The cell.

The cell.

The cell.

Four walls.

Six planes.

One cube.

One body.

Two inmates.

One crime.

There remained the old archetype of the tennis ball bounce, the open toilet, the gawking guards - all of which would have entertained her, had she had them. Nesrin, having neither balls nor benediction, had nothing. Empty air, empty space, the smell of sore wounds and silent disgrace. Nesrin Khan had tried meditation. She’d played with idea - but on what? On memories? Pain crept in the past - to swim with its suction was to go mad. Forgotten in the lockup of of the mad witch’s coven, deprived of the stimuli of change but the slight hum that could not be heard for its constance, Nesrin had metamorphosed from bored to broken to blessed. Like a bottled ship yearning for a kiss of wind, Nesrin was desperate for her liberation. Anything to be free. Anything to feel. Left with nothing but the shirt on her back. She laughed at the silence, made masturbation gestures in the general direction of the cameras, posing for the cinematography. She played with Silat, smashing her elbows into the pressure hull, listening for sounds of reverberation, any proof of air, probing for shockwaves like a blind mole, burrow caved in by the fox. Nobody to fight.

She massaged the lobes of her silver feet, counted her digits, teasing them till the roots flexed, one by one, two by two, disappointed to find they still made twenty. By the fifth week, she had pulled much of her hair out. Solitary confinement. Tacitus? Perhaps. Several miles above her head, dead vertical, more likely lightyears, there’d be a pair of lips, a tussle of arms, who knew her for human despite what she was. She imagined the silent solider prostrated between plasma shots, his fingers squeezing his blaster like a newborn with a rattle, his heart shaking, his frame straight. Squeezing, squeezing the blaster she’d built for him. Squeezing her, in a sense.

Why, Nesrin? What is it that drives you to alienate everyone you’ve ever known? Why do you choose to live in perdition? Is the freak you, Nesrin? Born to die, to be born again, not in salvation but in a long-lost limbo, from which you will never quite reach the sun? Why do you decide to live in purgatory? Is behind that door, heaven? You’ve been to heaven, Nesrin. You know that the angels bare fangs like long knives. Why do they bite you, Nesrin? Why does the Raven quest to tear out your eyes?

The bastards who pretend to be the I Am, the dogs in the sepulchre - they paint the sky their greens and blues and yet they still come for you. You’re in too deep, Nesrin Khan. In too deep. Now the well is washing over you, they’ll drown you in its waves.

She explored the crevice lines of the walls - she’d whispered into them, searching for sound, for renewal. Shhh. Are you in there, Nesrin Khan? Please.

She knew what they would take from her. They would take their dues. Her memories - theirs, by right of ownership. Possession. None would know of their travesties down here. She had imperilled men, and thus, Nesrin Khan had to die. They would not kill her - just clip her. What are years to a woman already dead? All they would steal is pain. All they would worm. They would take their fill and leave the void open. Nesrin Khan would craft new memories. She would craft a fresh identity from the bones of the old. She had be remade, was remouldable - there was precedent, after all, that glorious justification for all the actions of men.

Nesrin Khan would resist - and in her resistance, she would fail.

That was the beauty of being pariah.