Selfless Subjugation

The prisoners were let into the yard for their daily exercise routine.  Their frustration had continued to grow throughout the previous months.  A new gang leader had been elected.

The prisoners that had wanted to continue with having the other gang leader running their lives (just as he had for the last four years) were angry.  His supporters thought that the winning gang leader had cheated to win and were shouting their derision at the other prisoners. 

The guards watching it all unfold could only chuckle.   Just a word from their warden and they would significantly diminish the number on both sides. 

Their job was to just follow orders; no need to overthink it.  They were all a bunch of criminals down there anyway.  Why would any one of them not cheat to win? 

Gazing down from his window overlooking the guards and onto the prison yard, the warden could almost sense the tension between the inmates.  He knew that the next prison riot was at hand.  All that was left was to decide when the guards would be ordered to intervene.  

Had the other gang leader been elected once again, the warden knew that the riots would have already begun.  But starving the prisoners out would eventually accomplish the same goal.  That the prisoners could somehow be duped into believing that their misery had anything to do with each other was why they were the prisoners and he was the warden.

But now the warden was stuck with another problem.  The gang leader who had lost the election wanted to form a splinter-group apart from the rest of the prison population. 

The warden was at first angry at the hubris of a mere prisoner thinking that he could dictate terms to those in charge of the prison system.  But the warden knew that it was his own fault.  He had allowed the gang leader too much power over the other prisoners and he had become greedy for more.  But the warden also knew that as long as he had control over the guards, no revolt would be successful.  Any sort of violent action would only result in the prison administrators’ being successful in accomplishing their agenda.

And the agenda was, of course, to cull the prison population down to a more manageable size.  The prison administrators were very clear about that and the warden knew that he could easily be replaced if he didn’t go along with what they wanted. 

Sometimes the warden wondered if his situation was any better than those down there.  But memories of the prisoners slaughtering each other with the guards cleaning up the mess afterwards all due to his gang leaders’ manipulations soon made him begin to feel better.   

The warden then saw something in the prison yard that he could not at first believe.  He observed many prisoners coming in through the walls!

Yes, they appeared somewhat transparent, but even at that distance he could see these apparitions materializing in great numbers. And so could the other prisoners.

And then the warden understood.  These ghostly figures were those who had fought in the prison yard before and had all died on the inside.  They were the ancestors of those about to once again be turned upon each other.  These apparitions told the prisoners of the mistakes they had made due to believing the lies told to them by the “authorities” of the prison system.    

These ghosts told them that it was the guards that were really the most abject of slaves as there were many guards who had been there longer than the prisoners.  Only the guards would remain inside the prison walls of their own accord. 

And then those in various colored uniforms came through the walls.  These apparitions had been the guards killed in the prison yards both here and abroad.  They warned them of the approaching horror of watching their own progeny being enslaved under the very system that they had so blindly served.

In a moment of stark clarity, this entire circle of slaughter was emblazoned upon the consciousness of everyone in the prison yard.  And everyone knew that both the guards and the prisoners were slaves of a system that now wanted them dead. 

The prisoners and the guards processed it all as quickly as it was revealed, and a sad soft laughter could be heard moving across the crowd.  They now understood their folly of tying themselves to this endless cycle of selfless subjugation enforced by their own hands.  Some of the guards and the prisoners even exchanged their costumes in hopes of cheating the wheel of its next spin.  They now knew the way out.

The apparitions then took the hands of those still of flesh and blood and they simply walked out of the prison.  It was no great feat as no prison wall could hold anyone for long without being guarded.  And now the future of those who were once prisoners and guards was limited only by their imagination. 

As for the warden, all of his power had been drained from him, for his only strength had been his ability to steal the power of others.  It was then that he knew the same fear of so many of his previous prisoners. 

The administrators would not be pleased about having empty prisons.