The air that filters through my barred window has turned cool early, this year. The coming winter will be harsh. It is not the first I have spent in this cell, but I fear it may be the last. I am not as young as I once was, and the guards have been less merciful in recent years. The blankets they hand out are thinner, when the pallets are changed they seem to contain less straw each time. Already, I have developed a deep cough which racks my body. The sound is similar to the cough that troubled the last occupant of the cell next to mine Truthfully, I have a hard time missing him. He was a pleasant enough man, if incoherent at times, but he had a tendency to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. It made it very difficult to sleep.
	Today, however, should prove to be interesting. Last night was the first time in a long while that a new prisoner was brought into my wing of the dungeon (making an absolutely damnable racket in the middle of the night, naturally. Ah, well, no rest for the wicked.). It takes until nearly the middle of the day, when sun no longer filters through my window, but finally I hear groaning through the poorly wrought masonry. I scoot close to the wall, resting my hand against its stones.
	“Are you awake?”
	“I think so,” comes the slow reply, “but I wish I wasn’t.”
	“I can imagine so,” I commisserate, “I heard you being brought in last night. The guards may have been less rough if you didn’t put up as much of a fight.”
	“I may have ‘put up less of a fight’ if I had committed any crime!” he bursts out, fatigue forgotten.
	“Well, I suppose they must not have beaten you that badly. Pray tell, what crime is it that you’re being locked up for not committing?” He goes silent. “Though, if you’re come to my lonely wing of this place, perhaps you haven’t committed any. Yet.”
	“What are you on about?” he asks suspiciously. “The guards were laughing about dragging me over here after all the regular cells were full. None of them would say why.”
	“Well,” I say, suddenly self-conscious but undeterred, “I’m told that this wing is reserved for madmen.” Again, he is silent. Mental afflictions are not terribly fashionable.
	“Are you mad, then?”
	“Are you?”
	“Of course not.”
	“Well, then.”
	“But you speak as if you’ve been here longer.”
	“I have.”
	“Long enough that you wouldn’t be moved over here on account of the overcrowding.”
	“That’s correct.”
	“So you must be mad.”
	“Your logic is inescapable; it would seem that I am mad.” He sighs in frustration. I’m not sure why, he seems to have things figured out.
	“That’s what you did, then? You were locked up for being mad?”
	“No, I was locked up for being mad after I was locked up for committing a crime. On some days, however, I suspect that a madman is somebody who has been locked up long enough that none can remember his crime.”
	“So you’re not mad?”
	“I suppose that would depend on how you decided who was mad and who was not.”
	“Oh, for- enough of your riddles! Speak to me no more, madman.”
	And that’s all he said on the first day.

	“Hey. Madman, are you there?” The voice interrupts my morning stretching. Of course, ‘morning’ is used somewhat loosely, as the sky is still dark. Life’s ability to deliver exciting new twists to my private hell never ceases to amaze me: On a night when I should have finally gotten some peace, my own cough keeps me from sleeping.
	“I haven’t used my repertoire of black magics to escape since the last time we spoke, no. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
	“I was trying to,” his voice comes back muffled through the cracks. “All your shuffling and coughing is keeping me up.”
	Truly, history repeats itself.
	“And I wanted to ask,” he continues, “what did you do, anyway, to end up here?”