The smile faded, and he turned away. Silence invaded the little cell. His final joke had fallen flat. I slid the shutter closed on the view hole with a sharp clank. He would die, buried here in the darkness of the sanitarium. I turned from the door and wandered down the hallway. The overhead lights, some flickering, some dead, a few still shining, allowed me islands of light as I walked toward the stairs.
I was seven levels down, there were seven flights I had to climb, and no elevator. No budget for one, for anything. This little prison was off the books, these sub-floors not on any plan or blueprint. I wondered what other horrors were hidden behind the locked doors I passed. What was trapped within these unheated cells? Yet it was not mine to know any but the one which I had closed.
The silent echo of my steps filled my ears as I ascended out of this fantasy of steel and cement, turning at each floor upon the lonely stairwell. Six times around would lift me out of here, and on the seventh revolution, I would be free.
Once I turned back, terrified that somehow he would be there, smiling that wicked grin, following me out. I was alone. He would die, I reminded myself, and I would be free.
Here was the final step and the way out. I stood before it, breathless after my climb. Light, bright and blinding, was streaming in along the floor and around the edges of the door. The brass handle glimmered as if it were made of some living metal running like a river. I put my hand to its electric surface and felt the terrible swell of life force itself back into my cold corpse.
The knob turned, and I sawā¦
“He’s alive,” a voice said.
A hand took mine. I knew there was love in that touch, but I couldn’t recognize the face there. A friend, a lover, a daughter? Just a nurse who cared?
“Thank you,” she said.
“What?” I said, or tried to. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.
She squeezed my hand.
“You got him. He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore.”
She was crying, a moment away from blubbering, but she swallowed.
“Thank you,” she said again.
I nodded and closed my eyes. I saw a glimpse of his smiling face in the shadows, a ghost or a memory, and knew that, whatever that grinning monster was, he was dead.
Tale Told 