//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Will Barger 
// Story: The Random Adventures of Seth 
// by Marioland1 
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Guilt


Seth couldn’t remember how many days he’d been in here, nor could he remember what time it was inside this place, for the place had no windows to show him whether or not the sun was in the sky. He sat there in his tight cramped cell for what was surely months; but since meals were not even a routine in this prison of his, he did not even have a measuring stick of which to compare events to.

He was surely going mad in here, too. Once he had tried to maintain a regiment of counting in order to impose some order on his life; he had gotten to nearly one hundred thousand before he was overcome with a vile hatred of numbers, and had stopped. Then, he tried to maintain time by how often he had seen a guard pass by his cell; but that didn’t help him too much either. Anything he tried only served to further distort his sense of time.

He could hardly remember his crime for which he was locked up, either. He was sure of one thing, though. He was guilty of what he was charged of. He also remembered one feeling that he had felt before the judge sentenced him to his fate in this prison; guilt.

As he sat there, thinking of what he had done, he remembered a young girl. He thought he had done something to this young girl; perhaps he had stolen something from her? No, that couldn’t be it. He had stolen things before, and he had stolen from people far worse off than that small girl. But he knew for certain his crime involved the young girl.

He then remembered another thing; the judge had said something to him at the trial. It didn’t really make sense to his time-addled mind, but for certain it was important.
“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You just had to keep pushing. And look what became of that. I hope that, before you rot away, you find a speck of good in yourself, for today you certainly walk out of this courthouse an evil man.”
BANG; The sound of the gavel. And then the guards shipped him out, to the prison island he dwelled in now.

These were the things that Seth thought about. He had tried to ask the guards questions as they passed by, but they gave no response. Of course, he was perfectly aware of that; the guards were simply mindless constructs, and couldn’t talk to him even if they had wanted to. He talked to them still, silently and meekly hoping that one day, one of them would turn to him, and show a face of flesh, give him some human interaction; but that never happened. In fact, he hadn’t seen another person in a very long time; much time ago, they had put a prisoner in the cell across from him, who had been named Thomas. The two of them talked for a great length of time, about a great number of things; their lives, their beliefs, even their crimes. They were fairly good friends, not by merit of each other’s personality, but by necessity. They were the only thing keeping each other sane. Both were very guilty, and they served as a support net for each other’s woes.

But, one day, Thomas snapped. He was overcome with a great wave of guilt, guilt born of the man he had killed. In his sleep, he had told Seth, he was visited by the ghost of the man who he had killed, and the man was ridden with grief from his death; he had a life! He had a Family! And Thomas had taken that.

Thomas hung himself that day, with a length of rope he had smuggled in.

Nobody else had occupied that cell since, and every day Seth had to avert himself from viewing the scene; Thomas’s bones littering the ground of his cell, rope still dangling from the ceiling of his cell. That was really scary for Seth; nothing changed in here. Everything simply sat in its place until it rotted away, and only memories sat in its place. He was afraid, that he too would rot away one day, and only his bones would remain; except there would be nobody to remember him.

Time rolled by. He wasn’t sure how much, but with each moment he grew more anxious of one thing; the young girl. He yearned to be free for that reason only; to discover what his crime was. He wanted to apologize to the girl. To make things right; if only he could know what he had done to her! It agonized him for ages, the knowledge that he would spend eternity mourning, paying penance for a crime he didn’t even remember. But he supposed, for whatever he did to be locked up in this prison for his whole remainder of his life, he was surely receiving nothing less than the entirety of what he deserved.

As he thought about his yearning for freedom, he noticed something. There wasn’t even a clear reason why the prison had guards. When you were taken here, to Death Head Isle, you were thrown in from the very top, to a cell nearly fifteen feet tall, with a front wall of bars made of wrought steel, spaced about two inches apart. The walls were smooth as ice, and the ceiling opening was sealed with masonry, then the whole thing was sealed with some kind of ancient sorcery. Even if he wanted to escape, he wouldn’t be able to, even if he had the health he possessed in his life before his imprisonment. And the excessive, hulking size of the guards was another perplexing thing; none of the prisoners here had the strength to overpower a normal human guard, let along the constructs.

And all of his deep thought, then and there, was blown into a deafening, head-rattling blur, as the back wall of his cell exploded into a cloud of dust and rubble. As the dust and smoke cleared, he could see two figures in the open, a man and a woman.