The crack in the wall of Devon’s cell got bigger every day.

 

He stared at it for hours and minutes and seconds on end. He ought to know if it was getting bigger. He’d be the one to ask if you wanted to know anything about that crack.

 

Sometimes Devon thought the crack looked like a river. He thought he could hear the pattering of raindrops falling into it as it swept along, carrying leaves and fish and cigarette butts away to who knows where. Somewhere far from this eight by ten cell with fluorescent light, silence, and a crack in the wall.

 

Other times he thought the crack looked like the jumping of his heartbeat on a hospital monitor, beeping out the melody of life with every tick of the metronome. Sometimes he thought he wanted to flatten out that line and reduce the tune to a single note.

 

Clang! Creak. Clatter. Slam!

 

That was the sound of breakfast. Or lunch. Or maybe a midnight snack. His tray of potatoes and pasta with plastic fork sat on the bare floor of the cell where it had been tossed through a slit in the inches thick, reinforced door. Sometimes Devon would stare at the tray for hours before eating. Sometimes he would bury his face in the warm potatoes like a bear diving for salmon, flinging bits skin around the room.

 

None of it affected his situation. There was no one to care what he did or how he lived.

 

He stared at the crack and willed it to grow. He willed it to split and yawn into a gash that cleaved the walls of his cell and sent them tumbling into the ocean that he imagined was outside.

 

In his mind, Devon’s cell perched at the top of a lighthouse. It overlooked a rocky shore where foaming waves splattered, and ships cut through fresh, salty air bellowing their horns. If he put his ear against the crack, he could almost hear them, the ships, the waves, the crying seagulls.

 

Clang! Creak. Clatter. Slam!

 

Devon looked away from the crack, startled, confused, scared. It should not already be dinner. It should be many hours before he ate next. Devon’s fluorescent bulb never faded, leaving him in an eternal, pallid noon. But he could count hours and minutes. He knew the time. The potatoes on the tray challenged his reality.

 

Maybe his time leaked through the crack, slowing or speeding events. The crack was a mouth whose breath warped reality. He looked into its depths to analyse its bends and crevices. He fell into it and into the darkness, down, down. Searching, prying.

 

Inside the crack was a way out. If he went far enough, if he could navigate the bending passages beneath, he could find it. He could break through to the other side, and the mist of the waves would cool his cheeks and the wind would prickle his skin. Or he would splash, flailing, into the river and be carried downstream along with the salmon and leaves--on and on, to somewhere else, somewhere he could never decide or plan. Somewhere unknown.

 

Clang! Creak. Clatter. Slam!

 

He had not eaten the food from the previous tray. He had not slipped it out the slot in the door like he was supposed to. Or had he? There were not two trays on the dusty, bare floor at his feet, only one. One beige, plastic tray with a baked potato and carrots and a slice of ham.

 

He could not get more food without returning the tray. Had they taken it while he stared at the crack? Had someone been in his cell, with him? Another person? Devon thought if that had happened, he would be able to feel some sense of ‘other’ in the air. It would be a charge, like electricity or magnetism, being near another human.

 

He tried to remember what it was like to touch skin. He thought about the warmth of hugs and the smell of hair. He cried hot, silent tears, and stared into the crack. It expanded, and darkness poured from it like heavy, black smoke.

 

It must be night, thought Devon. The night is leaking in. Devon cupped his hands and let the darkness pool in his palms. It slipped in slender wisps between his fingers as he lifted his hands to his lips, and drank.

 

The darkness filled him and he stared into the crack. It split, and widened and swallowed him whole, a toothless mouth closing around him forever.

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