![prison11.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmNPKxVzVCpHuTaUBPBMszuSq1KGfzctCm2uSUsvEKpqCz/prison11.jpg)

I'm posting up the chapters of this uncompleted book as I hope the Steemit community might offer up its criticism (which would, in turn, force me to finish it, honestly). Started in 2008, this was my first foray into novel writing and was my undergraduate thesis required to graduate. The story is about an executioner in the not-too-distant future. Executioners are highly trained individuals with extensive educations built to help them execute their prisoners in the exact same manner that the prisoner's victims died. This is called the law of retaliation or _lex talionis_; you may know it better as "eye for an eye."

Because I was also getting my degree in philosophy, I wanted to explore the ethics involved. While I feel I'm a better writer now and could certainly expand most of this book, I also really enjoy criticism as I'm usually too close to the work to see what's working and what's not (though in this case, there's plenty that I feel is not working). So please...feel free to criticize the work if you'd like, but be constructive about it. Simply saying "this part isn't good" doesn't tell me much; don't hesitate to tell me why it's not good or offer up possible alternatives to make it better.

Thanks in advance!

***

Previous Sections/Chapters:

_Part I_
[Chapter One](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-1) / [Two](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-2) / [Three](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-3) / [Four](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/tgjcj-the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-4) / [Five](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-5) / [Six](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-6) / 
[Seven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-7) / [Eight](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-8) / [Nine](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-9) / [Ten](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-10) / [Eleven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-11) / [Twelve](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-12) / 
[Thirteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-13) / [Fourteen](https://steemit.com/writing/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-14) / [Fifteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-15) / [Sixteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-16-the-end-of-part-i)

_Part II_
[Chapter One](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-11) / [Two](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-2) / [Three](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-3) / [Four](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-4) / [Five](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-5) / [Six](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-6) / [Seven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-7) / [Eight](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-8) / [Nine](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-9) / [Ten](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-10) / [Eleven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-11)

***

My first day in the Catacombs was arduous and unnerving, a stagnation of time flipped on its head and left to rot. The priest was right – any human contact I might’ve hoped for came three times a day in the form of silence and steady looks from the guards who fed me. It was like sitting in the waiting room of God’s holy office, but having no magazines to read. No clock to keep checking to constantly wonder when he’ll finally usher you in to sit and chat, followed by the disappointment that God has shitty taste in furniture.  

I have been allowed only one book per week to read. It’s funny in a sad kind of way that I have more time to read down here, yet fewer options to do so. I read Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” the day it was delivered to my cell. I was pleased with myself until I realized I now had nothing to read for the next six days. My successive choices over the following months were more shrewdly chosen and more thriftily read. During my third month (for I had been counting the days since being Segregated), I chose a large dictionary. Expanding one’s vocabulary might seem absurd when looking down the barrel of a death sentence, but for all the good it does, meditation wasn’t going to carry me for the bulk of my days. 

I found myself thinking about the crew, more often than not. I wondered if Big Jim had found a way back to the topside through his unique messenger. Or maybe it was something worse. Panzer had probably been unwillingly promoted to head of the crew and Riddle, well – one could never lay a sure bet on anything regarding Ridsy. Jilette would take what came his way and adjust. He was strangely protean in that way. I’m sure Reitman would still spend most of his waking hours trying to find a loophole in his case. No sense wasting his last appeal without a mountain of sound arguments, he used to tell me.
	
These attachments would end up eating away at me if I wasn’t careful, but they were all I knew. They were the people I spent my last days with and had, admittedly, a great many laughs with while we slowly forgot what the sun looked like. And then I thought of Scabs and like the crack of thunder shaking the ground, I came to the realization that he could be in the cell next to me and I’d never know. Scabs was like Panzer in that they had both served in the military, but while Panzer was discharged as mentally sound, Scabs had seen more combat during the Russian-Iranian conflict and came home with the soldier’s form of the flu, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Calling him a loose cannon would be cliché, but one could never tell. He’d offer up half of his breakfast tray in the morning, but have a fork to your neck for your lunch. There was no order in his world despite being confined in a place built on order. 
	
Eleven months I’ve been in this cell now and I wondered if he were right next door. That first night, I sat on my bunk with ear pressed to wall, hoping to hear the smallest of sounds that would tell me he was there or not; a sigh, a cough, anything. The Catacombs are wide and spread out from the rumors I’ve heard, but the thought that he might have been in another part of them never crossed my mind. I was sure he was my incarcerated neighbor, but all I got for my trouble that night was silence, an aching ear, and legs that had fallen asleep before my eyes could catch up with them. 
	
After the thirty days was over, I stopped spending my nights listening. If he had been my neighbor at any point, he was gone by then. I was perhaps overly optimistic that I might see guards take him from his cell somehow through the opaque black glass, but I saw nothing and recited a Zen koan in his memory one afternoon. 
	
_“’Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: ‘Why do people have to die?’_
	
_‘This is natural,’ explained the older man. ‘Everything has to die and has just so long to live.’ Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: "It was time for your cup to die.’"_

***

He came to see me today, attempting to extract some form of truth from behind the one-sided glass partition. Somehow I sensed him standing against the far wall, waiting as if to pounce like I was injured prey. I sat in the lotus position on my bed, legs crossed and wrists attached to my knees, pointed skywards. Many of the others have laughed at my doing this, but meditation really is the best way to spend time here. With only a few books at a time allowed within each cell, I read the thoughts of others and meditate on my own. 
	
With eyes closed, I made my way to the partition and tapped at it, tilting my head. The speaker crackled and the opaqueness of the glass fizzled and disappeared. I saw him silhouetted in front of the dim hallway light and I imagined I could smell what he had for lunch that day, the odor wafting through the speaker on vocal notes strained from some kind of unease as he spoke my last name. My eyes popped open. In the quick half-second it took to size him up, I knew I’d never be able to fight back if we ever came to blows. His forearms alone were twice the size of my thighs and what was that look? Concern? Fear? Longing?
	
“You’re looking at me like you want attention,” I said. “I’m not your dog and you’re not my owner, so what do you want?” The weight of my inflection startled even me, but I couldn’t let him know. Months of not talking to anyone had affected me more than I wanted to admit, I suppose. Better to keep up the charade though. Physically, the guards have the upper hand, but if I’m to die soon, a psychological power play can’t hurt any more than just waiting around. 
	
No response from the speaker. I tapped on the glass and mouthed “Hey, I asked what you wanted.” Whatever reason he came down here for, he seemed to have forgotten it as there was no response. Perhaps this was his idea of toying with me? I headed back to the bed and shrugged the notion off since I was the one in the cell. I sat back down on the sheets of my bed and folded legs beneath me as I heard faint, questioning tones from the speaker. I was already well on my way back into my meditations and forced the noise outward so that I could concentrate inward.