think we just sit about all day?"

Sitting around, dueling with canteen trays, and running from guards. Yeah.

"Oh, and listen," he said, his voice alive again. He popped his head over the bunk and fixed me with a glare that made my pulse race. "If you hear a siren during lights-out, and the blood lights are on, then you don't get out of bed for any reason, okay? Doesn't matter what you hear outside those bars. Keep your eyes closed and pretend to be asleep, don't draw attention to yourself and especially not to this cell." I tried to say something but he cut me off. "No exceptions. They catch you looking, then you're as good as dead already."

He vanished, leaving me wide awake and terrified.

"Sweet dreams, Alex."

I DON'T BELIEVE THAT anyone truly loses their fear of the dark. Yeah, grownups act like they feel at home when the lights are out, they say there's nothing to be afraid of, that nothing's changed just because you can't see anything.

But they're bluffing. I defy even the bravest adult to spend the night in a place like Furnace in the pitch black without thinking that every noise is something right behind you with dagger teeth and eyes of silver and blood on its breath; that every whisper of air that runs over your skin is the rush of a descending blade; that every flicker of movement is a tendril of darkness wrapping itself around your throat and coiling in the pit of your belly, where it feasts on your soul.

The darkness came without warning. One minute I was lying in my bed thinking pretty rationally about my life behind bars, the next I was plunged into a void so profound that I thought I'd gone blind. It was such a sudden change that I sat bolt upright, clawing at my eyes and desperately looking for even the slightest hint of light to prove that I still had the ability to see.

I stumbled out of my bunk, crawling across the rough floor with my stomach in my mouth. I was in such a panic that I crashed right into the bars, but through them, far below, I caught a glimpse of the giant screen mounted above the elevator, a white Furnace logo rotating lazily on a black background. The darkness was doing its best to smother the image, but its weak illumination reached out like a beacon. I clung to the bars and watched it, the sensation of relief so powerful that it brought tears to my eyes.

It was here, holding the bars of my cell like they were my only friends, that I first heard the symphony of Furnace. It started with the sobs, which rose up out of the darkness all around me like the gentle strings in an orchestra. They began as hushed moans choked back by the countless musicians that crafted them, merging together from every level to create a fountain of sound that ran down to the deserted yard below.

Next came the jeers, the tuneful taunts of "new fish" and "you better cry, they're coming for you," which punctuated the sobbing like sharp blasts from trumpets. As the callous taunts grew in volume so did the cries, swelling into desperate wails hurled out into the artificial night mixed with calls for help and pleas that were heartbreaking to hear. Somewhere, somebody was singing a song, his deep voice a bizarre bass line to the symphony, a mournful cello that kept the two halves of the orchestra in harmony.

I don't know how long it went on, rising gradually to a crescendo of screams and whistles and sobs and songs that took hold of me, forcing a cry from my own traitorous throat. For what I knew would be the first time of many, I reluctantly added my voice to that symphony, crying and screaming until, exhausted, the music died and the prison once again found silence.

I KNOW I don't have to tell you that I didn't get much sleep that night. I lay in my bed with my eyes open, projecting pictures onto the blank black canvas before me. Images of my home, of my family, of my friends, of television, of school, of birthday cakes and bike rides and trips to the country, of the sea, skimming stones, ice cream on the sand, soccer matches and kickarounds in the playground, building models with my dad, weeding the garden with my mom, of sunshine, of rain, of snowmen and Christmas and playing with new toys in the flickering light of the fire.

But each happy image was smothered by the darkness, vanishing without a trace into the dead night. Furnace was claiming my memories as well as my body, its hold on my life now absolute, unforgiving.

All the time I lay there I expected to hear the siren. I wasn't sure what Donovan had been talking about when he said they came at night, but my imagination provided plenty of scenarios: the blacksuits appearing at the bars, ready to drag me into the abyss; the gas masks and their pockmark eyes, pointing at me like I was the next delicacy they were going to drop down their sick throats; the skinless dogs, wet to the touch as they pulled me to the warden and his leather face.

Whenever I did manage to drop off to sleep, these terrifying images followed me, making themselves at home in dreams they had no right to be in. In some I was being buried in a grave cut into the rock, the blacksuits covering me with rubble that pressed my body flat and choked my lungs. In others I actually sank into the floor, the stone like red quicksand that sucked me in until I was lost in shadow.