The Tower

Chapter 2

Allander Atlasia sat on the bed wrapped in a frayed blanket, his knees tucked tightly to his chin. The small bed was more than ample for his wiry frame. Outside, the waves pounded ceaselessly against the side of the Tower, causing the structure to hum with a deep vibration. Allander braced himself against the onslaught, relaxing his muscles slightly before another wave caused the Tower to shudder anew.

His long, stringy hair curved in wisps to his cheeks, a dark brown cascade that accented his high cheekbones. His eyes squinted, just barely, making him look either sarcastic or like a child protecting his eyes from the sun. At first glance, many people dismissed Allander as a skinny adolescent recently grown to manhood, but he was in fact quite strong.

Allander's moodiness was the most terrifying aspect of his personality. When he'd been in the correctional ward as an adolescent, nurses had noted that he seemed to wake up as a different person every morning. He was a whimpering child when the rain hammered against the window, a sullen boy who poked frogs' eyes out with his finger, a sweet youth who cried against a nurse's bosom, an angry adolescent who painfully tweaked the incipient breasts of the girls in the ward.

He could be deathly frail or dreadfully powerful. After a year in prison, he came down with a case of pneumonia. A nurse who was new on rotation failed to see the security signs outside his room. She unlocked the door and entered alone to check on him. His face was tinged blue and his teeth chattered loudly, causing an echo in the sterile room. She sat at his bedside and rocked the boy (who was now close to twenty) against her breast until he warmed beneath his blankets.

When the security guard walked past the infirmary, he noticed the open door. Gun drawn, he charged into the room and pulled the nurse away despite her protestations. After she complained about the incident, the warden released several photographs of Allander's victims for her perusal. She sat down after the second one, requested a glass of water after the fifth, and turned in her resignation after the seventh. Through the bars on his window, Allander watched her leave the prison, shaking her head, her steps slow and unsure.

When he was moved to the Tower after the "lawyer incident" (as it was referred to in the vague prison memo), he rode the elevator down through the Hole, bound, with an armed guard on each side and a sack tied over his head. He didn't flinch as the other inmates taunted him and screamed, banging the bars. It wasn't often that a new visitor came for them to play with. Allander was thirty-three years old.

He was placed in Unit 10A, and asked to turn around and back up against the door. From the safety of the platform, the larger guard reached through the bars and unlocked his handcuffs and thigh strap, then pulled the sack off his head and untied the gag. Allander wore a mask of calm, apparently not intimidated by the shrieks that carried up and down the Hole.

The ruckus quieted as the prisoners tired of their new toy. They resigned themselves to bed, their heads settling to rest on the stained yellow pillows. After the shouts stopped echoing, after not an inmate stirred in the jet, black night, Allander drew the thin blanket to his face and shook uncontrollably.

On rare occasions, high tide was moderate enough that the top three levels stayed above the ocean's brink. The water would remain just under the vents of Level Ten, so the guards would open them to aid the air circulation. In the deathly heat of the summer, the prisoners would lie bare-chested on their cots, fanning themselves with their blankets and dousing their bodies with water from the toilets. But as dusk fell like a funeral veil across the sky, the cool San Francisco air crept through the vents and into the bones of the prisoners. The guards would laugh as the inmates shuddered and clamored in their metal rooms.

On these nights, Allander would retreat to the safety of his bed and stare through the thin gaps in the vents. As moonlight spread across the water, it engendered figures and shapes, creatures and monsters that crept in the swirls and eddies. He stifled his cries as he saw clowns dancing above the whitecaps, their long, white arms reaching toward him through the waves, their laughing red mouths rippling in the water's surface, mouthing threats and delights eternal.

Only once did he lose control, and he hurled himself against the metal bars, screaming in despair. "JUST COME IN! Come in now and take me. TAKE ME!"

He collapsed, cowering in the corner under the vent. His eyes bulged wide in dreadful anticipation as he slowly became aware of the laughter filling the air around him.