Imagine you are not allowed to leave your home. Imagine that you are able to see what everyone else is doing, but you cannot call them. Imagine that the only human contact you have is when you wake up and feel someone else’s arm draped over you, only to realize that it is actually your arm and it’s just fallen asleep.
It’s as bad as it sounds.
And yet, I am not alone. Not truly. Through camera lenses hidden in renovated school buses and "closed" signs hung on business doors I can live a thousand lives. The Bug Man has tucked Cecilia in for the night and drifted off to sleep. Caracal and her companions have returned safely to their dojos. The three strangely dressed teenagers have chosen new identities and will begin their first days as Kingdom citizens tomorrow. Mercury sits at their desk contemplating the growing unrest of the Penitent. The Gravedigger has a well-earned evening to himself, one arm draped over the handle of his shovel while the other taps out a secret message on a wooden end table.
Town Square is quiet. Bard still sits on the edge of the stage, legs dangling as he picks quietly at his guitar strings. A light shines dimly from one of the high windows on the front wall of Fashi’s. Inside two women are wrapped in blankets beneath a table, comic books sprawling half-read all around them. And I watch. All of them, the people whose birthdays I celebrate, whose losses I mourn, and whose secret dealings I know about. Do they wonder about me?
Do they ever climb to the top of a tree and see the man in the Fire Tower drinking his third mug of coffee? Do they wish that they could speak to me when they drop food and toilet paper down through the vent in my ceiling? Do their children ask about me? I know that they do.
Wind bends the treetops over the sleeping town, the town I one day hope to visit again. Generations of Watchmen have lived and died in this tower. I wonder if the last one died on the bed I sleep in. Is any part of him still here? His dead skin? Lost strands of his hair? I hear his voice on old tape recordings, listen as the madness begins to set in. How many years can I wait before I face the same? I've lasted this long.
I turn back to survey my own little realm. The bed in the center of the room is comfortable and large. A shower stall and toilet are set behind a tiled half-wall on one side of the bed. On the other side is a kitchenette built into a bar-style counter. A sink and a couple of cabinets are built into one side, two bar stools are tucked into the other. Hilarious. I used to get so mad at that second stool. I kept throwing it against the windows, hoping I'd bust the glass but it always just bounced off. I've wondered where they got that glass. The stool is a little bent now. I still sit in the other one.
I haven't quite figured out how they get my water to come up here. Some kind of pump feeds it up from a spring deep below the tower. Where the used water goes is a mystery, I sure hope they keep the two well separated. A combination of solar and wind power my computer monitors thanks to the group of environmental researchers that wandered into town a decade ago. I think they're the ones running the research lab at Smoke University these days. Hard to keep track of so many people sometimes.
The truly ironic thing about Kingdom is our gate. The wall surrounding our town is built right at the very edge of the Line of No Return. Anyone who stops at the wall and thinks to themselves "Nope, creepy dark forest. Not going in there," can go back to their lives without inhaling Kingdom's Curse. But they can't resist the gates. I've seen hundreds of people take one look at that wall, turn around, and head straight back to Sherwood Road. But one glimpse of the gates and they're looking around to see if anyone's watching. I literally stood right inside the window and watched a guy squeeze through the iron bars last week. Same guy they beat up by Town Square. And get this, readers- he looked at me. He LOOKED at me. And then he kept right on going. I thought I'd spook him, thought the Gravedigger would be cleaning up another run-in run-out tourist. But he didn't turn back.
And what about those kids, the three dressed up in old knight and damsel clothes? Why does one of them keep looking into my cameras like she knows they're hidden there? I'm telling you readers, something is changing in Kingdom and I want to be part of it. I'll keep recording these events and lie low, keep cleaning this same goddamn prison until the time is right.
But I won't be dying here.