Crown

He awoke.

Not like a man surfacing from sleep. Like a man hauled from it, dragged up by the wrists with dreams still clinging to his face.

His mouth was dry. Not dry like thirst. Dry like it had been scrubbed with gauze. His tongue felt thick. The back of his throat was coated in something sour. Chemical. Chalky.

He remembered taking his medication. He remembered lying down. He remembered his bed, his pillow, the bad spring under his left hip that always clicked if he turned too fast.

But this wasn’t that. This wasn’t his room. This wasn’t his cell.

He was in a chair. Heavy. Solid. Wood and steel.

The restraints were leather. Old. Cracked like dried lips. They squeaked when he shifted.

His ankles were strapped.
His wrists too.

The kind of strapping that said we’ve done this before.

There was a logo on the wall. Small. Unimpressive. Just a circle of thorns.

And just like that, he knew.

Not just from memory. From somewhere deeper. Like his bones recognised it before his brain caught up.

Not here.
Not again.

He breathed through his nose. The air smelled like an old barbershop sink. Not the sweet kind with aftershave and powder. The other kind. Drainage. Sweat. The faint snap of static electricity from a cheap plastic comb.

A light flickered overhead.

Incandescent. The yellow glow of a tired bulb trapped inside a fogged-up mason jar.

Someone was standing to his right.

He tried to turn his head, but the movement was restricted, partially clamped to the back of the chair.

He couldn’t see much. Just a sleeve. White. Crisp. Pressed so sharply it could cut paper. The hands were gloved. Rubber. Tight. Surgical. A second skin clinging to each finger as though poured on.

They moved with bored professionalism. The kind that only came from doing awful things very, very often.

The hands turned a dial.

A machine beside the chair clicked on. It didn’t beep. It didn’t flash. It hummed.

Wires twitched.

Something stirred above him.

A coil of wire lowered from the ceiling. It hovered over his scalp, shaped like a crown.

Close.
Too close.

The hum shifted.

He flinched.

Not because of pain. Because of expectation.

He’d been conditioned for it. Voltage meant agony. Shock meant screams.

But this time was different.

This wasn’t voltage. This wasn’t electricity like he remembered.

This was sound.

Not heard through the ears. Not exactly.

It came through his teeth. His spine.

It hammered behind his eyes like a memory trying to punch its way out of the past.

His breath caught.
His pupils bloomed wide.

And then he wasn’t there anymore.

He was standing somewhere else.

The air had turned red.

Above him, the sky was wrong. Like an ocean of black water turned upside down and stitched in place. Things twisted inside it. Big things. Drowning slowly, as if they had been drowning forever and forgotten how to die.

The ground squelched underfoot. Thick, hot mud that tried to hold on.

Screams echoed somewhere far off, but they were wrong. Filtered. Like listening to lungs filled with tar.

And he knew this place.

From faraway dreams.
From before.

Ahead stood a hallway. Stone walls, damp and sweating. An arched ceiling. A wooden door, slightly ajar.

Waiting.

He moved.

His boots creaked.

His clothes weighed heavy. Wool. Black. Ceremonial. A rope hung over one shoulder.

He stood on a platform.

High. Ancient. The wood groaned beneath him, as if remembering all the others who had stood there.

There was a woman.

Barefoot. Shivering.

Her makeup had run in tracks down her face, mingled with dirt and something else. Something older.

She sobbed.

A guard held her by the elbows, like a marionette that had lost its strings. She tried to speak, but the words stuttered.

“Please,” she said. “Please, not like this. I have children. They need me. Please. I’m not ready…”

He stepped forward.

The hood was black. Rough. It smelled of sweat, mildew, and ten thousand other desperate faces.

He pulled it over her head.

She flinched beneath his hands.

“I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “Please, someone else. Someone else—”

She coughed. Her knees gave out.

The guard kept her upright.

“They won’t understand,” she muttered, barely audible now. “My babies… they’ll wait for me. They’ll keep waiting.”

He looped the rope around her neck.

He tightened it and checked the knot.

It was perfect.

Of course it was.

His fingers didn’t shake.

Not even once.

He stepped back.

There was a lever beside him. Old steel, worn smooth by calloused hands and generations of duty. It stuck slightly. Needed a little extra pull.

She was still crying beneath the hood.

The final word she spoke was “please—”

He pulled the lever.

The trapdoor dropped.

There was a thud. Thick. Final.

Her body jerked.

Then it swung.

And just like that, he awoke again.

A sharp inhale.

The machine clicked off.

He was sweating. His heart hammered in a rhythm that didn’t belong to him.

And then a voice spoke. Cold. Sharp. Punctuated with precision.

“Tell me what you saw—”