Friend

As the wars raged on outside the walls the Empire feeding on its own to grow more and more, the asylum too grew more and more crowded, and eventually the space between and inside the stones ran out and we began to get cell mates, who the guards called friends. 

The guards were not our friends. We were not friends any one. 

My "friend" was tossed into my cell in the middle of the night. I remember hearing the guard announce him while I was still in a dream. 

-Wild Joao! a disembodied voice rang out in my head, followed by a tossing sound. 

I felt a presence that wasn't there before. 

I met him when I got up. I met the rags he wore first. It was like he was a pile of them, in the corner of his cell. 

I tried to find his face in the folds of the rags but couldn't make it out. The inmates had been coming from further and further out, from all the countries the Empire had conquered.

I wanted to know if he was from one of the countries in which I helped the Empire murder and pillage, whether he was sent here for me specifically. For my guilt. 

I was one of the last inmates to get a "friend" in my call. I had secretly wanted one since word first went around about the new practice by the guards. I had made no friends in the Asylum. Only Avila visited me regularly. 

At first I suspected he was preventing a cellmate from being placed with me because of his own interest in my powers. But I couldn't confront him, because I didn't want him to know that I wanted someone with me, that I was lonely and even looked forward to his visits almost as much as my visits to the torture chambers. 

There was the only time I felt truly alive. 

I am in pain. I am always in pain. There are so many different kinds. The piercing, the burning, the stabbing and the stinging. We work on it all. 

The cell had torture too. Solitude, natural to the space, and the sounds that traveled from near and far, at odd and unnatural hours, in one direction. Even when I screamed I didn't know who heard it. No one made a sound back. 

And the bugs. The real ones and the phantoms. They itched everywhere. They came from the stone and the rags and they came from the floors and the guards and the food. 

The itching could be the worst pain. A blanket over the other pains. And the scratching makes it worse. Scratching, scratching, and then the memories bleed in. 

Everything is pedestrian. No pain is new. There are only variations. There is a reason to be telling you this. New pain can recall old. 

Bugs are universal. Pain is universal. There were many deprivations in the war. The magic could help. On the battlefield it was like the deprivations channeled out to the fighters or warriors or soldiers I would be with. The murderers and plunderers. 

Having the same men as torturers like the major mage arranged for us allowed the torture to be more exquisite. More perfect just for me. The connection from me to them, the way they fed off my magic and the way it animated them, became more real as the sessions continued.

It's difficult to explain. 

There were four of them and they were not my friends. 

I don't think any of them had been chosen specifically for me, not me as myself. The major mage selected them for their ability to make use of my magic against me. 

The biggest one was named Falo. He was the tallest and the widest and would take me from chamber to chamber as the other three followed. 

Because he got closest to me I could feel the effect of the bonding first with him. 

I remembered his memories instead of my own. He had the mind of a murderer and plunderer. It was not my mind but I was seeping into his brain. Or he was seeping into mine. 

When  I Falo was a child, his father kept insects. There was a section of the garden where he grew the different flowers and weeds that attracted insects, kind and mean alike. 

Falo liked to watch his father keep the insects, even though his father often warned him to stay away from the mean ones. 

But they fascinated Falo. They were always fighting each other, stupid things, and he loved to watch. They had the whole world to fly in but because the weeds and flowers his father had grown, which he wanted to cross pollinate for more potent magic, attracted them so, they stuck to their nest and fought incessantly. 

I remember one day Falo lost his balance leaning over for a closer look and fell right into their nest. The insects stopped fighting each other and all turned on him. They'd found a purpose. His entire face was swollen before his father could pull him out. 

I could feel the swelling on my own face. 

I could also feel him getting pushed into the nest, and felt myself as the one pushing him in. But I hadn't done it. Not then. 

The torture chambers were our nest. No. My brain was the nest, its pieces fighting each other and tearing my mind apart as my torturers fed off the friction.

We were pulling on each other. But mostly they were pulling on me, physically and mentally. 

I had never spent so much time with the same group of men on the battlefield. Though it had never been explained to me why, I was beginning to understand. 

I told Avila about it eventually and he understood the significance. 

-You are getting to know them, he explained, and their work is on you. 

It took him a while to explain it in a way that I understood. It meant having to get to know myself again. 

On the battlefields and in the villages, my men, which Avila insisted they were not, fed off my mind and magic for their battles and murdering and plundering and returned to my brain their deeds. 

Because I did not know them, Avila explained, I could not know that they were not me.

They were not my men, Avila insisted. I was their living collector. I was their tool. 

I did not like that. I served the Empire. With distinction. I murdered and plundered as the Emperor consolidated the lands. 

I am not a tool, I am a man. I am responsible for my actions. 

But, Avila kept insisting, they were not my actions. 

I thought even he might have been a trick put up by the guards. Not the real Avila. Someone come to toy with me.

He was trying to convince me I didn't belong here. 

-We all belong here, I told him. Those of us already here and those of us outside the wall. Everyone is guilty. I am more guilty.

It wasn't long after that that the Asylum started to fill up. Perhaps I was guilty of that too. 

The wars were not going well for the Emperor and I had no interest in joining them again either. I was guilty of that too. 

I belonged here. Even the woman had said I put a hole in her. 

I waited for my friend but everywhere I heard the bodies pile in and in my cell I was alone. 

Avila had stopped stopped visiting and I had only the torturers.

The memories of the other three were even worse than Falo's. Everyone murdered and plundered, or tried to. They came to the Asylum because they belonged. They could be the meanness of their essence. 

Ooste, the smallest of the four, had only tried. When he set his torture on me it was an exacting that he could never accomplish outside the walls. His memories were like my memories when the pain was onto me. In his life, he had been tortured. Now, he could torture. 

Mastery of the circling prolonged the exercise of torture. They relished and I relished bringing me as close to death before returning to the beginning of the torture. 

I knew from their memories that they had all done it before and there was shame in the memories. And that was let out on me, on body and brain, as well. 

The pain never stops. It is the punctuation of a life. I can only ignore it but it is always there. 

And the things that were happening. And someone to talk to to get away from the silence of myself. 

Then the pile of rags came in the form of a man. 

I belong here and I repudiate the Emperor. Yes, repudiate him. And I deserve it all. More than anyone else. And the silence is me because there is nothing there to hold on to and I cannot say these things. 

I waited for him to speak first. 

-Last time I was alone, he finally said from underneath the rag of his hood. 

-Why did you leave? I asked him. 

-I had been cured, he said and started to laugh, extending his arms as if to look at his hands, but I could not see them from beneath his rags. 

I wanted to tell him there were no cures. We all belonged here. 

-What cure? I asked him. 

He sighed a deep sigh from underneath his rags. 

-The cure for the affliction I am on others, he said. Everybody belongs here, he added. 

-Yes, I said. 

-You only end up here if they notice, be said. 

-Who? I asked, though I knew. 

-They call me Rafa, he said. 

I introduced myself but asked him where he was from without telling him where I was from. I told him I had been an Imperial soldier. It was close enough. 

It turned out he was from not far from my original home. The wars had returned even then. I mentioned some of my family, without mentioning the relation, and he repeated what I already knew about their demise.

It was important for me to hear it again. 

-The wars are not going well, I said. Were you in them?

Rafa laughed. 

-I don't fight, he said. That's why I'm here again, he added with resignation. The wars are inside us. 

I understood what he meant. 

-How long were you here last time? I asked him.

For a few moments he didn't say anything. It felt like he had disappeared. 

-I don't know, he said. When I left, I felt like I had been young and beautiful when I arrived and was no longer either. Now that I've returned, he continued, I feel like I was young when I left, but now I'm not anymore.

-How long were you out? I asked him.

He paused again. 

-I don't know that either, he said finally. How long have you been here? he asked me. 

I found that I didn't know either. I had stopped counting the days by the meals at two hundred and twenty something, when I'd found I'd probably been holding on to the numbers the wrong way and probably lost the real count in the one hundreds. I had never counted so high or so long. 

-It's not easy, Rafa said. The war is inside us and the time can pass or not, it doesn't change us, because we're here. 

I wanted to say more but it was time again for torture. The torture could not change me. And the time did not make a difference. I had always belonged here.

When I got to the torture chamber I decided to tell Falo I had gotten a friend. 

-We are not good enough? he asked with a dismissive laugh.

No one was good enough, I wanted to tell him. I could not remember the last time any of us had spoken. I screamed and I remembered them screaming too, but I don't know if it was really their memory or mine. And often I bore it in silence. The silence of who I am. 

-There are more and more here, I said, and you are only here for me. 

-Yes, one of the others said as he prepared some of the equipment. 

This is what I deserved. This is what I could do, the power of the pain I could inflict, it could be meant only for me. 

-Being your friend, Falo said. We are creative. 

I did not like that idea. If the torturers and mages thought they had cured him, it was not a memory I wanted. There was no cure. We were not curable. 

Avila disagreed. 

He came to visit again five meals after Rafa's arrival. I had started to count again, to remember how long Rafa would be here this time. 

The guards had not started to take Rafa until after the second meal he had been in the Asylum, and he already knew how to go himself before the third. 

We did not talk much. He was a pile of rags he did not remove. I told him the bugs and the heat would get to him but he always kept him on. 

I thought he might be a leper, but I could not feel that from anything any of my magic could sense, and the regiment of torture and the use of the brain magic had left me seeping it. During the meals I found corners to stay in because I could feel when the brain magic was scraping on the others there and could feel them. 

But it had not happened with Rafa. Not as a leper or anything else. Like he had been cured after all. 

But he would not tell me about the cure. There was no cure, as we knew, and what he wanted to insist on was that the war was inside. 

-It can't be won, he said. 

We hide from our memories or let ourselves get trapped in them, or even we do both of those things, trapping ourselves in our futile effort to hide in them or from them. 

You can't always see something from the inside, but I remember what the Asylum looked like. The great pile of stones reaching for the sky. It was bigger every time I saw it when I went through or by the Imperial capital. 

So maybe I didn't really know what it looked like. And yet even as it grew bigger the Empire was running out of room. 

Rafa was not there when Avila arrived. I don't know if he waited until he left. There were probably so many people Avila visited when he came here. I asked him about it. 

-Yes, and more and more to visit every time I'm here, he lamented. But I always come to see you. 

-Why? I asked. I'm nothing. You know this. I murdered and plundered--

-Again? he said, cutting me off. 

-I murdered and plundered, I continued. I served the Empire with distinction. There's no cure for me, this is where I belong. 

-You are too proud, Avila said. It's not a good thing for mind or soul.

-I'm not proud, I objected. I'm not proud of what I did, and it's my body that shows it, I said as I showed off my scars and fresh wounds. To show him the witness of my pain.

-Oh not that, he said dismissively. Despair, brother. Despair is your pride. You wallow in it and you are so proud to carry it. You are nothing, you boast, he said. 

I was nothing. I belonged here. This was home. My magic was strong and my magic was destructive and what can we do but contribute to the corruption and decay and the violence that arrests and quickens it too.

-I am nothing, I said finally. This is where I belong. So I didn't murder and plunder? I asked mockingly. I helped the others murder and plunder. I watched and I remembered. 

-You served the Empire with distinction, he said, stretching his hand out and curling each finger in succession. You were the Empire. You were the Empire's to handle. 

He reached his hand out to grab my arm and pull on it. 

-Can you handle yourself? he asked me, almost barking at me.

I could feel Avila scraping. I knew that he was true. I always did. But I didn't like it. 

He made me think about it and I didn't like to think. I knew too that he was trying to make me remember, but what for I didn't know.

I wanted to show him my scars again. I could handle myself. Here I was. This is who I was. Battered and bruised, the strength of my magic and violence turned on myself. Here was the order. 

-Who can handle themselves? I asked Avila. Rafa says he left here last time because they cured him. 

-And he's here again, Avila said. Maybe he left on his own. Anyone can, Avila said with a laugh, if you find the way. 

-But I belong here, I said. 

-Nobody belongs here, Avila retorted. 

-If you showed me the way out, I said, I would not follow. 

I regretted saying so. He kept coming back. He wanted to help. The Empire I served with distinction. Avila was not asking me to serve him. 

-I don't think the guards would let you, Avila noted dryly. Your magic is strong, he affirmed. 

My magic is strong. So I belong here. But I did not know what I was doing. None of us did. 

Avila left and Rafa returned. 

-Your friend left, he said. 

-Avila, I said. I'm sorry he didn't wait for you, I added half heartedly. 

-I know him, Rafa said. 

-Was it him that cured you? I asked naively. I thought I knew the answer. Avila had said it.

-No, Rafa said. The cure came from a major mage, he offered for the first time. 

-Did Avila lead you out? I asked Rafa. 

-I followed him, Rafa said and paused. But he didn't know it, he continued as he lifted his hood to remove it.

There was no one there. 

I had never seen an invisible person before, though I suppose I might not have known somewhere along the way. The Empire used invisible weapons to penetrate the defenses of some of the heavier walled kingdoms, but I had never seen their use either. 

-I see, I said. 

I didn't say anything for a while. There was nothing to say. 

-Do you remember the way out? I eventually asked him. 

-They wouldn't let me through, he said resignedly. I belong here. 

I did not like the way it sounded from someone else. I belonged here. Everyone belonged here. But it was just a great pile of stones in a city that didn't belong here. No one belonged anywhere. 

I was losing my mind. I tried to look at Rafa again but he was just the pile of rags. 

Three meals later, on the eighth meal, was a gathering. I did not see Avila, but there were a lot more slavers than usual, and they haggled with the guards loudly. 

One concern had brought scales to weigh us. They said they wanted healthy slaves, but I heard in their conversations the other inmates conclude that the slavers must be planning a long distance transport, where weights go into consideration for the use of animals and rolling devices. 

Nevertheless, the meals had started to get larger, and felt like they were getting more frequent. 

I missed the tenth meal after Rafa arrived because the torturers had come to get me instead. I had always come to them. I couldn't remember the first times when the guards must have took me. 

It felt like I had always known the passageways that I needed to in the Asylum. They led me in the circle of my cell, my torture, and the meal. I did not know the passage way out and it would not be something I would ever know. 

Falo held me as he took me, even though I walked along without objection. 

I wanted to say something but I knew Falo didn't. 

I pushed into his brain and felt it loosen and open for me. 

The torture devices. And death. The final release, the cure, the end, the reward. 

Mine. Not mine. Not here. Not in the chamber. In the Asylum. Everyone's death. 

Falo's brain started to tighten again and he squeezed me harder as he dragged me to the torture chamber. 

-What do you know? I asked him, but he tried to brush the thoughts I'd pulled out of him away. 

-Don't do that, Falo said as he shoved me ahead, where I tripped and fell on my face. That hadn't happened before. Not that I remembered. 

He kicked me and I remembered Avila. I got up and let him push me the rest of the way to the chamber. 

The torture device was old but I would not scream. 

I knew that they knew something. 

I let them strap me in and clenched myself for the torture as I released my magic to animate them.

I tried to bring a little of my mind with it.

We had done this torture in different variations and I remembered one where I was in a catatonic state, the memory for them as I tried to peak through their memories. 

Their meals, better than ours but not by much, and less so since the additions. Their quarters, actual quarters in the stones not cells. They were not like us even though we all belonged here. 

There were too many of us. Their memories of the better meals for the inmates were bitter. Jealousy. 

No. Pity. Disgust. 

The concern. Their memories of idle chatter I tried to piece together. The concern had weighed us, and sent more provisions for our meals. They were buying some inmates now, but all of them upon death. 

Death. Everyone's death. There were too many of us. The guards would be cutting the inmates down, when they'd gotten healthier, because the flesh is more valuable then, and can be used--I recoiled, back into my mind, and the pain that was everywhere. 

I screamed and their memories jarred into place. We were here again. 

I did not want to remember what I remembered in their memories about the concern and their plans for the meat after the guards got through with cutting the inmate population down. 

I felt their memories of it burn as my magic focused them on our torture. 

We belong here. But not death. 

I did not want Avila to be right. I am nothing. But I had to do something. I murdered and plundered and served the Empire with distinction. 

I never saw the Empire. Even when I left the Continent, I didn't see the shape of it from the outside. I know the shape of the Asylum, the pile of rocks. There's no Empire, just piles and holes. Sickness.

I am losing my mind. I don't deserve death because there is no suffering after it. 

I won't murder and there's nothing left to plunder in the piles. 

I let them torture me as I screamed and plotted. 

I would find a better place for us to belong. For one friend or for all.