Ain't War Hell?
By: Maximillian von Fischgeist 

Chapter Two
8X8X8

    Eight by Eight by Eight. That's how big the cell was. Remick Odem based his estimation on his own height (5'11"). Standing upright, feet flat, arms stretched over his head, his fingertips fell just a couple inches short of scraping the ceiling. As the cell was roughly a cube, he quickly decided on the measurement 8' x 8' x 8'.

    He'd undertaken this experiment during the daytime, when muted light managed to breathe in through the thick, fogged glass in the tiny window on one wall. He guessed its thickness to be about two or three inches. Unbreakable by fists or bare feet, anyway, which were his only physical tools. These conclusions summed up his first day's work in this place. That had been a Thursday.

    "That would make today..." Odem let his voice trail off as he counted the number of times that dull sunlight had come and gone. Six times? Yes, six. He was sure of it. The first was on Thursday. "Tuesday night. That's what this is. Tuesday night."

    He had kept in the practice of talking out loud. From the beginning, he'd been sure to talk to himself. It turned his mind toward the mundane, which was for the best. Silence, he felt, would make this waiting unbearable. Whatever it was he was waiting for.

    Almost a week now, and not a clue as to his captors' intentions. They were obviously planning to allow his isolation to gnaw at him. Isolation, starvation, the stench coming from the small well in the corner that served as his toilet.

    Odem allowed himself a weary smile. A man could learn to endure most inconveniences if he kept his wits about him. The horror of an odor was relative, after all. A couple more days, and the smell might not exist at all. But wit couldn't replace certain needs, food chief among them. Each morning he awoke to find an almost comically (there was so little room for comedy in this tiny place!) small (and bitterly stale) loaf of bread by the heavy iron door. That, and just enough water to keep him from turning to sandstone. He was always at work trying to make the meager rations last for more than thirty minutes.

    Odem's stomach burned with acidity. It was the one truly oppressive element in this bizarre nightmare. "I wonder if the stomach can devour itself," he mused aloud. "Can stomach acids erode the stomach lining? Yes, that's what a stomach ulcer is, isn't it?"

    His voice bounced around in the tight area, taunting him with the need for open space. No! his mind screamed. No thoughts of anything not in this place! The only way we ["we" meaning my mind and I? I've never thought of myself as "we" before. Mental note: Deprivation of activity and food makes "us" (mental snicker) wiggy!] can survive this is by becoming a creature that thrives on these conditions. From now on, life is THIS. We must never think that life has been, can be, or ever will be better than this. This is bliss. A cube 8' by 8' by 8' is how life is supposed to be. This is the world. And we are kings in it.

    "I stopped talking," Odem reminded himself. "Can't stop talking. I talk, therefore I am." His voice echoed from walls he couldn't see. He knew they were there. A scientist's understanding always trusts what MUST BE. When the window refused him light, he KNEW night had fallen. Darkness had come, but that was all. No other changes had occured. The walls were still there. No, not walls. The edges of the Earth. The world is a cube, 8' by 8' by 8'. And no one can take that away from me. These 8 cubic feet are MINE! The world is MINE!

    "The world is mine," he whispered. "Mine. Feet are no longer feet. Eight is no longer eight. This world..." he stopped, decided on a correction: "MY world is bigger than can be imagined. The corner to my right..." he pointed "...is called 'There'. And it shall always be There..." His voice trailed off. What am I saying? Why am I talking? What the hell did I just say? The corner to my right is called There? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

    He closed his eyes (an evil waste of effort, really... working the muscles in the eyelids just to experience the same effect as keeping the eyes open) and cradled his head in his hands. "Keep talking. Just keep talking, and maybe, eventually, something will make sense. Don't look for sense. Don't need sense. Just wait until the moment when everything clicks and you suddenly realize that everything makes sense." His mind worked against his mouth: But that realization will never come. What you're looking for is impossible, Dr. Remick Odem, old boy. Nothing makes sense until there is such a thing as Sense. Are you following me? Pay attention now. I'd hate to lose you. Nothing makes sense until there is such a thing as Sense. If you deny the existence of Sense, you have negated it forever. Still with me?

    "Yes, God damn it," he breathed. "I'm still with you. If I ignore it, it doesn't exist, is that it? And if it doesn't exist, there will be no moment where everything suddenly makes sense, right?" He was interrupted by the discomfort caused by his elbows jabbing into the sides of his knees, a predicament rooted in his sitting Indian style. He corrected the situation by laying on his side.

    "Just shut up," he told himself. "Maybe 'we' can get some sleep and when 'we' wake up, everything will make sense."

    His anticipation of another long, aching night of mostly sleeplessness was corrected suddenly by a sound. He froze, hoping to be able to determine just what the sound was. Then it repeated. A muted pop... no, several! He stayed as still as possible, analyzing. Gunfire perhaps? Could be. No way of being certain, really. The sound didn't come again.

    He decided it must have been gunfire. One or two single shots, then a burst (a machinegun), then a few more stray single shots again. And then the evening's entertainment had ended.

    "I am ill," Odem told himself (selves?). "People may have died by gunfire, and I can draw nothing from it but entertainment." Yawn. "Can it be? Am I actually tired?" Yawn. "I am! I'm getting sleepy!"

    He laid his head down on his arm, closed his eyes, and hoped that sleep might find it in its heart to take him. As sleep did indeed show its kindness, Odem vaguely (but, vainly, he knew) hoped that the death that may have come from those muted, distant bullets would somehow find a way to take him. But then, before he could even consider the philosophy of that thought, a tunnel of swirling warmth swallowed him whole, surrounding him in the beautiful Nothing that is Sleep.

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Continued in Part Three!
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