THE EPIC GILGAMEK: CHAPTER 6 - A MOST FEROCIOUS JUSTICE
A desperate exchange - Presumption of innocence - The Body In Pain
6
And that is when Gilgamek starts to cry. One broken mek lying on the cell floor glances over at the nearly intact boy and his incredulity is easy to read: What in the name of the Shattered Moon is he crying for?
“Terribly unfair, terribly unjust,” the older mek sighs. “A boy no older than my son.”
They pass the night without further words, the moans of the injured protesters rising and fading about them. Gilgamek, trembling nonstop, and praying for some turn of fortune — praying that Lonqo might bail him out or the Wizard would invade and they’d all be set free to fight on the wall.
Some twist of fate of the sort that always happens on the radio shows.
But radio is one thing and life another.
At dawn the Enforcers and the Orderers begin setting up a dozen punishment posts in the gaol yard. Each post sporting eight sets of adjustable shackles to dangle prisoners from. The Corporals testing the whips they will soon ply on the prisoners. Someone asking, “Are we dipping these in glass or no?”
Angry voices fill the wing, heavy doors open. “All right, you Rusty traitors, time to meet the justice of the Autarch — may his infinite light never slow below the universal constant.”
As the Bronze unlock the cells the older mek leaps to his feet, his features determined. He deftly switches charge tablets with Gilgamek.
“I couldn’t live with myself,” the old mek whispers. “I just couldn’t.”
How relieved is Gilgamek? The crying kind.
You have to look on the bright side.
He doesn’t have a chance to thank the old mek because the Enforcers shock prod the prisoners out to the yard.
“Talk and you’ll pay double!” the Bronze bellows.
The Bronze are efficient and within minutes Gilgamek and and the old mek and seven others are hanging from their shackled hands from the eight-side post — the plaque just above his head advertising BEAT-EM-AND-WEEPS HIGH CAPACITY JUSTICE FACILITATION INSTRUMENT.
Gagged, of course, to protect the ears of the Bronze and because the neighbors are always complaining about all the shrieking. The fear on Gilgamek’s post-mates is terrible to behold, especially once their shirts are scissored off. Already two of his fellow danglers have gone limp, knocked out by their own terror. Only one older demonstrator seems prepared for what’s about to happen, her eyes very far away.
The City Commissars get the first row of punishment poles going and soon there is nothing but the relentless cracking of whips, like a string of firecrackers going off slow-mo, and the spasmic writhing of meks with bulging eyes. The Commissars reach Gilgamek’s pole and examine the older mek’s tablet and chalk something on his bare back and then examine Gilgamek’s table.
“This can’t be right,” the Commissar says to the corporal holding the lash. “Is this boy some kind of career criminal?”
“They start early, this lot does.”
“But forty strokes — doesn’t that seem a mite excessive? Twenty five maybe if he was a stone cold crim, but forty?”
“The Autarch is not slack with his promises nor gentle in his wrath,” the corporal recites. “Besides, it’s not for us to question why, etc. That’s how one ends up hanging on a post like these miserable traitors.”
“An excellent point. I am glad, corporal, that you corrected my faulty thinking.”
“Always eager to assist a superior.”
“I will not soon forget your wise advice. But now onto the Autarch’s business. You may begin, corporal.”
“With pleasure.”
The whole time Gilgamek pulls at the chain with all his might and screams futilely.
He cheated me! The scrap bastard cheated me! Give him forty strokes, not me! Give him a hundred! Not me! Not me!
The Enforcer delivers onto the old mek exactly one blow, a hard one, and then as the Enforcers carry him away the old mek casts Gilgamek an embarrassed glance. Better you than me, friend.
Better you than me.
The Enforcer turns to Gilgamek. The staccato of lash on mek (or Bird) has now reached a sickening crescendo.
“Let me know if I go too hard,” the Enforcer offers with a jovial grin.
In the radio plays the heroes play tough before, after, and during torture — but by the second stroke Gilgamek has no tough in him. By the fifth stroke he has no thought in in him either, or humanity, only a shrieking that is agony, an agony that is shrieking. He thought he knew pain but he learns he doesn’t know anything at all. The elders say that “to have great pain is to have certainty” and now Gilgamek has certainty. The elders also say that intense pain “destroys a person's self and world” and destroys all language and Gilgamek feels his self and his world and his language obliterated. He is reduced entirely to his pain, nothing more.
And then the Enforcer stops.
I am saved, he thinks like an animal thinks. I am saved.
“That’s twenty,” the Enforcer says, stretching his neck casually. “Halfway there, boss.”
And here Gilgamek nearly loses his mind. I can’t go on, he thinks. I can’t go on. I’m going to die. I’m dying. I’m dying.
But whether he think he can go on or not the pain doesn’t care and goes on and on and on. His last thoughts are shot at the world for betraying him, at Feckles and Lonqo for not saving him, at his mother for not keeping him.
And then it ends or he ends.
.
.
Oh my god I wasn't expecting that!
That cellmate, a brilliant portrayal of community in jail.