Illusive Sanctuary

The jury received the case three days ago and there is little more for Elliot to do than wait and ponder the circumstances that brought him to this place. His only comfort is the typewriter on the small table against the wall. Here was a companion to deliver him from the curse of time and the grinding sameness that would blend all his days into gray eternity. This obedient servant that had faithfully supported his profession, now facilitates his mental liberation, his sanity and his emotional salvation. And here he writes, connected to freedom only by this implement of literary fantasy.

The typing stops as Elliot pauses for a moment of reflection. He focuses on an upper corner of his cell where a spider is spinning its web. He is intrigued that the spider weaves its web much as a writer weaves a story, one strand at a time, each strand connected to the other, each in itself seemingly unimportant yet essential to the integrity of the whole. He observes that the spider never gets caught in its own web. Not so with the writer. His own writing, while having been of great enjoyment to him, has also been at the root of his current misery. His work has obsessed him and created conflict with others close to him. It has also exposed the dark side of his heart and finally betrayed him, for in his recent trial it was one of his own literary creations that had formed the pivotal evidence against him.

Elliot pushes back from the small writing table, rubs the fatigue from his eyes, folds his arms, and with head back, closes his eyes in a search for meaning and hope from somewhere outside himself. In the failing light of the September dusk he drifts off, while a sequence that he has awaited in fear commences to unfold outside his cell.

A barred door opens at the end of the long corridor leading to his cell and footsteps beat a percussive crescendo finally stopping at his cell door.

The lock on the cell door snaps open like a rifle bolt. The steel barred structure slams aside with an authoritative report, impartial to whether it portends freedom or doom for the one it has imprisoned. Two uniformed guards of Olympian stature assert their presence in the diminutive cell, already too small, even when empty. One guard stands with his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver while the other unclips a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

"The jury is back. Get up and put out your hands."

There is no wish for good luck or any other suggestion that good fortune befall their guest of many weeks, but rather like automatons they shackle their charge and lead him down the long corridor toward the courtroom.

Elliot is unduly preoccupied with his appearance. He hasn't shaved in a week, his unruly hair needs cutting and he is still in his gray prison uniform. The fact that the guards did not give him time to be presentable to the court bodes poorly for the verdict that he is about to hear.

Handcuffed men have trouble holding their heads high. Even those who know they are innocent before the law find being fettered an occasion to resurrect in their minds past unpunished transgressions, crimes of the heart, and sins against God. In doing so, they mentally condemn themselves for these other misdeeds, if not for the crime with which charged. A man without conscience would not be so moved, but Elliot Vanfleet is not such a man. And so, positioned between his two escorts and with head bowed, he shuffles slowly as would a guilty man to the place of his judgment.