A Glass of Water

I'd been told three things when hired to patrol this prison.
First, to never spend too much time near any of the prisoners.
Second, that eating on the job would get me fired.
And third, to never, ever, give prisoner three-hundred-sixty-three a glass of water.
I'd broken rule one after my sister's brother-in-law got locked up for stealing a royal rooster. Because really, what harm could passing on his mother's scolding message that he'd earned every month that he would spend in here, since anyone would an ounce of sense would have gone for one of the hens, and would have waited for the proper moment, instead of barging into the royal roosts in the middle of the day, during the annual celebration of chickens.
My sister certainly married into an odd family.
Rule two was broken all the time by my fellow guards, and no-one had been fired for it yet.
So that's why I'm eating now. Breakfast was quite some time ago, and lunch went by without even a nibble. So I'd given in when a fellow guard, Rupert, offered me some grapes.
So here I am, walking down dimly lit corridors, and plucking grapes off one by one as I do my rounds.
By the time I plucked the last grape, I was pretty thirsty.
So I got a glass of water at the next guardroom I passed, waving away the laughter of another guard as he warned me not to let our superiors catch me with that in the three-hundreds.
I'd finished off most of the glass by the time I reached the door of prisoner three-hundred-sixty-three.
And for the first time, I heard something move from within that room.
"Wait," the voice was barely a rasp, yet something in it made me stop.
I contemplated responding, but that would be a wonderful way to beg for one of my superiors to come around the corner and catch me breaking two rules at once.
"I know you must have your orders, but there's been a mistake." The voice rasped again, and I could picture some old, hollowed shell of a man that must be the source of the voice. It did get a bit tiring, patrolling a prison where they never had you check on the prisoners. Who fed them? We guards never did, that much I knew.
"I'm not the one they want. My brother was at fault, not I." The voice continued to rasp, and I caught a flicker of movement from behind the barred window set in the door.
I took a step closer, squinting in the dim light to make out features that stuck me as off.
The figure in three-hundred-sixty-three didn't seem to be an old shell at all. The longer I stood there squinting to make out some detail, the more I found.
This prisoner was surprisingly young for how long I'd heard that this cell had been occupied. Young, with a curtain of straggly black hair and large eyes the color of sea foam. A pretty face, despite the dry, flaky skin and cracked lips.
And most surprising, this prisoner was a girl. A young girl, scarcely old enough to have done anything worth being thrown in here.
Well, I suppose if one could be locked up for attempted rooster theft, then a young girl could be imprisoned.
"Your brother?" I'd asked the question before I'd realized it, and quickly glanced down the corridor.
"Yes. He's always getting into trouble, with a whistling warble that would drive any maiden mad." The girl rasped, her eyes flickering as they caught the light. "He planed this, you know."
I frowned. "Planned what?"
She shook her head and offered a painful sounding laugh. "For me to be locked in here. Far away from my home, from the carefree waves and crying gulls." Her raspy voice gained a wistful tone, and she sighed.
If she told the truth, then her brother must have a lot of power. Or money.
Of course, she could be lying.
I didn't know enough about any of the prisoners to know if they lied.
Maybe that's why we weren't supposed to talk with them.
The girl gave a horrible, hacking cough. Her coughs continued for quite a while, and I wondered if they were the source of her raspy voice. Probably caught something down here, in the cold and the dark.
"Please," The girl's voice was weak, and her entire frame trembled like a sapling in a storm. "Might I have something to drink?"
Something to drink. Such a simple thing. Everyone needed to drink something at some point. It couldn't hurt anything to let the girl drink.
Could it?
My arm was outstretched before I'd made up my mind to give her my glass. The moment it came within reach, she snatched it like a dog snatched a meaty treat from midair.
She greedily drank, though there wasn't much left in the cup.
Then she began to change.
The flakiness of her skin smoothed, her chapped lips became moist, plump, and red. Suddenly she wasn't so little, and couldn't be called such a childish term as girl.
"The door is made from wood." She spoke, and it was such a melodic tone that it had to be called song. "Take that torch from the wall, and burn it down for me."
I moved, grabbing the torch from its place with ease. As I approached the door, I paused.
Why should I burn the door? It was there to keep this woman, this prisoner, contained.
Why was I listening to her?
"Burn the door. Come to my aid, and receive your reward." The woman sang, each word beckoning me to her.
The door burned.
So quickly it burned. Such fierce flames, despite the dark dampness of the prison.
I coughed, the smoke burning my eyes.
But I couldn't leave.
Not while she sang for me to come.
When enough of the door had burned, I broke the rest down with some well-placed kicks. My foot hurt, and there were burnt holes on my boot, but that didn't matter.
I'd made it to her.
The woman looked at me, her sea foam eyes and plump red lips almost as seductive as her song.
Closer, come closer.
She placed a hand on my check, and it was cold.
So cold.
Like a lake in winter, when the ice cracks.
Her song faded as her lips parted in a smile.
A toothy smile. that widened impossibly as her jaws stretched wide to reveal row upon row of serrated teeth.
Those teeth tore into me before the silence could reclaim the sanity that her song had stolen, and so I couldn't even scream.