Branjun's Escape - Part 2

Note to Reader: This is not my usual style—not that I’ve been writing long enough yet to have a usual style!  I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I would not have initiated this setting or this plot, but it is, instead, a writing exercise.  It all came about like this: I have a friend who is a master storyteller, although he balked when I called him such.  He wrote a short story called “Branjun’s Escape” that left the main character stranded.  When I inquired about a continuation, he threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to extend it!  Yikes!!  That’s rather intimidating, not only because it’s his story, but also because I don’t remember the last time I wrote a piece of fiction!  Grade school, perhaps?  But I had to admit that it was a useful and challenging exercise to take another author’s plot and extend the story.  So here goes nuttin’…OK, Captain Blog Master, this one’s for you!

--

The shaggy, old wretch beamed a misshapen smile.  Even with several front teeth missing, presumably from the club of the dungeon guards, the old man’s face was still pure joy.  It made no sense in this dark place of hopelessness, but the wretched man’s eyes contained such warmth and life as Branjun had never seen.  Had the old man gone insane?  Well, even if he had, his was the only voice in this hellhole who dared speak the word “escape.”

“Come to me later tonight after the other prisoners fall asleep.  My helper will take care of the night watchman.”

Now Branjun knew the prison’s torment had cracked the old man’s mind.  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he moaned, raising his shackled, bloody hands. 

The man shook his head.  “Listen.  Branjun, if you’re going to escape, you must learn to trust me.”

Branjun stewed.  The king had forgotten him, and his only hope in this God-forsaken pit had turned out to be a complete crackpot.  Why should he be surprised?  But something didn’t add up, and it nagged at him.  With each hour-—no, with each minute—his will vacillated like a pendulum’s swing.  “Forget escape, and just focus on numbing the pain as much as possible.”  “No, anything is better than this; hear the old man out.”  “This hopeless dungeon is your life; the sooner you get used to it, the easier it will go for you.”

The hour finally came.  No sound, no stirring could be heard throughout the prison except labored breathing and fitful snores.  Somehow the night guard had obtained a bottle of rum, and had drifted into a drunken stupor deeper than a sound sleep.

“Psst.”  This time, it didn’t come from across the cell.  It came from somewhere close.  It made no sense, but it felt like it came from inside Branjun.  “Psst.  It’s time.  Go to him.”  Branjun felt like he was arguing with himself.  Perhaps he was going mad.  Is this what people had described as hearing voices in their head?  “These chains won’t let me!”  Why was Branjun even talking back to the voice?  It was a good thing the other prisoners were asleep and not overhearing his insane conversation.  “Just do it.  Do as he says.”

The shaggy, old man lifted his head, looked straight at Branjun, and said, “Come, Branjun.”

Branjun obeyed without thinking.  He walked right through the shackles as if they were mere holograms, past the rack upon which a fellow prisoner had been tortured just hours ago, and across the cell to the old man.  He had been confined for so long.  Savoring the stretch in his limbs with each step, he marveled to be walking upright.

The old man remained shackled.  He lifted his gaze to Branjun.  Again, those eyes!  Such tenderness and yet such fierceness combined; how was it possible?

“You want to ask me a question,” the old man read his mind.

“I…I…it’s just…” Branjun didn’t know where to begin.  “You’ve called my name three times now.  The guards don’t even know my name.  How do you know me?”

The bedraggled, old man turned up one corner of his mouth in amusement.  “I know a lot more than you can imagine.”

“How did I just walk through my shackles?”  The old man only grinned and gave the non-reply, “We need to clean you up.”

At that, the man ripped a filthy piece of homespun wool off of his tattered sleeve and rubbed it into a bleeding, pussy wound in his side.  Branjun’s stomach curdled.  He recoiled as he realized that the crazy old man was extending the foul rag towards Branjun’s own hands.  The old man was unfazed.  “Give me your hands,” he said patiently.  Branjun obeyed.  He didn’t even know why.  But as the old man rubbed the bloody rag over each scab of Branjun’s, he felt a tingling warmth enter into it.  Before long, his hands were dripping with blood so thick he could not even see the cuts and scabs beneath, but his hands felt whole again and the dull pain in his knuckles was gone, even when he clenched his fists.  He couldn’t take his eyes off of his bloody, healthy hands.

“Helper, a clean cloth please.”  A clean cloth dipped itself into a bucket of clean water.  Branjun started.  He didn’t even have time to wonder how the bucket of clean water had made its way into the cell.  The cloth hung in midair, then floated over to Branjun’s now trembling hands and began wiping off the blood.  Branjun’s face went white as he realized that the scab over his left ring finger was gone, but a scab over the old man’s left ring finger had appeared.  With amazement and horror, Branjun realized that each cut, each injury of his had not simply been wiped away, but actually wiped onto the old man.  The shaggy, old wretch looked more afflicted than ever.

Branjun stared, a huge lump forming in his throat.  This wasn’t fair.  He wondered how the old man had done this, but what he wondered even more was why.  And why, if the old man held so much power, did he spend his days hanging out in a damp, fetid hellhole like this dungeon?  If he knew how to escape, why didn’t he escape, himself?  The man’s newly bloodied hands were still shackled. 

Finally, Branjun could contain himself no longer.  “Why are you here?” Branjun blurted, “Why waste your life in this hellhole living the life of a prisoner if you don’t have to?”

“I do the will of my father who sent me.”

Father.  That single word sent a cold numbness through Branjun, immediately cancelling the warmth he had felt from the healing tingling in his hands.  “What kind of sadistic father would send his son to this infernal place?  Even my father wouldn’t do that!”

“You speak of things you do not know,” the old man calmly and gently replied, “I know many things.  I know your father.  And I knew your father’s father.  And his father before him.  Now there was a real troublemaker.  It’s become quite the family tradition, doing time in this prison.”

“How do you know my father?” Branjun’s eyes grew wide with fear.  A knot was growing in his stomach.  “And just how old are you?”  The man’s stories were too fantastic to believe, yet Branjun had seen such magical things with his own eyes just now—unless he was indeed going mad.  Maybe this was all a lunatic’s dream.

“Your father is confined to another cell within this very same prison, only he doesn’t realize he’s lost his freedom.  His cell has windows and sunlight enough for him to keep studying and working and carrying on.  Others have tried to warn him, but he chooses not to listen.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Branjun’s whole body tensed as he recalled his latest conflict with his father.  “Let him rot.”  Branjun spat on the ground.  Suddenly, Branjun began slipping backwards, being pulled from behind by an invisible but inexorable force, like a preternaturally powerful magnet dragging him back across the excrement laden floor and back into the shackles that snapped their icy, metal jaws around his wrists once more.