Immortus

MORNING VISITORS

MORNING VISITORS

The woman who was already sat at the table in the magnolia painted room I was led to may have been tiny when compared to my six feet four inches, but I knew from her breaking my brother's ankle with no show of remorse when he tried to stop her from arresting me that she was not a woman to cross.

She may have looked like butter wouldn't melt, but underneath her misleading exterior, I knew she was as dark and as conniving as any psychopath was.

Now, she was here, casually sat at the table that gleamed metallic and sterile, leaning back on the uncomfortable metal chair in a cool and understated manner facing a clear glass window with bars across it as if she did this on a daily basis. I knew that she probably did. I was confused as to why she had come to see me again- was it usual for your arresting officer to come and visit you in jail? She had already had her own way anyway- I had been sent down as a guilty man by unanimous verdict with a life sentence after all.

There was a file of paperwork in front of her, just like there had been when I had been questioned. It was the same brown-beige colour and the same A4 size. It even had an unmarked front. I felt sick. I thought I was done with their games. Evidently not. She'd come back to play with my life again. Clearly, a life sentence was not enough suffering to be getting on with. The cat had returned to play with its food again.

"Take a seat."

Her heavy boots with a mirror polished surface and neatly laced bootlaces pushed a metal chair towards me, making an ear-splitting screech of metal on tiled floor. I recoiled, the sound grating on the inside of my head and bouncing off the walls of my skull. It made my ears ring. I paused for a second, but took the chair upon catching her eye. I was scared of what she might have done if I had refused.

"I am here to make you an offer."

Pause.

Tension.

Silence.

"Prison life is not for a mind like your own. You have a far stronger mind, much more suited to a life outside of four walls. It would be such a shame if a bright young mind like your own was wasted by a life left in depression and wallowing in your own self-pity." She smiled. "A mouldy jail cell is no place for someone like you. We can help you get out, you know. There's a drug trial coming up. The drug itself has been fully tested and had passed all of the regulation tests set down by law. We know it is fully safe to use. It is more of an endurance trial that we are suggesting. We just want to test how much the drug can endure over a period of time."

"So you've singled me out as a human guinea pig?"

"Oh, Adam, you do make me laugh." She shook her head and laughed softly. "Not quite. The 'human guinea pig' stage has ended. It is just an endurance test over time. It is only a six week trial." She leaned in closer to me. "Complete this trial, and you are a free man."

I bit my lip. I was sorely tempted. My fingers were trembling. To me, it seemed a worthy deal. Six weeks in jail sounded far easier than sixty years. It was just that the drugs trial was niggling at the back of my mind. It worried me more than it should.

"It's the best offer of a get out of jail free card someone of your predicament will get. Six weeks of a trial where we can do what we want to your body in the name of endurance testing. Do not worry, you will still be in one piece by the end. We do not make this offer to every murderer who wallows in his own self-pity."

She opened the file and took out a crisp white consent form which she placed in front of me to read.

"I'm not guilty of her murder. She committed suicide."

The woman rested her chin on her interlaced fingers in a bored kind of way.

"Oh but darling, you are. You are because society tells you that you are. Your peers will give you the same answer. So will your conscience, when it is given half of a chance." She tilted her head sideways. "It is the same thing, really. You caused her death by driving her to suicide. In our book, that is murder. Especially since we can prove that it was you who said the very thing that tipped her over the edge." She shrugged. "They do not hand out life sentences if they are not one hundred per cent sure of your guilt, you know." She sighed. "It must have destroyed your mother inside to see her beloved son become a child killer." I gritted my teeth hard until I heard them pop. "If you help us, we can make it all go away. All of the stigma associated with being a murderer, all of the rumours- we can even make the conviction itself just -disappear..." she moved her hand in a sweeping motion across the air in front of her face, wiggling her fingers. "Then you can go back to your little quiet life as a suburban twenty-something personal tutor and trainee teacher who likes nothing more than to have a bit of a flirt with his female students and has half of the staff wrapped around his little finger just by flashing his winning smile." She pushed the consent form closer to me, and placed a pen on the right hand side of it. "Have a think."

She got up from the table. I turned my thoughts over and over inside my head. Six weeks of my life in exchange for a lifetime of freedom. I was chewing my lip, even more tempted now. It seemed too good to be true. My instincts were warning me away, but I knew the woman was right. This was the only chance I would have to get my freedom back and clear my name. To me, that alone was worth the whole six weeks. If I didn't do it for myself, then I should at least try to ease my mother's conscience.

The woman was stood by the window, watching my inner turmoil with a satisfied smile on her face, like the cat that got the cream, casting a shadow across the consent from reminding me that it was still there. We both knew that I would accept. They would never have offered this chance to me otherwise.

"Aw, so tense." Her breath was a whisper across the back of my neck, instantly making me feel even tenser as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Her hands massaged the tense muscles in my back and my shoulders. It did nothing to ease my fear. "You will not be given a second chance. Would you regret not taking this opportunity in the future?"

We both knew that I would regret not taking it. Yet I also know that I could regret making the choice to take the chance and accept.

"Tick tock," she breathed in my ear.

I took the pen, uncapped the sharp point of the fountain open nib and signed my life away in shining black ink.

Blue eyes...

The ink gleamed black and shiny as it dried into the crisp white sheet. The form was pulled from beneath my sweaty fingers before I could take in what I had actually signed. The woman blew on the ink to speed up the drying process and waved it in the air. I felt like a fish out of water. I was no longer in control of my body. Sweat dripped

Red hair...

across my forehead. I felt uneasy and sick to my stomach. It pained me inside. Reality was finally hitting me hard.

For the first time in my life, I was afraid of what the future held.