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Prisoners

by Si Wang

 

The fortress was as large as a city and empty as a dried-up well. During the days, I followed a tattered map annotated by many hands and took many wrong turns through cramped hallways, treacherous stairways, and rusty gates. At night, I couldn’t sleep. Resting on the cold, stone floor, I clutched a delicate metal ringlet weighed down by heavy keys, worried I might lose it.

After five days, the claustrophobic ceiling finally opened up into a courtyard. The air was cold and fresh. The full moon illuminated a cloudy sky. At the center of the courtyard, a rusty cage hung a few feet off the ground — just enough distance so that the man’s feet couldn’t touch the stone floor. The man was as gaunt as the cage. They were one and the same with the way he sat: motionless, his thin arms wrapped around the bars, his thin legs protruding from the bottom.

He slept with a shallow breath, now and then shuddering and whimpering. His eyes fluttered open, and he groaned.

“Who’s there?” he said weakly in an accent I had not heard in a long time. Although his hair was jet black and his face free of wrinkles, the frailty of his words made him appear a hundred years old. He straightened up and said more firmly, “What do you want?” The illusion broke, and he looked like a much younger man. He looked familiar, like a childhood friend.

I tried to control the excitement in my voice and hide the reason I was there. “When I heard about you, I had to come see for myself.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the Queen.”

His face was impassive. “Is that so? Come closer — I can’t see very well.”

I stepped forward, a breath away from his reach.

His eyes studied me. My red silk gown flowed as smoothly as ocean waves, the jewels in my hair gleamed in the moonlight, and the perfume on my feet smelled of petrichor. The chaos priest had painted the penumbral edge of judgment on my forehead. The heavy set of keys hung on my belt.

“Are you going to free me?” he said and laughed bitterly.

“That was my intention, but first, I have some questions for you.”

“You would have brought guards if you intended to free me. I’ve had this conversation countless times with countless people. I don’t know the answer to what you’re looking for. You’re wasting your time.”

“You’ll find it hard to believe how much time I’ve already spent trying to find you.”

“Your forebears wanted the same thing. Whatever means they used, it always ended the same way: they died, and I am still here, locked up in this cage.”

“They were not my forebears.”

The man’s eyebrow arched. “A revolution then? That must be quite a story.”

“Allow me three questions. That is all I ask.”

He looked tired. He shifted his legs and grimaced. “And you’ll free me afterward?”

“That depends on your answers.”

The man sneered and nodded. “Of course.”

“Why were you put into this cage?” I asked.

“I stole a piece of bread,” he said, “Next question.”

“I was told you didn’t need food to survive.”

“The bread wasn’t for me.”

The man’s eyes were like dark pools of water where the depths were deeper than the ocean, and I couldn’t see below the surface.

“Please, tell me more. You must answer my questions to the best of your ability.”

The man sighed. “Very well. This was centuries ago when a revolutionary movement overthrew the Emperor. They deemed everyone equal: the farmer was equal to the merchant who was equal to the noble. The central government rationed food to every person. But why did the farmer have to till the land when everyone was equal? Why work harder only to have your surplus taken by officials to be split among everyone else?

“Soon, the food ran out, and famine struck the country. I knew a girl whose father died in his bed. No one had the energy to move him, try as we did. While the father’s body rotted in the upstairs bedroom, the mother died. We left her downstairs in the guest room. The grandmother went next. This little girl was so hungry that she was about to eat her grandmother to survive. So I stole a piece of bread, and they locked me up.”

The man’s voice cracked. “I never found out what happened to that little girl.”

I reached out to him and touched his hand. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you.”

He looked up at me, surprised. His eyes darted to the keys hanging on my belt. If he wanted to, he could have grabbed my arm. Instead, he asked, “Who are you?”

I stepped back. “I have two more questions for you. Is it true that you can’t die?”

Slowly, he lifted a knee to his chest and then the other. With his feet planted against the grated floor of the cage, he stood. His head bumped into the ceiling before he could straighten his back.

“When I was first locked up, two other cages flanked my own. A man was in one of the cages. He had been there for three days and was constantly screaming. He complained of fire in his muscles, but he shivered from exposure. Hunger tore at his stomach while thirst burned his throat. He asked the guards to kill him. It was not long before I began to howl with the same pains.

“At this time, a road ran by the cages — there was no fortress. I thought that a traveler passing by would surely show me mercy and free me. But no one came. All who passed by looked on with horror and did nothing. I was incoherent. I had gone mad. After five days, when my neighbor finally died, I would have done anything to trade places with him.

“When word spread that I had lived through two weeks, interested crowds gathered around me every day. I begged them to let me go. A month passed and they began praying around me. Some believed I was the new messiah while others feared I was evil incarnate. The king was one of the latter.

“The king’s men swept through the crowds and abducted the believers. The king, a man of his word, told me that since I was sentenced to remain in the cage until death, he could not move me to another location. Construction of the fortress began. Many of the laborers, who toiled day and night, died from exhaustion or accidents; their bones lie buried in the foundation. Many more would die across the wars that were fought over me. The fortress passed to many different rulers and grew to swallow up entire cities and towns. Still, I lived.

“All these years spent in this cage are small compared to my entire lifetime. If it were a beach, then the time I’ve been imprisoned would just be a handful of sand. Yet I’ve lost sight of that beach. I can only see what’s in my hand.”

Long past nightfall, we were now in that silent, late hour when the cicadas had stopped singing but the morning sparrows still slept in their nests.

“You have one more question,” the man said. “You still haven’t asked the important one, the one that every single soul wants to know.”

“Are you lonely?” I asked.

The man laughed but broke into a coughing fit, his skin barely able to contain his ribcage as he heaved. “What game are you playing? You would waste your last question on this?”

“Tell me.”

He gave a pained smile.

“I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever known,” he said. “If they weren’t killed, they grew old and died, sometimes resenting me for my immortality. Every century or so I had a friend I could trust. If I was fortunate, that friendship would last through several generations of their family.”

“What about lovers? Children?” I probed.

“My immortality isn’t a trait that can be passed down to my children. Nothing is harder than watching your children grow older, to have them wither away while you remain young.

“There were times when I had descendants, but they were all killed in world-ending catastrophes. The last one was particularly devastating. After the starfall, the sky darkened, plants died, people starved, and nations warred. Out of the carnage only our buildings and tools survived. After a time, even those deteriorated into dust. For thousands of years, I wandered the earth, wondering if I’d ever see another human being again. I wondered if I would live until our planet became absorbed by the sun and my body burned down into its most basic building blocks. Would those particles still try to come together — to live?

“Loneliness is a constant burden, but loss is a scar that never fully heals. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a true relationship, a lover with whom I shared everything. I used to carry a drawing of one of them in my pocket. It eventually faded and crumbled into dust. I don’t remember what any of them looked like, but I can still feel their absence.”

“Who were these women?” I asked.

“Some were men,” he said and grinned. When I gave no reaction, he said, “That doesn’t disturb you? As a queen, you are more free-thinking than even the poets and philosophers.”

“Tell me about the first one.”

He hooked one arm around the cage bars and scratched his beard. “That was before I discovered I was immortal,” he said, “when humans first walked the earth, babbling with a limited vocabulary. My memories of that time can’t be trusted. Can you remember the first years of your life?”

I shook my head.

He continued, “Each time a memory is recalled, it changes slightly. After thousands and thousands of recollections, an old memory might as well be a fantasy.

“My family had been killed by a pack of large animals — I was the only survivor. I didn’t question why I, alone, survived — humans were more akin to animals back then, living from moment to moment.

“I wandered to an inlet near the ocean, where a peaceful tribe took me in. During the summer when the waters were warm, they dived deep into the inlet to hunt for a species of crustacean that was both delicious and plentiful.

“She was my teacher. I can still grasp at some of the memories, but the rest have all been sanded away. I remember we had a son. I remember losing everything when another tribe attacked, killing the men and children and taking the women. I woke up soaked in blood with all my wounds healed. That was when I first questioned ‘why me?’”

The man looked more weary than a crumpled piece of paper.

There was a sigh from the earth as the clouds opened up and released rain. A steady drizzle. A good omen.

The man tilted his head, opened his mouth, and savored the small droplets of water. He turned back to me and said, “Well, you have asked your three questions. Now I want to know: who is this Queen with the strange questions? If you don’t want the elixir of life, the fountain of youth, or the tears of the moon, what do you want from me?”

“I wanted to know what kind of man you were,” I said. “When I first heard about you I was living on another continent living alone in an abandoned castle. It was only through a passing peddler that I learned about a man trapped in a cage, unwilling to die. It took me decades to travel north and gather information about you. It took me centuries to gain followers, build alliances, overthrow the king, and gain access to this fortress.”

He grinned and shook his head. He tapped the bars of the cage. He swung his feet. “No, no, no. Don’t play this trick on me. It would have been easier to become a guard if you wanted to talk to me.”

“Not for a woman,” I said, “Unlike for you, when civilization reverts backward, life becomes harder for me. The laws that protect me from men no longer exist. To be here now, I couldn’t be a guard — I had to upend the entire system.”

“This is a cruel form of torture I haven’t seen yet,” the man said.

“I want to set you free because you did the same for me,” I said. “Before I learned of your existence, I lived in the ancient buried cities, only coming up to forage and hunt game. When the foundations crumbled, I sailed across the ocean to a remote island. Eventually, I was driven out by the eruption of a volcano. I lived in caves and tunnels. I lived in desert oases and frigid tundras. I lived in places to escape other people. It was only after I learned about you that I became brave enough to venture out because I had something to live for. The last few centuries have not been easy, but they’ve been the best years of my life. I’ve built close friendships, improved the lives of my followers, and now I’m finally here, in front of you.”

“I don’t believe you,” the man said.

“Believe this,” I said. “I remember when other hominids lived side-by-side with us. I remember the first ice age and the second. I remember when nuclear fire blasted our cities and nearly wiped humans from the face of the earth, and then again, a thousand years later when the meteorite fell into our ocean. I remember when we settled on the red planet; I still look up at the night sky and wonder if someone is staring back. That history has all been lost with time so how could I have known all of that without having lived through it all?”

He didn’t answer me. He avoided my gaze and looked down at his feet.

“I don’t remember the early years of my life,” I said. “For a long time, I tried to forget my past. Like you, I was born along the coast and grew up diving in the ocean. I fell in love with a man I don’t remember. Your face reminds me of someone I knew . . . perhaps it was him. Perhaps you are him. The world was much smaller back then.”

The man stared at me for a long time before speaking. “It’s possible.”

“Have you ever met anyone else like us before?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I told him, “I knew a woman who was the mayor of a small town in the plains of a country I’ve forgotten the name of. A hundred thousand years later, I saw the same woman briefly, for just a passing moment in a crowded space. At least, that’s what I think I saw.

“Perhaps there are many of us out there who choose to hide from the world — just like we did — and thus, live in isolation, never knowing there are others who can understand them . . . or there are only two of us.”

He looked sadly at me, stunned into silence.

I retrieved a heavy key from the delicate metal ringlet.

With a rusty groan, the cage opened from the bottom. The man plopped down onto the ground. With no strength in his legs, he collapsed like a bundle of fire logs. He crawled forward to leave the oppressive, overhanging cage and then rolled over onto his back, staring at the sky. The rain washed away the dried sweat from his body.

He sighed and stretched out one arm. It cracked and popped.

He stretched out his other arm.

Then his legs.

“Aah!” he exclaimed with a smile. Slowly, his smile faded and tears streamed down his dirt-crusted face.

I bent down and held his hand. “What is it?” I asked.

He sobbed.

“You’re free now,” I said. “I’m here.”

“I had forgotten what it felt like,” he said, “to be this way. For so long I avoided thinking about this moment — I lost hope entirely. Tell me what you said is true?”

I was about to tell him it was true: he was free now. Then I realized he was not talking about the cage.

“Yes, it’s all true. Every word. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

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Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Prisoners” by Si Wang, and if you enjoyed that then you can find him on Twitter as @‌siwang, where he’s got links to his stories in Mythaxis and Electric Spec.

It is a strange and terrible thing to think you’re alone in this world, and that there’s no-one else like you. Buckle up, kiddos, it’s another Matt’s-late-autism-diagnosis trauma-dump-outro! I should probably hang a TM mark off that at this point. Did you know that PTSD and autism have a lot of overlap in the symptoms, to the point of frequent misdiagnosis? Even if you did know that, what you won’t know—because no-one has pinned it down yet, as far as I’m aware—is whether that’s related to the ways that trauma changes your brain, wherein it is literally physically rewired as a result of what you’ve been through, and whether that has any similarities to the way that an autistic brain is wired differently from the word go; or whether it’s just that growing up autistic in a neurotypical world that doesn’t accommodate us is so inherently traumatic that literally everyone who has autism also has PTSD.

Which is kinda fucked up, right? Of course, we could work this out either with lots of expensive MRI machinery and detailed study from top academics using hundreds of subjects and dozens of years, or by just making sure the world is the kind of place that isn’t traumatising for folks who don’t fit the narrow band of permissible behaviours, and the chances are that the first one will be easier to achieve.

Cos let me tell you, the primary experience of growing up autistic without you or anyone around you knowing that you’re autistic is the question “why am I like this?” You look at everyone around you managing to make friends and do new things and enjoy loud parties, and you think to yourself, I’m literally the only one who can’t cope. I’m the only one that’s different. I’m uniquely broken.

Fun fact: my social anxiety has been so absurdly illogical in the past that I would feel—and be—physically unwell for a day before simply going round a friend’s house. And I don’t mean “at 8 years old”, I mean “as a grown ass adult going over to get drunk and play video games with people I’ve known 20 years”. And still! But here’s the really funny thing, though not haha funny, sadly: once I had the diagnosis, that… went away. Not fully, gods know I’m lumped with this anxiety forever, but that extreme manifestation of it has withered away, because it turns out the majority of my social anxiety was in-fact _meta-_anxiety about the social-anxiety, the layers of “why am I like this” and “why can’t I get over myself” and, at the root of it all, the pernicious little phrase that’s forever undermining you: “why can’t I cope”.

I. Me. Uniquely. Alone.

So yes! I am, I think, becoming somewhat of a cliché of myself in these outros, forever viewing things through the lens of my autistic diagnosis, though in my defence revisiting your whole life to re-evaluate it through this new understanding is not a quick process, it’s only been two years and there’s thirty-eight before that I’ve still got to think through. But my not shutting up about autism and ADHD is a very deliberate choice, made for one simple reason: I never know who might hear it for the first time, and in hearing it, recognise it, and in recognising it, feel less alone. Because that loneliness literally kills us. The statistics on suicide for autistic individuals are genuinely horrific[1]: we are nine times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. We make up 1% of the population but 11% of the suicides. It is the second leading cause of death for us. It is bad enough that it brings the average life expectancy for autistic folk down to 54 years, around 26 years less—and there are no other health complications comorbid with autism, there is no other reason why we appear to be dying` younger.

To feel alone, like a uniquely inhuman aberration, is a terrible, terrible thing. And it happens to too many autistic people, and it doesn’t need to, because we aren’t alone. If we’re 1% of the population then there’s 80 million of us. And my gods let me tell you that when you meet other autistic folk and realise it’s not just you, it was never just you, you were never broken you just weren’t with people who understood you like these people do, it is the most liberating, freeing experience you can have, a moment of self-forgiveness so profound that it approaches the divine. So I won’t shut up about it, because someone who desperately needs to hear it might just be listening at that moment. And if that’s you, right now, feeling the walls crashing down around you: I promise you that the freedom outside that prison you built yourself to hide yourself is worth it, and there are people out there who know what you’re going through, and who will lift you out of that rubble and help you walk back into the world. Gods, find me on Bluesky if you want, if you need. Just know that you were never as alone as you feared you were.

[1] https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/nccmh/suicide-prevention/workshops-(wave-4)/wave-4-workshop-2/suicide-and-autism—slides.pdf?sfvrsn=bf3e0113_2