could have chosen to deviate — that itself could rightly be considered change — continuous, near-infinite change.
The pattern, then: twelve-count, and left, twelve more, and right, another twelve then straight. And again.
Somewhere back there they killed a boy, maybe.
In these walls: this cannot be accurate at all times. He knows this from the registers. A fourteen-by-six-inch wrought iron register every twelve tunnel segments. Sometimes a wall register (midroom, at the floor), sometimes a ceiling or floor register (midroom, at the wall).
Thus: in these walls, but also between floor and ceiling or between ceiling and roof or between floor and solid ground—if indeed the fortress is built on solid ground.
And what else would the fortress be built on, but solid ground?
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There is the tank and the man underwater — the boy they killed, but also the submerged man, every 1,416 segments he sees the submerged man.
These tunnels can’t be level, in spite of the evidence of his admittedly attenuated senses.
He (the casualty) is a young man, he came here a young man.
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Or the fortress itself — the rooms, the floor — the fortress isn’t level, his tunnels are on the level, but the rooms are not, and he cuts through them on the bias.
Or neither fortress nor tunnels are on the level. There’s no way of knowing, it’s very hard to know.
Before he sees the boy being killed, 708 segments and again, 708 segments after — the submerged man.
He (the casualty) is not the only one, there are others (other casualties), of course.
He thinks tunnel, though this is ductwork. He knows this. Still he thinks tunnel.
It must be razor blades into the dead boy’s food — razor blades the only explanation for the blood that drips or sprays or leaks down the dead boy’s chin.
A figure before him blocks the light of the upcoming register until it (the figure) advances past this register.
Not only wrought iron fourteen-by-six-inch registers, also fourteen-by-two-inch toe-kick registers. Through these toe-kick registers (midroom) he has learned:
The tank is a claw-foot tub.
A green bird peers out from behind these clawed feet, first one, then the next (the green bird advances clockwise from one foot to the next).
Almost wholly submerged in ice water, he (the submerged man) breathes through a drinking straw.
On that straw (the submerged man’s drinking straw) a green bird perches.
So two green birds, one above, one below.
Perching and peering.
As surely as we are alive, that boy is dead, blood spraying or jetting from his mouth, from the shattered teeth and slashed lips.
Still chewing, still upright in his chair, he shovels food into his mouth, but I am telling you, that’s a dead boy.
He (the casualty) is moving too fast or too slow, he (the casualty) thinks.
Yet he never loses sight of the figure before him, or draws closer to it.
He (the dead boy) eats like he’s famished, like blood isn’t gushing from his oral cavity.
He (the submerged man) is held in place by an elaborate system of harnesses — steel and brass and plastic fasteners of varying description bolted into the walls of the tub, and half-inch cowhide straps bind his extremities.
They (the cowhide straps) tighten in the freezing water.
He breathes through a straw, one hand and the crown of his scalp fixed above the waterline.
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A perch lashed to the drinking straw with kite string.
The birds, when they trade off (claw-foot bird flapping up to perch, perch bird sailing down), tear strips of flesh from the exposed hand and the exposed scalp, he (the casualty) surmises.
But he has not witnessed their switching off, the birds always fixed in their respective roles when he sees them (these thousands, these tens of thousands of sightings), and yet they do switch, there is no mistaking.
He could change the pattern at any moment.
The figure before him, but also a figure behind, and if there is a figure behind, there are in fact many of them (many casualties) in these walls, he surmises.
Many before and many behind, so many casualties crawling.
The tunnel (or ductwork) is well maintained — because it houses so many.
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any leaks — if there ever were leaks — plugged with aerosol particles blasted through at high velocity before he (the casualty) ever even got here.
He does not know if he sleeps.
If he does, it must be that they all (all the casualties) sleep at once.
Or the others wait for him, they watch him dispassionately, or with gathering rage, as he slumbers.
Or he keeps crawling, hands and knees, in his sleep.
What he fears most of all is contact.
Always one or the other green bird perches, jamming its beak into the drinking straw’s aperture, blocking the air, while the other peers up from below.
He (the submerged man) puffs through the drinking straw when a bird beaks off his air, at which blast the perching bird shakes its head and blinks.
(Below, the peering bird likewise blinks and shakes.)
Thus does the submerged man stay alive — with little puffs.
Both green, the smaller specimen a mild grass green, the larger a monstrous thing, oily black plumage speckled with a green pus that oozes everywhere as its throat pulses and throbs grotesquely.
But the larger bird is no more proficient at straw plugging than the other, and so regardless of which perches above, which peers from below, the prisoner is able to puff away the beaks.
In ice water, your needs are less, metabolically speaking.
In tunnels a distance must be maintained — a necessary distance.
He (the casualty) is crawling in a column — one of many.
The submerged man’s hand bolted to the rim of the tub, finger bones picked clean — the cartilage hangs in threads, hand gristle bobs in the water, a few stray fingernails bracelet the half-devoured wrist.
The skin of the exposed scalp peeled back to the skull.
One eye wide and the other shut tight.
The bones of hand and skull black, as though scorched by embers, as if caustic fluids were released from the beaks of the tormenting birds.
He (the casualty) is glad for the ice that seemed to have cooled the brain of the submerged man.
Surface heat loss plus ice water sucked into the body at the torn wrist or scalp might render him insensate to his tortures, and even engender cerebral protection from anoxia, should the puffing fail at last.
But the eye of the submerged man, the dilation of its pupiclass="underline" does it reveal a man more present in body and mind than the casualty cares to guess?
There are many others (many other casualties), perhaps.
These others organized in columns. His (the casualty’s) column, but others, too.
Columns (of casualties) both parallel and perpendicular.
He is the median figure in a crosscutting series of columns, and he must maintain a necessary distance.