DEPRAVED-3-EBOOK

by Smith, Bryan

  Spider shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I just have this feeling about you. I’m sort of psychic. Got a bit of the sixth sense thing going on, you know? You’re one of the good guys. I can feel it.”

  Jessica smiled, but she didn’t respond to Spider’s assertion. She knew she wasn’t exactly evil, not like the fake Nazis who ran Prison 13, but she wasn’t exactly good, either. Not completely. But Spider didn’t need to know that.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bunk and dropped to the floor. “Come on, Spider. Show me the way.”

  Spider needed no additional prompting. She hopped down and they walked out of the cell together.

  11.

  Jessica Sloan was not Prison 13’s only fresh arrival. Down in the D-Block showers that morning, new inmate Holly Carmichael was also beginning her second day of incarceration. A far meeker woman than Jessica, Holly possessed almost none of the personality attributes conducive to long-term survival in a harsh new environment.

  After lights out the previous night, she was beaten up and molested by her cellmate. The woman sat on her face and forced her to perform oral sex after an extended period of knocking her around the cell. This morning her right eye was bruised and puffy, while her jaw felt sore and her bottom lip was split and swollen. Several hours after the fact, she could still feel Bridget Hart’s hard knuckles pounding into her over and over.

  She wished she could report the abuse to someone in a position of authority. It was what she would do in the normal world. Out there, if someone wronged you, there were ways to seek redress. She could call the police, who would take pictures of her battered face as evidence and arrest Bridget.

  In here, though, that just wasn’t an option.

  Bridget herself had broken it down for her this way: “There ain’t anything you can do about it. The guards don’t care about you. The people who run this place don’t give a shit. In here, bitch, it’s survival of the fittest. You know how that shit works in nature, right? You’ve seen the documentaries on TV, I bet. A lion chases down a gazelle and tears its skinny ass apart. It’s some bloody-ass shit, right? Sure, you know what I’m talking about, I can see it in your scared little eyes. Well, guess what? In here, you’re the gazelle and I’m the motherfucking lion. I own your ass now. That’s just how it is.”

  Bridget’s diatribe was obviously somewhat self-serving in some ways. Even so, Holly was sure the basic thrust of it was nothing less than the absolute truth.

  Her humdrum, average life in bland Midwest suburbia was gone, inexplicably so, and had been replaced by this insane horror show. Nothing about life here made sense to her. Bad behavior was not only accepted, it was apparently encouraged and rewarded. Everything was terrifying all the time.

  As she entered the showers, Holly tried not to think about any of that. She just wanted to get clean again. Dozens of threadbare robes were hanging from hooks embedded in the wall to her right. Holly had been issued a similar robe along with her inmate uniform. She was wearing it now. Against another wall was a long basin with several sinks. A big mirror overlooked the basin. A lone, robe-wearing woman stood at the basin, fluffing curly blonde hair as she peered at her reflection.

  The woman caught Holly watching her and sneered. “The fuck you looking at, dyke?”

  Holly flinched. “N-nothing.”

  “You want your ass beat?”

  Holly’s voice came out small and childlike. “No.”

  The woman glared at her. “Then stop fucking staring at me.”

  Holly nodded, averting her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  To her left was a short hallway. Concrete floor, tiled walls. The floor was wet from an endless stream of women traipsing back and forth from the showers. There was an opening at the end of the hallway on the right. Through it, she heard voices and a sound of running water. The main shower area, no doubt.

  After draping her robe over one of the hooks, Holly kept her gaze off the mean-spirited blonde woman as she headed for the hallway to the showers. She experienced some dismay as she passed through the archway into the main shower area. Instead of the rows of shower stalls she’d imagined, there was a large open space, the walls of which were lined with shower nozzles.

  Nearly all of them were currently in use. In most cases, a single woman stood beneath each nozzle. They were rinsing their hair or washing their bodies with thin slivers of white soap. Some women, however, were sharing a water stream. Two women near her—one white, the other black—stood beneath a single nozzle. They were kissing and fingering each other. The white woman pinched one of the black woman’s nipples, eliciting a loud groan.

  Holly headed for an open nozzle at the far side of the room. The woman showering next to her was a much older lady, gray-haired with sagging breasts. She looked harmless enough, an impression that lasted until the old broad looked her up and down prior to opening her mouth to waggle her tongue at her.

  Holly sighed.

  There was just no getting away from that kind of thing, it seemed. The only thing to do now was get clean as fast as possible and get the hell out of here. Showering with no privacy around this many other women made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know how she could ever get used to it, but she’d been told she would be here for the rest of her life, so what choice did she have? Spending the remainder of her years wallowing in her own filth wasn’t an attractive option, either.

  A thin bar of soap sat in a dish below the nozzle. It was wet and goopy and had obviously been used by numerous other women already today. One more use would reduce it to nothing, from the looks of it. The thought of using soap already applied to so many other bodies grossed her out.

  Again, though, what choice did she have?

  She was reaching for the soap sliver when a fist thudded into the small of her back, making her cry out in surprise as much as pain. Turning around, she saw the woman she’d seen standing at the basin. Her curly blonde hair was wet now, the water weighing it down and causing it to hang past her shoulders.

  “Remember me, bitch?”

  Four other women were arrayed around the blonde. All were young and white. They also had something else in common—a swastika tattoo between their breasts. As Holly stood there in mounting terror, the women moved into a loose circle around her.

  The blonde instigator came closer. “Why were you staring at me, bitch? You thinking of starting some shit? Don’t you know who you’re fucking with?”

  Holly whimpered. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to fuck with anybody, I promise. I’m just trying to take a shower.”

  Tears were spilling down her face now.

  One of the blonde’s cohorts—a tall, big-breasted woman with black hair—mocked Holly by screwing up her features in an exaggerated way and pretending to cry. “Oh, boo-hoo, look at me. I’m a dainty little prissy-pants ho-bag. Boo-hoo.”

  The other women laughed.

  Most of them laughed, that is. The blonde just kept glaring at Holly. “Starting shit with me is a bad idea.”

  Holly was shaking as she glanced around and saw that the other women in the shower room were pointedly ignoring the confrontation. Her gut twisted at the realization that no one would be coming to her aid. Something terrible was about to happen to her—again—and there was no way to keep it from happening.

  She locked eyes with the blonde, bottom lip trembling as she pleaded with her. “Please don’t hurt me. Please. I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

  The blonde sneered. “There’s only one thing I want you to do, bitch. I want you to bleed when I cut you.”

  Holly shook her head. “No. No. Please.”

  The group began to close in around her, forcing Holly to retreat until she felt the soap dish pressing against the center of her back. She started screaming for help an instant before the tall, black-haired woman’s fist connected with her chin. This blow snapped her head backward, bouncing it off the tiled wall. They converged on her then, a flurry of swinging fists an
d wet, bare flesh. The blows pounded into her stomach, breasts, and face. Cuts opened in her flesh. Blood mixed with the water still pouring from the nozzle overhead, forming a spreading pool of diluted crimson across the floor.

  There was a brief moment during which Holly thought the worst of it was over. She had slumped to the floor in a quivering, bloody heap. The rain of fists had finally ceased. She sat there weeping and blubbering and praying for someone to come help her.

  Then they grabbed her by the arms and dragged her out to the center of the room. By now the shower room had mostly emptied out. Holly was forced to lie flat on her stomach, with her arms twisted painfully behind her back. Her head was turned to the side, cheek pressed to the cold, wet floor. She cast her gaze upward and saw the angry blonde standing above her. The blonde smiled as she lifted a foot and placed it against Holly’s face, pressing down hard.

  “Put it in her ass,” she heard the blonde say.

  Holly’s heart was beating so fast it felt like it might explode. She had no idea what the blonde meant by that, except that it couldn’t be good. Then something punched into her rectum. An instant later, she felt the pain. It was a blade of some kind. A really sharp one. The blade was taken out and jabbed back in again.

  The foot on her head pressed down even harder. “Bet you’re sorry for starting shit now. Aren’t you, bitch?”

  Holly screamed as the blade yet again invaded her flesh. This time it went into a buttock rather than into her rectum. It felt like she had at least three inches of steel inside her. Another pool of blood was rapidly forming beneath her on the cold floor. Then the foot abruptly came away from her head.

  “Flip the bitch over.”

  There was some grunting and movement as the women shifted their grips on her. Seconds later, Holly gasped in pain as they followed the blonde’s directive. She was turned over and roughly dumped back on the floor. The blonde had the blade now—a shank with a toothbrush handle—and was kneeling over Holly.

  She grinned as she pressed the blade to the spot between Holly’s breasts. “We’re the Frauenschaft and we rule this place. Here’s something to remember us by. Hail the eternal Reich, bitch.”

  Holly squirmed and squealed as the blade again began to part her flesh, but the blonde’s cohorts easily held her in place. The blonde bit her bottom lip and her eyes narrowed to slits of intense concentration. She cut deep and kept at it until the swastika between Holly’s breasts was complete.

  Near the end of this, Holly wished they would just finish the job and slit her throat. She didn’t think she could stand to live even one more day in this nightmarish place. But that didn’t happen.

  Instead, the women left her lying there in that pool of her own blood, whimpering and quivering in pain as they moved over to the shower nozzles and rinsed off their sleek, perfect bodies. They talked among themselves and laughed about what they had done, but they paid no more attention to Holly, who passed out from the pain and blood loss before they departed.

  12.

  Along with Dr. Woronov, Livia Collins was responsible for providing real medical care to Prison 13 staff members. She never failed to perform this aspect of her duties with the utmost professionalism. No one on staff had ever complained about the quality of her work.

  She took no special pride in this. It was by far the most boring utilization of her skills. Any genuine enthusiasm was reserved for her other role at the prison. Though she wasn’t listed as such in the facility’s records, she was a torturer. That was her real job. In medieval times, she would have worked in a dungeon. It was what gave her some sense of actual fulfillment. Nothing made her happier than making other human beings suffer. It was especially good when she could prolong that suffering over a long period of time.

  Which was why Livia was so disappointed with herself this morning. She had allowed her great enthusiasm for her work to get the better of her, causing her to get carried away with Sally Nielsen the previous night. The woman had been alive when Livia had at last departed the infirmary to retire to her quarters. Evidently, however, Sally had died of blood loss or some other internal trauma during the night. This despite steps she’d taken to stabilize the woman.

  It was so upsetting. The woman hadn’t suffered nearly enough. Allowing the stupid hag to go to her demise after just one night was unconscionable. Now she would have put in a requisition for another subject or two. Hopefully it would go through faster than the last few requests.

  She was on the verge of summoning someone to remove the corpse when the infirmary’s swinging doors banged open. Two guards came in bearing a bloody woman on a gurney. The woman was a prisoner. Her name was Holly something-or-other. The nurse had administered her inoculations just yesterday.

  Livia couldn’t help marveling over the serendipitous timing. Here she’d been, lamenting Sally’s early death and moping about how long it might take to procure a replacement subject when along comes this early Christmas present. It almost felt like a special kind of miracle. An evil miracle.

  The thought made her giggle.

  One of the guards cocked an eyebrow at her as he and his colleague rolled the gurney to a stop at the foot of dead Sally’s bed. “What’s so funny?”

  Livia laughed again and shrugged. “You wouldn’t get it. What do we have here?”

  “This is just my opinion as a layman, you understand,” said the second guard. “But it looks to me like the bitch got the shit beat out of her.”

  “Got cut up a bit, too,” chimed in the other one. “Stabbed in the asshole.”

  Livia laughed, watching as the men transferred the unconscious woman to one of the empty beds. “Interesting. Flip her over. Yes, like that. Hmm. Well, my professional assessment is in line with your layman’s opinion. And, putting on my detective’s hat, I’d hazard a guess that the ladies of the Frauenschaft had something to do with this.”

  The guard who’d spoken first said, “Are you deducing that from the fucking swastika carved into her chest?”

  Livia nodded. “What else?”

  “Those crazy bitches are getting out of hand,” said the same guy again. “We’re not even supposed to--”

  “Shut it, Clark,” the other man said, interrupting him. “It’s not our business and we’ve got other shit to do.”

  Livia frowned, glancing at the one called Clark. “No, hold on. Tell me what you were about to say.”

  The man shook his head, a dark look crossing his face as he looked away from her. “My partner’s right. We’re too busy for fucking gossip.” He tipped his hat at her. “Later, Ms. Collins.”

  The men started turning away from her.

  “Hold on,” Livia said again.

  The men turned back to her.

  “Yeah?” Clark asked, looking wary.

  “I’m sorry,” Livia said, waving a hand at Sally. “This one’s dead. Could you take her to the crematorium for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Livia cuffed Holly’s wrists to the bed rails, the guards transferred Sally’s corpse to the bloodstained gurney. They then bid the nurse adieu and wheeled the body out of the infirmary.

  Time to get to work. After donning a fresh pair of latex gloves, Livia pulled apart Holly’s buttocks to examine her rectal wounds. They were small and would have been easy to miss if not for the blood still weeping from them. The wounds did not appear to be life-threatening. It was within the nurse’s ability to suture them quickly while the woman was still unconscious and spare her a significant amount of misery.

  Livia, of course, had no interest in doing anything of the sort. She inserted the gloved tip of a finger into one of the punctures. This elicited a weak moan from Holly, but she did not otherwise stir.

  Well, that won’t do, the nurse thought. I need you awake and screaming.

  She pushed the finger in deeper and wiggled it around, enlarging the wound. This increased the flow of blood seeping from it. The beautiful red stuff burbled up ar
ound her knuckles, overflowing past them and into the crevasse between the woman’s asshole and vagina. This caused Holly to come awake with a loud gasp.

  Which was followed by a scream.

  Livia smiled.

  That’s a start.

  She took her finger out of the puncture wound and seized a handful of Holly’s long hair, jerking her head back hard enough to make her gag. “Be quiet. You’re behaving in a rather unseemly way, piglet. Soon you’ll have good cause to scream your foolish head off, but for now I need you to answer some questions for me. Understand?”

  Holly gagged again as she tried to say something.

  Livia relinquished her grip on Holly’s hair, allowing her head to thump down on the pillow. “What was that, piglet? I’m afraid I couldn’t make out any of it for some reason.”

  Holly sniffled. “Why are you being so mean to me? Aren’t you a nurse or doctor? I’m hurt. Please help me.”

  Livia smirked. “Yes, actually, I am a nurse. The scrubs give it away, right? I’d congratulate you on your powers of observation, if not for the fact that you’d have to be a fucking simpleton not to make that deductive leap. Anyway, I’ll do my job now and get you something for the pain. I’ll be right back.”

  Holly whimpered softly. “Th-thank you.”

  Livia smiled. “No problem, piglet. Don’t you go anywhere, okay?”

  She headed for the infirmary’s swinging double doors and banged through them. The short hallway outside the infirmary was empty. A half-dozen long strides took her to a door about halfway to the end of the passage. Stenciled in block letters on the door was a single word: JANITORIAL.

  Inside the supply closet, Livia groped in the dark for the thin cord that would turn on the overhead bulb. She found it and gave it a yank. The light came on, but it was dim and flickering. The low-wattage bulb needed replacing. This was annoying, but she could see well enough to locate what she needed.

  Stepping around a dank-smelling mop bucket, she approached a row of shelves and scanned the items crammed onto their surfaces. Livia grabbed a large blue and white plastic bottle from a middle shelf and walked out of the janitorial closet. She left the door partly open, knowing she’d be making multiple trips between the closet and the infirmary throughout the day.