life is a carnival

i shall be released

The ball made out of plasticine rolled under one of the twin beds. I guess that's what happens when you drop something that rolls.
Lee's arms dropped down to the mattress, limp, and Lee himself seemed to have lost what was left of his will to move.

"Ricky, could you get that for me? It's under your bed," Lee mumbled, knowing full well that Rick has just as few intentions to crawl under a bed as he does.
"Wha'?"
"Nothing."

So from then on, only the sound of their breathing broke the silence occasionally, when it became difficult for Rick to breathe normally.

So Lee just lay there, listening to Rick slowly dying, wondering what they did to deserve this.

That was at least until their door opened and in they shoved a man, who was... Already escaping. Lee sat up, startled, then lay back down with a chuckle. He remembered doing the same when they brought him in. He remembered Rick doing the same when they brought him in.

"I, hey, you people, you've got to understand that I wasn't even there when it happened! Hudson was my friend, I wouldn't have wanted to kill him! I want a lawyer! It wasn't... I was framed! Why won't you... Why. No." The guy leaned on the door which was now closed, and he knew that it would remain that way for a long time. "No. No!"

He promptly slumped down to the floor.
Lee let him.

For a while.

"Hey, man," he said softly, making the new guy's head snap towards him, his eyes wide and his breathing hitching. "Get up. You're gonna catch a cold and then you'll be joining Rick soon on the land of pneumonia."

It made Rick chuckle, at least. Already a success.
The new guy, however, didn't find it that funny. But he stood up. Another success.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Levon Helm, Lee, and this here is Richard Danko. The most important thing about him is that nobody knows when he was born. Cool, right?" Lee grinned, and Rick raised an arm to wave.

And the new guy just stood there.
"Aren't you going to tell us your name, then?" Lee lay back down and raised his eyebrows.
"I'm Robbie," Robbie said. "How do I get out?"

Of course he'd ask that.

"Well, you see," Lee started, "we don't know. This is a jail. I guess you'll just have to wait. No reason to get excited."

That did wonders to Robbie's mood.
"Who said I was excited? Do I look excited? What kind of twisted mind would I need to be excited to be here?"

"He didn't say you were excited," a new voice, which sounded like laughing and crying at the same time, joined in. "He warned you not to get excited while you're here. How many days are you going to be here anyway?"

Robbie looked at Rick, who was now trying to sit up, which took great efforts. But he managed okay.

"Dunno. All. Every."
"Every day?"
"I suppose," Robbie's posture slumped again, and was threatening to sit back down on the cold tiles of the floor.

"Hey, hey now," Lee sat up and crawled out of his bed to Robbie, urging him to stand up. "Come on, choose a bed, we've got lots of beds, there are more blankets somewhere, but most of them are with Rick, here, do you like that bed?" Lee pointed at the one after his own bed.

Robbie shrugged and sat down on it, not really caring which bed he'd spend the rest of his life on, which was not very insightful of him.

"Come on, why don't you tell us why you're here?" Lee sat down on Rick's bed, doing his best to give Robbie an open and inquisitive look. He'd have had to practice his open and inquisitive look later.

"I don't think it's any of your business," Robbie mumbled, "not just yet."

"Oh." Lee seemed to think for a moment. "Then we'll tell you why we're here! Good?"
"Very."

"So you see, uhm, Rick and I, we're officially working at a market, it's a big market, all kinds of people go there and you can buy anything you want. Sometimes there are performances and more often than not, very rare and, how should I put that, otherworldly things are to be sold. Is that right, Rick?"

"Yeah. And we were there all the time. We helped people find eachother. Yeah. To be honest, we more or less lived there."

"Yeah. So, one day, this guy who said his name was Robert Allen walks up to me, rattles a bag full of silver coins and says he'll give it to us if we can find the Sacred Harp." There he paused to look for recognition in Robbie's face, but he did not seem to appreciate Lee's framatic storytelling. "Now, I've heard about this Harp back in my hometown, it was sort of a legend. A myth. And now this guy wanted to give me enough silver to buy a house for it."

"Wait, what was the guy's name again?" Robbie asked at the mention on the house, with a kind of suspicion creeping into his voice.
"Robert Allen. Why? Anyways, so I thought, what do I have to lose? Nothing, I guessed, so I found Rick and off we went to find the Harp. It took us, I think, three years, and then we found the guy who was the current owner of it, and after some convincing and a whole lot of wine, he gave it to us. I think. Kinda." Lee shuddered and probably changed his mind about telling this whole story to the guy he met ten minutes ago, but at this point, he was too far in.

"So, we went back to the market, asked after Robert Allen, and it took us a while to find him. It turned out, while we were away, he spent most of his silver, so we decided to keep the Harp to ourselves."

Lee closed his eyes.
"It was a mistake," he breathed, "a big one."
"Yeah, you know, at this point, we've had the Harp in our possession for about a month now, illegally, and it... It had certainly noticed it. It was the next week, however, on a very sunny day that we noticed something was wrong, when our shadows started fading," Rick butted in weakly.

And yeah. Robbie now became aware of while dim the lights were, he had his shadows still, unlike Lee, and while he couldn't tell, probably unlike Rick too.
"It was a Cursed Harp," he scoffed with sympathy. "I'm sorry, guys."

Lee gave him a big grin. "Yeah, it's cursed. Soon everyone started noticing how we walked around without our shadows, and we were said to be the Devil himself in two bodies and then they decided to put us in here. But not for much longer. How much is it, Rick?"

"Six days, eighteen hours, thirty-two minutes and forty-one seconds. Now thirty-nine."

"Yeah, that," Lee's eyes crinked up as he looked over at his friend.

God, he hoped that Rick would survive these last days. He could tell that he was trying to hold back his coughing so that the new guy... Lee didn't know if the new guy had anything to do with it. And another idea came to his mind. What if that guy was the Devil, and instead of the Harp, he took their shadows? Which was slightly icky because what reason did he have to do that, if he did? For funsies?

"Alright, Robbie, it's your turn. Why are you here? It can't be as bad as stealing a cursed and probably sacred object. Out with it."

Robbie clenched his teeth, contemplating the pros and cons of telling them. Well, they told him their story, so he might as well just...
"My best friend, Garth Hudson was found dead this morning," he sighed, "and they think it was me who killed him."