Excision

By Allan Gaw

Alpine Fellowship 2022 – Writing Prize Winner

The plasterwork overhead was cracked and water stained. A large section of the brown paint was peeling and hanging in a flap from the ceiling like an autumn leaf. A bulbous droplet of water was forming at the point, then swelling until it was heavy enough to make the leap into the half-filled bucket below.  The young man watched it splash with a satisfying plop and then he looked up to see the next droplet already forming and teetering before it too fell into the bucket. It was a distraction from all that had happened, and it allowed him to lose himself in the moment rather than having to think about what was to come.  But he was forced back into his fears when the door of the cell opened with the dry whine of un-greased metal on metal. The man in uniform did not enter. From the threshold all he said was, “It won’t be long now, son.”  His voice was almost paternal, and he stood looking at the young prisoner appraising him without judging.  That had already been dealt with by those upstairs. The young man was thin and looked as if he had been held in custody in the dark such was the pallor of his skin.  And he was a young one, the light fuzz on his cheeks only contrasted by the few sparse dark hairs on his upper lip and chin.

The young man nodded respectfully to his gaoler and as his eyes had been drawn away from the ceiling, he started to look idly about the walls of the cell.  He had been there no more than twenty minutes since coming down from the courtroom carrying his sentence with him, but he was already confused.  At the end of the trial, he had been asked by the judge if he had understood or if he had anything to say for himself, but he had simply shaken his head because he had no idea what had just been said or asked.  He expected to be sent to prison even though he had heard they were starting to shut them down.  How long might they shut him up?  He reckoned it would be years. However, no numbers were mentioned by the old, grey man on the bench and come to think of it, he was not even sure he had heard him properly.  It sounded as if he was to be taken down and subjected to ‘excision.’  The judge had definitely not said he would be sent to jail. But what could he possibly have meant?

The gaoler had seen the clueless expression the young man wore many times before.  Down in the holding cells beneath the main court, he had been well-used to processing those found guilty,, but this last year everything had changed.  The new way was said to be more humane.  It was certainly much cheaper and these days that was almost considered to be the same thing.  The prisons were indeed being closed down one by one, and they said it would only be a few years before they would be a thing of the past altogether.  Some of the convicts now were more savvy about their fate than others, but not this one.  He was just another frightened youth who had gone badly wrong and who had no idea what was about to happen. The gaoler watched him look around the walls of the cell at the scratched graffiti left behind by others who had passed through it.  There were the usual obscenities carved into the paintwork, some more creative than others, but there were also the ditties and crude cartoons suggestive of what ‘excision’ might entail.  The gaoler watched the young man’s eyes widen with the realisation of what he might be about to lose. He turned to the gaoler still standing in the doorway and pleaded with him for an explanation.

“What are they going to cut off me, sir?  Tell me. Please tell me what they’re going to do to me.”

“Don’t worry, there are no knives involved, son, and it’ll be over before you know it.  Never heard anyone scream if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I thought…”

“I know what you thought, son.  They all think that, but that’s not it. Not it at all.”

The gaoler turned away from the young man, keeping his frown to himself. He knew that what they were about to excise was much worse than anything a young man like this could imagine, and he was angry that it was always left for him to explain it.  Nevertheless, he drew up a second chair and checked that no one was in the corridor before he sat down.

“Listen, there’s not much time but I’ll do my best.  It’s new, you see, this excision business.  If you’d been sent down this time last year you’d have been waiting in here in your handcuffs for your transport to the lock-ups, but not anymore.  Now it’s all done and dusted within an hour of the sentence being passed, and then you get to walk out of here and go home.  It happens next door in the treatment room, and that’s where they do it. That’s where they take away words from inside your head.”

The young man drew back in surprise and half-smiled at the thought of it. He shook his head in even greater confusion.

“Words?”

“That’s right, they take them away. It doesn’t hurt, but afterwards it won’t be as if you’ve simply forgotten the word. It won’t be like it’s on the tip of your tongue or even like you’re trying to catch it as if it was a wisp of smoke with your fist. No, after they take it away, you won’t remember that you ever knew it in the first place. The word and everything it means will be gone.”

“Forever?”

“For people like you, yes.  Yours is a whole life sentence remember.”

“But why? Why take away words?  How is that a punishment?”

When the gaoler had first been told of excision, he had asked the same question. The woman from the Penal Research Institute who had come along to train them was cheerful and enthusiastic and keen to explain it all to them.  She had spent the whole day going through it, and she certainly had enough words for everybody in the room that day.  What it boiled down to she said was that language defines us or to put it more simply, words are important because they are really ideas.  “Without words, we can’t think,” she had said.  She showed a lot of slides and talked a lot about Inuits and camels and Aborigines and snow.  Most of it had gone over his head, but like all the others he was struck by one thing she had said.  “If I excise a word, you will first be unable to use that word, to talk about what that word means and then you will be unable to think about it or even access the idea of it.  Finally, even to imagine the existence of what it represents will be quite impossible for you.  If I take away the word ‘love’ from your vocabulary, you will be completely loveless for the rest of your life.” He remembered sitting under the fluorescent lights in that training room in silence as the real enormity of what was going to happen sank in.  The woman smiled when she noted that she finally had the attention of the room because now she could go on to explain how much worse than that this punishment could be. Or, of course, how much more effective, depending on your point of view.

The gaoler was not in the business of inflicting pain and sitting beside the young man in that dank holding cell, he tried to explain it gently without the woman’s satisfied smile and with as much compassion as he could find.

“In the past, putting you away in prison was about taking away your freedom, and this is really just the same. Different of course, but just the same in the end, do you see?”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. What words could they possibly take away that would be the same as imprisoning me? How do words make us free, and their absence put us in any kind of jail?”

As the young man asked the question, he looked about the cell, at all the crude line drawings of castration on the walls and then up at the high window where the only light was streaming in. His imagination started to run in circles in his head. Maybe it would be that, he thought. Could they take away the sunlight? Or perhaps it would be ‘hope’ or ‘happiness’. He wondered that if he had no word for happiness, maybe he would no longer know what it was or how to feel it.  Suddenly, he was alarmed as he thought it might be ‘touch.’ He had a girlfriend, and he could feel himself start to panic at the thought of a life without any kind of human contact.  But he calmed himself as he thought more about it. There were many other words for that, just as there were other words for happiness and for hope and even sunlight. They surely couldn’t take them all.  He might have to work harder after they had finished with him, but everything would still be there somewhere if he could find a way of thinking about it. If he could find those other words, he would find the back way into the words that had been taken. That’s what he would do.  There was always a back way, he thought.

The young man sat back on the chair under the high window. He was still looking up at the sunlight that had just become a little brighter through a break in the cloud, but now he felt a little easier.  He was just as confused about it all but was now beginning to wonder how bad this could really be.  The gaoler had said he would be able to walk out of here within the hour and he would be able to go home. So, he would be able to see his family again and his girl, and he thought he could even go back to work if they would have him. He would be out of this place for good, and he could put it all behind him. And, best of all, he would be free.

The gaoler watched the faintest of smiles flit across the young man’s face and it was his turn to be confused.  He waited quietly for him to turn back from the window and, when he did, he urged him with the slightest tilt of his head to explain what he could have found to smile about in all this. The young man met the gaoler’s frown with an even broader smile.

“No, it’s alright, I can live without a few words.  Never been much of a reader anyway, and ‘actions speak louder than words,’ isn’t that what they say?  It doesn’t matter what they do to me. As long as I’m out of here, I’ll be free.”

The gaoler realised he had failed to make it clear.  This was not the first time he had skirted around the subject with a prisoner unable to tell them what was really about to happen.  Perhaps he should leave it there, he thought.  After all, why did they have to know?  Wouldn’t it be better to be taken into the next room unaware of what they were about to lose? But he remembered his training and how that woman had laid it on the line—the new law made it mandatory for the prisoner to have their sentence of excision fully explained before it was executed. Time was running out and the gaoler wished he had the use of better words, but there was nothing left but to be blunt.

“You still don’t get it, do you, son? It’s much easier for them than that.  They don’t have to go through your brain and dissect out hundreds of words to inflict their punishment. To take away your freedom, all they have to do is excise a single word.”

The young man looked at his gaoler in disbelief and shook his head.

“And it’s one of the simplest ones of all—the word, ‘no.’  Without that word there is no choice and without choice there is no freedom of action or of thought.  Afterwards, it’s not just that you won’t be able to say ‘no’, you won’t even be able to imagine there’s such a thing as ‘no.’ You might as well be in a prison because the rest of your life will be determined by those around you. They will control you completely. You’ll be at their mercy for it will never even occur to you that you could go against their will.  The very notion of dissent or disagreement will be completely alien to you. You will be utterly tamed—subdued by your inability to say no or even understand that such a thing is possible. I’m sorry, son, I really am.”

A door opened in the corridor outside the cell and the two technicians who came in were efficient in immobilising the young man. With one on each side, they lifted him from the chair in a practised move and marched, almost dragged, him out of the cell and into the adjacent treatment room.  He was put in a chair and held down by the weight of one while the other secured him.  No words were spoken. No explanations were given. And no notice was taken of the fear in his eyes.

At his side, dials were adjusted and switches thrown. As the probe was put in position, the young man strained against the tight leather straps holding him in place.  He felt nothing but his heart was pounding almost as if it was trying to leave his chest.  He could barely swallow and was trying to bite at the air to fill his lungs. He still felt nothing happening, but the waiting for whatever it was to begin was unendurable and he began to moan and then cry, “No, no, no…”

There was a sudden metallic silence in the room as the young man stilled in the chair and it was almost as if his very last ‘No’ was still bouncing off the walls, now unheard but felt before it faded forever.

“Better now, son?”

“Yes.”

About the author:

Allan Gaw

Allan Gaw is a Scot. A pathologist by training, he is a writer by inclination. Most of his published work to date is non-fiction, including books and regular magazine articles on topics as diverse as the thalidomide story, the medical challenges of space travel and the history of vaccines. More recently he has been writing poetry, historical crime fiction and experimental novels. His short story, ‘The Mother of Heroes’, won the UK Classical Association Creative Writing Competition in 2022.

You can read that story and some of his other articles on his website: www.researchet.wordpress.com.