If he had ever enjoyed his previous life, that was nothing to how he was enjoying this. Stan Jordans tilted his head to the side and slowly smiled at the wall. This wall was the most curious object he had encountered in a while, a fortnight to be exact. Stan shrugged away the hand that was on his shoulder, trying to steer him away from the plain grey wall just outside his cell. ‘They want me to leave my wall’ he thought, possessively as his smile dropped to a snarl and his eyes flicked in the direction of the man on his right. ‘They think they can take me away from my best friend. They want her all to themselves!’ He whipped around, hissing, planning to scratch at the face of his nearest captor. He didn’t get quite that far before the other four guards had tasered him and were pinning him to the ground.
“Gghn-noooo!” he moaned as his face was pressed into the dirt covered floor. “My wall! Give her back to me!” He continued whimpering pitifully as the guards shared a slightly surprised and incredibly confused look between them. They were obviously new guards to Stan’s case.
Stan Jordans had been in prison for five years and was in waiting to be sent back to the mental hospital he had originally been admitted. Stan didn’t know this. Stan only knew that every time he marked off fourteen lines on the pad of paper in his prison room, he got taken out to see the Green Land (the grassy oval where most of the prisoners met every fortnight). Stan liked the rocks at the oval. There wasn’t many, but he could always find at least one each time he went there, and if he was good, he got to take a small one back to his cell with him. Stan knew he probably wouldn’t get to bring one back this time because last time, the rock had said something really mean about his wall and he had destroyed the furniture in his room in a furious rage.
More officers rounded the one corner on the path to the Green Land and helped to hoist Stan Jordans to his feet. They all half carried, half shoved him down the corridor and into the bright, enclosed area. Stan blinked for a moment in the glaring light, and as he did every fourteen days, he tried to see the massive, golden orb that illuminated the Green Land. It hurt his eyes too much but he thought he could see the shape of a circle dominating the clear, blue sky. Happy, at discovering such a fact, Stan wandered off to his usual rock hunting spot. The guards went back to collect more prisoners but there were plenty enough guards observing the field with eagle eyes, ready for any disturbance.
The other prisoners stayed away Stan Jordan. He had a reputation for being both insane, and dangerous. In prison, most of the people are just those who did something stupid and got themselves landed in the grey hell-hole for it. The rare ones, who actually thrived on pain and violence, were allowed much less social time. Stan had been arrested on his first day out of the mental asylum he had called home for much too long. He had been diagnosed as ‘no longer a threat to society’ and, as such, had been allowed to leave. On that first day, he had wandered into an open home (not his) and stared at a picture of a little girl for over two hours. When the police arrived, he had been charged with breaking and entering and suspicious behavior. Stan was also charged for resisting arrest as, like the wall, he had fallen in love with an object. In this case, the flower in the little girls hair. This was enough to land him in prison, and, with his continued assaults on prison guards, kept him there.
Stan spent the four hours he was allowed outside, searching for the perfect rocks for his collection that he kept in a hidden pile next to the fence. He spent the last hour transfixed by a small purple weed-flower growing from underneath one of the rocks in his pile. He was sad when it came time to go. But when he rounded the corner (with an entourage of five guards) he squealed in delight at seeing that beautiful, blank, grey wall again. It was the wall that, if he pushed his hand right through the cage door, along his white cell wall, he could just touch the beginning of the painted grey. He ran up to his wall, smiling ecstatically, and ran his finger along its rough surface.
“My dear. I have returned for you!” he mumbled, before the guards grabbed his arms and shoulders and pushed him into his cell. He cried until the call for 'lights out' came, for now he could only stare mournfully through the bars of his cage until the next time his daily tally reached line fourteen.
All the lights in the compound were turned off or dimmed and Stan Jordans squished his hand into that small gap. Stan sighed again, relieved when his fingers past over the small line of interlocking paint and his finger lightly caressed the grey. Stan muttered to his wall the rest of the night and he knew, he was the only one who truly understood her.
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