Chapter

5

Morning comes and the new prisoner is shackled into cell sixty-five. The regular curses and slurs fly through the sixth floor but the prison guard just nods and locks the door behind him. Never again will he walk into cell sixty-five alone.

The prison guard saunters over to his folding chair and plugs his ears with wax. A calm covers him and he quickly nods off.

The serenity though fails to seep beneath the cracks of cell sixty-five's door. Behind the metal, the new inmate paces as far as his chains will allow. Obscenities flood from his throat until a soft buzzing passes his ear. He quiets, listens. A voice speaks to him, haunts him. At first he curses and heckles it, tries to ignore its presence. Soon enough though the voice paralyzes him, makes him scream.

Past a hole in the wall of the cell stands the body to a voice that plagued prisoner sixty-five for over three years. And now the voice will continue, unnoticed and irrepressible, until it no longer has a neighbor that listens.