Free Unknown by Jane Page A

empty.
    She has been asking for me and I am here. When she enters the bedroom she stops, frozen in her tracks, her kimono clutched tightly around her emaciated frame.
    “You’re
    here.”
    “I
    am.”
    “Time to go?”
    “If you’re ready. You’d probably find me more desirable there. You’d be less, how should I put this...intact. Less susceptible to pain. Less aware.”
    “No. I deserve everything I get.”
    “Good. It’ll go much faster, it will sink in, penetrate, encase your every fibre if we do this here first. There, I have no guarantees. Of anything. Here, it’s for sure.”
    “It will hurt?”
    “You tell me,” he states, gesturing down to his engorged lower region.
    A wisp of silk falls to the floor. The creak of a bed frame and his guttural laugh are no match for her screams. In the snow capped mountains she moves up and down, the howl of a coyote in the distance snapping her out of her state. Obsidian eyes stare out, blind as panic overwhelms her, while he plants his seed. Eden has been reborn.
    5. GORDON
    “Your shit will be here when you’re done.”
    Zeke is the muscles half of the equation. Seems that Eddy has other things to do. Jerking off and picking his nose no doubt. I barely know where I am, disoriented and weak. Zeke’s meaty hand is shoved between my shoulder blades as I am pushed up against the door frame while he tosses my bags inside.
    “This is where you’ll live. The town center? We’ll work up to that. I don’t think you’re ready for the bright lights and center stage quite yet. Personally, I don’t think you’ll ever be ready but that’s not for me to decide.”
    My face is pressed against the straw and timber as he lectures me on my new existence. I don’t know what he is talking about. So much work to do. I have a gigabyte of text already filtering through my head.
    “You’re probably worthless today, but I’m going to take you over to the fields anyway. I can’t have you wandering around here all day. Who knows what kind of trouble you could get into. The worse case scenario in the field is that you pass out in the corn.”
    Field. I can barely stay conscious. How am I going to work on the crops?
    “It’s okay Gordon, they’ll wake you up. You ever have a cattle prod shoved up your ass? That’s an eye opener for sure. I’ll tell them to set it on low since you’re a virgin and all, and have been such an ideal prisoner. I mean, citizen.”
    “Thanks asshole,” I mumble.
    I’m spun around and barely have time to focus on his contorted face before I get an extreme close-up of his knuckles. It feels like he hit me with a shovel, fast and complete, the pain swallowing my face as I crumple to the ground. A light show behind my eyelids gives me pause.
    “Listen dickhead, you’re low man on the totem pole. You’re fresh meat, the new kid on the block. Keep your mouth shut, and do your time, and you’ll be fine. I don’t need much of an excuse to kick your ass. What you did there, we call that insubordination. It gives me grounds to smack you. So, say something else, Gordon. I’m already in a foul mood, so feel free, give me more ammunition. It’s bad enough that I have to watch Marcy work you over without any reciprocation, but now I have to listen to your lip? I don’t think so. Anything else?”
    Sucking up dirt I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, a trickle of blood clinging to my wrist. A quick intake of air, wheezing as I exhale.
    “Sure. Your mother sucks cocks in hell.”
    I grin. I squint into the sun waiting for the explosion. And I’m not denied. I’m not going into the fields today. He just doesn’t know it yet. As the world shuts down again and I feel the sensation of my body rising, only to be beaten down and dropped again, I scan the display.
    Ezekiel “Zeke” Sanders
    Domicile: Sector 4, building 121:
    Six fEEt, four inches, two hundred
    eighty pounds
    Detail: Security
    Charge: Murder, rape, armed robbery.
    Maybe X could