by Susanne Beck
Ice simply stared at her. My muscles tightened as a sense of foreboding washed over me.
"It seems that your little pet has developed an attitude problem of her very own. Isn’t that right, Angel." Her words echoed, like a death knell, through the square.
Ice looked down at me, her gaze inquisitive. I stood frozen to my spot on the floor.
Cassandra laughed. "You mean you didn’t tell her, Angel? You actually kept your word?? Oh, isn’t that rich!"
"Spit it out, Cassandra," Ice ordered. "What are you talking about."
I wanted to scream, shout, fall down on my knees in a grand mal seizure . . .anything to stop this topic in its embryonic stage. For a brief second, I even found myself praying that Iris, the person who started this whole thing, would just jump so nothing else could be said.
My prayer went unanswered. Iris seemed as riveted to these new turn of events as everyone else was.
"I can’t believe she didn’t tell you of our little adventure, Ice!"
"Cassandra . . . ."
"Oh, alright. If it’ll get my sweet little Heracles back, I’ll tell you." She stuck her skinny arms through the bars, linking her hands together casually. "Let’s see. Friday, I think it was, I was just sick of this new fish and her incessant whining. So, I decided to take a stroll. Nothing much, really. Just a chance to stretch my legs, see what was happening, that kind of thing."
"I assume there’s a point in here somewhere?"
"Oh there is. There is. Never fear. You see, I just happened, for some strange reason, to find myself outside the library very close to lights out. Now, locked in my miserable cell all day like I am, I’ve been deprived of the great pleasure of seeing this remarkable bastion of lower learning in the flesh, so to speak. And I did so want the opportunity to meet the great Corinne." She sighed dramatically. "But, alas, it was near closing time and our dear librarian had already made her tottering way back to her cell, I’m afraid."
Then she clapped her hands together as an expression of almost beatific joy overspread her fair features. "But I wasn’t disappointed. Oh no. Because instead of the great Corinne, I got her wonderful assistant, Angel."
Ice’s expression became stony. Cassandra laughed. The inmates and guards, Iris included, all turned to stare at me. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. But I couldn’t. My body was refusing my mind’s commands. I remained frozen, landlocked in a sea of misery.
"So I invited her into one of the paint closets. You know, just to chat." She shrugged.
"What happened." Ice’s voice was completely devoid of all emotion. I knew right then just how angry she was.
Cassandra scowled. "The little bitch disarmed me!"
Some of the inmates started to laugh. There was a smattering of applause as well. Cassandra snarled, loudly.
"And?"
Her insane good humor restored, Psycho smiled once again. "Well, I didn’t give up without a fight. Managed to slice her leg open before she could take my knife away. But it wasn’t over there. Oh goodness, no. I went after my pretty little blade and she actually stepped on my hand!" Scowling, she held up the appendage in question. I noticed with equal parts satisfaction and guilt that her hand was swollen and bruised. "You really should spank her for her impertinence, Ice," she said in a sly undertone which, nevertheless, carried to all ears.
There was some snickering over that particular comment. Ice, however, remained unmoved.
"Anyway, like any good psychotic, I went with my best option."
"Meaning?"
"I bit her."
"You did what?!"
"I bit her. Right on one of those luscious thighs of hers." She trailed off, opening her eyes wide in a show of mock surprise. "You mean she didn’t show you? You didn’t see it when the two of you were rutting like a couple of crazed weasels? I know I left a mark. I could even taste the hot tang of her blood through the material of her uniform." Rolling her eyes, she ran a tongue across her front teeth, body writhing as if in ecstasy.
Ice’s hands clenched slowly. I could easily see the corded muscles and tendons of her neck protrude. I thought for sure she would rush the bars holding Cassandra inside the segregation unit. But she didn’t. She just stood there, staring. "What happened next." Her voice was so soft, I had to strain to hear it.
"We made a deal."
"And that was?"
"I wouldn’t fight her for the knife she now held at my neck, and in return, she wouldn’t tell you about what happened between us."
Oh, please look at me, Ice. Please. Look down here and see how sorry I am. Please.
But she didn’t hear me. And even if, by some miracle, she had, I knew right then that she would never have listened. I had never seen her as angry as she was right then. I felt as if I had lost my entire world.
"Why would she make that kind of deal?" Ice asked, almost rhetorically.
But Cassandra, as always, was ready with an answer. "Isn’t it obvious, dear Ice? It’s because she knows that you and I are two of a kind. The unredeemable. She knew that if she told you what had happened, you’d come over here and try to kill me without a second thought! And that’s how it should be! It’s who we are!"
She cocked her head, a look that frighteningly resembled compassion shining from her eyes. "Oh come now, Ice. You don’t think she really believes all that goody-goody tripe she spouts at you every day, do you? About your soul having worth? Of course not! She knows you’ll never be anything more than you are right now. A cold blooded murderer." She grinned. "Like me! That’s why we belong together, you and I. Because I’ll never lie to you, Ice. I know who you are."
I could see Ice shaking her head slowly, though tears had blurred my vision. I wanted to scream out. To negate Cassandra’s words. But my throat wouldn’t open enough to let the words come out.
"That she hid her injuries from you proves my point, Ice. Her words are just lip service. After all, you’re a good bodyguard." She leered. "And a wonderful lover." She shrugged. "And if she has to lie to get you to feel good about yourself, well, it’s not a bad return on her investment."
Through my wavery vision, I could see Ice’s whole body as it started to shake, as if in the grip of some palsy. It broke me from my terror-induced paralysis. Gathering up my strength, I sprinted for the stairs. Two bodies closed ranks to prohibit my passage. Looking up, I saw Critter and Sonny standing before me, their arms crossed over their chests, their expressions as stony as Ice’s had been.
"It’s not that way!" I screamed. "That’s not why I did it!"
All heads turned to me, but in that moment, I didn’t care. In some way, my actions had betrayed the woman I loved more than my own life. I needed to talk to her; needed to explain what was going through my mind when I made the decisions I did to keep what had happened from her. I did believe in the goodness in her heart. It wasn’t lip service. None of it was. I spoke from a belief in her that was as deep as the bedrock of the earth.
Or did I? Were Psycho’s words in some way true? No. No, they couldn’t be.
"Ice! Please! Listen to me! Please!!!"
In the split second that my scream diverted all attention, Ice moved quickly, grabbing Iris and tossing her into the arms of a surprised Phyllis. Then I watched as she bent down and retrieved Heracles, likewise tossing him through the bars to an ecstatic Psycho.
Then she bounded across the catwalk and down the stairs, jumping over the railing before she got down to the first riser and running back down the hallway to the auto shop. I turned to run after her, only to be stopped yet again by twin arms to my elbows.
"Let me go!" I shouted, struggling to break free.
"Go back to the library, Angel," Sonny said.
"No! I have to go after her! Psycho’s lying! Can’t you see? I need to explain it to her! Please! Please, I’m begging you!"
Critter’s face softened infinitesimally. "Go back to the library, Angel. Ice is too angry to hear anything you’d try to tell her right now. Let her calm down a little."
I
looked over at Sonny, who nodded, reluctantly, it seemed.
"Are you sure?" I asked, sniffing back my sobs.
My friend smiled slightly. "Yeah. I’m sure. Just let her calm down. I think she’ll realize who it was who told her these things pretty quick. After all, it’s obvious Psycho has her own agenda, especially when it comes to Ice. Just give her a little time and I’m sure she’ll be ready to listen to whatever you have to tell her." The expression on Critter’s face let me know that I had better have a damn good excuse, too.
I looked over their shoulders and down the long, empty hallway, willing with all my being for Ice to appear. When that didn’t happen, I finally nodded. "Alright. I’ll wait. Though if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go to my cell. I don’t think I can face Corinne right now."
Both women nodded and released their grips on me, parting to allow me to walk up the stairs and into my cell.
I never did see Ice again that day. Nor did anyone else I asked, or even begged. It was as if she had disappeared from the planet.
I spent the evening before lock-down in a total panic, half-expecting the alarms indicating an escape to sound.
But they didn’t.
I spent the evening pacing the tiny confines of my cell, wearing down the path from my cell to Ice’s, scaring the guards as I popped into their spaces to beg for information on Ice’s whereabouts, and vomiting in the toilet.
I went to my knees, praying to God to let me find her and explain my side of the story.
He didn’t listen.
It was well into the darkest part of the morning when my grief-induced exhaustion finally caught up to me. I fell asleep on a pillow drenched with tears of sorrow and shame.
PART 16
I WAS DREAMING.
I knew it. But that knowledge didn’t help. The guilt I felt came with me into my subconscious mind, where it settled in to roost.
My dreams were filled with courtroom scenes. In them, I was always in this enormous witness box, sitting in an impossibly huge chair, looking up at a judge’s bench that seemed to be as tall as a skyscraper. Corinne, for some reason, was always the judge and sported a fancy white wig that I once read English judges still wear. She said only one word, and that oft-repeated.
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
And in a line that stretched from just in front of my chair to as far as I could see, were my accusers, each clad in fancy dress costumes.
The first to confront me were my parents who were, for whatever convoluted psychological reasons, dressed as King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. They carried large gavels which they banged repeatedly on the humongous arms of my chair, doling out my crimes of being a horrible daughter and a heart-wrenching disappointment to the family.
Guilty!
Next came my grade-school classmates, bearing accusations ranging from being the teacher’s pet (which I was) to being a milk-money thief (which I wasn’t).
Guilty!
Then came friends from high school, with their own accusations which ran together like wet paint in the rain.
Guilty!
Peter followed next. Unlike the others, however, he wore no fancy dress. My husband, removed by death, was completely naked. His skin held death’s pallor and lividity. His head was oddly shaped and blood ran from both ears in a sort of beard of gore. He stank of formaldehyde and grain alcohol. He leaned over toward me, his fetid, putrid breath buffeting my face and hair.
When he started to speak, he used the same words he had used on the night he tried to rape me. His voice and body language where overwhelmingly aggressive, and for a moment, I was actually in that position again. I could feel my dream hand reaching down, searching for the weapon that wasn’t there anymore.
"This isn’t happening!" my dream self screamed.
Guilty!
"You’re not real! You can’t hurt me anymore!"
Guilty!
"You’re dead! Don’t you understand? You’re dead! I killed you!!"
Guilty! Guilty!
"Please, Peter! Stop this! I don’t want to hurt you! Please, stop! I don’t want to hurt you anymore! Please! Just . . .stay . . .dead!!!"
Silence.
The kind that makes you want to scream just to fill it up with something.
The kind that makes you know exactly how it feels to be buried under six feet of heavy earth.
I closed my eyes tight, rubbing at them and trying to wake myself up. When I opened them back up again, Peter was gone. The line was gone. Corinne was gone. The entire room was an empty morass of white except for myself, my overlarge chair, and . . .
Ice.
Clad as she was on our anniversary, in blue silks, a rose in her hand.
Unlike the others, however, she didn’t accuse. She didn’t demean. She didn’t demand an accounting of me. She merely looked at me, holding out that one perfect, blood-red bloom.
But her eyes. God, they were so empty. Like doll’s eyes, almost. Worse even than when she had come back from her time in isolation.
For the first time during this dream, I cried. I reached out to accept the rose, but it was too far away. "Forgive me, Ice," I sobbed, my fingers straining. "Oh God, please forgive me. I didn’t do it to hurt you. Please believe me. I love you, Ice! I love you!"
Finally, stretching as far as I could, the very tips of my fingers brushed against hers as I retrieved the rose from her grasp. The moment our fingers touched, she crumpled to the floor, as silent as the world around me.
I woke up screaming.
When I opened my eyes, the difference between my dream world and my living reality was so great that I felt a brief moment of intense claustrophobia. The chipped and peeling walls seemed to me living things, closing in on me, wanting to crush the life and breath from my body.
I wondered, for a brief moment, if I was still dreaming.
I pinched myself, then winced at the resulting pain. When I looked up again, the walls had regained their normally placid nature. I breathed out a long sigh of relief, wiping the tears mixed with sweat from my face.
Twisting in my bed, I looked at the ever-humming clock. It read nearly eleven in the morning. I was struck with an almost overwhelming urge to get out of bed right now! Listening to my body’s instincts, I jumped from the bed and threw on my uniform, pausing only long enough to run a quick brush through my hair. My nerves were tied in tight knots but I couldn’t tell if it was just the aftermath of my nightmare or something more urgent.
I let my feet carry me at their own will as I left my cell behind and descended, once again, into the depths of this Hell called the Bog. At first, I headed in my customary direction, toward the library, when I was overcome with the need to get out into the fresh air.
Running down the hallway now, I slammed open the door to the outside, almost knocking an inmate to the ground in my haste. The sky was the deep gray of an approaching storm and I wrapped my arms around myself as the gusting breeze pricked gooseflesh up on my arms.
The inmates moved sluggishly and without purpose, like a colony of ants benumbed by winter’s biting chill. Even the Amazons seemed listless at their appointed place. I looked around quickly, then once again, my heart not ceasing in its frenetic pacing.
Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I knew that the tension in my body continued to build in incremental segments.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, suddenly, Ice standing by the fence overlooking the parking lot. A strong sense of deja-vu washed over me, edging out the tension. As if still dreaming, I felt myself cross the yard in slow, measured steps, watching as more of the outside world became revealed to my sight.
I walked as quietly as I could, not wanting to alert her to my presence just yet.
A gust of wind whipped past again, musically rattling the chain-link fence and blowing Ice’s hair wildly around her shoulders and back.
I stopped several feet away from her, peering past the corner of the prison and int
o the lot beyond. Like last time, the warden stood conversing with Cavallo, the latter all spit-shined and polished and greasy, cap-toothed smiles. The warden returned the grin, smirking in the way of evil men pulling something over on unknowing innocents. They reached out to shake hands.
Only this time, when the gesture was done, Cavallo didn’t slip into his car. As if knowing he had an observer, he turned his head slowly, looking directly at Ice, his eyes shining chips of obsidian. The dark smile grew fixed on his boyishly handsome face.
Another squall flattened the grass in the yard, almost pushing me into the fence. Grabbing the billowing edges of his jacket, Cavallo turned his body in the direction of his head and began to walk toward Ice and the fence. After a moment, Morrison followed suit, striding quickly to catch up to his guest.
I shifted my gaze back and forth between the duo and Ice. The long lines of her body fairly radiated a lethal energy and spring-coiled tension. I resisted taking a step closer, instead contenting myself with controlling my breathing so that I might have a chance to hear the words sure to be spoken.
Cavallo came to a stop right in front of the fence. Leaning forward casually, he hooked a hand through the chain links, just inches away from Ice’s own grip. His oily smile broadened, a look of false camaraderie on his face. "If it isn’t the infamous Morgan Steele. How you doin’, Morgan? Get fucked by any big bull-dykes lately?" His twinkling eyes fairly radiated good humor.
"Cavallo," she greeted quietly, her voice overly controlled.
"I must say, though, you’re looking good. Orange agrees with you." Leering, he raked his eyes over her body, from head to toe and back up again. Then he cocked his head toward the sky. "Kinda sad though. You being all cooped up in this tiny little box while the world just continues to spin out here." A smirk curled his full lips as his eyes met hers once again. "Sorry to hear about Josephina’s little ‘accident’."
From my position to the side, I could see Ice’s profile and the way her lips pulled back from her teeth in a feral snarl.
Cavallo laughed. "Don’t have to worry about her getting lonely or anything, though. Her dear husband’s gonna be joining her in the next couple of days." His chest puffed out like a proud rooster’s. "Yes, indeed. The old man’s gonna be taking a long ride and I . . . well, let’s just say I’ll be left to pick up the pieces." His smirk became more pronounced. "It’s too bad you screwed up, Morgan." He leered at her again. "I just might have had a . . .position . . .for you in my new family."
