ANGEL'S PRISON
Kora woke up before the alarm.
Only a few minutes before.
It was her favorite part of the day—a few minutes of peace and quiet, but for her cellmate snoring like a beast on the bunk below. And the fan rattling away.
They had a fan in their cell, thick metal blades, sturdy, held into the ceiling by strong bolts. In other words, the prison didn't discourage suicide. On the contrary, they offered rope, which was stored under the beds. One less prisoner was one less for the prison to worry about.
They didn't get paid per prisoner, like some prisons in the region.
Kora had considered the rope once, but only once, and only for a moment, and never again would she. It wasn't her way. Wasn't her style.
She'd much rather go down in a fight.
Because—why not?
Even if you died, at least you'd be remembered for having had the courage to pull out the gun, unsheathe the sword, throw the punch, take the risk.
The cold room was still dark. Wouldn't be for long. Kora stared at the ceiling as the slow current of air from the fan washed over her cold body underneath the thin white sheets.
She'd made her bed the day earlier, and she would make her bed again today. The prison made them change their sheets once a day, every day.
Their days were simple here, and not quite as bad as she'd wished them to be. She wasn't having the worst of times. Perhaps it was just her nature. She accepted her circumstances. It almost contradicted the fact that she was a fighter, ready to scrap her way out of anything or for anything. Anything she wanted.
Humans were a mess of contradictions.
Sometimes.
More often, though, they did exactly as one would expect.
This was a women's prison. There was violence. But if you kept your head down, stayed away from people, didn't cross any of the lines in the sand—literally—you weren't going to have a bad time.
Of course, last week a woman committed suicide. And the week before. There was about one per week. But that might have had something to do with the confinement aspect and not necessarily the conditions of the prison.
Kora stopped thinking about it. She didn't want to think about people taking their own lives.
She lived out her days here the same way she'd lived out her days outside of here: don't worry about others, fight for yourself, don't die.
Take all you can take.
Shifting her focus, she started thinking about the same thing she thought about every day, all the time, during her temporary stay here: her plans. In three years, her sentence would end. She'd already served one boring year. She'd be twenty-nine upon release.
Crazy thought. But she knew three years would go by right quick.
Twenty-six years old now.
Still a lot of life left.
Her few minutes of quiet peace ended—5 o'clock in the morning.
The alarms blared.
The lights turned on—pouring out bright, fluorescent white.
Gave most of the inmates headaches by the end of each day. Forced them to sleep to recover from the headaches.
She shut her eyes against the light. Let the light soak in through her eyelids before daring to open them again. Her cellmate came to life with a loud snort, which sounded like a gurgle of spit and mucus in her throat. So disgusting.
A typical morning.
*****
First stop today: showers. It was Kora's quadrant of the prison's turn to take showers first thing in the morning. The prison alternated each week. Kora preferred night showers. But, the things you must endure.
Two hundred women, most of them dead tired from the five-hour night of sleep the prison allowed them, stumbled into the gigantic shower room. There were one hundred shower heads in a long line, drains down the center. You were required to share your shower head with your roommate.
As they walked down the long hall to the shower room, they stripped. While walking. They'd gotten pretty good at it. Kora yawned, unbuttoning her long-sleeved shirt. The woman in front of her tried to take out a pant leg, but did it lazily. She tripped into the woman in front of her, who got shoved into the woman in front of her.
"Hey, watch where you're going!"
"I'll kill you."
The one who'd stumbled, responded as one should. "You kill me. I'll kill you right back."
Kora just rubbed her eyes and waited for them to continue walking.
They did, huffing and puffing. Grumpy.
Morning showers were the most volatile.
Statistically, more people had been shivved during morning showers in this prison than in showers during any other time of the day.
Kora had seen someone get stabbed in the showers. Right through the gut. The person survived, supposedly, but never came back to this prison. Transferred out.
By the time they reached the showers, they were stripped and holding their clothes under one arm to be deposited into a receiving bin just inside the room.
The showerheads were numbered according to their cell numbers.
Kora found hers and switched it on.
Two options: stand away from the cold water and ease into it, or stand directly underneath it. Kora always chose to stand beneath it.
The water hit her head and washed down her back, stinging, waking her. "Whooo!" she shouted. Followed by shouts all around of women being suddenly awakened like a man is suddenly awakened at the sight of a pretty woman.
There was no option for hot water.
Kora's cellmate, Tiffany, was the kind who worked her way in. She splashed an arm in, soaped it up with the two small bars provided, then rinsed.
They were provided shampoo once a month.
"Did you sleep good?" Tiffany asked Kora.
Tiffany liked small talk.
Kora didn't. "Yeah."
Tiffany offered, "I slept fine. I'm not used to only five hours."
Kora's previous cellmate had been released on good behavior. Tiffany had been with her the past three weeks. Still considered new. She was slight of frame, pretty, nice. Quite juxtaposed to her breathing habits while sleeping. She had dark circles under her eyes and didn't look well.
"It gives me headaches," she said.
Kora finished soaping up, and stood under the water, taking a deep breath. "Don't think about it," said Kora. "Ignore the headaches. Ignore everything."
Down the line of showerheads, two women started yelling at each other. Kora couldn't hear about what. The larger woman, Theresa, swung a fist across the other's face. The woman went down on the wet, cold tile floor—her head slammed against it.
Theresa was the prison bully. There was always one alpha female to avoid. They usually lasted a few months before they got shivved, beat into place, or transferred out for another prison to deal with.
The fallen woman's nose bled onto the tile, mixing with the water.
And she just laid there.
No one did anything to help.
The water turned off after four minutes.
A typical morning.
*****
Breakfast. The best part of the day, for sure. After getting toweled off and dressed, Kora and her quadrant of fellow inmates lined up in the cafeteria. This morning the cafeteria was serving eggs, hash browns, toast and coffee. Kora ate better in here than she ever had on the outside. On the outside, she was always trying her best to make money for food and bills. In here, she was fed like a queen.
They served the coffee hot and black, no option for cream or sugar. Just as Kora liked it. She took her seat in her usual spot. Tiffany sat beside her. Cellmates stuck together. It helped. Teams of two had better chances of surviving the duration of their sentences. If you got stuck with a cellmate like Theresa, you weren't going to have a pleasant stay.
Kora was awake and alive, felt much better after having showered. Her clothes were warm. She accepted her circumstances. Unlike Tiffany, who was fidgeting.
"What's wrong?" Kora asked, taking a sip of the steaming coffee.
"This place."
Kora nearly rolled her eyes, but didn't. She didn't have the energy to care about Tiffany. Instead, she just ate, quietly, looking around the room at the hundreds of women filing in and taking seats and scarfing down their food. If you didn't eat fast, the inmate across from you had the right to eat your food. Not an official rule, but a rule. The unofficial rules mattered more here than the official rules. Which was true of life in general, for better or worse.
Which was why it was better to ignore rules, in Kora's opinion.
Loud, a lot of talking, some shouting. Mostly shouting of the pleasant kind. Like, "Remember when I beat down that loser." Nods of agreement, shouts of praise. Just a bunch of lawbreakers having breakfast together.
Typical.
Tiffany's fidgeting got even worse.
Theresa, the big one, finished collecting her tray of food and was heading for her table. She would pass Kora's way.
"Calm down," Kora said.
Tiffany didn't.
"Hold your breath," Kora suggested.
Tiffany had always been somewhat nervous, but never this nervous.
"What's wrong, specifically?" asked Kora. "Receive a threat?"
Kora took a sip of coffee, acting normal, talking so the woman across the table from her couldn't hear.
"Theresa said she wants to hurt me."
"She told you?"
"Someone told me."
"Then it's probably not true. Theresa doesn't know you exist. You're new—practically invisible. You'll be fine." Kora was lying. New inmates stood out like a rainstorm beating into a lake in the desert.
Tiffany seemed to calm a little bit.
Until Theresa walked right up to their table and set down her tray, taking the open seat at the end, just three seats away from Kora. Kora kept her eyes straight ahead, but felt Theresa staring.
Tiffany's condition worsened.
"Hey you," Theresa said.
Kora looked over.
Theresa was looking past her, at Tiffany.
"Stop shaking, girl, or I'm gonna beat the shakes out of you."
"What do you want from me?" Tiffany said, defensive.
Bad move. Kora's heart rate increased just a bit. A very bad move to acknowledge the threat. Better to make a joke. Ask a question that gets the threatening inmate to say the word "yes," which helps to disarm them. Psychologically. Kora knew this intuitively, because she'd grown up in poor conditions, fending for herself, and had survived this long. Tiffany's response should have been something like, "It's cold. Have you ever been cold?"
It would have been a strange response, maybe catch Theresa off guard. Break the pattern. Alter reality, even.
"You can help me," said Theresa. "Roll with my crew."
Really, really bad.
Theresa only allows you in her crew if she jumps you in. In other words, you're not in the crew until you've been beaten to a pulp, and other things, and then you have the choice to be in or out. If you choose out, you die. If you choose in, you have the same chances of dying.
Kora was relieved Theresa wasn't talking to her.
But she was Tiffany's counterpart by randomized extension: being her cellmate.
Tiffany's shaking was the same, embarrassingly intense.
Like a person haunted by visions of monsters.
"I don't want to," she said.
Kora felt her insides curl up. How could Tiffany be so stupid? Ignore, change the subject, anything but object right away to the alpha of the prison.
Kora's pulse quickened. She knew that there was no way out of this. She had to stand up for Tiffany, or she'd be the next to get trampled. It was for selfish reasons she had to enter this battle. Not for Tiffany. For her own survival.
She had to fight.
It wouldn't be her first fight, but it would be her first in a long time in this prison. In the first few weeks, she'd fought off four women who'd tried to jump her. Earned her place. Earned her nickname: Dynamite Diaz. Cheesy. She hated it. But it did the job.
She'd never had to fight a woman this big or powerful in the prison system. She knew only one thing: get in the first punch. If you don't, you lose physically, you lose mentally, and you lose the game in total.
Surviving in here was one big game. You had to have as many cards stacked in your favor as you could. Hitting first, standing up for yourself without hesitation, earned you cards.
Kora was holding her paper coffee cup in her right hand. It was half-full. As sad as she was to empty the rest, she stood from her seat, jumped onto the table, and threw the steaming hot coffee into Theresa's face. Without slowing, she dove at the beast of a woman, slugging her across the face and tackling her from her seat.
Theresa was screaming in pain from the hot coffee, but reacting just as well. Her eyes were shut tight, but she flung her arms around, and managed to get Kora in a headlock.
She'd break Kora's neck without hesitation.
Kora elbowed Theresa in the stomach and pulled away from the headlock. She rolled away on the cafeteria floor. That's when someone jumped on her from behind.
And all hell broke loose.
Like a storm in an ocean.
Not a typical day.