[Cosenticus]

Nothing tears at the soul like a prison abandoned. Its vacated cells of torment whisper memories long forgotten, of their tenant’s oppressors’ diabolical deeds, and of the unfulfilled dreams engraved into the very stone of their occupants’ crypts. Here, where people once lived to die, entering only to seek their utter demise, there was nothing but death. The steamy stench of decayed corpses left unattended wafted through the surreal, stagnant air of the great mausoleum. With tables turned over on their sides, and the glass of windows shattered and scattered across the floor, there was little to ponder on what happened to this wondrous institution. It was a revolution—one so grand that the world never saw one with such a bleak chance for success since the rebellion started by the gladiator, Spartacus.

And history repeats itself, for the animals went mad, organizing together and tearing everything apart that they could find, literally bending steel to escape from their austere chambers. Many of the cages had their barred doors pried off their metallic hinges, falling flat onto the dusty and blood-stained floor of the vile torture establishment, and left there to inevitably hide beneath the cloak of debris that would follow it all. The floor was littered with fallen helmets and torn clothes, of both guards and prisoners alike, and the deathly silence that endured was greater than the uprising itself. Lights that long lost their spark didn’t even flicker in this Soviet madhouse.

This is what happens when you take away a man’s freedom.

Perhaps, the greatest lesson is that men were always meant to be free…
Or, that, no man will ever be free, no matter how much it is commercialized.

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A late, seasonal blast of frigid, howling gales assaulted the masonry walls and rolled through the narrow windows of the death house. The gust blew through a cell and slipped through its barred door, where it slowly traveled from the bottom to the very top, and finally dispersed into nothing. During its journey, it uncovered some of what fell beneath layers of dust, rubble, and shrapnel. An endless carpet of bones, fallen gates, splinters of wood, shards of glass, torn cloth, cracked helmets, and a multitude of other miscellaneous, combined materials that were too mixed to distinguish became the floor, for what lay beneath them was any man’s guess.

The cages within the lonely Bastille rattled in the aftermath of the wind’s strike, and tormented screams devoured the entire institution. Truly, it was as if a vein opened up from the earth into Hell itself, and the Damned were crying out from their eternal confinement, begging to be heard. Deep, black mist swarmed out from every crack in every wall, immediately covering the floor which had only recently been revealed. Slowly, it grew denser and denser, and as it did daylight grew bleaker. That’s when night settled in the awful establishment that misery built.

As the dungeon fell beneath the shade of the night, a new sound accompanied the wailing of the Damned, nearly drowning it out with its cacophonous hymn. Whoever orchestrated it was unknown, but their instrument was as clear as a candle lit within the darkness. It used chains--rattling, unforgiving, merciless chains that sang a ballad of anathema, agony, and oppression; yet also one of passion, euphoria, and parole.

Then, the chains started to slide around and move, as if they were granted legs. A garbled cry exploded from the roof of the prison…

Outside the jail, a massive thunderstorm brewed. Its roaring bolts of lightning cackled gleefully within the misty pockets up above, and the color yellow flashed over the land and disappeared once again, briefly severing the darkness with light. Then a bolt of lightning fell from the cloud towards the earth, but this one had a mission—a destiny. It fell fast and struck the soil hard, and when it did its charge ignited the land, surging towards the vile reformatory.

Then, the entrance to the death house became accessible, when the double gates slowly creaked away from one another. Finally, the prison was alive again, and it was opening up its arms to whoever seeks refuge from the storm…