Alexander Smith - Lockdown

The hunched animal that I had thought was a dog threw itself against the bars, bending them outward. Then, to my horror, it stood up on its hind legs, rising to well over six feet in height as it hurled itself at the door. It was moving so quickly I couldn't get a good look at it, but what I saw told me exactly what it was. Or at least what it had once been.

The creature's face was human-ravaged and mangled and broken, yes, but still with eyes and a nose and a gaping mouth. The skin was marked with fresh wounds, as if a child had been trying to decorate it with a knife. It was naked, but there was something wrong with its skin, like it had been cut open and had something stitched underneath. Muscles bulged everywhere, flexing each time it moved and occasionally even splitting the skin with their size.

Tired of thrashing against the door, the monster turned its attention to the back of the cell. It didn't take it long to spot Kevin, cowering behind the toilet. With a roar that made me think of dragons, the freak leaped across the tiny cell, gripping the toilet and tearing it from the rock like it was made of tissue paper. Water burst from the severed pipe, obscuring my view even further. But I saw the creature grab Kevin, lifting him off the ground and throwing him into the far wall.

By the third time he'd done it, Kevin's screaming had become a soft groan. Five times and the boy was no longer moving. I kept watching as the monster went to work on the corpse, but my brain refused to acknowledge what I was seeing, editing it out as if it knew the images would drive me insane. I couldn't tell you what I saw in there, even though I watched the whole damn thing.

Some time later the blacksuits called for the door to be opened, jamming their metal sticks into the creature's collar with a spark of electricity. The murderous freak fought against them but the giants were too strong, dragging it out of the dripping mess in the cell. They pulled it back along the platform, eventually disappearing from sight down the stairwell.

But not before I'd seen something that filled me with terror.

On the creature's arm, distorted and pale but still unmistakable, was a birthmark.

It was Monty.

THAT NIGHT I BEGAN to wonder if I actually was in hell. I'd never been a believer, skipped Sunday school and scoffed at the kids who prayed in assembly. I always figured that if there was a God, then he'd have stopped me doing bad things, but there were never any signs, any warnings. Until now, of course.

I lay there in the pitch black, Monty's inhuman cries still echoing through my skull, blending with the sobs and screams that played endlessly from outside my cell. I wondered if maybe I had died on the night we broke into that house, tripped as I climbed in through the window, snapped my neck or something without even knowing it. Maybe the blacksuits had been angels of death, come to trap my soul and drag it down to the pits of hell.

I was so tired and scared that my mind was delirious, and the more I lay there thinking about it the more I was convinced that Furnace was Hades, Gehenna, the pit where sinners are sent to rot away for all eternity. It made perfect sense-the warden and his devil eyes, the blacksuits with their superhuman strength, the wheezers that looked like the tortured ghosts of Nazi storm troopers, and the way that poor Monty had been scoured of everything recognizable, forced to become a demon that thrashed and ripped and killed. What if that was the fate of all of us, turned into the very basest of creatures, the very essence of evil?

So if this was hell, where did the river go? I thought back to school, to the stuff we'd learned about Greek mythology. This was back when I'd wanted to be a magician, to live a good life, a free life. I'd devoured all that stuff, fascinated by stories of myth and legend and magic. I remember the picture of Hades we looked at, the Greek underworld. To get there you had to cross a river, I forget the name. Once you'd crossed it, you were in hell, but if you could get back over from the other side, maybe you were free.

Half dreaming, half awake, I saw myself diving into the river, its water clean and pure and cold, carrying me through the raw red tunnels of Furnace, buoying me upward toward the light on a surf of bubbles and foam. I saw myself laughing as I breached the surface, emerging on a crystal clear night with all the stars of heaven welcoming me back and the cool wind speeding me across the world, taking me home.

I was still chuckling gently when Donovan woke me the following morning, but not for long. As soon as I opened my eyes the four walls of my cell slammed down on my memories of freedom, cutting off the air and making me struggle for breath. I sat up in bed, shocked to find myself back behind bars after such a vivid dream, clutching my throat and gasping for oxygen.

"Easy there," said Donovan, sitting on my bed and placing a hand on my shoulder. "Deep breaths, don't panic."

I inhaled the hot air as deeply as I could, my whole body shuddering with the effort. My lungs filled, the fear ebbing away. Looking out of the doors, I saw people in their cells reluctantly getting ready for another day in Furnace.

"Did I sleep through the siren?" I asked, yawning. Donovan nodded, pulling on his overalls and standing by the door.

"You were away somewhere nice," he replied. "Giggling like a baby all night. God knows why, though, after…"

The pause was just long enough to bring back the horrors. They flooded the silence, ripping through my brain like razor wire and settling in the tender flesh of my stomach.

"It was Monty," I said, picturing the beast as it tore through the cell, through Kevin. "That thing, that monster."

Donovan didn't move, just stared in silence.

"I know," he said eventually. "It's not the first time someone has come back."

"What happened to him?"

Donovan turned slowly, then slid down the bars until he was sitting on the rocky floor. He ran his fingers through his hair, then let his head fall gently into his hands.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "No one here does. It's only happened a few times, five or six maybe. I don't know, maybe more. Most of the time people get taken, they never return, they just disappear. Dead, most likely. Sometimes, though…"

"They come back," I finished unnecessarily.

"The first few times I saw them I thought they were creatures, animals. Like monkeys or something. They were brought in just like Monty was last night. I never saw what happened before, they were always out of sight. I just thought they whaled on the inmates a little, taught them a lesson.

"Then one time I saw this kid get taken. Real nasty one. He was young, but he had all these tattoos of guns and knives and death and things, all over him. Gang ink, you know? Well, a few days after he was taken, the blood watch brought in this monster, like last night. They dragged him to a cell on this level, only a few away from ours. Walked right past the bars, and I saw these things weren't no monkeys."

He wiped his eyes and I saw he was crying.

"Its skin was all ripped and stitched, all bulging in weird places with all those muscles underneath. But I could still see those tattoos. It was him, that kid, no doubt about it."

"But what happens to them?" I repeated. "Monty was taken two nights ago, what the hell could they have done to him to change him like that?"

"Don't know," was his reply. "Don't want to neither. Only one way of finding out for sure, if you follow me, and by that time it's you who's ripping through your old cellmate."

"But why bring them back? Just to scare us?"

"To scare us, to kill us, to give us something to talk about in the morning. How the hell should I know? This is Furnace, Alex, they can do what they like." He paused for a minute, then lashed out, smashing his fist against the bars hard enough to draw blood. "Christ, that thing killed Kevin. I mean, it tore him to pieces."