He rocked back and forth in the cobweb-adorned corner where the gunmetal gray floors tapered to a jagged point with the walls. One hand tapped a steady rhythm on the floor; the other roughly stroked the tapered chin hidden under a thick beard. The gravelike atmosphere of the cell was made less claustrophobic by the presence of a single window: a small circular hole, a few inches wide, cut through the side of the concrete wall. Though the wall was thick, it was just thin enough for him to stretch his skeletal arm through the window and feel the sea breeze at his fingertips—through a reinforced glass plate slightly offset from the wall, of course.
On the left breast pocket, in a punishing black font, it read: 0011. His eyes matched the tortured green sea that rhythmically crashed forty feet below where he stood.
Why can’t I remember? No matter… Today is an important day, he would mumble to himself. The scratches on the walls finally numbered one-thousand, eight-hundred-twenty-five. Number Eleven combed one gaunt hand through a mass of unkempt charcoal hair, rubbing his right temple. It’s healed quickly, he thought to himself.
Not here, Number Eleven whispered as he heard the steady click clack of footsteps growing louder and then softer, retreating weakly from his ears.
He saw with green unwavering eyes a pair of black, shiny boots flash by the window at the bottom of the iron door that made up the fourth wall of his cell.
Not here. Perhaps later they’ll stop at my door.
Forgetting the pain in his bony knees, Number Eleven crawled across the floor to the wall opposite of his scratch-calendar, and picked up the thumb-sized fragment of concrete that he had chipped from the floor long ago. It was smooth and worn, no longer able to fit inside the crack like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Number Eleven scraped the oblong pebble through the familiar grooves in the somber cement wall, spelling the words I STILL LIVE.
The echoed song-whistle of the guard came to a fading halt as he cocked his head to check his matte black wristwatch. A sharp, high-pitched whistle was let loose from his lips this time, the shrill sound screeching through the air, shaking another similarly uniformed man from sleep within the confines of a small, dimly lit glass-walled office. The first guard, dressed in an oyster-colored shirt and black slacks, chuckled, seeing the plump man from the office mouth a curse as he glared at him.
“This is a heckuva lot better than Block C,” the taller, thinner man chatted to the tubby guard as they walked down the line of empty cells, surveying them. His name tag read Taylors; the shorter guard’s read McGibson. The hard soles of their black shoes reverberated against the high ceilings, bouncing around the walls of empty cells, overpowering the timid softer sound of the third man’s brown shoes. The third man was small, completely hairless, and had sharp features. He kept his bespectacled eyes locked forward, his hands clamped to the edges of his brown argyle jacket, and his thin pale lips wired shut. His only outstanding feature was a laminated name tag that read “GETZENDANER MENTAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE.”
“I don’t like it,” the short man jawed as he smacked on a piece of bubble gum. “He’s an entertaining fella, but it’s desolate having just one. Y’love it at first, the peace and quiet, but after a few months, y’get to missin’ the sound of a riot or all the hoods yellin’ when the new ones come in on the bus.” He chortled. “I never thought I’d hear those words come outta my mouth,” burbling gruffly under his breath as he removed and threw away his gum carelessly on the floor, and deftly flipped a cigarette into his mouth.
Number Eleven raised his head from his cot as he heard the rusty vulture-screech of the metal door swinging open. He saw the round face of the small man pop curiously inside the cell after a tall man dressed in a guard uniform. His clothes look out of place against the gray.
“Number Eleven?”
“Yes?”
“Year’s over. Time for your phone call.”
The tall guard, despite his disdain for the prisoners, could not hide the pity that ambushed his voice as soon as he stepped into the room.
The corpulent guard’s round face flamed red as he stifled a chuckle.
The small man pulled a wallet-sized notebook out of his pocket and began jotting with a long black pen. Every few seconds, he would pause his scribbling and look up from the pale pages like a sparrow, nimbly darting brown eyes briskly flashing from Prisoner Number Eleven to the notebook.
“Today, I am to be set free, correct?”
The prisoner spoke in a halting voice, new to English, heavily dripping with a Russian accent.
“Yes . . . You’ll be given your accoutrements on the way out. Surely you would like to exercise your right to a phone call first?” The man in the brown sport coat spoke in a coaxing voice, partially distracted and engaged by his furious scrawling. Before the prisoner could answer, the little man piped up again. “I thought so. However, before we allow you to leave, I am going to ask you a series of questions.”
Number Eleven stared with eyes that matched the green rage of the sea, held at bay by nothing more than a thin window plate.
“My name is Doctor Willopp,” he said as he awkwardly began to sit before realizing there was nothing to sit on. “Have you ever seen me before?”
Number Eleven, never taking his eyes off of the doctor, slowly shook his head no. This elicited a snort from McGibson, and more chicken-scratching from the doctor. After he finished writing, the doctor inquired further:
“Do you recall when you were moved to Cell Block E?”
The prisoner answered, in a low Russian accent, “One day ago.”
The lanky guard nearly interjected, but was quieted by McGibson. “Why were you moved?” The doctor asked.
“There was a riot. I sustained an injury. That is the only reason the warden gave to me.”
“Only one day? Then why are there so many marks scratched in the wall?”
“I kept track of days in my old cell, and memorized the amount of days. I made the first one-thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-five the first day I was moved.”
The taller guard looked at McGibson with a growing curiosity. McGibson, throwing the stub of a cigarette on the ground and muffling the thin line of smoke with his shoe, looked up at Taylors, grinned, and raised his eyebrows.
“Astounding…” the doctor murmured as he scribbled. “What about that writing on the wall there?”
“I . . . assume, yes, that is the word . . . assume that the man before me wrote that. This morning I carved in the letters to carry on his . . . tradition. He must be alive, somewhere. I would not want to be for . . . forgotten, yes . . . forgotten either. A life is the most important possession of any man.”
“Amazing.” The doctor checked his wristwatch. “I believe it’s time for your phone call.”
The walked out of the room, Number Eleven in handcuffs, the guards on each side, led by the doctor. They clacked down the otherwise silent hall, and arrived at a room lit with a flickering fluorescent light and dirty white tile. In the corner was a phone.
“All right, gentlemen. Let’s give the man some privacy,” the doctor urged as he ushered the two guards out of the room.
Number Eleven felt his breath on his hand, cupped over the bottom of the telephone. Doctor Willopp, observing the prisoner on a black-and-white flickering screen in a surveillance room, had gone through two pages in his notebook. They all stood, watching Number Eleven through the television, and heard the voice snowed with heavy breathing through a speaker in the center of a complicated-looking desk covered with knobs and buttons.
“Dina?”
Number Eleven, his image distorted into pixels for a split second, paused perceptibly, like a hunted lion hearing a twig snap. He slowly turned his dark-haired head halfway to the camera, then stepped closer to the corner and put his broad shoulders between the electronic eye of the camera and the telephone that was cradled in his large, bony hands.
“Dina…”
This time the words came out in a barely audible husky whisper, masked by the static. The doctor, adjusting the round-framed glasses that rested on his sharp nose, craned forward, squinting his eyes at the screen.
“Thank goodness you have answered,” Number Eleven spoke with a relieved sigh. “I am to be let out today, and I don’t know who else to come to.”
Taylors broke the silence that followed.  “Why can’t we hear what the person on the other end of the line is saying?” “It’s not connected,” the doctor hissed, his tone obviously indicating a desire for silence. Taylors’ expression grew more and more confused.
“You shouldn’t regret what happened. I knew what I was doing—five years is generous for armed bank robbery—I knew what I was doing. Your escape is what mattered to me.” His sentence was cut short by a stifled sob, followed by a brief laconism. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not in front of them.”
“He knows,” the doctor exclaimed.
“I told you it’s fun in Block X,” McGibson said.
“He knows. Astoundingly sharp mental perception for a man of his condition.”
As the three men walked out of the surveillance room, Taylors looked at both men with an inquisitive frown.
“Eleven’s an experiment,” McGibson cut Willopp off before he could speak. “He got knocked in the head in a riot twenty-three years ago before the day of his release, wakes up every day thinkin’ no time has passed.”
“Why didn’t we just let him out and send him to a psychiatric therapist?” Davis asked as his frown grew wider.
This time, Willopp spoke up. “It’s crucial that he remain in the exact same conditions until he regains memory. We ask him the same questions every day, at the same time. Any experiment requires minimized variables, and a prison, with its strict schedule and isolation from the world, provides the most optimal basis for this. The fact that Number Eleven was transferred to a totally solitary cell when he gained amnesia is equally opportune. Stumbling upon a scientific opportunity like this is no small amount of luck.”
“I don’t think you understand, doctor,” Davis pressed. “Why conduct this experiment at all?”
“Within Number Eleven’s brain rests the key to historically locked away secrets concerning the treatment of amnesia,” the doctor responded “Such potential is certainly worth the value of a life.”
Number Eleven, waiting patiently in his cell for the paperwork to clear, looked out upon the sea as he had done for twenty-three years, his excitement barely contained.