Perkins and I spent what we later found out to be three years in adjacent concrete cells. They were fairly roomy -- I'd estimate them to have been about twenty feet by twenty feet, about fourteen feet high. There too many ironies to count throughout this giant, strange story, and one of them is that they were significantly larger than any of the dorm rooms either of us lived in during college.
Perkins' room had a small window, too high to see out of but large enough to let some light in. Mine didn't. There was no light. I spent my time in pitch darkness, all the time, and it was a sort of lukewarm hell. Food was dished out through a small door twice a day, but the bastards somehow kept any light from sneaking in when they opened it up. The concrete was thin enough to let us talk to one another if we spoke up, but our jailkeepers wouldn't say a word. I hadn't seen a single soul, and hadn't heard from one apart from Perkins, since that day at Matt's house. The windowless van they'd thrown us into drove into a pitch-black garage, and from there I was pushed straight into my cell. I was, in every practical sense, blind. That last idyllic memory, the bright, sunny view that morning from Matt's father's bay window, couldn't escape me. Some nights I could see it vividly. It felt real. But in that prison, there were no days.
I'm pretty proud of my first few days (?) in there. I was fully aware that there was no reasonable expectation for me to be let out anytime soon. I didn't know why I was put here. But then, I didn't know why the effort was made to keep me alive, and that was the one thread of hope I grasped with every ounce that I had. It turned out that I didn't have much, because after a time (which, if you had asked me then, I would have estimated about a month) I started to grow mad.
Until then, Perkins and I had kept each other occupied with idle talk. We talked about anything. Music, football, girls, anything. After a time, despite Perkins' best efforts, he couldn't keep me grounded. Out of nowhere, in the middle of a conversation about our favorite Atari games, I just exploded into tears. I sobbed, then wailed, then screamed, in a sort of horrible, delirious rage. I started punching the walls with my fists. I thrashed my arms and legs about. Maybe I was jumping, maybe I was lying on my back. I didn't know. My only compass was my sense of touch, which after a time had seemed to obscure itself. The walls didn't feel warm or cold. They felt the same temperature as my body. I felt as though the Big Bang occurred, and instead of exploding into the universe, it built itself into me, and there was myself, and there was nothing else. No stars, no light, no forces of gravity, no hot, no cold. Only the invisible concrete walls that would cruelly decide to shove into me whenever I manipulated my limbs in a given pattern. Perkins said this lasted for about a week. I only remember a few short episodes.
I awoke on what I had decided was a clear morning, the same one I couldn't get out of my throbbing head. I ached all over. Perkins' shouting woke me up. "Casey! Casey! Answer, goddamn it! Answer me!" I didn't answer. I didn't care about him. I wished he would have just shut up and died. I wasn't interested. If I could have shut off my ears, I would have.
But I couldn't. I didn't answer because I didn't need him. There was no way I could get any better or worse at living in a black room. There were no more adventures or activities or objects or ideas. He was trying to help me. Fuck him. There wasn't a thing he could do for me.
After a time, I began to hear his tears in his voice. "Casey! You're not making a noise. I know you're there. I know you're just being an asshole." He paused. "Dude. I need you. I've got to have you there. You don't understand. If you're not there, I'm nothing. I'm gone."
Upon hearing that, I either opened or closed my eyes. It hadn't even occurred to me that it could work the other way. I was a miserable, unstable, blind, worthless wreck, and he needed me? I had made a terrible mistake.
"Perkins. I'm here, man."
"Oh God. Thank you. Thank God." I heard a few solid slaps from the other end of the wall.