A man awakens in a field. If you imagined a wide open expanse of flat land stretching as far as the eye can see when you read the word field, you know exactly the type of field I mean. If you didn’t, allow me to elaborate.
The field is a wide open expanse of flat land stretching as far as the eye can see. It is treeless and carpeted with short, but very thick, grass. There are pockets of wildflowers growing in seemingly random patterns all over the field. If these pockets of wildflowers could be seen from above, they would still seem to be random, because that is what they are. There are really only two things in this field that aren’t completely idyllic. Idyllic, that is, if you’re the type of person that finds beautiful sweeping grassland with pockets of seemingly random, though in actuality they are random, pockets of wildflowers strewn about to be idyll.
One of these things that looks out of place in the beautiful surroundings is the previously mentioned man who has woken up in the field. The man’s name is unimportant, as are his age and past. The only thing you need concern yourself with in regards to the man is that he has awoken in this field and the actions he takes in the future as a direct consequence of his presence there.
The other thing worthy of note in the field is a large wall. This particular wall, like many others in the world, though not necessarily those in the middle of picturesque fields, is vertical and composed principally of bricks. Well, to be fair, it is composed principally of empty space, just as is all matter, however, for the sake of this story, we’ll pretend those empty spaces between atoms and between the various building blocks of atoms are actually filled with more brick atoms.
If the man in the field were asked for a rough estimate pertaining to the height of the wall he would reply that its roughly 10 feet in height. He would be right, depending on your interpretation of the word “roughly”, as the wall is precisely 11 feet tall. The man would never know this and, in retrospect, it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. The wall stretches across the field for a scant 6 feet. So, in summary, this wall is made of mostly bricks, is 11 feet tall, though it could be surmised to be 10 feet tall if one gave it only a cursory glance, and is six feet wide. It is 4 bricks deep as well, though looking it head on, as the man we’re concerned with here is doing, that is not observable.
In keeping with the previously established theme of things having two odd bits about them, like the field with the man and wall, the wall too had precisely two things that could be commented on as being odd by someone who has knocked about for a while and come across many different walls in his travels.
It is necessary to describe one of these anomalies before the other because to notice one is to flow naturally into the other. After you read the description of the two things in the order in which I present them, feel free to reverse the order of those descriptions using “copy and paste” techniques to make sure you are thoroughly convinced that my order was indeed the correct one.
The top of the wall (11 feet up, see above description for further details) had protruding from it a short metal rod. This rod was made of cold grey steel and was anchored deep within the wall. At the tip not affixed to the wall, the rod terminated into a loop. Not unlike the eye of a needle, except that, unlike a needle, this was anchored deeply within a brick wall in the middle of a beautiful field whose only occupant, a man, was staring at it quizzically.
Now, as I describe the second odd thing about the wall, you’ll know why this order had to be strictly adhered to. In the eye of the needle, so to speak, there was threaded a very heavy and strong looking chain. The chain was only strong looking because it was, in fact, very strong. It was the type of chain one might see restraining a very unhappy looking pit bull in a very unhappy looking part of a very unhappy town. The combination of the very stout wall, the thick metal needle and the hideously strong chain made you feel pity for whatever was attached to the other end of the chain. In this case, the other end of the chain was attached to a man, now groggy from waking up, inexplicably, in the middle of a beautiful field chained to a wall.
It is to be noted that the man is only groggy because he fell asleep between the time I first mentioned him and now, as he was bored by my description of the field, as I’m sure you were as well, however, now that his bit in the story is here, he should remain more alert and perhaps something interesting will happen, but probably not.
The thoughts going through the man’s mind as he began to take stock of his situation were commanded by Confusion. Confusion chose Bewilderment and Astonishment to both mount expeditions across the man’s face and set up a base camp on the other side. Continual messages were sent between these two and their commander, Confusion, via the messengers of Fear, Panic and Bemusement. Once, in passing, Fear collided with Bemusement and the man’s face screwed up into a look so astoundingly odd that several passing chipmunks took it as a personal insult and vowed never to fraternize with humans as long as they both should live.
The man, after sitting in stunned silence for the better part of an hour, the better part of an hour being the latter half of it because of the expectations a new hour might bring, decided that it was time to be proactive. This entailed standing up and walking over to the wall to inspect it. It was now that he made his estimates, close but wrong, on the wall’s height. He also realized now that the wall was 4 bricks thick and filed that information into the part of his brain where he filed things he would never again need to know. Each step he took was accompanied by a slight jingle as the various links of the chain jangled off of one another.
He was clearly, though the reasons for which were far less clear, a prisoner. Why he had been imprisoned and by whom the man had no idea. And, to save the reader any anxiety or guesswork, you too will never know why or by whom the man was imprisoned. It is outside the scope of this story as we are concerned with the man’s reactions to being imprisoned, not the tedious details leading up to it.
Several days went by as the man spent them sitting idly in the warm sunshine of the meadow and testing the strength and length of the chain connected to a metal shackle around his ankle. He found that the chain was very light and he moved easily with it and that it was approximately, again with his near accurate approximations, 100 feet long. This length afforded him a fairly large circle, the center of which was the wall, for him to roam around in and comment silently on the beauty and abundance of seemingly random pockets of wildflowers. Each morning, when he awoke, there was beside him a cardboard box containing 3 meals. He assumed, this time perfectly accurately, that these were left by his captors and were meant to sustain him during his captivity.
The meals were very good and there was always plenty to eat. On a few occasions the man tried to stay up very late or fake sleep so he could confront his captors as they brought food. When he did this, no food was delivered and he would go hungry the following day. He soon stopped trying to meet his captors. He also tried ripping up clumps of grass and writing in the exposed soil with a stick. He would ask questions in this manner. Things like, “Why am I here?” and “Who are you?”, and, since we both know he never finds the answers to those questions, you can probably assume his questions went unanswered, which is exactly where they went.
The man, after what I’ll go ahead and reveal to you as being about 2 months in captivity, started to become very upset. He had initially thought that if he went along and didn’t make waves his captors would eventually let him go, or at the very least tell him why he was their prisoner. These things didn’t happen and he was beginning to come down with the sort of cabin fever one can only get when there isn’t a cabin anywhere near you. In short, the man was going insane.
In long, the man began seeing hallucinations. He imagined the chain rusted and broke away from his ankle and, upon seeing this, the man made a mad dash away from the wall. At roughly 100 feet from the wall the chain went again taut and abruptly ended his forward progress while simultaneously breaking his ankle. He lay there in agonizing pain for hours until, overcome with pain and fatigue, he passed out. When he awoke, his ankle was in a cast and the chain was on the other ankle. Also, alongside his 3 meals for the day were also 3 doses of a painkiller.
On the third day with the broken ankle, the man decided he had been there long enough and there was only one way out. He took all 3 painkillers at the same time in an attempt to kill himself. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at these things, 3 painkillers were not sufficient to kill him. They only made him very happy for a short while and very nauseous and violently ill for a long while. He then tried hoarding the painkillers with the idea of building up a large stash that he could take all at once. Any pills he didn’t take were subtracted from the next day’s delivery so he could only ever have a total of 3. Then, a couple weeks later, the pills stopped arriving and a few weeks after that he woke up to find the cast gone and his ankle fully healed.
He was at the end of his rope now. Or rather, at the end of his chain, as he liked to joke to himself. Whenever he made this joke to himself he would laugh maniacally for the worst part of an hour.
This had to end and he had a plan. He walked over to the wall one morning and tried to climb it. The mortar between the bricks was expertly placed so perfectly that it was impossible to get a finger hold and he wasn’t able to climb the wall. He then tried to toss the chain up and wrap it around the metal pole sticking out the top of the wall. He finally managed to get a knot of sorts on top of the wall and then, with the remaining slack on his end of the chain, wrapped the chain around his neck. He tried to pull down on one end of the chain, using the pole as a pulley, to pull the chain taut around his neck and hang himself. He thought it was working because he couldn’t breath and everything was going dark. He woke up several hours later crumpled at the foot of the wall. He hadn’t the strength to pull hard enough for long enough to kill him, only to make himself lose consciousness.
He thought a while longer and came up with another way of escaping. He walked, very slowly, away from the wall for the full 100 feet the chain would allow him. He then turned around and faced the wall squarely. He took a frighteningly long deep breath and began sprinting at full speed toward the wall. He was running full tilt feeling the grass bend and the wildflowers break under his feet. As he neared the wall he froze up with an unconscious survival instinct and braced himself for the impact. Even though he hit the wall head first with a sickeningly dull thud, his flinching had slowed him down enough that he was merely knocked out by the force of the impact.
He awoke again crumpled in a ball at the base of the wall. There was an ungodly thumping in his head as each heartbeat pushed blood through his ruined body. A lot of which was escaping through a deep and jagged gash just above his right temple. The resultant pool of blood collected at the bases of a clump of vibrant purple wildflowers and the mingling of the two colors and textures was the most beautiful sight the man had ever seen.
He couldn’t stand it anymore. He had to escape. He stood up woozily. The pristine meadow swaying wildly all around him and the sun setting haphazardly in the distance in front of him. He gathered the chain up and wrapped a length of it around his neck with a deft movement that came as a surprise even to himself. He took off away from the wall with the chain unfurling behind him from the clump it had become after he struck the wall. As he ran, he felt the weight of the chain as it stretched out behind him. He heard the telltale jingling sound as the links jangled against each other.
The jingling stopped and the man knew the entire length of chain had unfurled and it was beginning to lift off the ground as he pulled taut. There was a mere 3 feet left in the chain before it would fail entirely to wrench the needle from the top of the wall.
This is when the man jumped. He dove forward in an insane pantomime of a superhero taking to the air. The chain snapped and went rigid for a moment as the momentum of the man suddenly stopped. The spurned chipmunks from before were awakened in the twilight by a hollow cracking sound that echoed out over the meadow.
The man lay in the grass with his neck broken. His face was painted with a ghoulish smile and a vacant look in his eye, much like the look of an abandoned house whose lights are nonetheless on at night.
The man was dead. And he was happy about it.
-kingluscious.