The Dream Trotters

Chapter 1

Concrete echoed with the pulsating harmony of leather and skin as a captive was led to his judgement.  From the footwear of the two beings, much information could be derived.  Leather combat boots, molden with time and held together only by sheer will, squeezed the jailer’s toes.  They resembled his fingernails, which were worn and filed by his very teeth yet he could never remember chewing them.  He had large hands; but these were not the comforting palms of a grandfather, which hold laughter lines if looked at closely enough, tell the stories of little trains and glorious grandchildren.  These hands spoke of malice towards all  and trapped within the nails was a mix of blood, fury, and missed opportunities to save lives.   His hands told the stories of agony.  Yet, the jailer felt a strange sensation which had been missing from his life for years- pity.

The man he pulled with him embodied the word frigid.  The prisoner, Simon, was more foot than man.  Left with only minimal rationing, his skin had conformed to the shape of a man’s bones, which is a state no human should have to bear.  Threadbare orange fabric, that had once fit snuggly, hung loose around his frame and screamed to the world his occupation. The numbers, 11205, were slightly peeling away from his the right side of the suit of shame as if threatening to run off and leave him alone.  His fingers tingled with the burning sensation that one experiences when skin falls asleep, but is then jerked back to life.  This was not the feeling that one has when sitting too long on a road trip, or when you curl up on a couch for hours and pour your attention into a novel; this was feverish, for it covered every inch of his body and cocooned around his numb senses.  

The odd couple approached a cement door and the jailer rapped twice.  It produced an echoey sound, which reverberated off of cells, and frigid bodies.  True to its form, the door swung open and proudly displayed the dingy contents of the room.  Simon was distracted.  Water in its most disgusting form lay in puddles and oozed through holes in the ceiling, as if struggling between the state of liquid and solid.  The room was barely ten feet wide, yet dark corners seemed vast as if they were shrouding themselves to hide long lost secrets.  

Frozen metal collided with his skin, as he was slammed down into a metal folding chair.  The padding on the chair was as existent as cleanliness on the face of a toddler.  Large fluorescent lights switched on above his head and bathed the room in dusty, dirty light.  It was the first inkling of brightness that the prisoner had seen in months and it sent his mind reeling with memories of summer afternoons spent basking by the poolside.  Neon swimsuits and the poignant smell of chlorine, combined with the excess of cellulite flashed through his mind, a recipe for summer.  Simon was sent back into reality and ripped away from fantasy by the cacophony of fingernails tapping rhythmically against metal.  

He directed his eyes toward the hand of the person in front of him.  They were delicate fingers which were capped by cartilage and patterned by veins. In his own mind, they were the hands of a man who has seen trial and retreated through technicalities and loopholes.  The man’s hands were representatives of his whole physique and accurately they did represent him.  Doctor Ellis, for that was his name, wore a midnight blue suit which he wore like a caterpillar wears its cocoon.  It glided firmly over his frail frame and straightened his bony knees as if trying to increase his already commanding height.  Barely there eyebrows crowned his aquiline nose.  His eyelids were slightly opaque yet when he blinked, it was a slow process, like old windshield wipers sweeping away raindrops on a dreary afternoon.

Simon searched for the man’s eyes.  From his childhood, Simon King had been taught to look men firmly in the eye, and shake their hands with a firm grasp.  Yet beside all the pomp and show of Doctor Ellis, his eyes, which were set firmly in, hid in cobwebs of darkness and shame.  

“Do you know why you are here?”  the doctor asked.  Simon thought for a moment about what to say.  He didn’t want to bark out at the man, for he might be his only chance of being released.