1095

      He used the nail to scratch a diagonal line through the four vertical lines he had made the four previous days on the wall opposite the door of his cell. He counted the sets of five he had made, 219. That meant there were 1095 hash marks on the wall. If his calculations had been right he had been here three years.

       He could not be sure. He scratched a mark on the wall every time just before drinking what he thought of as his “evening gruel.” There was also the “morning gruel.” They were both pushed through the opening at the bottom of the cell door in hard plastic bowls, quite unbreakable,  by a gloved hand. He had stopped speculating if the hand was male or female, same or different. He knew the evening gruel was drugged; he always fell into a deep sleep soon after drinking it. He had tried to go without in order to stay awake but all that got him was hunger and terrifying hallucinations in the dark. He thought of the cycle of wake, get morning gruel, get evening gruel, sleep as a “day.” Because he never left his windowless cell and had not been spoken to by a living soul the entire time he was there he had no way of knowing how his days synced with those in the outside world. 

         He had forgotten how he came to live in the cell, whether he volunteered or was coerced, whether it was for punishment or protection, whether he or others were being protected. He only knew he could not open the door, there were times when he pushed and pulled on it every few minutes but that had been a while ago. He also knew that shouting through the opening got no response. Aside from knowing how to count he was not sure if he was sane or insane, competent or incompetent. 

          If he was being punished he was quite sure it was not for some deliberate crime. He had spent hours searching his mind for a tendency toward violence or perversion, ambition or idealism and found nothing large enough to make him act. That did not mean he was not being punished, his world had many statutes and it was easy to violate one accidentally. Also one could be convicted for a violation that did not exist. He knew he was being kept there by an aggregate of people each with their own reasons but that idea was too random and unknowable to be useful. He thought of what was keeping him there as a huge domestic bull with great horns, usually stupid and habitual but dangerous and unstoppable when provoked. 

          Aside from his gruel bowls there were only two objects visible in his cell. One was a white mattress with blue-black stripes. It was stuffed with something and was neither comfortable or uncomfortable to sleep on. The other was an aluminum pot for him to urinate and defecate. He thought with some shame of the periods when he had refused to use it and smeared his feces on the floor and walls. During his stay there he would sometimes go into bouts of such madness such as when he smashed his head against the wall repeatedly until he lost consciousness. 

          He was dressed in loose pants with an elastic waist and a short sleeve tunic open at the front. They were the same shade of gray that matched the cell walls. They were made out of a cotton like fabric; the fibers were fine and strong and closely woven. They were completely without distinguishing marks or decoration. 

           The drugs in his gruel must be quite effective. Every time he woke up he would find himself on the mattress with his gruel bowls removed and his pot emptied. Any mess he had made would be cleaned up. Often he had been bathed, his clothes changed, his teeth cleaned and his nails clipped. His caretakers/keepers/jailers did this all without waking him. They did not bother with his hair and beard; they were quite long now but their growth had slowed. He, of course, did not know what he looked like. He imagined if he was on the outside he would be considered odd looking but not extremely so. He had stopped trying to keep track of when he was renovated in order to ascertain whether it was periodic or capricious. 

           He held between the fingers of his left hand the one thing he valued most in his whole existence, a thin three-quarter inch nail. To you it would be an inconsequential thing; when you were aware of it at all, it would be something you would see in a drawer while you were looking for something else. He did not know how he had it. His pants did not have pockets to carry it in. He was quite sure that it had not been given to him. He kept it hidden by sticking it horizontally underneath the corner of the mattress away from the wall nearest his head. Everyday he used it to scratch a mark on the wall before he drank his evening gruel. That ritual was the only thing that kept his mind together. The nail was more than a tool: it was his god. 

          In his cell he had two gods. He did not exactly worship them; he knew what they could and would do for him and that no amount of propitiation would change them. One was the stupid bull, it ruled the whole world and everything in it. The other was the nail, it was his god alone. One god he could not control, the other god did what he desired as much as it could. He still had scars on various parts of his body from the nail, sometimes due to madness, sometimes as sacred offerings. He knew they were opposed to prevent either from becoming too powerful. It did not think of them as good or evil. Good and evil were meaningless in the cell. 

         He drank his evening gruel. As usual it was mainly tasteless with a bitter medicinal undertone. The morning gruel tasted slightly better. He returned the nail to its place beneath the mattress and lay down and went to sleep.

                                                         *****

        He awoke with his usual groggy disorientation and looked at the wall. All 1095 hash marks were gone! He leapt up and began to slowly rub the wall with his fingers. It was perfectly smooth; it must have been repainted but it was completely dry without even detectable brushstrokes. He looked down at the mattress he was standing on. It looked like the one he went to sleep on but he knew every spot and stain on that mattress. This was not the same mattress. His heart leapt in panic.

          He got down on all fours and pulled up the corner of the mattress, no nail. He ran his fingers over every inch of the mattress. He crawled over every spot of his cell searching desperately but hopelessly. He sat down on the floor between his mattress and his pot and wept helpless and bereft. 

          When he finally got a hold of himself, he realized that he was hungry. His morning gruel had not been pushed under the door. Perhaps if one god was gone, the other was also. He got up and pushed on the door. It opened. He walked out into an empty corridor. No one seemed to be around. Every ten feet or so was a sign marked EXIT. He followed them until he came to a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY: ALARM WILL SOUND. He pushed on the crash bar expecting that if anyone heard the alarm they would not respond. The alarm made a deafening noise as he walked outside. The sun was shining. There was a breeze. Somewhere a dog barked. The streets were empty but he could tell that there were people somewhere. He realized he did not know what was going to happen to him. That is what freedom is.