Wotan.
It was him who sent me down. I can’t really prove it though. I saw him - Wotan, I mean - pacing throughout the court unnoticed, whispering in the judge’s ear; the judge with that stupid silk shit sitting on his head.
Then he started painting the walls, plunging a fist into his dead eye, squelching around for ink. Runes, six feet high and a clotted red, everywhere on all sides and glowing. Like some grim ancient underpass covered in dripping graffiti.
The judge rapped the gavel, very nice, polite and lavender-like. Tap tap. They took me out as Wotan stared me down, his dethroned eye an abyss, standing there before his runes unregarded by all. I was screaming my head off. The judge thought he had got me good. Not true. It was Wotan. I was still out of it, even then.
I’d often been spazzed out in the town library before this all, watching a lot of YouTube videos about Wotan actually; paganism and all that bollocks. I think that messed me right up, because that’s when I began having visions when I was on it, just like that last time in the courtroom. Well that was all because I strangled some guy or something and now here I am.
I woke up after five days in the cell feeling like an open grave; no water, no food in me, nothing. Someone must have watched me stirring, cos they slid some grub through the gate right after and also a big bottle of water that only just about fit. I devoured it all.
Prison can be quite a sour place for a guy like me. I don’t care much for it. After a while I was just squeaking and humming and singing all the time up there, talking nonsense and such, just to pass the time, and they must have got tired of that cos pretty soon they put me on gainful employment, so to speak.
One morning they brought me to a small room, about the size of this place, with a cheap office chair, desk and computer in it. I remember the small window with the light just about getting in but it was heavily barred and fogged out anyway.
Rehabilitation is what government policy calls it, the guard said it would give me a sense of purpose, but really it’s just slave labour.
Nowadays there’s so many robots and bugs and viruses and evil spirits on the internet if you want to talk to anyone you first need to prove that you’re a human. So they sat me down in the chair and shut the door and every so often something would pop up on the screen and I would have to convince the thing I’m there, and the internet would be happy and then I’d sit there and wait for the next one. It’d be just me in there ‘til they came back and got me. I never asked what the pop-ups were for.
But the best thing about the job was the chocolate bar I’d get at the end of every shift. Yeah I love chocolate, I do. In fact that’s exactly how they sold it to me, otherwise I’d still be singing the echoey cell blues, lying back on the cot all on me lonesome like.
They gave me a time limit for each one. For a lot of them I just had to click on a little square. Those ones were easy money. For others I had to match the images, or do some maths, or type a code. And I was locked out of everything so I couldn’t do nothing else even if I tried. The guard said the last guy got in trouble for doing something like that.
And the white light in the room gave me a headache.
It was the hardest job I ever had.
Here’s the complete list of chocolate bars I ever received:
- Twix
- Wagon Wheel (not technically a bar but I asked for them)
- Mars Bar
- Toffee Crisp
- Yorkie
- Lion Bar
- KitKat
- Aero
I told them if I ever get a Bounty I’d pack it in.
And that was it for a while; wake up, escorted to the shower, back to the room, small breakfast through the door, short commute down the corridor to my lovely office, prove to the computer I’m human a hundred times over, luncheon, work again, chocolate bar, back in the cell, hum for a bit, dinner. One day whilst waiting for the shower I saw them drag a fellow prisoner down to solitary, all solemn like. He’d been acting up, apparently. There but for the grace of God go I!
Funny, although I hated the work it turned out I was pretty good at it, you know, matching the images, not tempted to rig it up for porn and all that. Pretty soon my good performance got me some more privileges, so I got a book out from the library, and you know even after that day at court I was still pretty obsessed with Wotan so I got a book out about him (“Wotan and the Germanic Belief in Fate”), and then they allowed me letters from the outside, but I never got any. Me friends and family didn’t want nothing to do with me after all that whole business, you know. Can’t blame ‘em. And the other junkies, they don’t really care about you, once you’re gone.
So one day I was singing to myself again, something nice and soothing like a lullaby, getting ready for bed. I’d been reading the book about Wotan until I got close to dozing. Then the grate to my room slid open a split second and something flicked through. I wasn’t sure it was the door at first, cos sometimes I still get those little explosions in my head when I’m close to sleep. And it was strange, because I didn’t hear no guard outside like I usually could, but then I was always more alert when hungry and waiting for dinner. And I was pretty tired, I guess.
I walked over, picked it up and gave it a looksee. It was a plain white windowless envelope you’d see anywhere. The front was unmarked and the flap on the back was tucked into itself rather than stuck on. I stuck a thumb in, prized it open and pulled out a three-folded sheet of plain A4.
I unfurled it and instantly recalled being dragged out of that courtroom months earlier. Under the eye of Wotan, under the runes.
The grate couldn’t be opened from my side, so I just threw thing in the opposite corner and jumped into bed, holding onto my knees in the corner with the light still on for a while as my heart grew steady again. I was a state. I could still see the dull red, dagger like scrawl stabbing at me incoherently from the folded page.
I couldn’t do nothing else but turn the light off. That helped. I slept, surprisingly well, and didn’t look at it until the next evening after work. I got in, picked it up and took it over to my bed. It helped the nerves that I still had a Wagon Wheel, which I ate as I looked it over. The first thing I wanted to know was, how did it get past screening? Every letter that gets sent to the nick gets checked for anything sensitive. So how could they tell? And if they gave it to some Viking up there to check, didn’t they think to provide a translation?
I must have read my library book from cover to cover in the next two nights, just for something to help decipher those runes. It was to no avail. They continued to stare back at me under that harsh prison light, just like He once did back in the courtroom.
Then it got so bad that work suffered. I didn’t dare to bring the letter, but in those moments of boredom between the puzzles I swear the secret almost came to me. And then I’d miss the pop-up, or I’d get something wrong, or sometimes I’d enter words and messages into the text field, just to see if He answered me. Little messages down to Him, the Psychopomp.
The chocolate bar they gave me that day was the last one I ever got. It wasn’t one from the list. It was a Snickers, completely out the ordinary. All nutty and variegated. Perfect fodder, I thought. And a sign. I took it back to my room, stuffed it down my pants, and opened my runes until I fell asleep under the light.
By the next morning the Snickers had turned to a sticky mash among my thighs. When the guard knocked on my door to take me to the showers, I gave him a handful of it.
And now I’m down here, down in solitary. And you’re here with me.