Free My Black Beast by Randall P. Fitzgerald Page A

for one
of the vials. She broke the tip and poured the contents onto the
bandage where he had been healed. The area instantly numbed. She
grabbed the table and started to turn.
    “ Wait!”
    Lowell put a hand on her wrist and she froze,
still looking away.
    “ Thank you. I don’t know if they’re
going to kill me or what but thank you.”
    She turned to look at him and seemed to get
what he was saying.
    “ Please. Do you know where they
took Marka?”
    “ Marka?!”
    She pulled away from him and hurried toward
the door, shouting up at the guards as she did. The door opened and
shut and she was gone. Though he felt better, the pain was still
fresh in Lowell’s mind. He pulled his shirt back over his head and
decided to have a look around. As it turned out, that was an
absolute waste of time. And not very much time, even. There were no
secret cubby holes to speak of. The bed was a raised slab, the
walls were all blank white and lit in such a way that it made it
genuinely difficult to get a sense of depth except when looking up
at the enclosed watch station.
    Honestly, the room was starting to annoy him
now that his energy was back and his life wasn’t just a series of
stabbing pains and aimless anger. It was boring and if he was going
to die at least they could put him on top of the big spire thing
and make him jump off or something more visually
appealing.
    He paced around for what had to have been
hours, tried some pushups, and eventually wound up on the
mattress-like bag of… maybe sand? He hadn’t really noticed before
but the stuffing was noisy and never missed an opportunity to
amplify the noise of any sound he made. He ended up back on the
floor. He could probably have pulled the mattress off of the raised
platform but it didn’t make much sense to bother.
    The door slid partially open and a bowl was
placed inside. It had shut long before Lowell made his way to the
bowl. A half dozen medium-sized chunks of deep brown meat in a
brown sort of soupy stew. A two pronged fork was stuck into a piece
of the meat. Lowell paced around and poked at the food. It didn’t
smell of much at all and there was no discernable spice in the
stock. He pulled up the piece of meat to inspect it more closely.
It hadn’t been seared. The odd darkness was just the color of the
muscle.
    Lowell shrugged and bit into it. Not good. He
dropped the fork back into the bowl and almost gagged. The meat,
whatever it was, tasted like a combination of chicken gristle and
old shrimp. He wasn’t hungry yet and counted that as a sort of
blessing. He’d probably need to eat it eventually and he hoped that
the future need would make it easier to stomach. Other than the
awful taste, it was bland. Like muddy water that’d been filtered so
it still has that earthen taste but none of the grit. The better
part of an hour passed, filled with poking at the weird meat and
wondering if he was being tortured or treated to a fine
delicacy.
    It wasn’t long before the door started its hum
again. Really, it seemed a bit busy for a prison cell. He stood,
not sure what to expect. A pair of guards led in, and grabbed him
by his arms. They didn’t stop at just securing him and it was his
back slamming against the far wall that signaled the end of the
short trip. The old man was behind them, walking briskly, a frantic
look on his face. He looked dead at Lowell.
    “ Marka! She gave you a
thing?!”
    “ What? No.”
    “ DO NOT LIE!”
    “ She didn’t give me anything!
Jesus! Let me go!”
    The old man ignored him and began to paw over
his jacket and pants squeezing things.
    “ Hey! HEY! What the hell,
man?”
    Lowell would have turned his pockets out if
he’d just asked. Degoed began patting the flats of his clothes,
looking for anything he could find. Lowell had hardly noticed until
the Elder hit on the locket and lifted up his shirt. The old man
reached out to grab it and Lowell’s eyes flared. With every ounce
of blind rage, he raised a leg and plunged it