Hi, I'm new here but as I was looking through the forum this caught my eye and I thought I would try it out.
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"Bring in the next prisoner!" The Judicatorâs voice boomed throughout the cold metallic court room. His brilliant white robe swirled around the less impressive shriveled old husk of what was once a strong man. Military personnel stood at heightened attention as the two heavy laden doors opened with a robotic swish. From the dark room beyond three men entered. Two hulking solider in their usual dark black Kevlar uniforms, their helmets encasing their heads and visors hiding their eyes. They had always looked like robots, cold, emotionless, non-thinking entities. In between them stood what looked like a dwarf compared to the soldiers, in reality he was an average sized man. His light blond hair bounced as he moved while his sky blue eyes flicked around the reflective room nervously, looking more at the reflections then the actual people. His dark orange jumpsuit clung tightly to his un-muscular form as he bent over from the weight of a bulky metal spine that had been inserted into his back. The guards pushed and shoved him towards a pulsating white button in front of the Judicator's pedestal.
As soon as the man stepped upon the orb, it's blinking stopped and a smooth hydraulic noise pushed a large iron cage from the floor. The man stood quietly as his eyes moved across the room more rapidly, like a caged bird he stood compliant but anticipating an escape.
The guards stepped back from the man as the Judicator pushed himself up on his chair to see over his position. His dark beady eyes stared and looked over the man, surveying him as a king would a treasonous subject, though the Judicator was not officially a king. The man simply locked eyes with him and both stared for minutes on end. The Judicator's eyes seemed glossy and the bags under them hung longer than usual but still they stared, unmoving, though the Judicator twitched every few moments.
"I wonder what his crime isâ¦.he doesn't seem like he could harm a fly." One of the jurymen to the right of the Judicator whispered.
"Give the Judicator time and he'll explain it." The other replied.
"Not like it matters to us anyway, we are, after all, just here for traditionâs sake." The first replied frowning at the staring match that was continuing.
"Shh Chris, your already in trouble with the judicator after that little stunt you pulled yesterday. You should've known better than to challenge him." The other whispered again, though the visor he wore blocked out his face Chris knew that he was frowning.
"The charges were false and the consequence destroyed that family. You know it was wrong." Chris said sitting up in his chair, his grey plastic robe crunched against the white seat.
"Regardless, you do it again youâll probably get kicked of jury. You should be counting your blessings anyway, lucky youâre still even on after what happened to your family in Houston."
"Yeah, thank Godâ¦or whatever the governmentâs approved for us to thank." Chris said turning back towards the prisoner, still locked in a quiet battle with the Judicator. Though the prisoners eyes had seemed to of changed somehow. There was something different about the prisoner's stance. He seemed to shimmer somehow, like a mirage on a hot day. Something was wrong, but Chris just couldnât put his finger on it. It frightened Chris, whatever it was, and, in his fear, he fidgeted in his seat hoping for the Judicator to stop his pointless contest and resume the case.
"So what are his crimes?" Chris questioned a minute later, unable to stand the contest any longer. All in the room turned the eyes toward the Judicator expecting him to lash out at Chris for his interruption of 'the method'. Instead, as the prisoner and he broke eye contact, the Judicator withdrew into his chair and looked about the room as if he had not seen it before.
"Silence please." He said timidly, more as if he were asking instead of commanding, and shifted his eyes back towards his desk beginning to shuffle through the several files, looking for the current case file despite it already being in his hands.
The prisoner had as well shifted his eyes towards Chris and, as Chris stopped eying the Judicator oddly still expecting more of a reproach, met eyes with him.
Immediately they locked and Chris could not pull his away. As he attempted to struggle against the invisible bonds keeping him stationary in his seat, the prisoner continued his staring, seeming to peer into the very soul of Chris. He could feel him probing his thoughts, his memories, his very existence and then all at once the room went black. Several non-coherent whispers loomed in the darkness but otherwise there was no noise. Chris attempted to scream but to no avail as the very breath in his lungs was captured and forced to be exhaled as no more than a whisper.
"Hello Chris." The whispers combined into a melodious tenor forming a beautiful symphony of words.
Whereâ"where am I!? He thought
"Still in your seat, listening to the Judicator's dissertation on the case." The whispers began again and with it the courtroom rematerialized. Chris sighed, never so happy to have been there before in his life, and then disappeared once more into the darkness.
Who are you? How do you know what I'm thinking? Chris frantically asked as he was forced back into darkness.
"Well just listen."
The Judicators voice broke through the blackness and echoed in the never ending vortex of nothingness.
"Prisoner 24895, know to friends and family as 'Jonathan Mosin', you have been charged with mutation of the mind causing a disturbance of the peace. Mainly, you are being attributed the spontaneous combustion cases of District 12 and 24." The still timid, almost confused, voice of the Judicator began to fade away.
The Prisoner? What have you done to me!? Chris's mind cried out as he increased his struggling. It was useless though.
"Calm down. I am a friend."
Friend?! Youâre a mutant! A murder! Chris cried again still struggling.
"I am a psychic, not a mutant and I have killed no one" The whispers said calmly.
Then what about your spontaneous combustion cases!
"Ask your own Judicator. You know well enough your government stages terrorist attacks to gain power." The whispers replied as thousands of news articles flew by Chris, stopped for a moment and then left. Headlines of virus outbreaks, bomb explosions, serial killers all followed by more headlines of the government asserting more 'Protective Authorities', making Judicators basically princes in their own districts. This was not enough proof for Chris, though.
"Just think, what would I gain from destroying those places? A shopping mall? A police station? A school? I have no quarrel with the governmentâ¦." The whispers paused, obviously sensing Chrisâs disbelief. "I would not do this; I have a family to think about."
Thousands of pictures flew in front of Chris's eyes. Bright, colorful, life filled pictures of a family. Pictures that included a younger version of Jonathan. Chris attempted to turn away from the photos but they followed him, swirled around him, and imprinted themselves into his very mind. He shut his eyes in an attempt to get away but they still were there, following and forcing themselves into his subconscious. They were all so beautiful yet still something tugged at Chris's thoughts, told him that something was wrong about all of this.
"You of all people should know what it is like to lose a familyâ¦" The whispers continued, more pictures flew in front of Chris's eyes. His family. His wife, so beautiful, her light blonde hair, sky blue eyes so life filled. His daughter, only a year old, still too young to even begin learning the ways of the cold world she had been born into.
They passed and in their place the coroner's pictures came. His wife now burned to a crisp, his daughter little more than a blackened heap of charred flesh. Chris attempted to scream for it to stop, struggled against his restrains with renewed vigor fought with every fiber of his being but the pictures kept coming. Until finally they stopped, coming to rest on a single news paper headline: 'Terrorist attacks kill Houston Judicatorâs family.'
Stop it pleaseâ"stop it!!! Chrisâs mind screamed into the darkness as he slumped over in his chair squeezing his eyes closed with every piece of energy left in him.
"You see how much it hurts. You know. Donât let them do this to me. Please, save me, cut the neuro-inhibiter signal from the Judicators desk so I can escape." The whispers said, they had changed though. No longer a melodious symphony but a twisted cacophony of deafening shrills. Chris didnât notice and as the court room rematerialized once again, he knew what he had to do.
There sat the button, blinking red not two feet from him. The prisoner, Jonathan, still stood in his cage, pleading with Chris begging for him to release him. Chris complied, in one fluid movement he outstretched his arm and slammed his palm into the button. It beeped loudly and was followed by a loud clank of the metal neuro-inhibitor spine hitting the floor behind the prisoner. He stood their smirking. No longer the man Chris had seen come into the room, but more sinister. His pale skin stretched against his bones, his dark black hair matted and greasy, and his deep inset obsidian eyes gleamed of terror.
Terror is what they would have as well.
In a second he had lifted his arms and bent the cage around him, stepping out the guards began to rain down a hailstorm of bullets upon him. They all stopped around him and soon all that could be heard was the click of empty cartridges. He laughed his despicable snicker and then outstretched his arms sending the bullets right back at the guards. They all fell in bloody heaps.
"I want to thank you Chris." He said as he came closer to the bench. Several jurymen tried to run but were stopped dead in their tracks, strangled by hidden nooses.
"I had tried convincing the good Judicator here to release me, but he isâ¦uncooperative." He continued, glowering at the Judicator. He began to choke the frightened man until finally he could no longer hold his head up and it slammed into his prized pedestal.
"You lied to me! This is not what you said you wanted!" Chris cried as he moved from his stand, more attempting to get away from the fast approaching man than to confront him.
"Hm, I suppose I did." He said, lifting his hands above his head. With his hands, flames rose from the every surface of the courtroom and began to burn it to the ground. The metal groaned and twisted in a horrible screeching sound, Chris tried to cover his ears.
"Sounds bad does it? Kind of like those hundreds of children I burned in the school. That was a good day." He said kicking Chris to the floor, laughing wildly as he did it.
"You lied!" Chris repeated again, struggling to pull himself away from the mad man.
"I know." The man said no longer laughing, pulling Chris across the floor back towards him without even touching him. The dark scowl on his face more frightening than anything else. Jonathan smiled one last time and then snapped his fingers. Chris's neck broke under the force of Jonathan's mind. He stood smiling and then finally, after a moment of taking in his own handiwork, sauntered out of the same hydraulic doors he had came in, whistling all the way.
About 1,958 words.
