His uniform was tight, his gut pinched in rolls and threatened to escape by exploding clothing each time he sat. Even though he reclined, stationary at his post, where his shift must have begun years prior, each breath wheezed asthmatically. And he continued to wheeze without words as Tennant spoke to him, or at him, from his cell across the room. From the dark, dank and reeking of rot cell they had put him in for holding and from where he had been talking to every guard on shift incessantly for days on end.
"Is this land some barbarous place where a man is given no trial, is there no jurisprudence here?" The guard would not reply. "I have been to such places... I met a man once who had been in the stocks so long he neck had grown to twice its height. You know," he seemed to pause, recalling quite readily the wheezy guard had not offered up his name so readily, as others before him had eventually conceded to do. "...In civilized lands to be imprisoned without cause or reason is injustice. I know you are a man of morals," but he didn't know, not the man or his name.
Glenn Burnie's guards had not been overly vicious, but it had been over a week now and the bruises were still healing. Scrapes from the fray had vanished into barely noticeable scars, the flesh stretched tight and smooth over the once broken skin. Tennant picked at them which did not help, picked at scabs and talked at guards. "Your Mr. Burnie, does he lock up innocent men often?" Either he was just making conversation or hoping for a reaction, neither came from Wheezy.