Break

There was a school that burned down, wasn’t there?

Who would burn down a school?

Who in their right mind would burn down a school?

Interrogation

“So you didn’t start the fire?”

“No.” That’s what I’d been saying. “I didn’t start it.”

“Ok.” The bespectacled turkey across from me crossed his feathers. He had mentioned his name was Marvin. He looked like a Marvin. Between us was a steaming plate heaped with delicious looking food. Mashed potatoes. Cranberry sauce. Candied yams. The works. A full Thanksgiving dinner. Minus the turkey of course. If only things had been like this when I was a child — if only Thanksgiving dinner had never included these stupid birds to begin with — then maybe my life would’ve turned out differently. But there was no use thinking about what-ifs now.

The plate was untouched.

I was unrestrained now. After an intense and unbridled torture session, the turkeys of Division 108 Federal Human Penitentiary and Punitive Corrective Facility ^_^ had begun goodcopping me to a disgusting degree. Obviously this did not change the fact that I had been battered horribly. I was weak and nearly broken. Even if I had still had the will to fight back at this point, I sure as hell hadn’t the strength. The beatings I had somehow endured had left my body a fragile assemblage. I felt like I could hardly even move.

From across the table, a practiced smile spread across Marvin’s beak. “So. You didn’t start the fire. I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I believe that you believe you didn’t start the fire.”

So that was his game.

Marvin cleared his throat and spoke in his slow and articulate voice, pronouncing every single letter like he was feeling out the shape of every word in his mouth. “Before we move forward, I think what I would really like is just some clarification. Just some clarity.”

“... On what?”

“On your story. The story as it exists” — he tapped his tiny, exposed skull — “in your mind. The order of events. A to B to C… all the way up to. Well. To right now. Do you think that’s a story that you can tell me?”

“I-I guess so.” What else could I say?

“Good. And I really believe that this will help you too. Help everything lock into place internally in a way that makes internal, logical sense.”

“Alright.”

“Ok. So to start, just to clarify, you — I’m referring to the both of you, that’s you and Number 6—”

“Prisoner X,” I corrected.

“Yes. Ok. You and Prisoner X. I understand you were accomplices. And my understanding is that after escaping The Division” — he used our word for it — “and committing the arsons—”

“We didn’t start the fire.”

“After committing the serial arsons, you two returned? Here? To your former place of imprisonment? Is that correct?”

“Yes. Well, I did. Prisoner X got away. I mean, if he did. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Ok. Forget about Prisoner X for a minute. Let’s talk about you. Why would you come back here? Only to face…” His face contorted like he was choosing his words carefully. Like all his professional sensibilities were willing him to avoid the word “torture” like you’d avoid an oncoming bus.

“... Only to face the torture you had to have known would await you,” he finally said. Oncoming buses are not always easy to avoid.

“We didn’t return voluntarily,” I told him. Which was the obvious truth. They knew that. How could they not know that? Was this turkey seriously trying to test my sanity? “We were caught. We escaped The Division that night, like you said.. And we were caught and brought back.”

“Ok. I’m just making sure I understand things, you see?”

I nodded.

“Now why don’t you tell me, as best as you remember and understand it, what happened to lead up to your escape and the events that transpired after it. The time during which you and Prisoner X were on the run.”

Testimony

Sylvester’s beak had been torn clean off. Well, not really. It wasn’t a clean break. Nor was it a clean beak. It was resting feebly in a pool of what looked like sticky, curdled blood on the other side of the corridor, a slimy, congealed puddle necrotized for decades. The rest of his body was over here on this side, out cold but still functional. Obviously. He was undead after all.

“Holy shit!”

Number 6 clamped a sweaty palm over my mouth. We were standing out in the hallway, out in the open, like fools. “Quiet, god damn you! Don’t attract any unnecessary attention.”

I shook the hand off.

“I had no choice,” Number 6 told me. “You understand? He was about to come into my cell. He was about to… About to… Hell, I don’t know what he was about to do. But I’m not ending up like 108, understand?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s not Sylvester I’m worried about.”

Number 6’s gravelly voice raised an octave in confusion. “It’s not?”

“No. I’m just surprised at your window.” Number 6’s cell door was open. Inside, a single splinter of moonlight cut through a high slit into a tiny sliver on the floor. “You really weren’t lying.”

“... Jesus Christ, kid.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer me.

Here’s the order of events as they played out, according to Number 6. Sylvester had been patrolling the corridors. He had walked up to the small barred window of Number 6’s cell to harass him a little bit. The guards, Sylvester in particular, liked to do that frequently, especially at this time of night, to deprive us prisoners of much-needed sleep. I, meanwhile, was in my own cell right next door, but I must have been completely engrossed in my masterpiece, because I didn’t even notice what Number 6 said happened next.

As Sylvester attempted to unlock and enter the cell, Number 6’s thin fingers shot through the bars. They somehow found purchase on Sylvester’s beak. Number 6 pulled. Sylvester screamed. Blood, jellied over decades of life after death, oozed. Sylvester opened the door to exact violent revenge. A tussle. In his already injured and startled state, Sylvester succumbed to Number 6, emaciated and weak as the latter was. It might sound crazy that a half-starved prisoner could achieve something like this. But Number 6 was fighting for his life you see. Fighting for his very survival. And that can make all the difference.

And that was how we wound up in this mess.

Number 6 and I just stood in the hallway next to Sylvester’s comatose body — it would’ve been food if history had played out differently — in silence. I think Number 6 was trying to come up with a plan. His eyes were wild and scared. He had opened the door to my cell with Sylvester’s keys. That was how I had gotten out. “We have to get out of here,” he whispered to me.

So we did. It was surprisingly easy to sneak past the night guard. It was kind of like a video game, in a way. The perimeter guard was a little trickier, but we managed. After that, we were free men. We just looked at each other like “did we just do that?”

We had just done it.

The prison would soon learn of our escape. We had to put as much distance between ourselves and it in the meantime, use our tiny lead and the cover of night and the adrenaline coursing through our blood to get as far as possible as quickly as possible. This was difficult. We had been locked up for 40 years. In those 40 years, the turkeys had completely replaced human society with their own. The world outside the prison walls may as well have been a different planet. We ran into the quiet darkness and didn’t stop running.

It wasn’t long before my terror caught up with me. I was free. After 40 years, I was free, and this fact was sinking in. Suddenly, I had so much awful liberty to look forward to. So much impossible living to do. I stopped running. I breathed deep, tasting clean air for the first time in decades. It made me want to throw up.

Interrogation

“You’re saying you actually wanted to come back?” Marvin asked, awestruck.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“But I thought you said you didn’t return to The Division voluntarily… didn’t turn yourselves in.”

“We didn’t. You’re not letting me finish.”

He eyed the food. Probably cold by now.

“I’m sorry. I interrupted you. By all means.” He gestured with his wing like a human might with an open palm. Like a kissass. Clearly trying to ingratiate himself to me and, clearly to everyone but himself, failing. “Tell me how you started the fire.”

He still didn’t get it.

Testimony

Realizing I had stopped running and fallen behind, Number 6, looped back to me. “What the hell are you doing? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

By this point I was hyperventilating. We were out in the open. The worst place to be. “We need to go back.” My breath was ragged and regretful, like I had just run a marathon and come in last place. “I’m going back to jail.”

“The hell you are.” He grabbed me by the trembling wrist and pulled.

We wound up in some lonely building quite far away from the safety of the prison. The squalor was familiar — the building was run down, abandoned, probably sitting on the cusp of some human slum or another — but nothing else was. I had managed to calm down a little though. Stopped babbling crazy stuff like “I’m gonna miss my cell,” and “At least I never had to eat any stupid turkey in there.”

“Don’t worry,” Number 6 reassured me. “Can’t eat turkey out here either. Outlawed, remember?” That got me in a bit of a better mood. Got me to shut up a little. The more I shut up, the more Number 6 seemed to approve.

“Alright. You good?” Number 6 finally asked me after a cold silence. He didn’t care about my well being, obviously. He just needed to make sure I was going to be an asset to him and not a liability.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I was catching my breath, finally. I had already lost track of time, not sure how many hours of darkness we had left. I hoped Number 6 was keeping track. “I’m good.”

“Good. Now we just need to figure out what our next move is.”

Deciding what we were going to do now that we were out was almost harder than bearing the weight of the belief that I was going to spend the rest of my days behind bars. It was certainly harder than escaping. At least for me anyway. Number 6 seemed to be having an easier time coming up with a gameplan, and before long, he clued me in.

“Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do next. Listening?”

“Yeah, Number 6. I’m listening.”

He spat. “Don’t call me that anymore. I’m not a number. I’m a free man. And so are you.”

“Then what do we call each other?”

“Hmmm, let’s see… you can be… I know. You can be Chimp.”

“Wow! How’d you know my old name?”

“Lucky guess.” Number 6 never ceased to amaze me. “And wipe that goddam clown makeup off for god’s sake. Can’t believe you still haven’t done it. 40 years, man.”

I touched my face. Number 6 was right. It was covered with a grease of ancient cosmetics. My old clown makeup, still caked on after all this time.

“Once a clown, always a clown,” he mumbled.

I didn’t really have anything to wipe my face with besides my hand though, so after doing that I asked him what his new name would be.

“Good question, kid…” I wondered why he had insisted on giving me a new name too if he was just gonna keep on calling me kid. Just as I was about to bring it up, I saw his eyes light up, almost glowing in the gloom. “How about Do—! Err… I-I mean… h-how about, uh, Prisoner X?”

“Prisoner X? But didn’t you just say we were free men?”

“Uh. Uhhh…!”

“Number 6?”

“Stop calling me that. And y-yeah. I did say that, didn’t I? And I meant it. We are free. Free of The Division. But look around you, Kid. Notice anything? Whole world’s a prison. Always was, really.”

I agreed with him on that.

“Now it is more than ever,” he continued, “for people like you and me.”

“Humans, you mean.”

He nodded.

“Chimp?”

“Yeah, Prisoner X?”

“You ever wonder who Number 1 is?”

Not really, no, I hadn’t, I told him.

“I have. A lot. Gotta be someone important, right? Number like that. Number 1, for crying out loud. Numero Uno. Big Jefe. Boss Man. In capital-C Charge.”

“Who do you think Number 1 is?” I asked.

“Hell if I know. But you and me? We’re gonna find out.”

“We are?”

“You bet, kid. And we’re gonna do it with this.”

He held out his hand. Slats of moonlight coming through a boarded window tigerstriped the thing in his palm, silver slashes cut out of the night. The glint of metal.

I gasped. “That’s…!”

“Yeah. Sylvester’s.”

Flick.

Flick.

Flick.

Spark.