by Smith, Bryan
“This is another delicacy. Can’t you see the care that was put into preparing this part of your meal?” The warden squirmed slightly on the edge of the bed. “Eat it, you ungrateful pig, or I’ll have Helga whip you to death.”
To emphasize this point, Helga cracked the whip on the floor again. This time it came within an inch of her splayed pinkie finger, making her screech in fright.
Tears pouring from her eyes, Spider reached for the mouse.
“No!” the warden roared, genuine fury flashing in her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you? Do not use your hands. Lower your face to the plate and eat like the dog you are.”
Whimpering, Spider did as commanded. The nausea she experienced this time was exponentially worse as she tasted the dead rodent’s squishy insides. Her gag reflex worked against her, causing her to cough the partially masticated body back up as it entered her throat. She begged for leniency as she was commanded to take it back into her mouth. The sight of its bile-soaked body made her stomach twist painfully.
“I can’t do it!” she cried, tears spilling again. “Please, please…I tried. I really did!”
Ms. Wickman grunted in disdain, shaking her head. “Two lashes, Helga. If she doesn’t do as she’s told after that, you may do with her as you wish.”
Helga’s heels clicked on the floor as she moved closer to Spider. “With pleasure, madam.”
Spider’s terror of the pain she was about to experience overwhelmed the sick feeling twisting up her insides. She put her face to the plate and drew the mouse into her mouth. This time she was determined to choke the thing down. She clamped her teeth shut and forced the little body down her esophagus, fighting against that gag reflex with everything she had.
This time it stayed down.
Ms. Wickman smiled. “That’s better. Your renewed resolve to do what’s necessary is admirable. However, you still have to take your punishment.”
Spider sniffled. “Please—“
The whip cracked across her back again, harder than before, a line of fire sizzling through her lacerated flesh. Blood poured out in a thicker stream from this latest wound, pattering on the floor like water from a leaky faucet. Then came that familiar swish again as the whip sliced through the air another time.
Spider screamed.
Helga and the warden laughed.
Spider was allowed a brief moment to ride out the worst of the pain.
Then the warden said, “Again, whore. Forward.”
Her arms trembling, Spider scooted forward. She was certain she wouldn’t be leaving this room alive. This happened sometimes. The women of D-Block were randomly taken from their cells and never seen again, gone to some hellish fate. Usually it didn’t happen to relative newcomers like her. Women who’d been on the block for years were more likely targets. But she should have known better than to take anything about life in Prison 13 for granted.
She’d been naïve.
This was all so unfair.
“Stop, whore.”
Spider stopped.
She was much closer to the bed now, only a few feet away. Directly beneath her was another plate. This time it was a cheap paper plate, the flimsy kind used at picnics and cookouts all across America during the summer. On it was an array of dead spiders. Some large, some small. As best she could tell, this was the last of the “treats” her tormentors had lined up for her.
She didn’t know whether to be happy about this or afraid. Some combination of both was probably most appropriate. There was a strong chance she would be killed after she finished this part of it.
On one level, of course, this was terrifying.
On another, she was no longer sure how much she cared. This was Hell, anyway. She was in Hell. And, more than anything, she wanted out.
She glanced up at the warden.
Ms. Wickman’s hand was still between her legs, her fingers flexing more insistently than before. She bit her lip a moment before saying, “This is the last course of your meal tonight.” She smiled. “And it should be your favorite. You’re called Spider for a reason, right? You love them, don’t you?”
Spider said nothing.
Her back felt like it was on fire. She felt sick and wanted to scour her mouth and insides with acid to take away the disgust she felt at the things she’d been forced to ingest. But that wasn’t an option. Nor was anything other than total submissive compliance with the warden’s sadistic wishes.
She put her mouth to the plate and began to eat. Though she felt a revulsion similar to what she’d experienced upon tasting her other “treats”, her stomach soon settled down and her gag reflex was only slightly tickled. It helped that the little bodies weren’t stuck to some gross piece of adhesive paper, of course, but they really didn’t taste quite as bad as either the mouse or the chewed up flies. In most cases, she was able to swallow them whole without chewing, which also helped. Just one or two of the furrier, larger specimens required a bit of mastication and even they weren’t bad.
She burped when she was finished.
Helga laughed.
Ms. Wickman spread her legs wide and moved her ass to the very edge of the bed. “Excellent, inmate. I’m very pleased. Nice recovery from your earlier troubles, I have to admit. I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
Spider figured now was the time to be humble. “Thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t show the proper appreciation earlier.”
Ms. Wickman smiled. “That’s okay, child. We learn from our mistakes, don’t we? Do you know that I died once? Well, I did. And I learned from that, too.”
Spider’s brow furrowed.
Ms. Wickman chuckled. “I can see that you’re confused. Don’t let it trouble you. The point is, I believe in well-earned second chances. And you have earned yours. I want you to do something for me. If you agree to it, you will not die here tonight.”
A silent moment elapsed.
The furrow in Spider’s brow deepened. “I’ll do anything. What do you want me to do?”
Ms. Wickman took her hand away from her crotch. “All in good time, dear. We’ll have some wine and discuss it later. In the meantime…” She wriggled her hips slightly. “Come and taste your final treat.”
Spider sighed, knowing what she had to do.
She crawled the rest of the way to Ms. Wickman and performed as required.
ELSEWHERE ON THE NIGHTSIDE…
In a cell on A-Block, a woman named Florence Washington smothered her cellmate to death with a pillow. At fifty-five, Florence had been at Prison 13 for thirty-one years. Though she didn’t know it, her period of incarceration was the prison’s current longest on record. In a way, it was a sort of miracle she’d survived for so many years at the prison.
Well, perhaps “miracle” wasn’t quite the right word. Either way, she had finally decided she couldn’t take it anymore. After extinguishing the life of her cellmate—and lover for the past decade—she drew the blade of a shank across her throat and collapsed to the floor, where she bled out.
Back in D-Block, Carol Ferguson was crying in the bottom bunk of her cell. She was one of Prison 13’s newest arrivals, having been there less than a month. As she wept, her cellmate groaned and rolled over on the top bunk, telling her to shut the fuck up. But Carol, a woman guilty of nothing, continued crying.
A regular churchgoer in the normal world, she’d committed no crimes, had always been faithful to her loving husband, had no enemies she could think of, and was a devoted mother to her three young children. She had no clue why she was here, except that someone had it in for her for reasons she would never know. Some of the nicer ladies on D-Block had assured her she would eventually stop crying herself to sleep every night, but Carol didn’t believe them.
She was sure the tears wouldn’t stop until she was dead.
In another part of D-Block, Angie Donovan was having her face shoved into the toilet bowl by her cellmate, Donita Garrison. She spluttered and tried to ra
ise her head out of the water, but the other woman was larger and much stronger. Donita believed Angie had stolen her last cigarette. It wasn’t true. Angie didn’t smoke at all, but Donita was high on something and couldn’t be reasoned with at all.
Donita kept her cellmate’s head beneath the water until she stopped struggling.
In the infirmary, as Nurse Collins continued with her exploratory surgeries on Sally Nielsen, the old woman named Agnes expired unnoticed on one of the other beds.
And so it went all night long—as it did every other night—all throughout Prison 13, as the sounds of suffering resonated in so many places, a symphony of misery that went on and on without end…
10.
The corpse was gone when she woke up the next morning. That it was gone didn’t bother Jessica. It had been spotted and removed. No mystery there. What she did find somewhat disturbing, however, was that this had been accomplished without rousing her from sleep.
Over the years, she’d trained herself to be a light sleeper. This was an absolute necessity in her line of work. The goal was to always be able to snap out of any doze and be ready to defend herself within seconds should the need arise.
She supposed it was possible that whoever had removed the body had deliberately gone about their work as quietly as possible in an effort not to wake her. This, however, seemed unlikely. The idea that any prison employee would give a damn about disturbing the sleep of an inmate struck her as absurd. Then again, if said employee was aware of her reputation, the stealth might merely have been a product of wariness.
Regardless, the bottom line was the body was gone and she was not back in shackles, nor had she been returned to solitary. Making assumptions about anything in a place like this was a dodgy proposition at best, but it seemed no punishment for the murder of her cellmate was in the offing.
And the failure to wake while the body was being removed could be attributed to the extremely elevated levels of stress and abuse her body and mind had been put through over the last couple days. Perhaps a period of deep, unconscious recovery had been necessary to get herself back online, so to speak.
The door to her cell was open. She heard voices from outside the cell, a low rumble of muted conversation from what sounded like—at the very least—dozens of women. Something in the quality of those voices was suggestive of women still groggy from sleep going about their early morning routines. What exactly that entailed, Jessica did not know, except that inmates were apparently free to leave their cells at this time.
As Jessica watched from her top bunk, she saw inmates shuffling by on the landing outside on their way to somewhere else. In a normal prison, they might be headed to the showers or the dining hall for breakfast prior to heading to a work site.
Here, though?
Who the fuck knew?
Jessica supposed she’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, despite her long, deep sleep, she still felt a bit tired. She rolled onto her back and laced her hands beneath her head as she stared up at the concrete ceiling, which was only a few feet overhead. The ceiling was adorned with copious graffiti. Names, years, jokes, drawings, random profanity, and heartfelt expressions of homesickness and desperation.
Jessica was reading a particularly poignant example of the latter when she glimpsed a shadow on the wall. Someone was climbing up on to the bunk with her. Her hands came away from the back of her head and she started to sit up as her defensive instincts belatedly kicked in, but by then the slender little woman had plopped down on the opposite end of the bunk.
The woman sat cross-legged with her hands folded in her lap, eyeing Jessica in a way that betrayed curiosity but not malice. She was thin and had stringy brown hair. Her features were mostly pleasant enough, even attractive, sort of, but her eyes were big. They looked almost too large for her face, in fact, lending her a sort of googly, bug-eyed aspect.
She did not strike Jessica as threatening, at least not in any immediate way. Again, she was disturbed more by this additional evidence that her instincts—usually so finely-honed—remained off-kilter. She hadn’t detected the slightest hint of the woman’s presence in the cell until glimpsing that shadow.
That was worrisome.
Jessica sat up and stared at the woman a moment before saying, “Who the fuck are you?”
A corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. “I’m Spider.”
“Spider. Really?”
The little woman nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s not your real name.”
Spider shrugged. “Depends on your definition of ‘real’, I guess. It feels more like who I really am now than the name my parents gave me.”
Jessica yawned and rubbed at her bleary eyes with balled fists. She blinked slowly a few times, banishing the last of the lingering post-sleep grogginess.
“Okay. Spider it is, then. Just so I know, what’s your given name?”
“Lenore Flanagan.”
Jessica nodded. “That’s not such a bad name. Kind of cool, actually. The Poe connection, I mean.”
“I never said it wasn’t. It’s just not me anymore.”
Jessica shrugged. “Fair enough.”
She glanced out to the landing as she heard more inmates shuffling by. They moved in a steady flow now, some of them in obvious groups. Members of the same gang, maybe. Or just friends sticking together.
Jessica looked at Spider. “What are you doing here, Spider? Why are you in my cell?”
Not to mention climbing up on my bunk uninvited. What’s up with that weirdo shit?
No need to say that part of it out loud, though. She already sort of knew the answer. The girl just was weird. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, unless the weirdness crossed unacceptable borders. This bunk thing came close to crossing that line, but Jessica’s curiosity was aroused now.
That same corner of Spider’s mouth twitched again. “I’m your new cellmate.”
Jessica grunted. “Huh. That was fast. Weird that they’ve assigned me a new one already.”
Spider’s shy little smile broadened a bit. “Not so weird, really. There’s another reason I’m here.”
“And what’s that?”
The smile slipped some. “They want me to spy on you.”
Jessica stayed silent a long moment as she thought about that. Then she sighed. Being spied on wasn’t a comforting thing, but it didn’t surprise her. “By ‘they’, I assume you mean the warden.”
Spider’s expression was apologetic, her nose crinkling and her brow knitting as she said, “Yeah. Sorry.”
Jessica laughed. “Why are you apologizing to me? I’m guessing you were threatened, right? Do this for us or die horribly, that kind of thing?”
“Pretty much.”
“Why are you even telling me this, then? Doesn’t seem like it’s in your best interests.”
Spider shrugged. “Nobody likes a snitch.”
“Nobody likes to be tortured and killed, either.”
Spider cast her gaze downward and stared at the folded hands in her lap. “Yeah.”
Another long, silent moment elapsed.
Then Jessica said, “So does this mean you won’t actually be spying on me? That you might be open to feeding that bitch a bit of disinformation?”
Spider looked at her, shook her head. “Oh, no. I’ll definitely be giving them what they want. I’ll tell them everything you tell me, let them know of any suspicious shit you might get up to. And I definitely won’t be feeding them any bullshit. They’d know, somehow, and I don’t want that.”
Jessica frowned. “So why tell me at all?”
“It only seemed fair. I’m a snitch now, but at least you know about it. Puts us on a level playing field.”
Jessica’s frown deepened. “Huh.” It made a twisted kind of almost sense. “Okay, fine. We know where we stand. That’s good. But let’s forget about all that for a moment.” She tilted her chin to indicate another group of women passing
by outside. “Where are they going? What usually happens this time of day?”
Spider looked grateful for the change of subject. “Those bitches are either off to the showers or the dining hall. Some of them will skip the shower in order to get a better seat for breakfast.”
Jessica nodded. “How long do we have for bathing and breakfast?”
“Two hours. Sounds like a lot of time, but there’s a lot of bitches living on D-Block. Takes time for all of them to cycle through the dining hall and get their food. If you want a morning meal, you’d better get down there soon. I’m guessing you haven’t eaten in a while.”
She hadn’t thought of food yet, but as soon as Spider mentioned it, Jessica’s stomach emitted a low grumble. “Yeah, okay. I’ll get down there in a minute. How shitty is the food here, by the way?”
Spider shrugged. “Not the best, but not as bad as you might think. It’s all pretty edible.” She made a face. “Better than what I had last night anyway.”
Jessica said nothing, awaiting an explanation. When none seemed forthcoming, she pressed the subject. “What do you mean by that?”
Spider looked deeply uncomfortable. She fidgeted a little at the other end of the bunk, glanced out at the landing, and again looked at Jessica. “They forced me to do some nasty stuff.”
She told Jessica all about it.
Despite the disgust she felt at what she was hearing, Jessica managed to keep her expression neutral as she listened to the tale. “I’m sorry, Spider,” she said at last, when the other woman was done speaking. “That’s terrible.”
Spider touched her stomach. “I’m still feeling kind of queasy.”
“I bet.” Jessica stretched her arms and heaved a big breath. “I guess I better get my ass down to the dining hall. You coming with me?”
Spider smiled. “Of course.” She reached out and clasped hands with Jessica. “And I just want you to know, the whole spying thing aside, I really like you.”
Jessica looked at her askance, arching an eyebrow. “You hardly know me, Spider.”
