The Dimensioners - Chapter 5

SYNOPSIS: When a young man wakes up to find himself a prisoner without any memories of his prior life, he seeks to escape. Not knowing who to trust or what is real, he fights to find the identity and home that he has left behind, but ends up finding out more than he was prepared for.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I started writing this novel some time in 2020 and originally posted a few chapters on Wattpad. Since I hardly ever venture over to Wattpad anymore and I see that Vocal has become a lot more fiction-friendly, I decided to give it a shot at posting some of this work in progress here. THIS IS THE ROUGHEST OF DRAFTS and one day I will finish this novel, but for now, here is 'The Dimensioners' in its infancy. I hope you all enjoy!

READ CHAPTER 4 HERE:

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CHAPTER 5

It only took a few weeks for Axton to settle into a monotonous pattern. Every morning he was woken up by a less than friendly guard, marched down to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, then taken to the warehouse where he would work for hours and the guards would bring the workers lunch in brown paper bags. Then he would work some more, be let out for dinner, and get locked into his cell for the night. Rec Day was the only variance to Axton's days, when he would be let out to go to the Rec room after lunch and be able to play pool or basketball or lay back in one of the lumpy bean bag chairs until dinner time. The deep animosity he felt toward the prison came on his fifth Rec Day.

Dev already had a basketball in his hand when Axton walked in the room. Axton mumbled that he had pulled a leg muscle in the warehouse earlier so he couldn't play.

"Need me to help stretch you out?" Selah asked.

"No it's okay," Axton said. "I'm just gonna sit down and massage it out."

Axton pretended to limp over to the bean bag chairs and plopped himself in one that was just a few feet from Ramirez.

On the widescreen TV, a soccer match was playing that Ramirez's eyes were glued to. The score at the bottom of the screen was partially cut off because of the crack in the screen, but Ramirez seemed to be unfazed by it.

Clearing his throat, Axton leaned toward Ramirez slightly. "Who are you rooting for?"

"No one," Ramirez said.

"Neither one of them are your team?"

"This match is a repeat," Ramirez explained, "all of them are. I've seen this one at least fifty times."

"Why don't you change the channel then?" Axton asked.

"There's only one channel. This is it."

Ramirez's eyes didn't move from the cracked television once during their exchange. Axton watched him curiously. For the past month that he had been at the prison, during every Rec Day, Ramirez went straight to the exact same beanbag chair he was sitting in and stared at the screen in front of him for hours until it was time for dinner. Axton imagined Ramirez had been sitting in that same spot for years before Axton had ever stepped foot in there and watched every soccer match with just as much intensity. It was enough to drive anyone crazy.

A sour taste formed in Axton's mouth and he swallowed it back. Just as he was about to stand up to walk back to Dev and the others, a loud crash came from the corner of the room. Axton's head snapped towards the noise. Two men were fighting by the board game table, which had now collapsed onto the floor with one of the men lying on his back on top of it. The other one was on top of him, punching him mercilessly while the other's flailing arms tried desperately to fight him off.

Two guards rushed at them, snatching the violent one off of the other.

"Alright, let's go," one growled at the aggressor, handcuffing him and pushing him toward the door.

The other guard pulled the other man up to his feet. His face was bloody, but Axton thought that for a second, he saw a faint smile form under the curtain of red on the man's face. The guard led him out of the room, holding onto his upper arm but not bothering to handcuff him like the other one had been. When both men and guards had exited the room, everyone else moved back to their various spots, murmuring to one another.

Axton turned back to Ramirez, who hadn't looked away from the TV once during the commotion.

"Does that happen a lot?" Axton asked him.

"It's happened enough," Ramirez said. "When you've been here as long as me, you've seen every kind of fight there is."

Axton stared at him, this unfeeling, unflinching shell of a man in front of him, and the sour taste formed in his mouth again.

"It looked like that man was smiling," Axton said carefully. "The one who got beat up."

"He probably was," Ramirez said.

"But why? He was all bloody. That couldn't have felt good."

A cold smile appeared on Ramirez's face and Axton was silently grateful that he was staring at the side of Ramirez's face that was scar free.

"He knows he'll feel better soon enough. They're taking him to the infirmary."

There was something unsettling about the way Ramirez said it, as if he was somehow disgusted but amused at the same time.

"What will they... do to him?" Axton asked, leaning closer.

For the first time, Ramirez looked at him and a jolt shot down Axton's spine. It took everything in him to keep his eyes on the man in front of him. He didn't want Ramirez to see him flinch.

"They'll probably clean him up and give him some pixie dust for the pain," Ramirez said quietly.

Axton leaned away, surprised.

"They give people pixie dust in here? But it's a drug!"

Ramirez shrugged and turned back to the TV. "It numbs you to the pain, but it's addictive as hell."

Axton thought back to Ramirez telling him that he didn't do pixie dust and then thought to his colleagues laughing at him for believing it.

"What about the other man?" Axton asked. "Where are they taking him?"

Ramirez didn't speak for a few seconds as the crowd on the TV grew louder. One of the soccer players was running full speed at the opposite goal and when he kicked it in, the crowd roared.

"They'll take him to see his analyst and then lock him in solitary," he said when the crowd died down.

"His analyst?"

Ramirez nodded and said nothing more.

Axton wondered if Ramirez was speaking from experience and bit his tongue against the rising desire to ask if Ramirez had ever been sent to solitary before. The sour taste in in his mouth grew as he watched the mysterious man sitting in front of him and an image of himself as an old man, white haired and bearded, sitting in the same spot that Ramirez was in, staring intently at soccer matches that he had watched dozens of times before, formed in his mind. He shook his head and swallowed the taste back, sure of what he needed to do.

He needed to get in a fight.

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