The Ambience of Fletcher Stone [HWC2013]

The Ambience of Fletcher Stone [HWC2013]
October, 2013
It had been eleven years since Fletcher Stone saw the sky. The window in the corner of the cell was made of turbid glass; which neither allowed light in nor kept it out. The walls were an exceptionally dismal shade of white that seemed to scream whenever he turned his back to them. Even the air had an invisible weight that pulled on the surroundings, causing his skin to crawl from the tissues that bound them.

Sleep consisted of tossing and turning in a haze of violent nightmares. Night would end when he woke to what could only be assumed the earliest hours of the morning. The bed would be covered in sweat and his clothes would be stuck to his body, as if holding on for dear life. Daylight bled through the small slice of window; only to be quickly overpowered by the fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead.

As he stared at the ceiling, a track of thought kept luring him back to memories long since paced away. There was no feeling in the reminiscence; it was a throttle of thought that had no one to control it. He had access to someone else’s photo album, where even the pictures themselves had twisted in the lurid cloud of immeasurable solitude.

He thought back to the boy that carried the same name he did; a youth that went to a Halloween party when he was nineteen and got too drunk. Those memories seemed so far away at the moment, yet somehow they never left his thoughts completely. It seemed as though every crunch he did, every push up, reminded him of that boy. It was the same boy that assaulted a police officer when the latter tried to apprehend him for under aged drinking.

So many times he had rolled the incident over in his head, each time the outcome being different than the reality. The memories were passed over so many times that truth and fantasy became mixed up until neither could be separated. The actual events were on paper somewhere in an office. No one paid attention to the details however, except for a prisoner whose existence now consisted of nothing more than two hands that would grab a tray of food each day from a slot.

It was the thirteenth anniversary of that fateful night and Fletcher Stone had planned a routine in celebration. The first part consisted of a hundred push-ups, crunches, and paced squats followed by an unsatisfying meal of sliced ham and cheese. The second portion of the itinerary was timing the arrival of the guard that had been put up to the task of keeping tabs on the block. It was difficult to determine exactly how long the guard would be gone but he guessed it was anywhere from 15-20 minutes. It was out of the question to try and listen for footsteps as the shouts from broken men blanketed the halls.

Fletcher Stone pulled off his pants and slowly lay back down after the guard made his round. And as he stared one last time at the ceiling, his thoughts brought him back again to that night thirteen years ago. What would he say to that boy if he had the chance? Perhaps he would tell him that the future would be a nightmare far worse than any ghost or goblin of Halloween fantasy.

After he allowed himself to feel calm with that thought, he let the air out of his lungs. He tied the pants around his neck into knots that even Houdini would have had trouble getting out of; and as his lungs heaved in vain to suck in air his mind fixated on what his father had told him before death; that life is the last thing you think of before you die.


It was then that Fletcher Stone thought of the sky.

reply to post by OrphanApology


Beautifully written! With alot of feeling, too. S&F!

reply to post by swanne


Thanks!