Enjoy this passage from my work-in-progress novel, Mendett’s Home for Social Rehabilitation. I wrote and submitted this as part of my coursework while working on my English degree at Southern New Hampshire University.

Content warnings: bodily injury, cursing, violence

Second time should do the trick, Skyven told himself as he broke free of his two handlers and sprinted for the prison yard’s exit. He hadn’t been thinking straight since the medics stabbed a needle in his eye, but that wouldn’t matter in a few moments. The guards scrambled, their gloved hands tried and failed to grab onto his stick-thin arms. He wheezed out a delirious laugh. Those two hadn’t heard he tried to escape earlier that day? He weaved across the dirt, the shackles on his wrists clanked rhythmically and each step was punctuated by his panicked breath.

“Runner! We got a runner!”

The guards’ shouts rang out across the empty yard, following Skyven’s haphazard path. He needed his magic. Skyven felt a dull ache of magical energy radiate from his eye down his body, how badly his physical being yearned to bring it to existence. His head tingled. He willed a burst of flames to manifest in his hand, something, anything to fire at the guards, but it fizzled on arrival. The more he thought about magic, the more fierce the pain in his head became. The tiny needle in his eye stopped any spectacular manifestation before it could ever spring into existence. His two escorts shouted but the blood rushing through his ears deafened him.

He looked over his shoulder and nearly tripped over his feet. “Go fuck yourselves!” his voice echoed. 

From the moment those guards came for him, they called him names, twisted his arms too roughly, spat in his face. He returned the favor by stepping on their toes, hocking phlegm at their uniforms, and, to his deep pleasure, he nicknamed them the Fat One and Buckteeth. When he first saw them standing next to each other, they looked like caricatures of guards – a comedic duo who’d fallen astray of a stage and ended up in a real prison.

In twenty years of life, Skyven never felt running to be so blissfully liberating. His laughter soared in the breeze of his wake. As he neared them, Skyven realized the walls of the prison yard were the tallest he’d ever seen, taller than his village’s defensive walls. Moss covered them, especially at the upper levels. These shackles would be a hassle, but he’d figure it out. The craggy stone had purchase for climbing everywhere he could see.

On the other side of the wall, he imagined freedom, that the wilderness surrounding the prison waited to embrace him. He didn’t care if there were famished wolf packs or gangs of bandits in that forest, anything was better than Wendergast. He made a mad dash for the rock wall. This place would not be his grave. He could be the master of his fate.

A light flicked on overhead, so bright it was like the sun had switched on. Piercing the dark sky, a single guard tower presided over Yard Three. He hardly noticed it before, it blended into the night. A shadow moved inside the observation deck, momentarily blocking the sun-like orb, and circled the platform.

Skyven hovered mid-step, his foot caught on nothing, with an abruptness that startled his pursuers. He felt he’d run face-first into the prison wall, though he was still a good twenty feet away. An invisible giant’s hand grasped his lungs, constricting them. A painfully bright spotlight enveloped him as if God wanted to highlight his sad sprint. Projected from the belfry of the tower, “God” spoke words that curled like an ice-cold finger from his ear, down his neck and spine. 

Quaint. While I enjoy the nighttime excitement, that’s enough now, boy. Go quietly with the guards. I don’t give second warnings.

The voice dissipated out of his mind, but the hand didn’t let him go. He tried to breathe, to twitch a finger or toe, to will his magic into existence to free himself, the pounding sensation grew unbearable – the light from above blinked off. Skyven gasped as he fell, a dead weight in the Fat One and Buckteeth’s grasp. The tower guard’s shadow stepped away from the crystal spotlight mounted atop the building. Two yellow lights, so dim that Skyven had to squint to see them, extinguished from the guard’s eyes. Magic. Of course, he got to keep his.

“I didn’t think that bastard was going to stop him,” the Fat One said.

“Why do they always have to run in the first place?” Buckteeth grumbled.

Cursing all the while, the duo hoisted Skyven ajar. He wheezed and hacked, unsure if his lungs would uncrumple themselves. The world spun around him, the dirt became the sky and the walls closed inward. Fight, his mind said, but his body couldn’t stand, let alone run, and begged for mercy. His legs left trenches in the dirt as they dragged him into Wendergast proper.

They took him below the earth, to the sagging dungeons. Moonlight could not penetrate the layers upon layers of stone. The hallways were nooses closing in the deeper they went. They passed open dormitories where men were stacked three high in bunk beds, crammed together like cattle. Malcontentment stirred its residents through the restless night. The air stank of iron, piss, and something Skyven thought was gallons of curdled milk. They turned hallway after hallway, the guards navigated the labyrinth with practiced ease. Each path they walked were more and more men crowded into dorms or cages, each with an eye or two shrouded, a hand missing, a bandage over an ear.

The guards unlocked another thick, creaking door and pulled him through. Sharp moans roused Skyven from a stupor. Doors with small barred portholes lined the hall, a half dozen on each side. Pained whimpers and sobs created a disharmonious song that bounced around in the tight space. The iron stench combined with human waste was overpowering. Tension strangled his heart. He searched the tight space with his single eye. At least down here, there wasn’t a guard tower anywhere in sight. Buckteeth and the Fat One were Wendergast’s only cronies.

The three men hardly fit side-by-side in the walkway. Buckteeth released Skyven to unlock the final door at the end of the hallway. That is when he kicked out his leg, striking the Fat One’s knee with the little energy he’d regained. The Fat One’s leg gave out from under him, he slipped on a slick cobblestone and smacked face-first into the nearest door. He yelped in pain. A chorus of wails pulsed from the occupants of the cells. Ghostly faces appeared between the bars, their single eyes bloodshot and eager to view the fuss.

In a flurry of gangly limbs, Skyven turned tail for the exit. Images of the corpse-like inmates swirled in his addled mind – he couldn’t let himself become one of them. Buckteeth promptly punched him across the face and Skyven went down with a sickening crack against the wall. Blood gushed from his nostril. The hot stickiness pooled beneath his cheek. 

“You stupid – get up,” Buckteeth forced Skyven onto his feet, sending blood splattering onto the wall. 

The Fat One hobbled. He groaned and held his bruised head in his pudgy hand.

“Hope I broke something,” Skyven grinned, his gaze unfocused. Blood dribbled between his blistered lips. “Take these shackles off so we can have a fair fight, fatass.”

“Shut the fuck up!” The Fat One pushed him backward out of Buckteeth’s hold. Skyven took a sharp elbow beneath the chin. His teeth gnashed together and caught his cheek between them, one of his cavity-ridden molars dislodged. He fired off a bloody wad of spit and out came said tooth. It bounced off the Fat One’s roughed up uniform. As he sank against the wall, he smiled, a black gap now visible along the side of his mouth.

“Coward,” Skyven said. He nodded toward his discarded tooth, “Thanks for that, I guess. It was bothering me. You should help out your buddy too, maybe it could fix his ugly mug.”

Buckteeth stood there, jaw tense. The Fat One was red and shaking. After a moment’s hesitation, he looped his arm around Skyven’s and crushed it with his sweaty girth. “Bastard.”

They marched Skyven through the final door. He squinted under the brilliant light in the small space. An uncomfortable number of wall sconces illuminated every piece of sharp metal laid out on a medical cart. The only objects in the room were a medical-esque chair – Skyven’s heartrate shot up as he leaped to conclusions about its purpose – the medical cart, some lopsided locked cabinetry, and a padded stool.

A man waited for them on the stool. A doctor in a wrinkled white medical robe. He was a gray man with a handful of wispy hairs that stood upright like a burnt candlewick on his head. His glasses lenses were thick and his bloodshot veins so vibrant they nearly obscured the markings of magic in his right eye. Dark blue runes circled the whites of his eye like writhing worms. Atop his robes, he wore a gray apron covered in stains. Some spots were dark and looked glistening wet. Bile filled Skyven’s throat. His cockiness cowered at the door.

“Why is he bleeding? I haven’t started.” The doctor didn’t look particularly concerned as he studied a dirty scalpel.

“He put up a fight,” Buckteeth said. “You didn’t hear the commotion?”

The doctor grunted. “You fools can’t control a scrawny boy like him? Stupid non-magicals.” The Fat One’s grip upon Skyven tightened, prompting the latter to squirm. “You should’ve saved me the trouble and done his eye while you were at it. Hurry out, I don’t have time to waste,” the doctor gestured to the grimy exam chair.

Skyven flew out of the guards’ hands and tumbled into the chair. He promptly had both of his ankles strapped down by another unseen force. The doctor’s marked eye oozed with blue fog as his magic locked Skyven’s shackles to the seat of the chair, forcing him to awkwardly stretch out his arms. The twin assholes scattered and slammed the door shut behind them. The Fat One staggered out with a smile fattening his porky cheeks. Beside him, the doctor prepared the lance for Skyven’s devil magic eye. It was a metal rod as thick as his finger, three times the width of the needle they used to immobilize his eye when he arrived at his village’s jail. A jolt of terror screamed at him to flee, go, run away, but the doctor’s magic kept him from another impulsive escape attempt.

The gauze bandage ripped away from his face. Tears leaked down his cheek from the sudden light. When he squinted, he felt the needle stuck in the middle of his eye, held in place with magic chains no bigger than a dust mite, invisible to most gazes. It felt like a perpetual eyelash stuck in his cornea, one that dug in further if he rubbed or picked.

“That little eyepin was temporary,” the doctor said, his smile revealing a set of crooked yellow teeth. “This procedure is forever. The more you move, the worse you’ll make things.” He waved the lance.

“N-No. You can’t. Not my eye. P-Please, this is a mistake.” His head continued to spin. Skyven felt as though he were in a foggy swamp, slogging through dirt and waste but unable to see the path ahead. Struggling with all his might, the mist smothered him.

“What did I just say? Stop squirming,” the doctor gruffly said. When he refused, the doctor huffed. A thick leather belt tightened itself around Skyven’s throat, forcing him to sit back. He tried to wiggle out of his binds and focus on his magic, now was the time he needed it most. His struggles served only to choke himself. The pressure behind his eyes returned too quickly. His magic stopped dead on arrival with no way to escape the needle. The revolving world made it impossible for him to focus on the doctor, yet that tool in his hand glinted in the powerful torchlight.

Blue haze washed over doctor and patient. The doctor sidled up to Skyven and readied his iron spear.