Some time later, though I cannot say how long, I found myself being roused by a man garbed in physician's clothes. He did not seem familiar though my head was so fogged that I could barely make out his features in any case. It was several minutes before my eyes found focus and I spied the embroidered name on his coat: L. Wheeler.
Noticing my alarmed attention the man immediately gave me an injection. Cunningly fast he was, the plunger depressed and the stinger removed to his coat pocket in the blink of an eye. He had a stethoscope to my chest when the armed policeman stepped into my cell.
Instinctively I reached out for them but I quickly stifled my plea upon realising that, far from the angel of death I'd pegged him for, this Wheeler-imposter's sinister stinger was having a remarkably invigorating effect. From the very puncture wound I watched a stream of sand spill out, a billion coarse grains bursting forth like a bullet riddled sandbag on a besieged army base. As the sand dune grew larger on the floor, so did my body feel equally lighter. My head defogged and I blinked readily. A second look at the man's breast pocket showed the embroidered name no longer read Wheeler but, "…Hidalgo?"
"Up, brave Sancho," whispered the man who was not Wheeler, helping me to sit up before raising his voice to almost theatrical volume. "There's a good fellow," he said. His face was aged and sun-leathered, with a proud hooked nose and gaunt cheeks. A long, wispy moustache dangled over cracked lips. "Seems to be in better disposition today, señor, though I must still advise patience. And shuffle the cards."
He stood back from me and the warmth he exuded went with him, turning the air cold. It was then that I saw the true face of the waiting policeman: ram-headed and wool-collared, his horns curling like question marks at the sides of his skull.
"My God!" I yelled.
The beast came closer and in his eyes, those shiny black marbles, I saw reflected my dreadful expression. Bunching my muscles I tried to resist him, but even with the invigorating drug I was unable to overcome his animal strength. Using practiced moves the White Ram cuffed my wrists and hauled me out of my cell.
"Courage, brave Sancho," called the Hidalgo man after us. "For he is even more stubborn than I!"
The White Ram marched me to cell #3 whose shatterproof window was still smeared to obscurity with faecal matter. Apparently flummoxed by this, he began bleating at me.
Bleat! Bleat!
Bleat! Bleat!
His breath reeked foul and, trapped as I was by his grasp, I could not long endure his incessant noise, which like a deafening police siren stabbed at my nerves. I covered my ears in effort to drown him out, but he bleated only louder.
"What is it?" I cried. "What the hell are you saying?"
"Belated!" he said. "You've made us belated!"
"Belated for what? Where are you taking me?"
"His Honour won't be happy," he said, warning me that His Honour had horns too. "I will not be made a scapegoat."
I begged him to explain but my ignorance only angered him. He began head-butting the cell door, harder and harder, until soon the hallway rang out with the harsh clash of bone against steel. I stared on, terrified. The White Ram's twisted face and beastly determination were all the deterrent necessary to dispel any notion I had of running away.
"No wait!" I yelled as he threw a powerful arm around my neck, and reared up at the steel door. "You'll kill me!"
We shot forward like a bolt. Gritting my teeth, I braced for the devastating impact—when all of a sudden the door swung open and we tripped over its threshold, landing in a heap. I cursed loudly, demanding the damn beast get his dirty fleece off me, but before I could protest my mistreatment any further, I was gagged by the stench of faeces.
"Ah, loamy," said the White Ram, cheerfully sniffing in the offensive air while he dusted down his coarse police coat.
The dank cell in which we stood was covered in grime; its moss green walls had weeds sticking through, and fly-infested clumps lay all over the… "Cobblestones?" I said. We might have been at the bottom of well.
"Hardly," the White Ram snorted, hoofing me towards the gaping hole in the middle of the cell. Looking over its edge, I was met by a gust of air so fetid and damp that one lungful made me vomit—the spew immediately swallowed by the black mouth with no sound of splash back.
"What the hell is this?" I panted.
"Time to weigh your wool." The White Ram dragged me around the hole to where began a spiral stairwell that vanished down into the darkness. He told me to follow him and, fearing another violent outburst, I did so.
Down, down, down.
The smell worsened with every step. The walls sweated moisture and the air buzzed faintly with the sound of flies, or was it whispers? The spiral turned endlessly, until soon the light from above had dimmed out and all that remained was the steady clop of the White Ram's hooves in front of me, and the oppressive, sucking black below.
Down, down down.
"Well, let's see," I said to myself when my legs grew weary. Ten minutes at, say, one-hundred-twenty steps per minute is twelve-hundred. So with the average height of a step being what, half a foot? That made…
"About one furlong," said the White Ram.
I bristled somewhat at his evident mathematical prowess but my ego was summarily curbed by the prospect of what in the world could be over six-hundred feet underground? Surely this couldn't be a structured part of the asylum. The only things I could think of were a sewerage tunnel, a subway line, or else some other kind of subterranean municipal system.
"Or the bottom of a well," said the White Ram.
"Indeed," I said, and promptly slipped on the next step down (it was slick with my vomit) and suddenly I was tumbling head-over-heels down the staircase. How I missed the White Ram in front of me, I don't know, but so painful was each bash against the cobbled stairs that my screams soon echoed throughout the flue. Unable to use my cuffed hands to shield me, I prayed desperately not to break a bone. My body was perhaps the only thing left of me and the dread of permanent disfigurement confounded my thoughts which likewise tumbled through wicked stepmothers, conniving lawyers, and every sinister happenstance I'd thus far experienced—until finally, thump! thump!, I crashed to a stop and the fall was over.
Unfathomably, I discovered that I was not in the least bit paralysed and despite wanting to vomit again, my faculties remained in good function.
"Bet you're nice and tender after that," said the White Ram, chuckling as he pulled me to my feet. Lifting my head, I saw in front of us a snaking path which led up to an old victorian house, something akin to the House of Usher. Foreboding I mean to say, with a kind of dark presence about it that sent a shiver down my spine. Hustling me towards it, the White Ram implored me to mind the thickets of bramble bushes which had overgrown the house's portico and front door—but even so the wild thorns shredded my clothes and tore at my flesh.
"Tender indeed," said the White Ram.
"Let go of me!" I cried for the cuts were stinging badly. What followed from my mouth I shall not repeat, but those hateful curses were in any case drowned out by a thunderous voice yelling for order.
The Judge sat atop his bench, at the far end of the courtroom. Clad in a dirty shroud, he thrice banged the end of his stethoscope like a gavel. ""You're late, bailiff," he said. "How dare you belate these proceedings."
"Doctor Wheeler!" I yelled.
"Quiet, that man." He wore a wig, one of those damn pretentious kinds, but it did nothing to hide his ruddy face and horn-rimmed glasses. He told me to put my finger down and then demanded an explanation from the White Ram.
"Begging your pardon, Your Honour," he said. "The defendant wished not to follow me."
"I see. Then proceed with with force, bailiff."
Even had I registered that, I would not have been swift enough to parry the vicious headbutt which followed. The bastard White Ram did not hold back, flooring me with a single blow from his bone hard horns. Vision shaking, I pleaded for mercy but my tears engendered no pity from the beast and I was kicked down the aisle like a whimpering dog.
"You will stand," ordered the Judge, and so was my utter disgrace completed when the crowd saw that I had soiled myself.
"Disgusting," they whispered. "How terribly abhorrent."
Shamefaced, I dared not look at them, but upon registering a familiar voice I felt compelled to seek it out. If only I hadn't. For when I turned, I saw the gallery was packed to capacity with one-hundred people all sitting in their finery—and staring at me from behind masks that bore my face.
"What the hell is this!" I yelled. "Why is this happening to me?"
"Silence," ordered the Judge, banging his stethoscope to quiet the affronted whispers of the gallery. He said that never in his life had he seen such an objectionably dressed defendant, and that in his courtroom such insubordination would not be tolerated. "I therefore find you in contempt of court."
"And yourself too," I spat, pointing out his own robes were nothing but the soiled lab coat in which he'd been killed. The comment caused a shockwave; the gallery gasped, and shouts for my head rose above the whispers of my guilt. "By his own admittance!" called one voice but the Judge once again banged his stethoscope, silencing the room.
"We are not yet come to that point in proceedings," he said, "and so shall we never get there should a modicum of decorum continue to allude us. Mr Blaze, I have already found you in contempt and would urge you to reconsider your attitude—and words—very carefully lest what you find the only thing altered is you."
What the hell he meant was anyone's guess, but the Judge seemed quite pleased with himself, and so did a chuckle ripple through the gallery.
"Now," said the Judge. "If you'd all kindly remain silent, the bailiff shall read the charges."
On this, the White Ram stepped up to the Judge's box and, facing the court, he pulled a parchment scroll from his police-coat pocket and unfurled it. "Isaac Blaze—" he began, but the Judge immediately interrupted him for breach of procedure. A three-note trumpet blast was required to initiate all judicial formalities.
"Right you are," said the White Ram, apologising to the court for the irregularity, and explaining that the trumpet had been misplaced.
"You lost the trumpet?" asked the Judge, face purpling in anger.
"It's not my fault, Your Honour. The defendant would not accede to me peaceably and in doing so caused me to mislay the instrument." The White Ram appeared to be shaking, and when the Judge then beckoned to the bench a member of the gallery, those black-marble eyes glazed over with terror. From the front row rose a hulking figure whose upside-down mask sat skewed across his meaty face. With heavy footsteps, he approached the bench, humming a happy children's' song as his huge shadow slowly engulfed the distraught ram. There was a faint scuffle and then two weak bleats rang out. The audience gasped at the ensuing cracking sound but I did not look away. In fact, I felt some grim satisfaction when the Imbecile finally handed the Judge the White Ram's left horn.
"I suppose it'd be too much to ask you to blow your own, wouldn't it?" said the Judge. A tactless joke it was, but I made a point to smile. The Judge wiped off the horn and then put it to his lips and blew three-long blasts. "All right," he said. "You may commence now, bailiff."
The White Ram collapsed twice before managing to stand up. Scowling at the court, he tore off a clump of wool from his neck and plugged the bloody hole on the side of its head. Then he re-addressed the scroll and read as follows:
"Isaac Blaze, of mind in craze,
is accused of homicide:
The masks he wears, they all shall swear,
exactly who yet died!"
My patience was wearing thin and the more I listened to these ramblings, the more my head ached. "But we know who died," I said. "That's exactly what the problem is."
"You object to the deceased dying?" asked the Judge.
"I object to the deceased judging."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Judge. "Who better to judge a homicide than the deceased himself?"
The gallery murmured approvingly but I did not take kindly to this farce and barked them quiet. Was it not obvious that if the deceased was judging then there'd be no case? Or at the very least an easy one, since the deceased could just tell us who's guilty.
"Preposterous!" said the Judge. "I can't do that. I have to be impartial." He banged his stethoscope, blanketly overruling anything further objections with regards his authority. This settled, he told the White Ram to bring in the jury.
They came in like the Mafia. Ten chassidic men with thick beards and stern expressions. They marched two abreast down the gallery aisle, each of them adorned with a high fur hat, and carrying a large leather-bound book under his arm. Already they were arguing.
"Which way is Truth?" the most portly of them demanded, and after some consideration the Judge pointed to the east. Apparently satisfied by this response, the Jewry shuffled into the jury box, opened up their old books, and began to rock back-and-forth as they deliberated its contents.
Wiping his brow with a handkerchief, the Judge shuffled through his notes and asked if the litigants were ready to proceed with opening arguments.
"Yes, Your Honour." The Professor stood to attention behind a table to my right. He wore a yellow tweed jacket, complete with clashing pink pocket square and green bowtie. "Solicitor Advocate Tobias A Nice. Appointed for the defence and ready to proceed at the Court's order."
The Judge nodded. He then looked to the space on the opposite side of the gallery box and frowned. "Where is the Prosecutor?"
The White Ram, still plugging his gory stump with a clump of fleece, froze. "I, baah… went to retrieve them, Your Honour, just as instructed."
"And?"
"It proved problematic."
The Judge slammed his stethoscope onto the bench. "Problematic?"
"Decidedly so, Your Honour," said the White Ram. "For there were so many candidates vying for the position that I didn't know who should be picked."
"You should have picked the one who made the best argument," said the Judge.
The White Ram agreed that that would have been optimal and asked whether he should fetch someone now. But the Judge vetoed this out of hand. "You have belated us enough as is," he said. "I will defer to the Jewry on the matter."
At this, the ten chassidic men lifted their heads and said in unison: "Woe to him whose prosecutor becomes his defence attorney."
The Judge considered this and, as the Jewry went back to arguing, he set his eyes upon me. "Well, Mr Blaze, it appears you have made yet another mockery of these proceedings, and left us without a prosecutor."
"Shame," I said, and made a sharp turn for the exit—only to be immediately halted by the enormous shadow looming over me. Panic striking my breast, I turned back to the Judge, narrowly evading the Imbecile's swiping hand.
The Judge continued: "It is therefore in the spirit of jurisprudence and symmetrical irony, that the Court hereby appoints you, Isaac Blaze, as Prosecutor in your own case."
"What? You can't—"
"You will examine the witnesses. You will present the arguments. And you will tell us why you are guilty."
"But that's absurd—"
"Do you object to your own competence?"
"I object to this farce!" I said, but the Judge only banged his stethoscope. "That's quite enough, Counsellor. I will not allow you to mock or belate these proceedings any further. You have been found in contempt twice over, and I warn you that no warning will be given for the third."
"You can't seriously expect me to prosecute myself."
"On the contrary, Mr Blaze. Who better?"
"This is madness!" I yelled.
"Then allow the Madness to commence!" He banged his stethoscope a final time. "Litigants, kindly present your cases."