Unsounded Deeps to Dance -

First place 2001

© 2000 Michelle Scalise (story) & Skydancer (art)
All rights reserved.

He comes to her in the winter, when the blood is slow and thick, and the senses sleep.

“Sister, you okay?” Lieutenant Carter asked, reaching for her shoulder then quickly pulling away as if he’d committed a blasphemy.

The guard’s towering frame dwarfed her shadow. His booming voice echoed as he whispered, “So I was hoping, if you wouldn’t mind...it would mean a lot to me and my wife.”A gold chain slipped between his gnarled fingers, falling to the gray concrete floor. His hand shook as he picked it up, placing it in the nun’s palm like a tithe.

She wondered if Carter could suppress a scream if she touched him.

“I saved up to buy it for my little girl. Her First Communion is this Sunday.”

Sister Theresa smiled. “How old is she, Lieutenant?”

“Margaret’s seven. But you’d never know it talking to her. Smart, like you wouldn’t believe. She’s gonna make somethin’ out of herself one day.” He glanced at the nun nervously as if begging her not to tell him otherwise. “So if you could bless it for us.”

Stop treating me like a martyred saint, she wanted to cry. 

“Of course I will,” she responded, snaking the gold links and tiny cross through her fingers as she prayed. A vision sprang to life in brilliant, blinding white light before her closed eyes. She saw Carter’s daughter in a bed he would move into their shabby living room. The child’s polio-ravaged body fighting uselessly to breathe. 

And the necklace, burning in the nun’s hand, coiled like a noose round the young girl’s throat.

She pressed the chain to her lips.

“McKree’s got about an hour left, Sister,” he said, unlocking the cell. “I’ll be down at my desk if you need anything.”

Returning  his daughter’s gift, she stepped into the small room, cringing as the bars slammed shut. There was always a moment of complete darkness when she entered the cells, a frightening second before her eyes could adjust to the windowless gloom. She waited, wondering if a pair of hands might wrap around her throat before she could cry out for help.

A thin figure, crouching in the corner next to a metal cot, moved slightly. Only the back of his shaved head was visible to her. “Mister McKree?”

The man turned suddenly.  His stark blues eyes filled with terror. “Is it you, Lizzy?”

“I’ve come to pray with you,” she said, kneeling beside him and introducing herself. The scent of fear and stale sweat was so powerful she thought she might choke on it.  “What are you doing there?”

“I’m drawing,” he replied.

She leaned away as she caught sight of a dead rat beside him. Humming tunelessly, he reached into a gaping hole in the  rodent’s stomach.  Pulling out a string of thin intestine, he twisted it carefully around the tip of  his index finger. 

Sister Theresa swallowed hard as he spread shades of red across the cracked wall. The bloody finger painting, childishly crafted,  depicted a woman with wings falling headfirst into a hellish sea.

The prisoner studied Sister Theresa in silence, as if reading her breath, then said: “I started it last week and ever since,  I swear at night I can hear the waves when they catch her.”

“Who is she, Mister McKree?” she asked, forcing herself to look away from the man’s art and into his face.

His stare is too unyielding, she thought. His eyes were desolate and bright, like fractures in the sky.

“Call me Charlie, Sister,” he said, smiling. A chipped front tooth gave him an innocence he probably never possessed. “I seen you here before. Last week you was down at Jim’s cell right before they took him to the chair. ‘Course, he got the reprieve. You think you could give me a little of that good luck too?”

“I’m afraid I’m not a rabbit’s foot,” Sister Theresa said. “I was with Jim Leonard when he was...exonerated.”

A gash of rat’s blood trailed his cheek like war paint as Charlie ran a hand across his face  “I didn’t kill them whores.”

“Was Lizzy a prostitute?””

“Didn’t you read the report on me?” He was glaring at her now, daring her to lie. “You gotta know about the women, don’t ya?”

“I don’t know why any of the prisoners are here. It makes no difference to me.” She tried to stand but he was too fast.  Reaching out, he grabbed her black habit,  pulling her back.

“Lizzy was my wife.” His chiseled face just inches from her lips but she refused to pull away.

I’ll bet he was once handsome, she thought. Before the gaunt shadows of a death sentence started eating him out.

“She jumped out a window when they convicted me. I couldn’t get a release to be at her funeral. But maybe it was for the best cause sometimes I can see her in my dreams and she looks...well, she was real pretty once. Just stupid nightmares, right? For all I know her face didn’t even get messed up in the fall.”

Sister Theresa looked back at the drawing. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“She read an article in Life magazine once about them Radio City dancers and she got it into her head she could do somethin’ like that. Next thing you know she’s got me talked into moving to New York. I would have done anything for that tramp.”

Sister Theresa froze.

“I couldn’t find work here...but she sure as hell did. Didn’t think I knew what she was up to was but I followed her...” Charlie gazed at the nun.  “I like your eyes, they’re...pure. Maybe I won’t be so scared if I can just look at you. You’re going with me into the room, right?”

“I’ll be with you as long as I can,” she replied.

“They say it only takes a few seconds.”

“Charlie, sometimes it takes forever to die,” she said.

“I’ve heard the guards talkin’ bout you,” he whispered, leaning closer as if to share a secret. “They say you come to judge the living and the dead...funny thing is, they almost sounded scared of you. Why is that?”

Tugging at a handful of her dress still in his fist she stood and moved a few feet away. “I’m with the prisoners at their death.  I guess that  bothers some of the guards.”

“You know what they call this place? The Dance Hall. ‘Cause sooner or later we’re all gonna dance in the chair. Someone had a hell of a sense of humor when they came up with that one, don’t you think?” Charlie’s laughter filled the small space and echoed down the corridor. “You been in the room before? Cause I was wondering what it’s like. There gonna be spectators? They sell tickets for this kind of thing?”

“There may be witnesses,” she mumbled, fingering the beads at her throat. “We won’t know until it’s time.”

“You gonna watch them kill me?” He followed her across the cell, cornering her against the cold stone wall with his arms.

“Charlie, move away from me.” Her voice shook as she glowered at him.

He smiled sweet as a child. “I just wanna look at your eyes...that’s where everyone hides their dirty secrets. You got something different lurking in yours though. What are you doin’ in this place? Christ, you can’t be more than twenty-five, twenty-six at the most.”

Sister Theresa slammed her fists against his hard chest, staggering him for a moment. She instantly regretted the contact of his skin.   “Don’t touch me!” she cried, covering her face. “I don’t know Lizzy.”

Searing pain shot through her eyes as if they were scooped out of the sockets. For a second a figure appeared, silhouetted in red shadows crouching over her. 

Something glittered in his hand like a star.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Charlie asked. “I never touched you!”

Sister Theresa looked down at her open palms. Blood pooled in them like tears.

“What did you do to those women?”

“You some kind of witch?” he whispered, backing into his painting as if he might swim into its sea.

“I’m your confessor.” Her voice sounded strangely far off.

“Are you hurt?” He took a few tentative steps, handing her a dirty handkerchief.  “Here, I won’t be needing this anymore. What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Sometimes I see too much.”  Sister Theresa ran the rough cloth across her cheeks,  choking back a sob. “Please, tell me about the women.”

Tracing his fingers gently across the drawing, Charlie said,  “I started following Lizzy to see where she was going. I didn’t believe her when she said she was workin’ in a restaurant uptown. The first night I saw her get into a car so I asked some of the whores...’course they all denied knowing her but they were lying, I could see Lizzy’s secret in their eyes. When they found some of the hookers dead, I was blamed for it.” He kicked out at the rat’s carcass at his feet. “She told me she was gonna be a dancer.”

Footsteps broke the silence as they neared the cell.

Sister Theresa hurried from the cot,  looking out between the bars. “Charlie, they’re coming for you. Please, if you murdered those women I can still save your soul. They’ll be no witnesses and God will forgive you.”

Charlie backed further into the shadows. “I swear to you, I didn’t do it.”

The door opened behind her. Two guards stepped around the nun, grabbing the prisoner’s arms.

“Sister, you ready to go?” Carter asked.

She nodded,  stepping into the cold hall. Charlie wouldn’t meet her gaze as he was led from his cell.  She trailed a few feet behind as inmates yelled out their goodbyes and blessings.

At the first archway, Sister Theresa stumbled.

The arm had ripped further through the wooden door at the end of the hall, waving them on, closer.

Turning in the guards’ grasp, Charlie gazed back at the nun. “You gotta save me like you saved Jim.”

Carter shoved him along wordlessly.

The arm was suddenly followed by a shoulder, a long thin leg and the rest of a woman’s body in a tattered red dress. As it emerged, Sister Theresa could see that the right shoulder fell at a strange angle, as if it had been attached haphazardly by a drunken surgeon. In spite of a splintered bone protruding through her thigh, she danced out through the door as if it were a stage curtain. Pirouetting back and forth between the concrete walls. In and out through the door she twirled  to music no one could hear. It was hard to tell she’d once been pretty. Her smashed cheekbones broke through the tissue-thin skin of her face like white daggers.

“Lizzy,” Sister Theresa whispered.

Lieutenant Carter stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “You need a minute first, Sister?”

“Don’t let them do this to me,” Charlie pleaded, sweat running down the back of his neck.

Sister Theresa stepped up behind him. “I’m begging you, walk into that room with a clean conscience.”

With a sickening smile, Lizzy spun closer. Drawing near until her bruised lips cried: “We’re waiting for him, nun.”

Sister Theresa jerked away. 

Charlie twisted to his side, tears shining in his eyes. “I didn’t kill those whores.”

“Why couldn’t they see you?” she cried. “Everything was a red blur.”

Carter glared at his prisoner.

“Help me!” Charlie tried to reach out to her but they pulled him back.

Carter opened the door, half dragging Charlie into the small room.

A raised wooden electric chair graced the center, as if a throne.

“Where are all the damn witnesses?” Charlie said, his eyes darting as his wrist and legs were belted securely. Before him stood four empty church pews. “I thought there’d be a crowd lined up to watch them fry an innocent man.” An open,  closet-size room to his right caught his attention. It contained a large metal-gray box on the wall and two levers.

Sister Theresa coughed. The scent of a hundred prisoners’ burning flesh never faded from the place. It was as if the odor were painted into the walls.

Carter rolled the bottom of Charlie’s pants, exposing his pale shins. As he’d done a hundred times before, he connected electrodes to the prisoner’s shaved head and legs.

“We’ll be waiting outside if no one shows up,” the lieutenant said as the guards quietly left.

Pulling a black sweater tightly around her, Sister Theresa shivered as she prayed.  Each breath came slowly, cold white puffs of air escaping her lips.

“What the hell’s going on?” Charlie’s voice cracked as he pulled at the straps

Twisted shadows came scurrying down the walls like hungry spiders and took their seats.  Sister Theresa’s teeth chattered as she pointed to a sign above the door.

It read ‘Silence.’

Seven women appeared in the front two pews staring sightlessly through empty black sockets.

“Oh God!” Sister Theresa cried, clutching her stomach. “You cut out their eyes.”

Charlie’s mouth opened and closed a few times as if he could force the lie out one more time. “No,” he said, shaking his head to erase the sight before him.

Lizzy stumbled in front of him on her broken legs. Her face snarling as she circled the chair.

Grabbing his hand, Sister Theresa curled her tiny fingers around his wrist.

“Get the hell away from me,” Charlie said. “I thought you’d save me.”

“You saw secrets in their eyes,” she said. “Lies about Lizzy.”

One woman climbed over the front pew and crawled up into Charlie’s lap as if awaiting a kiss on her lipless mouth. Two dark sockets, like tunnels into her brain, watched him.

Charlie yelped, trying to jerk his body up.

Sister Theresa kept her grip and wept.

She saw the woman—Kelly was her name—as Charlie dragged her dying body out of the alley and into the basement of  an abandoned building. It took her a long while to bleed to death. Rats scampered up to her, curious at first. When the first one bit into her cheek without getting slapped away, a dozen joined in.

Six hours later a homeless man found her corpse,  her face cleaned of all skin and muscle. Rodents, busy chewing at her fingertips, had to be shooed away with a tattered sheet of newspaper.

Kelly raised the gnawed bone of her index finger up to Charlie’s face.

He closed his eyes. “Get it off me!”

The woman carefully pulled his eyelid up and looked in, her face just inches from his.

She gave a toothless grin and dug into his socket, half standing to get all her weight into the action.

The other six women stood, leaning over the pews as if they were believers witnessing a miracle.

Sister Theresa pulled her hand free of  Charlie’s violent grip just before his blue eye came free with a hideous popping sound.

His screams slammed against the gray walls like trapped birds.

The woman raised her prize in the air, her mouth moving in soundless laughter.

Charlie fainted, but it was a short reprieve. When he awoke he was greeted by the sight of Kelly pushing his eye into her own bloody socket.

Twirling into the small area beside him, Lizzy gripped the two levers. Charlie looked down and saw the thick black wire that led to his chair.

“I’m so sorry,”  Sister Theresa said,  twisting his bloody handkerchief through her hands.

Lizzy pulled the mechanisms down.

Charlie wanted to scream but only managed to bite his tongue in half, the loose muscle choking him.  Smoke burned out his fingertips as they blackened.

A sound like thousands of wasps nesting in his brain almost blocked his wife’s laughter. “Dance for me,” she said.

And the pain seemed to go on forever.

When Charlie came to, Sister Theresa knelt beside him. He spit out the dead piece of tongue and wept. “Is it over?”

The nun pointed to the levers. Another whore stood at the controls.

“Sometimes it takes a very long time to die, Charlie, “ she said.

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