![prison5.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWs8FUyRnZhEWRR2D48rsAnAfuuBDRiT6VkGL8YkmUmsa/prison5.jpg)
(Image from Oregon Live)

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)

***

Dinner that night was quiet. Big Jim sat far away from me and ate silently, not even looking up during the normal after meal conversation. I wanted to engage him, but settled on leaving him alone. I thought it the best course of action, or rather, inaction. He’d talk when he wanted anyway. It wasn’t like we had a feud going, we just disagreed on how to best show our loyalty to someone we could loosely call a friend. 
	
The meal tasted bland, either because it was or because everyone could feel that things were simply off kilter. There was no talk of after dinner nonsense in the common room, just the sound of teeth gnashing and plastic gliding across enameled bicuspids. Even Riddle had been unusually tightlipped and didn’t ask anyone for extra food. 

“I appreciate the gesture, Jim,” Panzer offered towards the end of the meal, trying to kill the tension. “I just don’t want to see any of you disappear into a black bag, never to be heard from again.” 

Unsure of a response, Jim looked up at us over his clasped hands. “I realize that we’re supposed to be the bottom of the barrel of society down here and all, but even our limits can be pushed. Panzer tells the truth,” he started, addressing no one in particular, “and gets beaten for it. I think it’s only fair that his captors wear the same mark is all. Or maybe just one good kick to the skull, cave it in a little bit so he talks all retarded when he wakes up.” The table nodded in unison, pleased that there was conversation occurring regardless of the topic. 

Panzer just laughed, running with Jim’s darker humor. “Bro, you’ll be the first person I call when it’s time. That’s a promise.” 

In better spirits, we all got up to leave and I headed right at the split in the corridors, heading towards my cell. Jim’s hand fell on my shoulder and I turned to him as he started to speak. “J…I uh…I dunno how to say this…”

I grinned at him. “You don’t have to apologize, Jim. I understand where you’re coming from.”

He scrunched up his face and cocked his head to the side. “Apologize? Forget you, you candy ass,” he said with a laugh. “I was just hopin’ you could teach me some of that mediation shit sometime. Might keep me out of trouble maybe. I dunno. At the very least, it’d make time go by a little faster down here, yeah?”

I shut my eyes, mentally searching for a koan to send back with Jim. “Bassui wrote the following letter to one of his disciples who was about to die: ‘The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither color nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains. 

‘I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air.’”

Jim stared as if I had switched brains with Riddle. “The. Fuck?”

“Think on it,” I replied. “A good portion of meditation is mental, so mull it over and talk to me at breakfast. Or at lunch. Or next week, whenever you think you have a response, we’ll talk.” I turned and left him slack-jawed, standing in the hallway, probably more confused than he had ever been in his entire life. Having built his existence upon the pounding of fists and deception, I thought this koan would be appropriate if he actually took it with him and tried to understand the underlying message. The beauty of the koans was their subtlety, a weaving of simple words that hid a greater meaning within the white spaces between phrases and letters. Perhaps it was a bit grandiose for me to take on the role of teacher, but all teachers were students once and they taught through these parables and the everyday instance. 

My favorite involves the student who comes to the teacher, claiming that he is ready for more advanced teaching. The teacher sends him off to find the sound of one hand clapping. When the student returns to the teacher, he realizes that he was foolhardy in believing himself to be ready and accepts his teacher’s wisdom pertaining to the student’s education. 

There is always something to be learned, some granule of information to be stored away within the grey matter between the ears no matter how important or insignificant. These granules, should we choose to hold onto them, combine and grow inside us, affecting each decision we make. Some lie dormant, waiting for a certain dendrite to fire the “a ha!” signal to our waking mind. Others are more pervasive and swim amongst our dreams, affecting our moods and choices in ways we don’t even realize. 

These granules take on shapes inside our subconscious, hinting at things we already know but refuse to admit to the waking mind. An image of a city submerged in murky green water or a person, oddly familiar but completely unrecognizable, as a main players in a dreamtime movie all mean something to different parts of the brain. The granules of information feed into and exacerbate these images and force us as individuals to figure out the puzzle pieces of the internal struggles we choose to ignore while awake. Once we put those puzzle pieces together, if ever it happens, the struggles never dissipate as nicely as the dreams. We as a race have a tendency to prolong our own issues, whether by our very nature or because we have learned in a very backwards way that we learn and adapt depending on the problems placed before us. 

Two guards had posted themselves outside of my cell sometime during dinner. I kept my pace, curious as to their arrival. “Your request for a haircut has been approved. You know the drill.”

I nodded and turned around, placing my hands slowly behind my back so they could cuff me. I felt the cold steel around my wrists and then felt more than heard the rapid click-click-click-click of the rings shrinking down tightly against the skin. I bowed my head and felt the cloth covering slide over my mop of a hairdo and rest gently along my shoulders. I had asked once, very early in my stay here, why the hood was necessary. “We don’t want any of you to know where the sharp tools are, if in the totally unlikely event you escape, you decide you need a weapon.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, a smile of understanding spreading beneath the black cloth. 

***

A haircut really is one of the most relaxing things, regardless of one’s status. Most children hate them for one reason or another, but I realized as I got older that a haircut is much like a shedding of one’s old outer skin. A metamorphosis of sorts in that a new haircut can make a man or woman feel like a new person. I try to get one at least once a month, but it had been awhile since my last one. I wanted to see how long I could grow mine out before tiring of its length. 	

After so many visits, I knew exactly the route despite my eyes being covered. I had read enough of the silly spy novels to know that one can determine their direction or place by backtracking through movements and turns. I did this purely for entertainment and not because of any desire to escape. Other than the small, random riots that broke out, I knew this place was more secure than most other government buildings. My lawyer had made sure I knew before my sentencing. He was the Janus type of lawyer a defendant hoped he never got; eyes you couldn’t trust with a too-smooth voice that said ‘I believe you’ but meant ‘I hope you rot in hell.’ 

I counted the last ten steps and called out to Angus, the barber, before I even stepped foot in the room. The smell of alcohol and shampoo was strong, but the guards were shocked all the same. I felt both hands grip my arms tighter, nearly lifting me off the ground as I was corralled to the seat. They unlocked the cuffs and sat me down hard in the plastic chair and I laid my arms on the armrest, waiting for them to cuff them back down while Angus finished sweeping the floor. I could hear their boots clip clop outside and the door shut with a loud clang. “I don’t know why those assholes can’t take the hood of for you. Seems rather rude to me, don’t you?” Angus asked as he removed the hood and threw it over his shoulder to an unseen part of the room. 

I winced as the light blinded me briefly and caught Angus’ reflection in the mirror. “My god, it has been a long time since I’ve cut you,” he replied with a disgusted look on his face. “You look like hell, J. I thought you had been taken and disposed of like some of my others. Seems you just decided on a sabbatical from old Angus, eh?” he asked with a grin. 

“I just wanted to see how long I could get it without it becoming annoying. I was thinking maybe today we’d just shave the entire thing. What do you think?”

He stood in front of me, making L’s with the forefinger and thumb of both hands as if I was his canvas and he was my painter. I suppressed a laugh as his tongue slipped out between his lips in a look of faux concentration. “We may be able to make that happen,” he said finally, nodding with approval at his new canvas. “I’d ask you how things are, but it’s not like much changes down here, right?”

“It’s not all doom and gloom, despite some people’s ideas to the contrary,” I replied, sitting up straight in the chair. 
“Some of us just try to make it a better situation than it actually is, that’s all.”

He smiled from behind me, toying with the long, stringy strands of peppered gray hair. “Were you trying to grow yourself a rope from this? My god, man, this is foul.”

“You know me, Angus. Always trying to find a way out of here. I keep trying, but they just keep throwing me back in.” He laughed as he pulled out a pair of scissors from the alcohol marinade, drying them off on a cloth towel he kept around his belt. 

I closed my eyes as I felt his fingers comb through the grimy tendrils. The mechanical slip and snip of scissor arms across hair brought on the feeling of being instantly lighter with each snip. Angus had been the third barber to work down here in the last several years. He had also been the friendliest, asking the guards to stand outside of his makeshift shop while he worked on us. The door was always unlocked, just in case, but Angus liked working in a quiet, no nonsense environment. He also liked to bullshit with us, purely for bullshitting’s sake. He got a taste of the underworld and depending on the person, they got a taste of topside for a few minutes. 

“How’s your daughter, Angus? She and that lawyer fellow ever finally tie the knot?” I asked, risking half an eye open in the flurry of hair falling around me. 

The scissors stopped as he stepped back. I saw him spit on the floor behind me in anger. “That cockroach. He left her at the altar. I almost ended up being your cellmate a few months ago,” he half joked. “She was beautiful. The dress, amazing, as it should be. You know, her mother, my wife, passed some years ago, so I paid for most of it with my savings. She was upset, but I was angry. Out of the kindness of their hearts, his parents gave me close to half to make up for what I’d lost. They felt horrible. Terribly nice people,” he said, nodding distractedly. “They would’ve made lovely grandparents. So strange that their son was the spawn of the devil,” he joked. “But, no. Neither of us has seen or heard from him since, which is good for him,” he almost yelled, shaking the scissors at my apologetic face in the mirror. 

“Well I’m sorry to hear that. How’s she holding up?”

He threw his hands into the air. “She comes over most nights, eats all my ice cream and watches horrible love movies. She’ll be fine eventually. But for now, I make sure to have five different flavors of ice cream in my freezer; one for me, four for her,” he said with a grin. 

He continued cutting my hair, humming to himself as I closed my eyes again. “J?” he finally asked, putting the scissors away and plugging in his clippers. 

“Yeah?”

“Not that I have a queer taste for you to not ever come back, but how come you’ve been here so long? Most other guys I see for a few months, then they never come back. Seems like you’ve been here forever when all these other cats just disappear.”

He turned on the clippers and began sliding the metal teeth across my scalp as hair fell like lengthy snowflakes before my eyes. “I don’t really know, Angus. I think they may have somehow forgotten I’m still here.”