Tomarkus and the Betrayed Planet

2. The Agonies of Carcerem

Ariet's future seemed darker than the night. He had been standing in his cell since morning, on the uneven pock-marked floor. The guards had disappeared, but he could sense the terror waiting behind the cloak of silence. His reedy legs hurt in the joints, and his feet itched as though a hundred worms were feasting on them. Ariet was a sato, a male fugit, with green, bulging eyes, half-covered by thick eyelids like an aged fish. His silver-grey skin glittered in the light. He had a pair of thin legs and a pair of hands, emerging from his torso. His oval head had two slits in the middle of forehead for breathing, and a thin cut in the face from where he could eat, speak and cry. Physical ears had disappeared centuries ago, leaving small holes on both sides of fugits' heads.

Exhausted and depressed, Ariet finally sat down on the floor. His compact cell was like an ugly bird's cage. The smell that he had been aware of from the time they had put him into this cell continued to annoy him. At first, he had thought it was something from the Dueso vent, situated in the ceiling of his cylindrical glass cell. He had checked it repeatedly, bowing his forehead to the vent, but the air coming from it was normal; if anything, it was cleaner and more odorless than he expected to get in Carcerem. Gawking at the dirty floor, the sato saw greasy, violet stains in some of the depressions on the floor. After looking closely, he discovered they were bloodstains. How had they come there? Some previous occupants, perhaps?

Sitting helplessly inside the cell, he had nothing to distract him from thoughts of possible tortures that had been devised for prisoners during their sentence. And when he looked out into the gloomy corridor, he now noticed similar bloodstains all over the floor, screaming miserable tales of tortures.

'Mahona tiyun kuil fugnes isfu heli Komayo ornakul,' the sato wondered, in his native Fenayaki. What could have caused such terrible bloodshed inside the prison? He scratched his itching feet. Guards could have been beating the prisoners in there, though he hadn't as yet witnessed any prisoner being tortured. The foul smell seemed all-pervading in this place, but it was not the smell of blood, it was more like the smell of a fetid bug. Tired of inaction, he moved aside from his place and started checking every depression on the floor, poking his fingers into the deeper ones.

'What's this ugly thing!' he yelled, leaping on his feet. He was holding a thick flesh shred that stank beyond imagination. It must had been rotting in the cell for quite a long time. Terrifying thoughts raced through his brain —what if he died in Carcerem, what if he could never return to Hydus, his home.

Ariet threw the stinky shred away to the side, as far away from himself as possible in the sealed cell. He would have to get used to this life, he thought, closing the shutters of his eyes in disgust. He would likely be here a very long time. For the thousandth time, he cursed himself for not following the exact orders from MOX, wiping his hand compulsively on his brown gaban, the tight skirt, made of rubber, which covered the middle part of his body from neck to knees.

Time bled away and it was evening. Ritual sounds echoed in Carcerem. Some prisoners woke from sleep, then snoozed again. The rituals were dedicated to "Manosim Ornociya Xonik" aka MOX, the regime on Tomarkus. After a time, they faded and were replaced by a high-pitched siren, the kind of which Ariet hadn't heard before. He pushed himself back, frightened, as the cells started opening one after another. His heart pounded hard against his chest. Was it a malfunction, the sato worried, as he saw prisoners aggressively emerging from their cells. He started sweating, but nobody paid any attention to his cell where he lay in a fetal position, folded like a beaten pet. The crowd hobbled towards the murky end of the corridor, their severely wounded feet painting the hallway in fresh violet.