DEPRAVED-3-EBOOK

by Smith, Bryan

  Sensing a hostile presence even before she glimpsed the blur of motion in her peripheral vision, Jessica executed a quick spin kick that caught the woman in her midsection. The force of the kick knocked the air out of her and sent her flying backward. Something fell from the woman’s hand and clattered to the damp tiled floor. Jessica scooped the object up. It was a classic prison shank, a crude thing fashioned from a razor blade affixed to the melted end of a toothbrush handle.

  A guard was standing with his arms crossed against the opposite wall. Shonda had known he was there and had been counting on his non-interference. That they had some kind of understanding was obvious. What wasn’t so obvious was the depth of the relationship. Would he stand by and watch Jessica deal with Shonda or would he attempt to intervene?

  The apparent answer came an instant later as he nonchalantly turned away from her and stared off down the hallway in the opposite direction.

  Shonda was still on her back several feet away, moaning as she clutched at her stomach and writhed weakly on the floor. She was hurting too much to present an immediate threat. The standard prison move here would be to slit her throat, dump the shank, and get on back to the block. And Jessica might have done just that had another woman not emerged from the showers at that very moment.

  This woman had a stocky build and short, spiky brown hair. Her thick arms were covered with bad prison tattoos. A new plan formulated in Jessica’s head so fast it initially existed only as a series of quick, flashing images rather than fully-formed thoughts. The woman paused as she came into the hallway, her eyes going wide with surprise at the sight of Shonda squirming on the floor. Everyone on D-Block knew Shonda was part of Alice Kincaid’s gang and therefore, theoretically, untouchable. Seeing her like this couldn’t have been anything less than shocking.

  There was a brief window of opportunity here, one that would close within seconds if Jessica didn’t act right away. Still not really consciously thinking about it, she seized the woman by the neck and smashed her face against the edge of the archway. This was done with considerable force. The woman dropped like a rock to the floor as Jessica let go of her.

  Hearing this new commotion, the guard started to turn in Jessica’s direction. She was on him before he could uncross his arms, ripping the shank’s blade across his throat. She twisted out of the way as she did this, managing to avoid the messy arterial spray of blood.

  He was dead on the floor seconds later. The woman she’d just attacked was also dead. Working fast, she arranged the bodies in a manner that suggested the woman had attacked the guard and that he’d managed to kill her in the last seconds before he expired. The staging might not hold up to close scrutiny, but Jessica doubted anything like a full investigation would occur. This was a secret prison, not the streets of a city in the normal world. Violent things got swept under the rug all the time. It’d be far easier for the people in charge here to accept the scene as she’d set it rather than waste a lot of time looking into it. And, after all, it would look relatively plausible.

  Success at this point hinged entirely on getting away as soon as possible, preferably before anyone else came along. With this in mind, she hefted up the still-groaning Shonda, slung her over her shoulder, and hurried on down the hallway. There were more guards inside a glassed-in cubicle down the next stretch of hallway, but they were engaged in a sex act with each other and didn’t even glance her way as she continued on by them.

  Soon she was in a common area, where prisoners were engaged in various leisure activities. A few women were taking turns shooting a basketball at an old hoop that had no net. Some other women, seated at a nearby table, were engaged in a game of cards. Several heads turned Jessica’s way as she hurried through the common area. Basic human curiosity compelled the attention. But when the identity of the woman slung over Jessica’s shoulders registered, they all pointedly looked away, not wanting to get involved in Alice Kincaid’s business in any way.

  She encountered more guards as she continued to make her way through the block. One or two looked at her in a way that suggested they were considering stopping her to ask some questions. Again, however, they opted not to upon identifying Shonda. This told her something valuable. While it was possible only the two guards mentioned last night were directly involved with the black market operation, the rest of them had some degree of awareness about it and were not inclined to interfere or get mixed up in the business of their colleagues.

  Jessica was thus able to continue unimpeded the rest of the way to Alice Kincaid’s cell. The woman was lying stretched-out on her side on her futon, with the palm of her right hand propping up her head as she watched Cannibal Holocaust on the boxy old TV. She reached out with a remote and froze the fuzzy old VHS image on the screen as Jessica came into her cell.

  “Um…what the fuck?”

  Jessica dumped the still-woozy Shonda on the shag rug and stood with her hands on her hips, panting from the exertion of carrying a barely conscious woman all the way from the showers and up three flights of stairs. “This bitch tried to kill me.”

  Alice tossed aside the remote and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the futon. She eyed Shonda with curiosity a moment before again looking at Jessica. “Okay. Back up. What happened?’

  Jessica pulled the privacy curtain into place at the front of the cell and took a seat in a chair near the futon, positioning herself so she could keep an eye on Shonda while she talked to Alice. After heaving a breath and wiping damp strands of hair out of her eyes, she told her all about what had gone down.

  After Jessica fell silent, Alice sat there with a thoughtful expression for a few moments before saying, “So why didn’t you kill her?”

  Jessica shrugged. “She’s part of your thing here, one of your higher-ranking girls from what I understand. I thought what to do with her should be left up to you.”

  Alice smiled. “I appreciate that, Jess.” She patted the edge of the futon. “Here. Come sit with me.”

  Jessica joined her on the futon, sliding in close as Alice wrapped an arm around her back. She hoped this wasn’t the beginning of another sexual interlude, but if that was the woman’s intent, she would go along with it. She needed to stay close to her in case any additional information about the rumored big changes at the prison came down the pike.

  Alice leaned in and kissed her on the neck. Her wet lips lingered on Jessica’s flesh a moment before she pulled back and looked her in the eye. “Jess, what you call my thing is actually our thing. I don’t want you to think of me as some disconnected queen living in careless luxury up in the castle while all the little fucking peons do the hard work. We’re equals, you and me.”

  Jessica shook her head. “We’re not, though. You’re the boss.” She slipped a hand between the other woman’s legs, squeezing an inner thigh. “I don’t have a problem being beneath you.”

  Alice laughed. “Yeah, you kind of proved that last night, didn’t you?” She laughed again. “Beneath me. You’re funny, Jess.”

  Jessica gave that inner thigh another squeeze. “I mean it. I appreciate that you respect me, but we’re not equals. No matter what, I will always defer to your judgement.” She indicated Shonda with a tilt of her chin. “So that’s why I brought her back here. You already lost one of your top girls. I didn’t want to take out another one without your approval.”

  Alice nodded and turned her attention to Shonda, who was sitting up on the shag rug now and eyeing them with woozy wariness. “Look who’s back with us.”

  Shonda grimaced. “That bitch attacked me, boss.”

  “Not the way I heard it.”

  Shonda’s grimace shifted, becoming a sneer. “You can’t believe a word that cunt says, boss. She’s not one of us.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Alice disentwined herself from Jessica and rose from the futon. Shonda’s eyes widened and she leaned backward as Alice came closer. “Boss, you can trust me, I swear. Whateve
r this bitch told you was a load of fucking bullshit. She’s trying to take over the operation. That’s why she killed Lucy last night.”

  “Is that so?”

  There was desperation in Shonda’s eyes as she scooted backward a few inches. She was breathing rapidly and her skin was sheened in sweat. After a nervous glance Jessica’s way, she licked her lips and said, “Yeah, I know because she told me right before she attacked me.”

  Alice laughed. “You stupid cow. You shouldn’t make shit up based on shit you don’t know directly. She killed Lucy last night because I told her to do it. Now, I can’t totally blame you. You weren’t here and you thought you were getting justified revenge for your friend’s death. That much I could forgive. But I know you’re just making shit up and lying to me. I don’t like it when bitches lie to me, Shonda.”

  Shonda sniffled as moisture welled in her eyes. “Please forgive me. I’ll do anything. Just tell me what I can do to make it right.”

  Alice stared at her silently a moment before saying, “I’m going to let you live.”

  Tears spilled down Shonda’s face. “Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won’t regret it. I promise.”

  Alice smirked. “I know I won’t. Now go sit over there.” She indicated a little card table with a tilt of her head, watching as Shonda immediately complied with this directive. To Jessica, the malice in the woman’s tone was obvious. Shonda, though, wasn’t hearing it, probably because her relief at avoiding an immediate death sentence was so great. “Good. Now put your hand on the table. No, not like that. Palm down, with the fingers spread. Yeah, like that. Good girl.”

  The wariness returned to Shonda’s eyes. “Boss…why am I doing this?”

  Rather than answering directly, Alice glanced at Jessica and said, “Get behind her. Make sure she doesn’t move or get up.”

  Jessica rose from the futon and positioned herself behind Shonda, placing her hands firmly on the woman’s trembling shoulders. She said nothing and waited for Alice to get on with whatever she had in mind here.

  Alice went over to the creaky old steamer trunk and opened the lid. There was a loud squeal as the ancient hinges protested. Alice reached inside it, sorted through some items, and came out with a meat cleaver. She smiled as she turned away from the steamer trunk and showed it to them.

  Shonda shook her head. “No. Please. Don’t. This isn’t fair.”

  Alice laughed. “Give her a smack, Jess.”

  Jessica swatted Shonda, making her yelp in pain. She derived no pleasure from it. This was just what she had to do in this situation.

  Alice came closer, brandishing the heavy blade. “Don’t talk to me about fair, you fucking liar. I’m sparing your life. It doesn’t get any fucking fairer than that after what you’ve done. But, bitch, that kind of mercy doesn’t come without a price. And that price is two of your fucking fingers.”

  Shonda squealed and tried to rise up out of the chair, but Jessica gave her head another, harder swat and pushed her back down.

  Alice smiled. “Hold that bitch in place, Jess.”

  Jessica hooked an arm around Shonda’s neck and leaned into her as she reached out and grasped the woman’s wrist with her other hand, forcing her to keep her hand on the table. Shonda squirmed violently in her grip, but Jessica’s hold on her was secure and unyielding as Alice came closer still, raising the blade above her head.

  Tears were again streaming down Shonda’s face. “Please don’t do this. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything.”

  Alice laughed. “I bet you would. But right now you’re gonna scream.”

  Shonda screamed.

  The blade came down hard, punching through flesh and bone before becoming embedded in the thin surface of the table. Alice yanked the blade free and swept the severed fingers away as blood jetted from the stumps.

  “Oops.” She giggled as Shonda continued to scream. “I apologize. Looks like my aim was off. I took three fingers instead of two.”

  Shonda kept on screaming.

  Tiring of the sound, Alice rolled her eyes and said, “Jess, shut her up, please. And when you’re done, maybe go get one of the guards and have this useless whore hauled off to the infirmary.”

  Jessica nodded and choked Shonda into unconsciousness. Once she’d accomplished this task, she left Alice alone with her mutilated underling and went off in search of a guard. It took her a while to find one, additional evidence of an accelerating state of disarray at the prison. She hadn’t known whether to entirely trust the information passed down to Alice by Lucy and the guard last night, but she was starting believe it.

  Prison 13 was unraveling.

  25.

  Despite the many unexpected indignities she’d been subjected to the night before, Livia Collins reported to work at the infirmary on time, same as always. She did not, however, do much in the way of actual work once she got there, other than checking on Spider and changing out the empty drip bags hanging from the pole by her bed. The tiny, busted-up woman was the infirmary’s only current patient, one she was not allowed to harm.

  Instead she sat at her desk at the back of the infirmary and stared blankly at her monitor screen. Displayed on the screen was a screensaver with an oscillating, multi-colored pattern. Like all other tech devices used by anyone other than upper echelon staff, her work computer had no internet access. She could only use the internal intranet and there was nothing much of interest on it.

  As Livia sat there and continued to wallow in the shame and anger she felt over last night’s humiliations, she wished she possessed advanced tech or hacker skills. She would figure a way to get on the real web and spread the word about Prison 13. She’d be a whistleblower, like that Edward Snowden guy, only way more of a big deal because what went on here was far more fucked-up than all that surveillance crap. She smiled grimly as she pictured herself reaching out to major media sources and passing along documentation and photographic proof to back up her bombshell claims. It would be huge, scandalous news. Lots of powerful people with a lot to lose had connections to Prison 13.

  After getting herself all worked up envisioning the fallout from the imagined revelations, Livia heaved a sigh and shook her head. She would never do such a thing, even if she possessed the necessary skills. In truth, she had as much to lose as anyone else if what went on here was exposed to the world.

  The double doors at the other end of the infirmary banged open about an hour after her arrival, bringing merciful distraction from her inner torment. A solitary guard wheeled in a new patient on a gurney. This in itself was unusual. The guards usually worked in pairs when wheeling in fresh meat. It was just standard protocol, but the gurneys weren’t so unwieldy that one person couldn’t do the job easily enough.

  She forgot all about this deviation from the norm when she got a look at the patient on the gurney. It was one of the top girls from what had been the prison’s most feared gang until the recent rise of the Frauenschaft.

  Based on an initial inspection of the wounds and a knowledge of the gang’s less than friendly relationship with the Frauenschaft, she had a hunch about what had happened. “Blondie here had a run-in with those Nazi bitches, I take it.”

  The guard was a tall one named Ted. She’d always thought him a bit of a weirdo, even judged against the prison’s admittedly elevated standard of weirdness. He smiled in his usual slimy way and said, “Nah. This was something else.” He grunted as he transferred the semi-conscious woman from the gurney to a bed. “She crossed somebody else she shouldn’t have crossed.”

  Livia frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

  He shrugged as he cuffed the woman’s wrists to the bedrails. “Just am.”

  “How certain are you?”

  He chuckled. “Dead certain.”

  Livia rolled her eyes and waggled her fingers at him. “Okay, whatever. You can run along now. I’ll take it from here.”

  Ted chuckled again and winked as he turned
away from her and headed out of the infirmary, rolling the now empty gurney ahead of him. A look of distaste crossed Livia’s face as she watched the weird guard disappear through the swinging double doors.

  Once he was gone, she turned her attention back to her new patient. The woman stared up at her through bleary eyes and spoke softly. “Please…help…”

  Livia unwrapped the bloody rag that had been tied around the woman’s mutilated hand. Blood continued to trickle from the finger stumps, staining the white bedsheet beneath her. Livia probed one of the stumps with her thumb, smiling at the way this made the woman squeal in agony. “Look at the mess you’re making, pig. You fucking worthless slut. Don’t you have any respect for other people’s property?”

  She probed harder with her thumb.

  The woman screamed.

  Livia’s features rearranged in an expression of faux-concern. “Aw, does that hurt? We’ll just have to close that wound. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of that in a jiffy.”

  She went to a shelf overlooking her desk and took down what had long been one of her favorite work tools, though it’d been a while since she’d last made good use of it. This struck her as a prime opportunity to address that deficiency.

  The new patient screamed again when Livia appeared by her beside with the acetylene torch. She jerked against the cuffs securing her wrists to the bedrails and continued to scream as Livia started the torch.

  Livia leered at her. “This may sting a bit.”

  She applied the tiny, focused flame to the first of the finger stumps. The way the flesh first blistered and bubbled before turning black was as beautiful as always. Of course, the extraordinary pain meant the woman was unable to keep still as Livia cauterized her wounds. This resulted in other parts of her hand getting singed by the flames. This was okay with Livia. She could never get enough of watching human flesh melt. Of all the ways a human body could be marred or deconstructed, this was one of the most visually satisfying.