6. JESTER
JESTER
The iron door screamed a beautiful, jagged sound, like a violin string snapping.
They had me by the pits, dragging my heels across the cold stone, and oh, the friction was delicious.
My toes danced. They thought they were subduing me, these heavy-footed oxen with their sweat and their leather and their fear—I could smell the fear, a sharp, metallic vinegar leaking out of their pores.
But I was just enjoying the ride.
Left, right, drag. Left, right, drag.
The gag was a bit much, really. A thick, rubberized bit of silence jammed between my teeth, buckled tight.
It tasted of old spit and industrial cleaning solution.
I chewed on it. I bit down until my jaw ached, grinding my molars against the intrusion, trying to mash the silence into something I could swallow.
Because there was a laugh bubbling up. A great, fat, golden lark of a laugh that wanted to soar out of my throat and paint the ceiling red.
Masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece.
I’d left them such a gift in the intake wing. A mural of viscera. A symphony of arterial spray. I could still see the way the light hit the wetness on the stones—a glossy, crimson invitation.
And then, they threw me.
The air left my lungs as I hit the floor of the containment cell. The bricks here were older, colder. I rolled, the chains on my wrists jingling like bells—merry, merry bells—and pressed my face against the bars of the cage.
Across the hall. There.
A movement. A flicker of light in the gloom of the lower pits of hell.
I didn't breathe. I couldn't.
I just watched.
She was so small—a little bird in a cage of giants. She was moving through the wreckage of my art, the gore I’d gifted the world only an hour before. I expected her to recoil. I expected the heaving of shoulders, the delicate pale green of a turning stomach.
But no.
She moved like water.
She was efficient, quick. Her hands were encased in blue nitrile, moving with a clinical grace that made my heart do a frantic little jig against my ribs. Scrub. Wipe. Spray. She was taking my beautiful, chaotic noise and turning it back into a dull, white silence.
I leaned my forehead against the cool iron bars, chewing, chewing, chewing on that rubber gag. My eyes traced the line of her back. She wore a uniform that swallowed her, but I could see the spark of her. And then, the light caught the plastic rectangle pinned to her chest.
Elara.
Elara. Greek. Aethlios. The mother of the stars?
No, no—daughter of Orchomenus, beloved of Zeus—hidden away in the earth to protect her from the jealousy of a queen.
Deep, deep in the earth. No, different names, different gods.
They all bled together. But not like here.
Elara Hart was my subterranean star, scrubbing the filth off the world’s heels.
Elara. It tasted better than the rubber. It tasted like honey and ozone.
I watched her work. She didn't look at the guards. She didn't look at me. She was focused on the grout. The grout! I’d spilled the blood of a man’s life all over the cement, and she was worried about the porous cracks between them.
She was so thorough. She treated the biological waste with a reverence that most people reserved for prayer at church before going out and hating immigrants with all their bloody guts.
Look at me. Look at the artist who gave you this work.
She didn't look. Not for a long time. She just kept dancing that rhythmic, scrubbing dance. I marveled at the contrast—her sweet, conventionally pretty face, the kind you’d see on a milk carton or a wedding invitation, framed by the horrific, rust-colored streaks of my "work."
She was a lily in a slaughterhouse.
I felt a sudden, violent urge to reach through the bars and snap the distance between us, to feel that efficiency under my own skin. Would she scrub me, too? Would she take some industrial enzyme to my soul until I was as white and sterile as the floor?
The thought made me want to howl.
Finally, she began to strip the gloves, a sharp snap of plastic echoing in the quiet of the containment level. The silence down here was heavy, but she didn't seem to mind it. She packed her bins. She sealed the red bags. She walked toward the bars.
My bars.
I didn't move. I didn't blink. I let my eyes go wide, fixed on her with the intensity of a starving man watching a feast.
She didn't flinch. She didn't look away. Her eyes were tired, but they weren't afraid. They were just... practical.
Then, she spoke. Her voice was a guttural rasp that cut through the manic humming in my brain like a scalpel.
“Try to keep it on the walls next time,” she said, her gaze lingering on mine for a heartbeat too long. “It’s bad for the grout.”
She turned and walked away.
The laugh hit me then.
It couldn't get out—not fully—so it stayed in my chest, expanding like a supernova. I bucked against the floor, my forehead hitting the bars with a rhythmic thud, thud, thud. I was choking on it, the sheer, ridiculous, beautiful absurdity of it.
The grout!
I’d painted the intake wing in the colors of the end of the world, and she was giving me housekeeping tips.
I breathed out a fit of muffled, jagged sound through the gag—a series of high-pitched wheezes and wet, rhythmic gasps.
If the gag hadn't been there, the sound would have peeled the paint off the walls.
I felt giddy. I felt lightheaded. I felt alive in a way that made the blood in my veins feel like boiling champagne.
Elara.
My star-girl. My own little earth-hidden treasure.
She thought she was leaving. She thought she was going back to the world of people who care about Walmart and white wine and sleep and air pollution.
She was wrong.
I chewed the gag, feeling a tooth graze my own lip, the taste of my own copper blood joining the flavor of the rubber. I didn't mind. I welcomed it.
I looked at the empty space where she had been. The floor was clean now. A blank canvas.
I need more of her — she's a riot.
The guards were watching me through the monitors, I knew. They were seeing the Jester twitch and heave on the floor of his cell and they were thinking I was having a fit. Let them think it. Let them prepare their sedatives and their restraints.
They didn't understand.
I was going to dismantle this place. I was going to pull the bolts from the floor with my fingernails.
I was going to scream until the foundations cracked and the earth swallowed us both.
I would turn this entire prison into a ruin of stone and wire just to make her come back with her little blue gloves and her enzyme spray.
I’d give her something much worse than grout to worry about. I closed my eyes, the muffled sound of my laughter finally dying down into a low, predatory hum.