The Demented Assassin
Part 1: The Question
By: My Plaid Pants

I heard voices echoing down the once deserted corridor. Two sets of feet walked closer to my jail cell. They were speaking very fast in French. I rested my head in my hands trying to soothe the immense pressure that was pushing out from the inside of my skull. I didn’t speak fluent French and only knew a few selective words. The result was that the nonstop foreign words clouded my head buzzing a loud continuous hum. The soft tapping of walking feet grew steadily louder until suddenly it stopped and the voices were silenced. A slot opened on my jail door to reveal a set of horrible, large brown eyes peering in at my pathetic shadow. These eyes were deep set in the guard’s skull, the corneas yellowed and bloodshot. They were fearsome and creepy in appearance, making me wince for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint.

“Parlez-vous français?” The guard gazed down at me with his piercing eyes, his expression slightly alarming. His words startled me in my cell, making my head shoot up and my eyes squint as they tried to focus on the dim image in front of me. I tried to open my mouth but my lips cracked painfully from lack of water as thick glutinous saliva surrounded my tongue.

“What?” My answer was hoarse and almost inaudible as the words pinched at the throat and rolled out like sharp rocks. The eyes behind the door turned to the left and out of sight to reveal half an ear darkened by grease and grime in the creases. Surrounding this grotesqueness was thick clumps of course black hair curled and matted from neglect. The muscles beneath his hair moved faintly as he spoke quickly in French again to his partner. I heard quick steps echo into my cell as the second guard rushed off in the opposite direction. The dark brown eyes from before turned back to peer into the cell again.

“You look like shit.” His heavy French accent disfigured his words so they were barely understandable. My expression changed to the coldest glare I could muster in response to those two terrible eyes. They were like deep and menacing holes I was falling unwillingly into. The guard’s eyelids squinted as he let out a sneering laugh, echoing down into my cell and filling it, reverberating off the walls and into my ears, up to the brain as my headache thumped on. It seemed like its mocking sound would never end, growing louder with every passing moment, and slowly building more and more pressure in my already pained skull.

“Why am I here?” I forced out, slowly getting use to using my voice. Once the guard heard my questioning words, his laughter stopped immediately and his eyes jumped to a sharp expression of distrust. Then, the slot snapped shut in front of them, and I was left in his cold loneliness once again.

My stifled breathing filled the cell in its own ominous way. There wasn’t a single sign of life surrounding me. The silence filled the cell like a looming toxic gas, filling my ears with its painful emptiness. I looked around my gloomy cage as my only source of light, an old bulb hanging in the corner, flickered on and off. The dim shadows it spread throughout my tiny cell were lucid and creepy. I could feel the dark tarnished yellow color it inflicted on my skin, causing me to shudder every time I looked down at an arm.

I shivered uncomfortably, wrapping the tattered blanket tighter around my shoulders. Random threads stuck out at odd angles poking and pinching into my arms and catching at my pathetic excuse for clothes. I stifled a breath between my chattering teeth letting stiff and stifling air push down my throat as the deep stench of my last bathroom break filled my nose.

I was exhausted and uncomfortable but I had no means of knowing what time it was. The only interaction I had with the outside world were the times when those menacing brown eyes showed themselves into the open slot. Each time they caused me more pain than my perpetual headaches. For some reason, they frightened me, making me tremble at the very thought. Although I was hungry every time he came, I would rather have starved to death than have to look toward those eyes before every meal.

Then, three meals after the brown eyes had laughed at me; I felt something that would fill my brain with more confused and tortured thoughts. The sharp feeling of metal on my own skull crashed into my mind like a hundred pound weight. Its sense of reality was overwhelming.

Instinctively, my hand shot up to the back of the head where I could feel felt a mass of matted hair congealed together in thick tangled clots of dried blood. I winced as my fingers came in contact with a particularly sensitive spot. The wound was warm from my own body heat, different from the hair surrounding it which was icy cold from the thick stone it had previously been pressed upon.

Once again, the back of my head began to throb uncomfortably. This must be the reason for the constant headaches. I placed my head in my shaking hands, attempting to make an abysmal attempt to think.

My bemused thoughts were interrupted when the door of my cell clicked multiple times and pulled open cautiously before three large men came into view. The two men in front immediately swooped down grabbing tight holds onto my upper arms. The pressure was ominous as I allowed them to lift me to my feet and pull me roughly out of the cell. It took quite a struggle for me to get a good enough footing in order to half walk, half jog along beside them.

The third man led the way, his wide stride and head held high seemed to mock my pathetic stature. For this was the man who guarded my cell, gave me food everyday. This was the man who owned the most horrible eyes I had ever had to face. The ones that caused my imprisoned and lonely existence to be accompanied with so much strife. But only the back of this fearsome man’s head was in view at the moment, and I preferred it that way. I glared angrily at the coarse greasy black hair, as if trying to prove to myself that those eyes were not to be feared, this guy was nothing! But I did fear him, and I didn’t have to look very deep to know it.

We made our way down many long corridors, in and out of locked doors until we entered a part of the prison that was much cleaner and well cared for. We entered through a door that had a French word in large white letters inscribed on it. Like almost all french words, they were unrecognizable in my eyes. When we entered, I felt a painful punch in the eyes as my iris’ shrunk around the pupil. The whole room could be described as bright, white, and shiny.

The two guards holding onto my arms pulled me over to a hard medical bench in the opposite side of the room. They pushed me onto it, positioning me stomach down, all the while not loosening their clenching grips.

“She’ll be in here in any minute now,” one of them said to the room. She. The word rang in my ears like the most beautiful thing in the world before an alarm bell to go off in my brain. I hadn’t had a glance at the opposite sex for who knows how long. I had forgotten how much I missed the light flutter that tickled inside my chest when I saw an attractive woman.

Five minutes later however, my faint light of hope was shattered. A woman just as large as the guards who had carried me here, strode into the room. She held her arms in an awkward position, elbows out, shoulders hunched. Her hair was a dark burgundy hair was stretched against her skull and pulled into a tight bun in the back of her head. Her skin was thick and leathery; it seemed to hang on her face rather than being a part of its features. Thick black eyebrows hung above a pair of large sinister eyes. Her protruding nose stuck out at such a length that its shadow discolored her thin lips. In fact, the only thing small about her was her lips. It was as if they didn’t belong with the rest of these conspicuous facial features.

Her large stride brought her quickly into the room as she smacked her lips unconsciously as if she was just about to dig into a sumptuous meal. Her face curled into a malicious sneer as her eyebrows narrowed once her darting eyes locked a gaze onto me.

This intimidating woman turned to the guard in charge and began to speak quickly in French. Her voice was low and almost to masculine for a woman. After a short conversation, she walked briskly over to me as I lay on the bench. She positioned her hands over my ears firmly and turned my face down while the brown eyed guard slipped a donut shaped pillow beneath. Just before he was about to take his hand away from under my face, I noticed a black and purple bruise in the shape of an odd crescent on the back of the guards hand. It was ghastly in color; I almost winced just looking at it. Then when it was out of sight I started to wonder why it was such an odd shape as a crescent.

Now surrounded by darkness, I had to listen carefully to the clatter of noise the woman was creating. Suddenly, a cold stinging fluid was being poured onto my gash and patted carefully. It felt like tiny splinters were pricking one by one at my flesh burning after each painful jab. I winced unwillingly and heard the woman chuckle at my reaction.

The next thing I knew, a needle was pushed smoothly into my skin around the damaged flesh and out through the other side. The woman worked quickly and efficiently pulling the needle in and out slowly enclosing the open wound. Once she was finished, my head throbbed painfully as I was quickly escorted out of the medical room and down the halls back to my well protected and dreaded cell. It took every ounce of my power to allow myself to let the guards bring me back to this hell of an enclosed space.

The next day, my head still throbbed with as much pain as ever before. I couldn’t lean my head against the cold cell wall anymore for fear of damaging my newly sewn stitches. Uncomfortable and miserable, I was once again alone and trapped with only my befuddled brain to accompany me.

The gentle slide of the slot on my cell door interrupted my unhappy thoughts as I looked up to see, not those frightening brown eyes, but a new set of bright blue ones staring in at me. These eyes were sharp and tense. They scanned the inside of the cell quickly before looking down at my with disgust.

“You are Mark Oliver Wackett, are you not?” His stern and rigid voice reflected his eyes’ stature perfectly. I looked up, slightly confused. Now that the subject came up, I realized I had no idea what my name was. It was at that moment that another odd recollection entered my recollection.

A woman with curly brown hair holding a clipboard stood in front of me as we stood at the entrance to a large ornately decorated building. Many people surrounded the two of us talking and jostling this way and that, most of them speaking quickly in French.

“Name, please,” the woman said without looking up from her papers.

“Mark Oliver Wackett”

The episode faded as quickly as it had come.

“Yes, that’s my name” I answered. “That’s my name,” I repeated softly to myself, attempting to get used to it. For some reason though, it didn’t feel right. Was that really his name? Or was that reminiscence just a figment of the imagination, a lie. Only it couldn’t be. It had been so vivid, so real.

“Right,” replied the man with blue eyes before snapping the slot stiffly closed.

I pulled my tattered blanket tighter around my shoulders. I wanted to scream. I wanted to lash out to find out what the hell was going on. Sitting miserably in this cell hour after hour with only my scrambled thoughts to occupy me was unbearable. I rested the side of my head against the wall and closed my weary eyes. Mentally exhausted, I fell asleep within a minute’s time.