Hell Cell

Welcome to the galactic shithole known to those inside as 'Hell Cell'. You lucky people who haven't been incarcerated for serial homicide, statutory rape or space piracy know it as "The Mars Institution Correctional Facility" - the biggest, most secure prison ever built. Total escapees: 0. Even if ya do manage to break out, the nearest space port is five miles away, and the Martian atmosphere ain't exactly a welcoming thing. Hell, we're barely staying alive with $20 million worth of oxygen pumped in here every year. 'Course most of that is circulated through the warden's office, so whataya know.

I s'pose it's kinda naive of me to think this journal will ever make it out of these walls. Even if I do manage to keep it hidden, eventually I'll kick the bucket, and either the guards will find and burn it, or the next sorry son-of-a-bitch who comes in here will use it for toilet paper. Literally. You think with all the money they spend to keep us breathin', they're gonna make shittin' a pleasant experience? We're the scum o' the universe - we don't deserve a clean ass.

By the way, my name's Viper. Yeah, you guessed it - that ain't my real name. My real name is #1226926 - that's all I really am to society now: a number, and a sack of meat. But in here is different - within these steel walls is a tiny pocket of the universe where "society" don't exist. There's no race, no class, no gender. There's just the old tradition - survival of the fittest. The best way to stay alive around here is to shit on the little guy. Me, I like to keep myself to myself as much as possible, because... well, I might be a pirate, but I got morals. I didn't used to, but this place has changed me, in a weird way. Other guys, they throw their weight around - kill some people, keep everyone scared, and live about as luxuriously as one can around here - the guards don't seem to care if some pedophile turns up dead, so long as the media don't find out. And since there ain't no news stations on Mars, that's not gonna happen.

But before I got myself locked up in here, I was a mean son-of-a-bitch. Me and my crew - they're all dead now, the bastards - used to flit around the Terra-Martian Expanse, raiding cargo ships and beating or raping the shit out of anyone on board. It wasn't even for the money - most of the time I blew my share on booze and Raptures anyway - it was the thrill. I grew up in a rich family in Tehran - part of the American Empire. My father was in the Titanium business. He was the essentially the father of laser-mining, or some shit like that. In any case, we were rich, and life was hellishly boring.

Maybe it was 'cause I was spoiled, but I wasn't the type of kid to sit around and do what other people wanted me to do. I was pretty damn smart, and athletic to boot. I had great things ahead of me. Potential. At least according to those examiners and private tutors my dad would hire. I resisted it all though. I didn't go to school (for all you young people reading this, if you're reading this: school was a building you went to in order to learn shit before Virtual Reality Education became a standard. It was a hell of a lot less fun, to say the least), and spent most of my time playing with one of those earlier VR kits (when I was a kid it was just audio/visual retinal projection, none of this new gusto/tactile/olfaction crap that's been driving people crazy and causing all those other weird psychological fuck-ups that's been going on), and even writing some of my own. Mostly adventure. Mostly of the criminal nature.

The argument of whether people like me are born that way, or just victims of society will probably never be resolved. But after spending some time in Hell Cell, I've learned something. People are all the same - no matter what time period, no matter what situation, no matter what upbringing - people are always disgusting bags of blood and guts and shit. The difference between those of us on the inside, and those of us on the outside is simple - we weren't afraid.

The reason people don't crack each other's heads open, or fuck the first member of the opposite sex they come across is - no matter how you spin it - fear. Every God-fearing, suit-and-tie-wearing dickhead has the same urges as everyone else. To kill, fuck, eat and shit - this is what we're wired to do. Society is a way of dressing it up, hiding what we really are. There's fashion, poetry, art, politics - but really it's all a subterfuge. Life is about one thing: passing on your genes. It may shock you, but if you'd spent the last 4 years outside of society's claws, you'd see it just as clearly as I do. There's nothing glorious about humanity - we're just disgusting sacks of crap wrapped in a translucent membrane, our only purpose to reproduce. It's sickening.

But with that realisation came an understanding. Society - the thing which I scorned, which I found too 'boring' - is important. It's an illusion, yes, but it's an illusion we must bear in order to survive. Without that illusion, we have nothing. To reject society is to reject purpose. Without it, we're just bags of shit. Remember that, if nothing else.


Jacob shut the journal. A puff of dust erupted into the air, sparkling in the rays of sunlight. He stared at the attic's cluttered floor for a few moments, thinking to himself, until his sister's footsteps on the ladder jerked him out of his mind's eye.

"C'mon, Jacob, what's takin' ya so long?"

Jacob smiled. "Found dad's old journal."




This is an original short written specifically for:

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It's 1,000 words long, exactly (which was the limit - got it on my second try, too).