Barriers: Part Two

Although open, Lightning's eyes were rolled back in the sockets, his pupils turned into the back of his head, showing only the whites. Baines was more scared than he ever thought it possible to be. He was scared beyond screaming, or vomiting, or trembling.

As he watched an overview of Lightning appeared in front of the prisoner's body, a second image of him, translucent like the green light, almost not there. There was nothing wrong with Baines’ eyesight, only with his body, being controlled by the man locked in the room beyond the grill.

The overview image hung for a second, shimmering in front of Lightning, and then he inhaled. The long sigh sucked the overview back into his body. The two visions of the same man became one and the prisoner's eyes fell so that the pupils rolled into their proper position. He fixed the paralysed screw with an ice-cold stare.

The jagged scar that ran from forehead to chin, giving the prisoner his nickname, throbbed in time to the pulse at his temple. His skin was pallid, causing the scar to bulge in an angry red ravine that ran along the man's face. Some said that he’d
been hit by lightning and that it had turned his mind, but it was down to a pub brawl and a broken bottle.

Lightning was diminished and exhausted, but his eyes danced with malice.

‘Ah, my dear Mr Baines, sir’ he said, his voice dripping with languid sarcasm. ‘You think these feeble barriers can hold me down? Surely you
know that you can tie me up, but you will never hold me back.’ The prisoner's words broke into a laugh filled with venom and disgust for the screws that he held so far beneath him.

‘I travel to places that only your worst nightmares could take you to the threshold of. Can you imagine, Mr Baines, the world that I play in
when I fly free?’

Baines wanted only his own freedom. He didn't want to be part of his nightmares, he didn't want to partake in the other man's playground, he wanted only to close the grill and get away from the
power that held him captive.

‘The places I go, the things I see, the deeds I do. What would you think if I told you that I stay
here only because it’s convenient for me to? You’d think me mad, would you not? But tell me, Baines, who is the most insane? He who uses his intellect to its full capacity, or he who trundles round his
wheel like a frustrated hamster? I tire of you, little man. Go turn in your wheel.’

Lightning spread his palms on his knees and closed his eyes. His breathing became shallow and he seemed to fall instantly asleep.

Baines felt a tremor through his body and it was as though the air that had closed around him to hold him still had fallen away. He turned from
the man's cell and ran along the corridor.

‘Bloody `ell, Bainsey,’ Bill Jackson said as he mopped his slopped cup-a-soup from his uniform pants. ‘`oo's chasin' you? Clean on, these
pants were, an' now look; you've made me slop all over `em.’

‘I'm outta here, Jacko. I've had it with this place. Tomorrow I'm giving in my notice. I'm too old to be coping with these crazy bastards any
longer.’

Baines made himself a strong coffee and tried not to think about what had happened. Maybe it was just a stitch or something; a bit of indigestion. No more liver and onions for him before coming to
work.

The thought of completing his rounds was as appealing as the idea of having quiet game of chess with Lightning. He rubbed the aching part of his chest and tried to regulate his breathing and calm his frazzled nerves.

Jacko turned on the television and raised the heat of the gas heater from medium to high.

‘Just going for a piss, Bainsey. Won't be long.’

Baines sat in one of the two battered winged armchairs and waited for the news. The last programme was nearing its bleating conclusion. It was one of those bleeding hearts documentaries.

This one was a tired sympathy shoot about the conditions and deprivation of the children in the Romanian orphanages. It was being shot live via satellite.

Tormented naked bodies rocked in demented turmoil on filthy shit-laden beds. The kids stared at the camera.

A somber voice in clipped, well-educated tones did a reasonable talk over, while the children screamed and rocked and shit.

The camera angle shifted and the voiceover was saying that although conditions were still poor and aid was not getting through, much had been done by one man.

The camera pointed to a naked child of about ten; a man leaned over her cot and stroked the child's arm soothingly to calm her.

He stood and faced the camera. His smile was one of Godly benevolence, his eyes shone with the love of his fellow man. ‘I’m a simple man,’ he began. ‘I know not the ways of the rich and the famous.
I just do what I can to help my poor children.’

He smiled as he used the possessive reference to the orphans. ‘Like all men, I’ve sinned. The good Lord knows how I’ve sinned.’

Lightning leaned into the camera. His face filled the television screen, his eyes shone and his scar pulsed with the vein in his forehead.

‘There are no barriers that can hold me. The mind is a vast playground that can be harnessed and used for good or evil.’ He smiled into the
camera with a look that emanated goodness and love. ‘I’ve chosen to use the gifts that God gave me for the good of these poor innocent children who have no defense against evil. Man can turn in his wheel like a frustrated hamster, or he can break through the barriers imposed upon
him.’

He winked. Baines was in no doubt that the wink was meant for him. He tried to work out how one of his prisoners, who was locked in a cell not five hundred feet from where he sat, could be transmitting a live broadcast from Romania. He couldn't make the connection but what he did know was that a lot of helpless people were in grave danger if he didn't do something about it.

He shook his head to try and make some order of
his muddled thoughts. Who would he call? What would he say?

He lifted the handset of the telephone and
dialled zero for an outside line. Maybe he ought to start with the governor.

He felt a draft from behind him and assumed it was Jacko back from the toilet.

‘Hey Jacko, you'll…’ he stopped mid-sentence. Lightning's over-image was beside him in the room.

Without the protection of the enforced steel door between them, Lightning looked more evil and more dangerous than ever. The fact that he had no substance only heightened Baines' fear and his left hand rose instinctively to rub the right side of his chest.

The over-image turned to the television screen. ‘Such raw material to play with, don't you think?’

The voice came from the air. The over-image touched Baines’ head and the pain in his
chest spread until it engulfed his body and head.

‘I'll get you, you bastard’ were the screw's final words.

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