Free Codename Prague by D. Harlan Wilson Page B

him nice and trim. A rusty metal slot in the cell door opened three times a day and somebody tossed in a tin plate of goulash or soup or gruel. Bad things ensued. He was accustomed to overeating and his body took revenge by way of frequent diarrhea, nausea, hives, cold shakes, brainfreeze, and other unpleasant symptoms of excess-deprived withdrawal. Additionally, a man in an iron blowtorch mask tortured him on a regular basis. The man never used a blowtorch. He used a magnifying glass, burning holes in Prague’s skin with the aid of a portable fusion-powered sun, but usually the man beat him with blunt, Lo- Tech weapons (e.g. clubs, maces, logs, chains, pipes, baseball bats, bones, candlesticks, broomsticks, hardcover books, stones, bricks, icicles, chair legs, medicine balls, T-squares, hippopotamus whips, shower nozzles, flashlights, knobkieries, sally rods, wrenches, bamboo, etc.). He only tortured Prague once with surgical instruments, cutting off most of his fingers and toes as well as a pound of flesh here and there and the majority of his upper lip. Whatever the case, Prague oscillated between screaming, giggling and snoring, unable to retaliate given the steady influx of sleeping and laughing gases into his cell.
    After awhile, Prague adapted to the routine. Even defecating in a bucket wasn’t unbearable. Nor was having his veins artlessly replenished with fresh Victory gin and vermouth whenever it went bad. His only real complaint was the constant draft he felt on his upper row of teeth; he realized the grave degree to which he had taken his lip for granted. He even befriended his torturer, who, while continuing to bruise, burn and break him, developed a high regard for the celebrity/g-man/prisoner, telling him jokes and, once, bringing him a slice of cherry pie.
    One day the torturer entered the cell and began to cry. Prague asked him why. He took off his blowtorch mask, revealing the surgically reconstructed face of Vincent Prague sans défaut , and said, “Seven years have passed. That’s seven tenths of a decade.” He fell to his knees, sobbing.
    Behind the torturer appeared a replica of Armand Dorleac, the prison warden of Château d’If in an early twentieth century film version of The Count of Monte Cristo . He placed a hand on the torturer’s shoulder. “Pardon the poor fool. Upon your incarceration, he had his face recreated in your image and has become quite attached to you, I’m afraid. Now we’ll have to burn the visage to ashes. Alas.”
    Prague lifted a trembling arm and pointed at the warden. “You look familiar. Didn’t you play bad guys in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Crow ? Strange Days , I think, too.”
    “Amazing, Mr Prague,” said the warden. “How do you speak so well in the absence of your upper lip? Bilabials are an impossible feat of articulation in your condition.”
    “Ventriloquism runs in my family.”
    “Ah yes. Of course. What doesn’t run in your family? Well, you’re free to go. You’ve paid your debt.”
    “Debt? Fuck did I do?”
    “You know the MAP. Existence itself is grounds for punishment. Thus and so. By the way may I have your autograph? My kids love your work.” He held out a sheet of parchment paper and a fountain pen.
    Prague took the pen and threw it aside. He blew his nose onto the paper and gave it back to the warden.
    Bound in shackles at the neck, wrists and ankles, he shuffled up and down and across countless stairways and corridors and planks, pausing only to be flogged by malicious escorts…
    A doktor stood at the front gate of Château d’If. He wore a stethoscope and monocle and pale green OR uniform. “Hmm,” he said at the sight of Prague, and took his pulse. “I see. Take him to the madhouse, please. This man is insane in the membrane.”
    “Insane in the brain,” droned the diminutive assistant at the doktor’s side.
    An escort clubbed Prague in the back of the head. Before losing conscious-ness , he felt somebody tear