Alexander Gordon Smith - Furnace 3: Death Sentence

Welcome back, old friend.

I thought I heard the tunnel walls laughing as I was carried through them deep chuckles that could have been distant earthquakes. Somewhere inside I knew it must have been the echo of the blacksuits, but the injuries in my mind were just as bad as the ones on my skin and reality was a distant memory. I was living inside a nightmare now, a place where Furnace was a creature that howled with delight as we were pulled back into its belly, dragged to the infirmary.

Every atom of my being was in agony. God knows how badly Id been burned when Id hit the incinerator flames. I would have opened my eyes to see if Id been barbecued, but they wouldnt obey. I would have lifted a hand to check that I still had my eyes, but I couldnt find the strength. I would have screamed, but there was barely enough air in my smoke-ravaged lungs to breathe.

So instead I tried to shut down my brain. Tried to forget that Id ever been alive. Tried to flood my body with absence a black tide that would douse the pain in my flesh. Maybe if I could do that then death would sneak in, snatch me up right from under their noses. It worked for the fraction of a second until I heard the voice.

Oh no you dont, Alex, the warden hissed, snapping me back into my body. Death cant have what belongs to me. The whisper grew louder, accompanied by wicked shrieks I knew all too well. Get those wheezers to work. We havent got long. And find me an IV, now!

I was lowered onto something which should have been soft but which felt like acid against my burned skin. I tried once more to leave my head. Maybe if I could just escape my skull for an instant then death would take me, carry me up through the rock towards that sliver of daylight I had glimpsed only minutes ago.

Then I felt the needle in my arm, and something cold rushed into my veins. I knew exactly what it was, Id seen it before on Gary, on Donovan a drip full of evil, not quite black, not quite silver, with specks of starlight floating in its dark weight. It was the wardens poison, the stuff that turned you into a monster.

I tried to fight it, to buck my body until the needle came out, but the pain was too great and I could feel the leather straps holding me tight against the infirmary bed. The panic grew like a living thing in my chest and I made one last mental effort to escape, to leave my flesh behind and vanish like smoke. But the liquid nightmare flowed into me like molten lead, filling my veins and arteries and weighing me down. And its impossible to escape anything when the chains are inside you.

It was only a matter of seconds before it reached my brain. To my surprise it numbed the agony. I felt the same way I had years ago a lifetime ago when Id broken my wrist and the doctors had given me morphine. It was like I was no longer connected to anything physical, like my mind was free.

I should have known better than to hope. For a blissful instant I felt nothing, then the floodgates opened and something far worse than physical pain burst into my head.

This time I managed to scream.

It was as if the warden had ridden into my mind on the wave of poison, because I could swear his voice came from inside my skull.

Its over, he said, the sound of him causing rotten images to sprout from the shadows in my head. I saw something that looked like flyblown meat, something else that could have been a dead dog, there for only a second before evaporating. The warden continued: Everything you ever were, everything you are now, and everything you ever wanted to be, its over.

I wanted to argue, wanted to open my mouth and tell him he was wrong, but his words were like maggots burrowing into the flesh of my brain. They gorged and grew fat on his dry laughter, revealing visions so horrific that I couldnt bear to make sense of them.