An inmate's life in prison is short, yet long.
A life sentence with parole is usually about 20 years. Which on the street can pass in the blink of an eye when you work a nine-to-five, get married, and have kids.
But locked within the same walls for that same amount of time without access to any decent human contact—besides your fellow inmates—is enough to drive anyone into a psych ward.
Really.
The types of people in prison today seem to be composed of a few types of groups: Vagrant power users, sacrificial cultists, and just plain psychopaths. Once you add on living in a world where only no news is good news, with oddities and cosmic fissures popping up everywhere and new Gods roaming the Earth, you're even closer to death outside the safe zone than you think.
And these people are from outside of the safe zone. They're dangerous and crazy survivalists.
Seir sat up from her seat at the corner of the room to go and dump her lunch tray and headed back to her cell, expertly avoiding eye contact with anyone else along the way.
Once there, she scanned her finger to enter. Only when she heard the door slide closed and the lock clicked into place did she release the breath that she had been holding since earlier to reduce her presence.
She fiddled with the suppression collar hanging loosely around her neck for a minute with her index finger while listening to the sounds within the small room, scanning for anything else inside with her eyes.
There were no other noises besides her light breathing and heavy heartbeat.
No one was there, fortunately.
Seir had been living quietly here for only about a week.
In the next month, she was due for execution. She had made up her mind to leave today over her meal before she was to be injected with what the prisoners were calling "sweet death."
The walls leading outside were made thick. She's talking about "buried under a mountain" thick and reinforced with grade-A materials by new-age crafters, supposedly impenetrable even with the power of a war God.
But if anyone—or anything—knew how to leave this place, it would be something inhuman, possibly not favored even by the Gods themselves.
In exactly 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 9 seconds, Seir was kneeling in the center of a room unrecognizable. The bed had been stuffed into the bathroom, and the sleeping area was now covered from top to bottom with newspapers, written over with her blood mixed with her favorite ink pen specially provided by the before-death prison welfare, in a script lost to most men.
Gone was the unbearable carpet and the floor with it. It now housed the image of a man prostrating in the center of a pentagram. There, Seir kneels beside it.
Her face was pale as she had been stripped of her powers upon capture, and only her blood and determination remained. A type of madness burned in her stomach, just waiting for a chance to unleash like a dragon's fire.
Through clenched teeth, she began to whisper in a soft voice:
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Ă̶̯̎̿b̵̥͈̒͐ȳ̴̠̼š̶̖͕̓͝s̵̩͎̯͐͒ ̸̭̙̘͊̆̕d̸̟̲́ȩ̸̞͐m̵̺͇̓̔ȍ̷̪̻͒n̵͈̦̹̍e̶͕̅̈́͗ -
e̶̢̢̜͈̮͕̣̯̫̤͖̮̰̦͖͕͎̥̩̭͉̥̜̬̺͚̼̜̥̘̍̓̋̇̿̍̒͊͗̔̏̆̅̓͘̚͠͝ņ̵̢̨͔̼̪͍͚͕̗̤͈̲̳̗͙̳̟̮̳̪͙̗͇͓͇̟̲̋͂̓̎̄͗͂̃̓͑̀̀́̔͂̚͝ͅţ̴̢̨̢͕̞̯͍̗͙̤͉̱̫̖̞̠͉̒͑͋͊̐̂͗̊̕ė̶̳̎̀̄͒̿̽̈́͋̍̐͝͠r̵̢̛̞̹͔͓͓̙̰̳̣͖̠̞̦̯̭̟̓̿̏̆̈́̐͗̾̔̌̉̒̈́̈́́̐͠
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