Three anonymous absences

 

I do not know whether this letter has reached you. It may have been intercepted. It may already be ash. I hope it was not. Either way, that uncertainty no longer matters to me.

Now, the subject.

The guards grow dull during the night hours. Not careless, just slower. Most of them have the habit of drinking for entertainment, as you have probably noticed as well. For that reason, the nights belong to us.

There is an inmate I am in indirect contact with. We have never stood within sight of each other. We do not share air, let alone conversation. Notes move instead. Folded into library returns. Slipped into maintenance carts. Passed through hands that do not ask questions because they are paid not to, not to assist, but to ignore.

He told me that he is regarded and treated as insane by the authorities. I do not know the details, but it is likely they inject him with substances meant to dull his mind. But as you can see, they have not succeeded entirely. He still writes to me.

He has spent years alone. No visitors. No cellmate. No incentive except observation. Time has been his only companion, and he has studied it carefully.

Over months, he reconstructed this place through repetition. Step counts. Light delays. Which doors echo and which absorb sound. Which guards pause before turning corners. Which ones count keys by habit and which by feel. He reduced it to a map. Not official, but accurate in the only way that matters here: it works.

I have memorized it. I am in process of creating a copy for you, but it will be more cipheric than a casual map so that it can avoid detection if it gets caught. I will keep it intentionally complex and alter certain words to conceal their actual meanings. I will give an example so you can better understand the obscure language: “The guard is useful at this moment” will translate to “The hallway breathes better at this time.”

The map does not point to a single exit. It outlines several narrow failures in the system. Short windows where attention collapses into assumption. Each window appears on a different night, at a different hour, in a different part of the facility. None of them overlap. They cannot.

That is how this must happen.

There will be no shared moment of escape. No signal flare, because the schedule and structure of the institution do not permit such coordination. Each departure will be solitary, scheduled days apart, and indistinguishable from a clerical miscount. The man will be first, then me, then you. I will know the man is gone if no further letters arrive. You will know I am gone if no letter comes to you. For that reason, you must be the last to leave if you do not want to mess things up.

If done correctly, no one will realize anything has happened until it is too late to reconstruct how. This network must not be exposed, no matter the cost. If we are caught, even these letters will cease to exist, and we will be moved to a higher-security confinement.

This is not an alliance. This is a sequence. What binds this together is not trust, but isolation. None of us can betray what we do not possess. 

This is not written in the expectation of a reply, or even recognition. You will not learn my name. I will not learn yours. Even the one who drew the map exists to me only as rumor, really. I have never seen him. I do not know if he is old or young, truly mad or not, or even whether he is a man or a woman.

If you understand what lies beneath this letter, do nothing remarkable. Just wait. When the man and I become absent, your absence may then be necessary. That absence will be confirmation enough, and it does not need our witnessing.

This must be a matter of choice, though. Even if it is torturous here, the outside is no different either. There is cold. There is hunger. You are protected from these here. There is also the so-called “free” world, but a prisoner who has spent years in solitary confinement will not easily adjust to its culture of comfort and conformity. When you flee from here, you may find yourself needing to flee from that sickness as well. So, choose wisely.

After that, there will be nothing further between us. Each of us will leave alone, unseen by the others who made it possible. When it is over, there will be no shared story to reconstruct. Only three unrelated absences, filed separately, explained poorly, and eventually forgotten, as it always happens.

Finally, you must remember this: systems do not collapse when confronted, but when deprived of continuity. Not through rebellion, but through disappearance. The authorities should receive nothing more than our absence.

A.