by Ed Kurtz
Walking around. Eating a cop’s neck. Falling apart and not taking notice.
The air was thick with apprehension; the muted whispers came together like a loud hiss in the mess hall. Very few of the girls actually ate their slop. No one seemed to be hungry. Arkansas’ stomach cringed at the thought of food. Her private thoughts turned to Irma.
She tapped Nan on the shoulder, said quietly, “How long’s she been in there? Irma, I mean.”
“I dunno—two weeks?”
Someone screamed far away, outside the mess hall and down the hallway. Heads popped up and looked at the doors, where one of the two guards there nodded and sighed before going out to investigate. Arkansas swallowed.
“I’m getting kinda worried, you know?”
Nan shrugged.
“Sometimes you go in the hole,” she said. “You remember Stella? Steele kept her down there two months. But she was all right after.”
Arkansas squinted, trying to remember Stella. She didn’t. She also refused to believe that anyone kept in solitary for two months could ever be all right again.
Heavy, clomping footsteps sounded in the hallway and the guard came bursting back into the mess hall. She had her sidearm gripped tightly in her right hand, and with her left she tugged violently at the other guard’s shirt.
“Let’s go, come on,” she grunted.
Both guards disappeared, leaving only the one who was lazily patrolling between the tables. Arkansas watched with keen interest.
“Something’s happening,” she said, her voice rising out of a whisper.
“Always something happening,” Nan answered nonchalantly. “With this buncha broads, it’s a laugh every day, isn’t it?”
Shouts erupted from the far end of the hall, distant and muffled. The mess hall whispers flattened out to silence in a hurry; those that didn’t got roughly shushed. Boots squeaked on tiles, someone screamed.
A voice hollered, “Get her! Get her!”
“The fuck?” Arkansas said.
The last guard pulled her nightstick out with one hand and touched the grip of her gun with the other. She regarded the prisoners with wary, wide eyes.
“Everyone keep your seats,” she announced uncertainly.
“Halt!” came the angry voice from the hallway. More scuffling. “Halt!”
Slapping sounds grew loud, insistent, close. Bare feet on the tiled floor. Then a savage shriek: not afraid, but rather enraged. Several women launched up from their orange plastic chairs and the guard roared at them to sit back down. Only a few did, while others rose up, too. The doors to the mess hall burst open and Crystal appeared between them, completely naked and spattered with blood on her face, neck, and tits. Her eyes were so wide it looked to Arkansas like she had no eyelids. Her chest heaved and she bared her teeth like a mad dog’s.
“Stop, goddamn you!” one of the guards called out. Crystal stretched her bloody mouth open wide and screamed at the stunned congregation of inmates, long and loud and low. Arkansas jumped up and backed away. Then a loud report drowned everything out and a black hole punched through Crystal’s ribs. The bullet that passed through her found another inmate’s back. She yelled out and toppled to the floor. Crystal simply stood there, angrier now that she had been shot.
The guard who stayed behind rushed to check on the girl who took a round in the back, ignoring the fact that Crystal did not go down, that she was now advancing into the mess hall on feet pointed in on each other. She was pissing herself and growling, her mouth working up a pink lather.
“Jesus, she’s crazy, man,” Arkansas stammered, shocked to stillness by what she was seeing. “She’s crazy.”
The first guard reached her next, tackled her. Together they went down against a long table, hurling several chairs aside and breaking the table in half. Trays still heavy with uneaten slop clattered on top of them, splattering the guard’s back and Crystal’s frizzy cornrows. The guard delivered a hard punch to Crystal’s ribs, right where the bullet had exited, and curled her other arm around the screaming woman’s neck. The guard’s partner emerged through the swinging doors, breathing hard and looking fearful. She knelt down beside them and took over, locked her nightstick against Crystal’s throat and hauled her up by it.
“Fucking bitch,” grunted the guard who relinquished the prisoner. “She bit me, Louise. She fucking bit me.”
“Damn,” Louise put in, tightening the stick against Crystal’s throat.
Crystal spat and burbled, jerked her arms and tried to claw at the bitten guard’s face. In response, the guard threw a punch at Crystal’s stomach. It had no effect.
Arkansas unfroze, permitted her shoulders to untense. She glanced over at the guard who punched Crystal and noticed the bloody patch of ragged skin on her forearm where she had been bitten.
“PCP, you reckon?” Nan drawled in Arkansas’s ear.
“Yeah, I guess,” Arkansas said, not believing it.
“Got herself shot,” Nan said. “She’s gonna die now, I bet. Soon as that junk wears off, she gonna be dead.”
“Dead,” Arkansas mindlessly parroted.
The guards dragged Crystal out, while the one tending to the other injured inmate hefted her up and threw her into a fireman’s carry. As they shuffled out of the mess hall, Sandy squeezed past them, followed closely by Warden Steele. Arkansas was surprised to find the warden’s face pale and sunken, stricken by what had occurred.
“Back to lock-up!” Sandy bellowed.
No one complained this time.
* * * * *
Arkansas smashed the pillow down over her head to block out the noise of the women copulating a few feet above her and felt Irma’s letter crinkle against her cheek. Since Crystal’s bizarre removal yet another new cellmate was moved in, a dumpy Puerto Rican chick named Sal, which was apparently a move meant to conserve space and open up some of the cells. Wanda was muttering nasty nothings into Sal’s ear, goading her to put another finger inside her and squeeze her tits, but Arkansas managed to ignore it. She concentrated on the envelope and wondered if Irma would ever get to open it.
She was close to checking out for the night when the voices rose on the landing outside the bars. Fully awake again, Arkansas took the pillow from her face and perked up her ears, listening past Wanda’s wet grunts at the gruff voice saying, “Get the hell back here, Steele’s gonna have your ass.”
Guards sneaking into the cells again. Not unusual, Arkansas knew—there were plenty of girls, most of them straighter than an arrow, who were perfectly willing to offer their bodies to the guards in exchange for small favors, maybe a little protection where needed. But this sounded different. The one was pleading for them to get out of there. The other just moaned in reply between great, gasping breaths.
“Rhonda,” the guard stage whispered. “Rhonda! We don’t need to be here!”
“Huhhhn,” Rhonda replied, her feet clanging up the metal steps now.
Arkansas got up and padded softly to the bars for a better look. She craned her neck to peer down the landing, where she spied Rhonda standing still on the top step, backlit by the yellow glow of the security lights.
“Rhonda!”
Louise tramped up behind Rhonda, dropped a hand on her shoulder. Wanda suddenly squealed with an unyielding orgasm behind Arkansas when, at the same time, Rhonda screamed horribly like a woman in terrible pain and dragged Louise up to the landing. Louise cried out and Rhonda dropped on top of her, clawing at the guard’s face and shirt and chewing on her meaty shoulder.
“Oh, shit!” Arkansas shouted.
Someone in another cell yelled, “What the shit? What’s going on?”
“Don’t stop,” Wanda groaned, oblivious in her ecstasy. “Sal, don’t stop.”
“Hey!” Arkansas shouted louder still, banging on the bars. “HEY! HEY! There’s some shit going on here! Rhonda’s fucking killed Louise, ya’ll! HEY! HELP, SOMEBODY!”
“The fuck we supposed to do about it?” a voice jeered.
&nb
sp; It was Pam.
“Somebody! Sandy! Anybody!”
A dark, gleaming pool spread out beneath Louise’s juddering body. Rhonda growled and jerked her head back, a glistening red flap of Louise’s shoulder quivering from her teeth.
“Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus,” Arkansas muttered. “Oh, Jesus Christ…”
She banged the bars harder and others joined in, raising a deafening clatter and screaming out for someone to come, to do something.
“Keep going, keep going,” Wanda mewled. “Suck that pussy…bite that pussy…bite it, you bitch.”
And again Wanda screamed, though this time not in ecstasy. This time Wanda screamed in agony. Arkansas yelped and spun around to face the bunk. In the weak light of the security lamp she watched with revulsion as Sal raised her head up from between Wanda’s legs, her face wet with blood.
Wanda continued to scream and battered Sal’s head and face with her fists.
“Getoffgetoffgetoff,” she shrieked.
Sal let loose a burbling groan and dove back at Wanda’s crotch, shaking her head and tearing at the screeching inmate’s womanhood with her mouth.
“FUCK THIS!” Arkansas cried, turning back to the bars. “Let me out of here, goddamn it! One of ‘em’s in here! I got one in here, you fucks—let me out!”
As if in acquiescence to her demand, the block was filled with the jarring buzz that signaled the unlocking of the cells, which was followed by two dozen noisy clicks in tandem. Stunned, Arkansas prodded the bars and the gate swung open. A general murmur of confusion ensued, followed by the first timid steps from the cells to the landing. In minutes the landing was filled with inmates, all of them muttering and looking at one another for answers that no one had. Then a high scream broke the otherwise low hum of voices and Arkansas thrust herself into the throng, jockeying for position to see what caused the alarm. She stared over the heads of the shorter women and saw Rhonda dig her bloody fingers deep into Louise’s neck, curl them around the dead woman’s larynx and rip it out with a sickening crunch. Rhonda held it up to the yellow light like a trophy, blood falling from her hand in thick, fat dollops, and then shoved the scooped out throat into her mouth.
The inmates broke into a violent, shouting panic. There were only two ways out: over the railing or past Rhonda to the stairs. Several women bum-rushed Rhonda, seized her arms and wrenched her up, but Rhonda overwhelmed them easily and had her teeth deep in one of the women’s face before anyone knew what was happening. While Rhonda fed, the throng rushed past her, tumbled down the steps to D Block’s ground level. Arkansas joined them, shrinking away from Rhonda and Lousie’s ruined corpse as she passed them. Downstairs she almost ran right into Sandy, who stood scowling with a shotgun in her large hands. She yelped with surprise and made to skirt around the guard, but Sandy sidestepped and blocked her again.
“How many up there, Arkansas?” she barked.
“I—I dunno,” Arkansas answered. “At least two. Rhonda’s…hurting someone up there. And Sal…Jesus, and Sal!”
“All right, all right,” Sandy said as she pumped the shotgun with a forceful clack. “Stay down here with the girls, I’ll take care of Rhonda and Sal.”
It looked to Arkansas like it was Sandy who opened the cells, but glancing around she couldn’t see a single other guard, much less Warden Steele herself. Whether or not Sandy was acting on orders or simply taking care of business was anyone’s guess, so she moved into the trembling crowd of inmates at the far end of the floor by the gated exit to the yard. Sandy had left that one locked.
Several women sobbed uncontrollably while others cursed and shouted. Arkansas glimpsed from one shadowed face to the next, looking for an ally. She had to settle for Nan.
“They oughta let us out of the block,” Nan said calmly.
“What the hell did she do?” Arkansas asked. “Rhonda…did you see?”
“I saw.”
A shotgun blast cracked the air and the flash lit up the landing above. Sandy screamed something Arkansas couldn’t make out, then fired again. Arkansas grabbed hold of Nan’s thick, flabby arm and squeezed her eyes shut. Nan offered a motherly pat on her back.
“Sandy’ll take care of ‘em,” she twanged. “Don’t you worry.”
The desperate cry that emanated from the cells above did not seem to qualify Nan’s statement. Arkansas popped her eyes open and stared up at the dark landing. Two shapes were struggling against the railing and Sandy yelled out, “Let go, let go!”
She swung the butt of shotgun and it smashed the other woman’s face, whereupon Sandy scampered backward and fired at her. The resulting flash briefly illuminated Wanda’s face before it exploded in a red and white spray. Before the light was gone, Arkansas had a clear line of sight to the remaining back half of Wanda’s head as her body spun and dropped to the landing.
Now the block was filled with screams and shouts, women clamoring at the bars for release and pressing against each other in a wild throng of panicked elbows and reaching hands. Arkansas was pushed against the bars and felt a hand reach around to clamp down on her mouth. She tried to twist away, but with everyone squashed so close together she had no room to move. The next thing she felt was the raw tip of a shiv at the hollow of her throat.
“Can’t get at your bitch Irma,” Pam hissed into her ear. “So you’re just gonna hafta do.”
The shiv pressed harder, piercing the top layer of skin. Someone else was holding her around the waist, preventing the slightest movement. Big Lou, she thought.
“Steele’s lost the prison,” Pam said. “It’s ours, now. And you’re the first to go, Ark—”
The shiv vanished and Pam choked before she could finish speaking. Lou cursed and something wet splashed Arkansas’s cheek. There was another shotgun blast and the crowd pressed harder; then Pam cried out, “Lou! Lou, no!”
“There’s one in here! Oh, God, there’s one with us here!”
Arkansas didn’t know who said it, but it didn’t much matter. It was a hell of a world where Big Lou saved her from Pam, even if was only so Lou could bite Pam’s nose off and pull her down beneath the inmates’ stamping feet. But Arkansas took what she could get and squeezed away, between the panicking women, when at last the siren sounded and the gate unlatched.
The crowd surged into the narrow hall leading to the yard, no one knowing who had let them out and no one really caring. Arkansas had to keep up to prevent herself from falling and getting trampled, but she found herself out in the hot night air in seconds, the glaring lights of the yard blinding her.
The prisoners scattered in all directions. Arkansas stood a few yards from the door they all came from and wiped Pam’s blood from her face with her hand. A hundred feet in front of her, past the rushing bodies all dressed in short olive dresses, was Ilsa Steele.
Steele stared Arkansas down, her hands curled into fists at her sides. She looked equal parts infuriated and sad. The two women silently regarded each other for what seemed like hours, but it was merely minutes, after which the warden dropped her head and walked slowly away, back into the main building. Arkansas turned to watch her go, but her eyes stopped on the large, rusty metal hatch in the ground.
The hole.
* * * * *
Her knees touched her forehead and she hugged herself tight, forcing herself to withhold the tears. The screams and shouts and groans, punctuated occasionally by pistol shots and shotgun blasts, dug deep into her brain and stayed there. The world was ending above her, on the other side of the bars. It was almost funny that the hole was exactly the same as always, apart from the fact that Irma was now going to die down here. There wasn’t going to be anyone left to let her out.
She began to pace, indifferent to the fetid slop through which she walked. When she realized that she was muttering to herself, she wondered how long she had been doing it. She decided she didn’t care and kept on muttering. After a few minutes, a gray, ragged face appeared at the bars, blocking out the bright yard lights. Irma paused in the midd
le of the slanting concrete floor and regarded it. The face had no lips to speak of. Its eyes were creamy and lacked pupils. She could not determine if it was a man or a woman. It clacked its teeth like castanets. It hissed at her.
Maybe Alfonse did see a guy get his damn guts ripped out…
“Yeah,” Irma laughed. “Maybe he did.”
The gray face shifted and a gray hand wormed through the bars. The hand was missing the ring finger, but the remaining fingers twitched and clawed at the air. A tattered black tongue drooped out of the thing’s mouth and it clacked its teeth again, severing the tongue at the middle. The black lump dropped to the floor, but the hissing thing at the bars did not seem to notice. Irma kept her eyes fixed on the creature and tried to remember to breathe. She was fairly certain her mind was finally breaking.
Warden Steele would be pleased, she thought. With lips twisted into a half-grin, half-frown, Irma’s eyes dribbled tears down her filthy cheeks. She considered sitting down in the mucky water and waiting to die, but that seemed like it would take much too long. Other notions of suicide passed through her mind—bashing her head against the wall, finding a vein in her wrist and biting it open—but these dark fantasies were interrupted by the wrenching, rusty groan that suddenly echoed throughout the concrete hole in the ground.
At first she tensed, her muscles coiling up like a cat. Her eyes shot to the hatch at the top of the ladder, despite the fact that it was enshrouded in darkness. She had nowhere to run, no means of escape. Whoever—or whatever—was coming in had the home field advantage. Gradually, as the heavy hatch came open and light flooded the ladder, Irma relaxed. It didn’t matter what happened when she couldn’t do a thing about it. She stood up straight, let her arms dangle loose at her sides.
Arkansas cried, “Irma! Irma, you still down there?”
Irma gawped at the Afroed head that poked down through the open hatch.
“Where the hell do you think I woulda gone?” she said.
Arkansas breathed a sigh of relief and said, “They’re coming over the walls now. We gotta get outta here—can you climb the ladder by yourself?”
