Mickey - The View From Here PART TWO - Gallavich

The Guard and the Joker

The air was stale, seemingly trapped and stilled over the past 30 years. What lay ahead was illuminated only by my flashlight, the dark, cold, and eerily empty cell block. Spiders had taken up residence in their intricate webs between the bars of the old cells that dated to well before I was born. Bars were something I saw less and less of with each of my prison stints to the point where they now seemed like relics. Concrete and plexiglass were the new norm.

Dust and ash were lifted with each step I took, causing me to cough and lower my flashlight. Even with a cloth over my mouth and nose, I could swear I could smell something burning. Looking ahead into the pitch-black cell block, my hand trembled to fix the light ahead of me once more. This place was like a tomb. With each step I took, my fear gradually increased until the only thing I knew was, if I get locked down here, no one ever hear my cries for help.

Still, I had a job to do, so I swallowed my fear and continued into the abandoned cell block. I counted the beds in the cells as I went before my flashlight settled on the floor. My breath caught in my lungs at the sight of shoe-prints in the ash. I wouldn't have been so creeped out if it weren't for the fact that I knew this place had been sealed off for over three decades, ever since the fire.

I turned to tell Ian what I had found, but I was alone. Hadn't he been right behind me?

Ignoring my instincts to walk away, I instead followed the footprints through the wreckage, down through the cell block to the bottom level. There, I found an open gate leading to a corridor.

"Hello?" I called, making my way down the corridor to a big, metal door.

Although my mind was telling me to turn around, I played with the heavy latch and opened it. Beyond the door was something perplexing. A hatch on the floor that looked like something you would see on a submarine. Now too curious to consider turning back anymore, I held my flashlight with my jaw pressed to my shoulder. Setting my hands on the circular handle, I twisted with force, pulling a side-lever before I lifted the heavy lid with a grunt.

I pointed my flashlight down into the dark pit below, hoping to see the sheen of water to tell me this was nothing to worry about. This was just an old water tank. Instead, the darkness consumed the light, only revealing a ladder extending down into the blackness.

As I leaned over the abyss, my pack of smokes slipped from my shirt pocket, tumbling into the depths below. When it hit the ground, it let out a dry slap.

"Great," I said out loud, glancing around again in search of Ian. He had come down here with me, hadn't he?

Knowing I needed to retrieve my smokes if only to hide that I had wandered in here, I ignored my instincts once more and climbed down onto the ladder. Once inside, I realized the ladder was surrounded by metal. I was in a tube, venturing down to pluck my cigarettes from the unknown. Hopefully I could do so without claustrophobia setting in. I didn't like being in tights spaces like this, but I could tolerate it. After all, I'd made it through prison more times than I could keep track of anymore. This space was only just a smaller cage, one that wasn't meant to contain me and would gladly let me go.

As I descended, each sound took on an echo. Each step. Each breath. It almost sounded like I wasn't alone.

At the bottom of the empty water tank, the chamber opened up. To get my bearings, I scanned the room with my meager light to find the expected. Metal all around me, concrete below my feet, my cigarettes patiently waiting at the foot of the ladder.

I shoved the pack into my pants pocket and was ready to climb back up toward the sun when my light fell onto something that shouldn't have been down there. A chair, a leather-bound book which was probably the Bible, and a coffee can filled to the brim with cigarette butts.

What the fuck?

"Ian?" I called quietly, needing him with me but terrified to make a noise.

When I heard movement, I stopped breathing, fear taking hold to freeze me in place. I wasn't alone.

My mind screamed at me to scramble back up the ladder, but my feet wouldn't move. Slowly, I panned the light around the chamber, hands shaking in horrified anticipation. Metal walls in a circular room. The chair, the coffee can. Metal bars. A skeletal-like being with large, intense eyes. As it stood, its long, thin limbs became visible, its gaze still set on me, seeing into me, staring through me.

A curt scream escaped my lips as I sat up in bed, sweaty and confused.

A dream. It was just a dream.

Rubbing his eyes, Ian held my bicep with reassurance. "What's wrong?"

Beyond relieved to be safe in bed with my husband, I lay back down and sighed with peace. Liam had been helping me learn to read better, and the book we were reading was Stephen King's Salem's Lot. The scary story must have been getting to me. It also probably didn't help that Ian and I watched 2017's It before bed that night. "Nightmare."

"Terry?"

"No. I was in this old prison where there'd been a fire," I told him. "But I wasn't a prisoner. I think I was a guard, and I found something...someone..." I scratched my head, trying to make sense of it.

Ian chuckled at the idea of me being a prison guard. "You dreamt you were a guard. I dreamt I was a Jedi."

"You could never be Jedi," I snarked before I admitted, "I think I found Bill Skarsgård in a cage..."

Ian smirked, unaware of how frightening my dream had truly been. "Kinky."

With a smile, I let my fear wash away. "Well, you know I love the tall ones, even if they have a scary clown smile."

He lifted a brow before giving me an almost inhumanly wide grin. "Like that?"

I pretended to shudder at his Joker face before I pulled him in for a kiss.

*Mickey's nightmare was brought to you by Castle Rock Season 1 from 2018. If you like Stephen King, great actors including Noel Fisher and Jane Levy (the ORIGINAL Mandy Milkovich of Shameless US), then I recommend giving at least the first season a watch if you can find it*