He was dreaming of chicken piccata. The cutlets had been pounded thin, battered, and browned to a golden crisp. Olive oil dripped from the fork as he lifted each warm, tender bite. Hints of lemon and capers. Slight snap of black pepper. A mountain of mashed potatoes hovered nearby, bathed in garlic butter and sprinkled with chives. He chewed slowly, savoring each mouthful. Groaning.
It was the groan that woke him.
One of his eyes opened; the other stayed shut, courtesy of a swollen lid and a thick crust of blood and mucus. Was it his own groan he had heard, or someone else’s? At this point, Ollie could barely tell the difference. He had been locked in the shadowy room for hours with six other men and two women. They were not allowed to talk to each other. They were not allowed to talk to the guards. A plastic bucket in the corner collected all bodily excretions, and the stench of sweat, vomit, diarrhea, and urine choked him to the point of unconsciousness. He welcomed the blackouts. He prayed for them.
Ollie had awakened this time to find he was still curled up on the floor, his cheek crushed against the cold, gritty stone. With his one good eye, he stared at the removable slider at the bottom of the cell door. This was how the prisoners’ “meals” arrived. The most recent offering was still sitting there, untouched by anyone. It appeared to be a large bowl full of leather belts, soaking in a beige broth, though Ollie knew that couldn’t possibly be true. The water, if it was water, tasted as though it had been poured from an exhaust pipe into a rusty pitcher.
He was starving. He was shivering. He was surely about to die. And it was all, he knew, for nothing.
He had failed.
Ollie had been kidding himself, thinking he could play the hero. Believing his own white-knight, bullshit story. Why would someone like Nell ever need someone like him? Who was he, anyway? The fat kid. The freak. The easy mark. Fatherless, and now motherless. Useless as an abandoned penguin egg on the tundra, left alone to tumble in the harsh, unforgiving winds.
Nell had screamed his name when the guards caught him. At least there was that. Had she rushed out to try to save him? Did she even care? Or had she been too worried about losing her place in line? He’d probably never know.
The goons had patted him down before they tossed him into this hole, but had somehow missed the gift-shop keychain still tucked away in the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled it out, there in the darkness, and pressed the tiny button on the edge. Oliver, it flashed, over and over again. The shocking light seared into his eyeballs. Oliver. Oliver. Oliver.
He moaned. The pain was almost bad enough to drown out his torturous ruminations. Almost. Ollie stared at the stone floor, breathing in the stench, and he thought about his mother. Did heaven have a view to this place? He hoped not. He didn’t want her to see him here. He had faced his own version of Francie’s frozen-river analogy, and he had failed. He should have stayed on the riverbank when the splashing victim went by. He should have never gotten involved. Now, the victim had crossed safely, easily, to the other side, and Ollie was the one who was going to drown.
He had been a fool. A naïve, fractured fool. Did he actually think that Nell would throw herself into his arms? That she was helpless without him? What kind of a ridiculous fantasy had he been living in? Ollie wanted to snort at the absurdity of it. He almost did. Then a clacking sound came from the cell door.
“Get up,” the guard barked. “Time to go.”
* * *
They forced him to his feet.
Weak and disoriented, Ollie and his eight cellmates staggered through the door and into a narrow hallway, following each other in a slow, shuffling line. The man behind him whimpered. The woman in front of him muttered obscenities under her breath. Ollie stayed quiet.
When they came to a spiral staircase, one of the guards stepped aside and jerked his head. “Up here. Let’s go.”
The first prisoner in line obeyed, and the two behind that followed suit. Ollie, fourth in line, stopped to gape up at the stairs. They seemed to have been carved directly out of the stone wall, spinning in a tight loop up into the abyss. Impossibly high.
“Move!”
Ollie grunted as a hard object collided with his ribs. He dropped his eyes, lurched forward, and started to climb.
The first few steps were relatively easy. Each stair was short, which meant that Ollie didn’t have to lift his leg much to get from one to the next. Soon, though, even that small effort became difficult. Then, intolerable.
The frayed group passed floor after floor, doorway after doorway, bypassing them all. His thigh muscles screamed in protest. His breath came in ragged gasps. Dizziness set in as he followed the stairs in endless, spinning spirals; when he glanced down to measure his progress, the ground seemed inconceivably far away. And still, they climbed.
One of the other men had already given up, slumping in sobbing protest. In response, the guards zapped him with something loud. The man screamed, rose onto his hands and knees, and began to crawl up the stairs.
Ollie’s body shook all over. One wrong step, and he would go tumbling down the massive staircase. He shuddered. Then he realized that a grisly, 30-story fall might actually be better than whatever was waiting for him at the top.
He was lost in exhausted delirium when he heard a voice above him. “In here. Let’s go.”
Ollie’s head snapped up. Thank you, God. They were stopping.
He slumped against the railing, blissful in the moment’s rest. It didn’t last long. The guards ushered the group up the last few steps and through an open doorway, which led to a surprisingly clean, white room with tall ceilings. Ollie had to shield his eyes from the sudden, unexpected brightness.
“Over there,” one of the guards said. “Let’s go.”
The group shuffled to the room’s far end. There were no chairs waiting for them; one of the women and several of the men collapsed onto the ground, panting. Ollie wanted nothing more than to join them, but something told him to stay on his feet. Jittery with fear and fatigue, he took in his surroundings. One wall was blank and white. Another was full of large holes, each about the size of a sewer grate. Every hole had been assigned a number.
For several minutes, nothing happened. One of the men on the ground seemed to have passed out; Ollie nudged him with his foot.
“Wake up,” Ollie whispered, then cast his eye toward the guards, who hadn’t yet noticed.
The man nodded and struggled to sit up. As he did, a second door opened to their left. The guards stood at attention.
A woman swept through the doorway. To call her “old” was to call the galaxy “big”—she was, more accurately, ancient. The lines in her face had long ago transformed into deep grooves, less like skin than folded origami paper. Her oversized eyes spread all the way into her forehead, while her nose was little more than two semi-protruding holes. The woman’s thick, yellowed dreadlocks defied gravity, ascending skyward into a sharp point. Her hair reminded Ollie of the stalagmites outside.
“Ma’am,” the guards said in unison, bobbing their heads as she passed.
The woman barely acknowledged the greeting. Instead, she turned to take stock of the mangy group of prisoners.
“Stand up,” she said. Her voice was soft yet sharp, the voice of a much younger woman, and it carried a heavy weight of warning across the room. The prisoners on the ground scrambled to their feet. The man beside Ollie started whimpering, again.
“I am the Reader,” she said. “I will see all that you have done. And you will pay for your crimes. Only what you owe.”
At this, the guards repeated the phrase in unison: “Only what you owe.”
For one brief, deranged moment, Ollie felt like he was back in a Lighter Tomorrows meeting, listening to the members chant the LT motto. Here today, lighter tomorrow. He was teetering on the edge of hysteria.
“Only what you owe,” the woman said again. Then she turned and walked to the center of the room, where a platform held two chairs. She settled into one of them, adjusted her robe, and folded her hands in her lap.
“I am ready,” she said to no one in particular.
One of the guards jumped to attention. He walked across the room and grabbed the first prisoner in line, dragging the haggard man by his collar and depositing him into the chair next to the Reader.
“Raise your hand,” she told him.
His eyes darting in confusion, the prisoner raised his right hand like a witness swearing on a Bible.
“Like this,” the woman said. She held out her hand, palm first, and faced him.
The prisoner dropped his right arm and raised his left. He held out his palm. Even from a distance, Ollie could see that it was shaking. His own hands were already doing the same.
The woman pressed her wrinkled palm against his. She closed her eyes. Then she raised her other arm, stretched it out, and pointed her free hand at the nearby empty wall. She seemed to be concentrating.
Ollie held his breath. As he watched, a picture began to flicker on the wall.
No, not a picture. A movie. Her hand was projecting a moving scene. One of the people coming to life on the wall was…the man. The same prisoner who was sitting in the chair next to her. He was here, and he was also there. Ollie’s heart began to pound.
The room went dead quiet as everyone watched the scene unfolding on the wall. The man was talking to a young boy. He was grabbing the boy. Slapping him across the face. The boy cowered.
Ollie turned his head away. He couldn’t watch. He heard the young boy crying, begging the man to stop. Heard blows landing, heard the boy whimpering in pain. It was…sickening. Ollie felt vomit roil up from his stomach.
That episode was followed by another, and another. Ollie kept his eyes on the floor. Each time an attack came, he heard the same vicious words spewing from the man’s mouth, the same cries from the boy. When would this end? Finally, Ollie looked up at the platform to see the prisoner sitting, stricken, watching himself on the wall. Watching himself hurt the little boy, time and time again.
The old woman, meanwhile, seemed unaffected.
“End,” she said abruptly, and the movie disappeared from the wall. The screams and angry curses died out. The man sitting beside her had turned white. And to Ollie’s left and right, his fellow prisoners had flattened themselves against the wall, terrified.
The Reader pulled her hand away. The man gathered his own to his chest in a uselessly protective gesture.
Two red-suited guards appeared at her side.
“Thirty-four,” she said.
The guards nodded, grabbed up the shaking man, and led him to the wall filled with holes. His mouth was slack with dread.
“You will give what you owe,” she told the prisoner. “Do you understand?”
“I’m sorry!” he said, fighting to free his arms. “Please! No! God, no! I’m sorry!”
The ancient woman gave the barest of nods to the guards. At that, they lifted the man and shoved him head-first into the hole marked “34.” The man’s scream echoed, then faded into the distance as he fell.
Ollie and the remaining eight prisoners cowered. One by one, each of the inmates in front of him marched to the platform, touched their palms to hers, and watched their misdeeds unfold on the white wall. After the skinny man came the middle-aged woman—a nursing-home attendant, apparently, whose “reading” highlighted her abuse of several elderly victims in her care. In scene after scene, she was shown pinching, hitting, withholding food, withholding pain medication, and even refusing access to the bathroom. The revolting examples went on and on.
“End,” said the Reader, then, “Forty-one.”
Down the 41st tube the abuser went, screeching like a hawk.
Next came the man who had passed out next to Ollie: a pot-bellied, grizzled sixty-something wearing a black sweatshirt. When he touched the reader’s hand, the white wall lit up with video of him smacking around his small brunette wife. “Why do you make me do this?” the man was shouting. “Why?” Sobbing and helpless, his wife shook her head as the man grabbed a lamp from the table, lifted it high in the air above her, and brought it down with a mighty crash.
By the time Mr. Beer Belly went down his tube—number 17—Ollie was close to dry heaves.
“Next.”
The guards grabbed Ollie and led him to the platform. Up close, the woman seemed even more otherworldly, as though she was only partially human. He was having trouble breathing. He wanted, more than anything, not to touch his palm against hers. But of course, he had no choice. Ollie lifted his arm, felt her bony hand against his, and waited with a stuttering heart.
The old woman pointed her other palm to the wall. She closed her eyes. Nothing happened.
She opened them again, looking at Ollie with suspicion. “Press harder,” she said.
Ollie obliged. Still, nothing appeared on the wall. His legs jellied with relief. And then…a flicker. A movie began. Ollie, sitting across from Nell in a coffee shop. Though the film was black-and-white, her bruise was in color: violet and navy. It stained her cheek with an almost fluorescent glow. Ollie watched in horror, seeing himself look at the bruise, then look away. Sip his cappuccino. That scene morphed into another, in which Ollie asked about her wrist, got the answer about the dog leash, and asked no further questions. The next scene showed the two of them on the street. Nell telling Ollie how The Guy didn’t want her hanging out with her friends anymore. How he kept track of her money and read her texts. Her eyes were darting, nervous. She looked pale. And Ollie, again, said nothing.
Breathless, Ollie slammed his eyes shut.
“End,” the Reader said. She pulled her hand away as the room fell into momentary silence. Then she said, “Five.”
“Wait, what?” Ollie yelped, opening his eyes. “No, you can’t—”
The guards lifted him from the chair.
“Please, wait! I’m not that guy! Look at it again—the guy who was hurting her, that was her boyfriend. Not me! I’m not supposed to be here! This is all a big mistake! Please!”
The burly men ignored him. The wall and the holes got closer.
Ollie kept shouting: “You don’t understand! I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
The woman regarded him with an almost amused expression. “That is exactly right,” she said. “You did nothing.” She stood, stepped down from her platform, and glided across the floor in his direction. When she stopped, she was so close he could smell the mildewed crust of her skin.
“You don’t understand! I’m not—”
“Evil cannot exist on its own,” she interrupted calmly. “It requires a power source. In many cases, the power source is simply…nothing. Doing nothing. Saying nothing. Enabling. Implicitly agreeing by lack of action. All of these feed the abuse, empower it, embolden it. They make it monstrous, where it might have been meager. They make it live, and breathe, and thrive, and build in strength like a raincloud. And then, when the storm finally reaches you, you are confused. You ask: Why should I be tossed into the tempest? I am not to blame. I did nothing.”
The Reader leaned closer. Her acrid breath fell hot on his cheek as she continued in a low, dangerous voice: “And you are correct. You did nothing. You were nothing. And so, that is how you shall remain, within these walls, until the end of your days. As nothing.”
Hundreds of protests choked Ollie’s throat as he stared at her, wild-eyed in terror.
“Only what you owe,” the old woman said.
The guards repeated it in unison: “Only what you owe.”