A few years back, I had the worst streak of bad luck in my entire life. My dad, my one living parent, got run over at a pedestrian crossing. My fiancée left me, I lost my job at the warehouse, and I had to move to the outskirts of town because of a sudden rent spike.
My one stroke of good luck was my friend Garreth. He mainly worked the commissary at a nearby prison, and he told me they were looking for more people. Mainly night crew, but the pay was solid. There was a trial period and two weeks of on-the-job learning, but it was all paid for. In my position, how could I say no?
So I started my job as a corrections officer just outside of Tomskog, Minnesota. The place was partly owned by a private company, but it was basically the same logo you’d see all over town. Hatchet Pharma has a finger in everything around here.
I got the uniform, I met the inmates. I went through the routine, and I got to know who to keep my eyes on. I had to fire my taser after three weeks on the job, but that was pretty much the highlight. Most of the time is just sitting around waiting for something to happen, or breaking up loud conversations. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds, but you gotta be ready for when it counts.
In December of 2021, I was assigned to a new route. One of the people working with inmates in solitary confinement had to quit over a health scare, and I was next in line to take his place. It was still a night gig, but in a deeply disturbing part of the jail.
Now, I won’t paint it to be something it’s not. Isolation is just a whole bunch of people keeping to themselves. Usually not even that many. Sure, the Tomskog facility has a slightly higher solitary capacity than normal, but we’re talking 10-20% at most.
Still, you need someone there at all times. You never know what they can come up with, and they’re trickier than they look.
There was this one guy at the end of the hall that just gave me the creeps. The other guards called him “Merry”, short for a longer biblical name I could never remember. He always broke the lights in his cell, and he was rumored to be extremely violent. Even in solitary confinement, he had to wear shackles. Every time he received his food he had to put his hands out to have the shackles removed, so he could eat. That’s basically the only part of him I ever saw; his hands. The cell was always pitch black.
The guy used to be an academic. Merry had three doctorates, but one day he just snapped. Killed three of his students. He also had some kind of chemical burn on his arms, leaving most of the skin on his hands discolored. Silver poisoning, possibly. Even his files were strange; stamped with a sort of blue flower. Most inmates had a stamp on their file, but he was the only one with a sunflower.
The guy refused to eat during the day, so I was the one to feed him on the night shift. Every time I removed those shackles, I’d see those gnarled blue hands reach for me. Or the tray. Whichever.
One of those nights, we were having beef stew. Nothing fancy to look at, but the thing smelled divine. I brought him some bread on the side, a little jello-box, and a bottle of water. Everyone else was fast asleep, apart from a newbie who couldn’t stop crying at the end of the corridor.
“Same procedure as last time,” I said. “Hands up front.”
Those elongated fingers slowly slid out, as if giving me an invisible fruit. The shackles clattered. I put down the tray, got the keys, and started twisting the locks back and forth. These were always a pain to deal with.
“You’re going to let me out,” Merry said. “I need you to, so you’re going to.”
“Yeah, I don’t see that happening, buddy.”
I unlocked his shackles and fetched his tray. He took it, but lingered for a second.
“You’re going to,” he said, with no hint of a joke. “It’s already decided.”
“Well, no one showed me that memo,” I chuckled. “You good in there?”
“Someone said bad things happened to you,” Merry said. “And that’s why you’re here.”
“Well, that makes two of us. Have a nice dinner.”
I walked away, but couldn’t help but to look back as those long fingers slid back inside the dark room. Gave me the creeps every time. And sure, I had to get the tray and cuff him back up in a bit, but that was just part of the job.
The next night was fish sticks. Not too shabby, but far from fresh. There were only three people in solitary that night; two guys who tried to kill each other, and Merry.
Always Merry.
As soon as I approached, those blue hands slid back out. I had to look away. There was something about the texture of his hands that made me feel weird; like they were always a bit too slick. Like a thin cover of soap. This time, he didn’t skip a beat.
“You’re going to let me out,” he said. “It’s already decided.”
“You keep saying it, but this door seems just as sturdy today as it did yesterday.”
“If you come in, you’ll see why you’re going to let me out.”
“You mean, if I open this door without any kind of backup or supervision? Yeah, I got a pretty good idea why you’d get out if I did.”
“That’s not it.”
I unlocked his shackles, and he took his tray. It disappeared into the darkness, but Merry kept talking.
“You being here is proof that I made it,” he said. “That I’ll get out.”
“I’m not following.”
“They told me you lost a lot of things. Your dad, your girl, your apartment…”
There was poison in his words. Deep, seething poison. I’ll be honest, I wanted to break his goddamn hands when he said it. But what bothered me more was where he’d heard it from; there was no one around to talk to him. And as a rule, we didn’t talk to inmates about our personal lives. Neither our own, nor that of other employees. Someone must’ve slipped up.
“Look, that’s personal,” I said. “That’s none of your business.”
“Then how do I know your dad got hit by a white Corolla?”
I banged on the door. I didn’t even know why, it was just this instinctual reaction to shut him up. But of course, that just made him laugh. How the hell did he know? It’d been a hit and run, and the color of the car was only a footnote in the police report.
“That’s not funny,” I spat. “And you’re not making any new friends by being an asshole.”
“I don’t care, little man,” he continued. “Because you’re going to let. Me. Out.”
“Not on my goddamn life.”
I took the tray back from him before he finished his dinner, and I shackled him right back up. He didn’t resist. It shut him up for a while, but it was a faint victory.
I asked to be transferred to another shift, but there just wasn’t any other people available. Hiring was rough, we were basically on our own. If we lost one person to sickness, we’d be shit out of luck at that point. So no, there was no option to switch. It couldn’t be done.
I didn’t want to go back to Merry. I really didn’t. I didn’t know who was talking to him, and I didn’t like what he was saying. I’d checked and double-checked, and there was no mistaking that white Corolla. It’d gone 60 on a 30-mph street and killed him on impact, before disappearing down a dirt road. The thing was just gone.
The police said it might’ve been deliberate. That it was too fast to be an accident.
And in my mind’s eye, I could see blue hands on the steering wheel.
When I walked up to Merry’s cell with a tray of meatballs and mashed potatoes, I was genuinely scared of what he might say. Every word felt like a threat. Could he really say something to make me let him out? What if he could? What would it be?
“Hands out,” I said, knocking on his door.
“You’re not letting me out tonight,” he sighed. “I know that. But it’s gonna happen.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I shrugged. “That’s all I wanna do.”
“Did they tell you what I did? How I did it?”
“I got a pretty good picture.”
“Helium poisoning. Painless asphyxiation. They didn’t feel a thing.”
I didn’t respond. I just took off his shackles and gave him the tray.
“I’m not a monster, you know,” he added. “I just do what I have to do.”
“Eat up and leave the tray,” I said as I walked off.
“Maybe ask your ex about Beverly!” he shouted through the slit in the door. I could almost see his lips moving. “I’m sure you’ll find it an illuminating conversation!”
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want to think about it.
But goddamn it, there was something there.
In the last fight we’d had, she’d shouted that name. Beverly. I didn’t know a Beverly, and at that moment I didn’t care. But it was such a specific name. The chance that Merry just picked it up on random was… improbable. So the next day, before my shift, I decided to give my ex a call. Things had calmed down, after all.
There was a cold greeting, and even colder small talk. Finally, she just called me out.
“Just tell me what you want,” she asked.
“I want to talk about Beverly,” I said. “You said her name once.”
“What, you’re getting remarried? Wanna bury the hatchet?”
“No, I- what?”
“You want me to forgive you? Give you my blessing?”
“What are you talking about?”
There was a moment of silence. She scoffed.
“The skank you’re dating.”
“I’m not dating a Beverly,” I said. “Never have.”
“Don’t give me that shit, I saw your e-mails. Her videos. Her insta?”
“Look, I don’t know what… I don’t know any Beverly.”
She screamed her username and cut the call.
I got online and looked her up. Beverly was maybe eight years younger than me, and absolutely stunning. She’d only been active for a few months, where she’d upload a sort of daily video blog.
It was heartbreaking. In every post, she talked about the issues of being “the other woman”. A vlog kind of thing, daily outfit posts, memes… a sort of strange mix.
This is the woman she thought I’d been involved with? Through some kind of e-mail? It didn’t make sense.
And how the hell did Merry know about this?
This haunted me. I didn’t know what to think, and I felt myself coming back to Merry and his blue hands. I had this constant sense of him being with me, looking at me. It felt like I was missing something. I could feel that strange slick texture as the hands wrapped around my neck whenever I let my mind wander. I could feel his presence in the back seat of my car, riding along with me.
And once at a stop sign, I heard him clear as day, right behind me.
“You’re gonna let me out.”
But there was no one there.
The next time I went back, I skipped the tray. We were gonna figure this out. I finished my coffee and thundered down the hall, ignoring the other inmates. Merry had some explaining to do, and I was goddamn terrified of what he was gonna say; but I needed to hear it.
“You’re gonna tell me what you know, right now,” I said. “I’ve had my black coffee, and I’ll break your goddamn hands.”
“You let me out, and it’ll all be clear,” chuckled Merry. “I promise. It’s kind of written on the wall at this point.”
I smacked my nightstick against the door.
“No more fucking games!”
“Then come in! Teach me a lesson! Open. The. Door!”
I calmed down. Maybe this was how he got to me; tricking me. That wasn’t gonna work, no way.
“Your shift starts at 10:15,” Merry said. “You take your coffee black, and you came here the first thing you did. Hold on.”
He shuffled off into the back of the cell. There was a strange scratching sound, and he was gone for a solid minute. I just listened, trying to figure him out. I shone a flashlight inside, but he’d hung up a sheet over the slit in the door. I couldn’t see anything without going inside.
“So there was your dad, you reacted to that. Then a Beverly. That worked. What made you lose your last job, was it, ah… let’s say a failed drug test? Yeah, that’ll work.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“And you don’t do drugs. Probably some kind of error. Maybe a few… poppy seed pastries for breakfast? Those things can give a false positive.”
I just stood there, mouth wide open. The morning of the mandatory drug test I’d had three pastries with poppy seeds. The bakery down the street were giving them away as a promotional event.
I got this awful pit in my stomach, like he knew more about me than I did. Like he was about to tell me something horrible. Like he was standing right behind me, just soaking up my fear.
“So that brought you here. I’ll have to figure that out later. Maybe you know someone here,” he continued.
“Shut up!” I said, hitting the door. “I’m telling you to shut up!”
I looked over my shoulder. There was no one else here. Why was I feeling watched?
“Calm down,” Merry said. “We’re getting to the end. You’re about to let me out.”
“Never,” I spat. “You’re gonna fucking rot in there.”
“Don’t you understand?!” he yelled back. “The fact that you’re here proves that I’m right!”
“How?! That doesn’t make any goddamn sense!”
And he told me everything.
Merry, or Meridian, was given an opportunity. If he followed a very specific set of events, he would be given a great gift.
“Nonlocality,” he said. “But you need to dissociate hard enough. Basically turn yourself crazy enough for reality not to make sense anymore. Or rather, for you as a person not to make sense to reality. The other way around.”
As a part of this delusion, he killed three of his students. He burned himself with chemicals. Then, seemingly as part of his plan, he willingly went to jail.
“Years of darkness,” he added. “Isolation. Like being in a sensory deprivation tank. I need it. I crave it. Then I’m done.”
“And all for… for what?”
“To be unbound. No causality, no rules, nonlinearity. And the fact that you’re standing here is all the proof that I need to know that it is going to work.”
“And why is that?”
“Don’t you get it?”
A blue hand slipped out of the slit in the door and pointed at me.
“I did this to you. I put you here. Someday, you will let me out, because if you didn’t, I wouldn’t get you to come here. And that time is drawing close. I don’t need this darkness anymore, I feel it. I’m done.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “That’s literally impossible.”
“Then why are you sliding down the wall? Feeling sleepy?”
I hadn’t even noticed. I was nodding off, right there in the hall. I tried touching my face to see if I could feel anything.
“Did… did you-“
“Yes,” Merry said. “I drugged you. I couldn’t have if you hadn’t told me about the black coffee, but now that you did, I could. It’s on the list. It’s all on the list, and what’s on the list is going to happen.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
”Imagine you could travel through time,” he chuckled. “Not today, but someday. And you promise yourself that you’re gonna put a rose outside your door on this very day, in this very present. And when you open your door, the rose is there- Then you would know that you’re gonna get that power. You know you will come here someday. Then it all comes down to strength of will; to force yourself to remember all that you’re going to do, and in the correct order.”
“That’s not… I-“
An image flashed in my head. Blue hands on the steering wheel of a white Corolla. A man paying the bakery to promote some pastries. A woman being paid for a bit of internet theatre by an unknown benefactor.
There were dozens of people standing at the end of the hallway. Thin, emaciated men. Men with long fingers, and blue hands.
I blacked out.
I woke up in the staff room with a nurse looking into my eyes. They gave me a checkup and sent me home to rest up. They gave me a few days off, just to make sure.
I didn’t know what to say. I had my keys, and Merry was still in his cell. If I was the one to let him out, all I had to do to make sure that didn’t happen was to stay away. That’d ruin his plans. So taking a few days off seemed perfectly fine.
As I was about to leave Garreth met me in the parking lot. He jogged out to say good night and to see if I was okay.
“Look,” he said. “I know you hate that shift. But don’t worry about it. They’re moving him, and I’ve heard talks of approving a shift change. He’ll be someone else’s problem, and you’ll be back in cell block D.”
“What… what do you mean?”
“They heard how much he was messing with you,” Garreth said. “And decided it just wasn’t worth it. They’re moving him, we can’t lose you.”
“What? Why?!”
“I, uh… gee, I thought this was good news.”
“No, I- I don’t know. I’m… I don’t know.”
Garreth patted my shoulder and sent me on my way. I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain it? Did I even believe it?
I got in my car and took a deep breath. A strange chemical smell. I noticed something on the passenger seat; a letter.
I took a deep breath and opened it.
“Thanks for the help,” it said. “This one’s on me.”
A little smiley face, and a hundred-dollar bill.
I just stared at it. Suddenly, there was a loud bang. For a heartbeat, all I could see were blue hands, simultaneously smacking my car. I shot out of the driver’s seat, but there was no one outside; just an empty parking lot. Still, I couldn’t help but feel watched. My pulse pounded behind my eyes, almost popping a blood vessel.
They were out there. He was out there. Watching me from the dark. He was still getting out.
I knew he was all around me. Unbound. He could stab me, push me over, whatever. He’d be there, and then not, and I’d he helpless. I got this intense sense of paranoia washing over me, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I just dug my fingers into my hair, trying to force my mind out of that dark pit.
This was my doing. I’d let him treat me like shit, and because of it, they were going to move him. During that move, he’d get out. He must’ve planned it. And I couldn’t do shit about it since I was off duty.
I took another look at that hundred-dollar bill, and a thought occurred to me.
There was something I could do.
I went to the gas station.
I came back the next day with a backpack. I showed my credentials and told the gatekeep that I was there to fetch something from my locker. It was fine; Danny knows me.
I got in on the dayshift and waved at the others. A few of them asked how I was doing, what I was doing, the regular chit-chat. All smiles and waves.
Prison transfers takes place in the early afternoon. It’ll only be a short walk, but that might be all he needed to escape.
I used my keys to get past cell block D. I knew I’d get stuck on camera, but I also knew that the prisoners were out in the yard; no one was watching the tapes. Not this close to lunch.
I walked straight into the solitary ward, and all the way up to Merry’s door.
“Wait,” he said. “You’re… you’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“No, that… that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Send me home then. Have someone shoot me. I’m waiting.”
“No, wait, that doesn’t… hold on.”
There was a shuffle as Merry hurried into the back of his cell. I couldn’t feel them here. We were alone. I unzipped my backpack and took out a door stopper. I shoved it under the door. That thing wasn’t moving anytime soon.
I stepped over to the fire alarm and pulled the handle. The emergency doors opened with a violent blaring siren. Every door swung open; but Merry’s.
I was lucky that time. No one in the solitary ward but Merry and I.
“H-hold on, what are you doing?!”
I took out one more thing from my backpack. A can of gasoline. I shoved it through the slit in the door, tearing down the sheet he’d hung up.
“Oh, you’re killing me? That’s what this is?”
“It… yeah. And I see no little blue hands trying to stop me, so I guess it’s working.”
“Maybe you’re missing the point! Maybe you’re not doing what you’re supposed to!”
“And how exactly is that a bad thing, if it keeps you from getting out?!”
Half a can was enough. It was leaking under the door. I took out a gasoline-soaked rag, lit it on fire, and tossed it through the slit.
For a split second, the room lit up. The walls, the bed, even Merry. I got a short view of the room as it was, and what he was doing in there.
He had drawn things on the walls, and the floor. White Corolla, Beverly, poppy seeds, black coffee… the wall was full of things, arrows, lines and squares; all related to me. These were all things he was gonna do when he got out, and he was so convinced that I was the one to let him out. So convinced that it had all started to happen.
And then there was Merry himself.
He was more bone than man. Sunken eyes, like he hadn’t slept for weeks. He’d torn his hair out, and bit off his fingernails. This was a completely senseless man, and he stared at me with unblinking eyes.
But in that moment as the flames started to lick him and the fire spread into the hallway, he looked me in the eyes.
And smiled.
I just bolted out of there. Hundreds of inmates were gathering in the yard, and I could already hear sirens. I could see flames bursting out of the solitary ward. Before the firefighters could get there, one of the walls completely collapsed.
And I saw him. Just for a brief second.
I saw that emaciated man, standing in the flames. Holding his hands out, like he was receiving a gift. The chemicals in his arms ignited with a bright green; they’d burned straight through the wall.
And the thought hit me.
Technically, he was out. He might be on fire, but he was out.
And in that split second, in that heartbeat, he vanished. Like snuffing out a candle.
Hours later, the fire was put out. It didn’t spread. Turns out, that part of the jail had a peculiar type of stone that was weak to high temperatures; the stonework just crumbled. Some kind of exposure to a certain chemical. A blue one, with a green flame. The construction crew had cheaped out on materials, many years ago.
There were no recordings. They’d forgotten to change the tapes from last night.
There were no visitor’s logs. Barely anyone remembered me even being there.
And lastly, there was no body recovered in that cell.
As I got back in my car, I just held my breath, waiting for something to happen. A knife at my throat. Possibilities passed through my mind. In another place, it all really happened. Violent images of myself getting stabbed, burned, tortured and flayed. A world where everyone turned to ash, and I was placed in front of a throne of bone as a prize jester. Dark figures rising from the earth, tearing the world apart. Breaking the ground like an egg shell.
I cried. It was seconds away, at most.
But Minutes passed.
I found a letter on the passenger seat. It hadn’t been there seconds acog.
It took me a solid fifteen minutes to work up the courage to open it.
“You got me out,” it said with a smiley face.
And there was another hundred-dollar bill.