The Eyes Of Men: A Collection Of Short Stories

Entombed

It must have been almost noon, or so Harn thought as he eagerly awaited lunch time. Not because he was particularly hungry or because Tuesday's lunch special of sloppy gray meat chunks was especially appealing, but because it meant that he got to get the hell out of his cell for a moment for a change of scenery.

Prison was an exercise in patience that could push even the most accomplished Jedi Knight to the breaking point, but Harn had become a master of the routine that kept his mind occupied, which mostly consisted of a healthy diet of masturbation and push-ups. However, today they just weren't doing the trick.

He rolled onto his side to face the wall where he had plastered a cluster of pornographic images; an assortment of partially nude females in extreme bondage poses (as extreme as the screws would permit anyway). The girls had dark hair and dark eyes—always dark hair and dark eyes.

He fixated on a girl with a gag in her mouth and a rope bound from her neck to her ankles with her mascara smeared as though she had been crying in fear. They were obviously staged; cheap counterfeits of the real thing, but most days they did the trick.

Harn fondled his flaccid penis with his hand and tried to imagine the girls' pain to bring himself to erection, but the excessive use of the same images had robbed them of their luster and him of his ability to transpose his fantasies into them, and as a result his cock remained soft in his hand and his frustration turned to anger then to dull aching boredom.

So his mind drifted back to creating images from the peeling paint chips hanging from the ceiling, and then there was a knock on the sliding food tray window. It slid open with a violent clung and a guard's voice called in "Harn, you got a visitor," he said with Nazi-like authority.

A visitor... on a Tuesday? This didn't add up but Harn was open to anything that could break the monotony.

Then there was a buzz overhead as the guards in the control room unlocked the door and the clinging sounds of heavy metal components banged out as the door crept open.

Harn, not wanting to appear too eager, remained laying on his back while a tall slim man entered the room. The man was white and in his early sixties, judging by the leathery texture of his skin and silver of his hair. He was dressed in a black shirt like a priest's but carried himself with the uptight, irreverence of a bureaucrat.

He sat across from Harn and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. "Do you mind if I smoke?" the man asked politely. Harn rose to the sitting position in his cot to meet the man's eyes. "Do I strike you as the type that would give a fuck."

The man gave no reaction other then to spark his lighter and draw smoke coyly. His eyes were a steely blue with a faint clouding of the lenses bestowing him a corpsey effect that even Harn was unnerved by.

"Let me get one of those" Harn gestured to the man's cigarette.

"Sure... if you don't mind that they're filterless." he handed Harn the pack.

"Last time I checked, I still had a cock between my legs" Harn lit up his cig and blew smoke threw his nostrils.

"So what are you anyway... some kind of a priest or something, come to hear my confession and save my soul?"

To this the man laughed for the first time revealing his large tobacco stained teeth; the combination with his ghostly eyes was even more unsettling. "I suppose that you could say that," the man replied.

"So what now... do you want me to tell you all about my crimes... all the details of how those girls suffered so you can go back and jerk off in a pew?"