A person’s face appeared. “Yes?”
“We need two passes to go downstairs, level four,” Denis demanded loudly, like she wouldn’t be able to hear him from her fish tank.
The woman nodded and typed something into the computer, looking up and appraising me once, narrowing her eyes around my dirty, frozen blue ankles.
“New inmate? I’ll need processing papers,” she said, taking her thick headband off, plucking hairs from it and dropping them on the floor, then sliding it back over her dark blonde hair.
“No. Visitors’ passes.” Denis held up his wrist and pressed it against the glass. “Do you need anything else?” he asked, irritated.
She flustered like a cat being brushed backwards. “Oh no, no, that won’t be necessary, Master Grant.” She hastily printed out two barcoded tickets and passed them through a slot under the glass.
I smiled at her, trying to assure her she wasn’t in trouble, but when Denis turned his back to her, the woman scowled at me.
So she should, I guess.
I wonder if sunlight is the fundamental thing that keeps you sane. When it’s snatched away, you start to feel less human. You can’t remember. You’re a starved plant that can’t grow.
We entered the lift and Denis scanned the passes. When the buttons lit up, he pushed four.
“What’s on level four?” I asked, my hands seeping nervousness and dripping from my fingers.
Denis kept his eyes forward and said, “It’s who. And I don’t know.” But his hand flicked and flattened like he was telling me not to ask any more questions. He knew something, but the cameras froze his tongue.
I rocked back and forth on my heels as my stomach bottomed out and my heart refused to calm. The lift so fast, I thought maybe my organs were sitting in a disgusting pile at ground level.
Within seconds, the lift stopped abruptly and the doors slid open with a chirpy ding.
I stepped out, expecting moldy, rock corridors and single bulbs swinging in cages. Instead, clean, white halls glowed before my eyes. Long, fluorescent lights shone overhead. To our right, in front of locked glass doors, a plush, green lounge the shape of plump lips faced a bunch of screens. The small, carved-out area was painted in soft colors like beige or cream. The only way to describe the color was ‘blah’, as if they had mixed every dull color together to create one super-dull one.
A guard sat on the couch, his legs spread wide. His attention was on a book rather than the screens. When he saw Denis, he shot up and saluted him.
“Master Grant,” he said, flustered. He looked from me to Denis in confusion, and then he chose to ignore me. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Are you taller?”
Denis gave an easy laugh. “Probably, it’s been two years, Solomon.”
Solomon laughed with him, his dark, bald head catching the light as he dipped down, grabbed a remote, and blacked the screens.
“Yes. Not since Superior Grant brought you down here to scare you straight.” Solomon winked as he spoke. The wink too long, too familiar.
Denis swallowed uncomfortably and fiddled with his earphones. “Ah, yes… anyway. Similarly, Miss Rosa is in need of a wake-up call.”
I scowled at the guard; his jolly exterior was as unnerving as his thin face and nonexistent eyebrows. In their place were two bulges of skin like he’d stuck brown dough above his eyes.
“Doesn’t look so bad,” I lied, trying to appear blasé. “It’s nicer than my actual home!” It was nothing compared to my home. The home I would never return to.
Solomon snorted and I wondered whether you could fit a Ping-Pong ball up his nose, his nostrils were so large.
“Tickets, please.” Denis held them out, and Solomon scanned them with a reader. There was a shake to his hands. “Do you want the tour?” Solomon said, waggling his soggy brow.
Please no!
“No thanks, Solomon, just open the doors, please,” Denis said, tipping his chin.
Solomon pulled a chain from around his neck and lifted a small, numbered pad that was dangling from it. He punched in a code, and the doors opened.
“Have fun!” he said, waving dorkily.
We stepped over the red line painted in front of the doors, and they closed quickly after us. As soon as they did, I felt squeezed, like someone’s hand was around my throat. We were sealed inside a corridor smelling strongly of chemicals that barely masked other horrid odors like sweat, urine, and things I didn’t want to think about. Denis put his sleeve to his nose and started placing his earphones in, then he glanced down at me, remembering I was there, and muttered, “Sorry.”
I breathed in deeply and repressed the urge to gag. This might be my home soon, if they let me live. I guessed I’d better try to get used to it.
The thick, metal doors, spaced every few meters, were plastered with giant barcode stickers. You could see the tears and leftover paper from previous inmates underneath the current barcode. When you were a prisoner, they took your name as well as your freedom.
We walked hesitantly down the aisle, and my eyes caught glimpses of the inmates through the wire-infused glass. Huddled in dark corners. Lying with their backs to the door, their knees pulled to their chests. They were shadows, thin and barely human.
My skin shuddered over my frame loosely, like it was trying to escape my body. This could be my life.
“There are no mics in here,” Denis said as he ran his hand along one of the doors and rubbed the microscopic dust between his fingertips. “I think they got sick of listening to all the screaming.”
I imagined the desperate pleading of shadow people scratching at their last shreds of humanity.
My dry mouth spat out a curse, making him flinch.
How many people did they keep down here? It went on for at least twenty doors on both sides but not all were filled.
A sharp bang made me jump.
“Git, git, git, me out of here!” A muffled voice came from my left. I walked closer and saw a raring face pressed up against the glass, his eyes bulging with need.
“Please, please, please…” he whispered softly like a song, like a prayer no one would answer. When I put my hand to the window, he suddenly head-butted it. “Devil bitch!” he screamed. I pulled back my hand like he might bite me through the glass or infect me with his insanity and shook my head in shame. Denis placed his hand at my waist and pushed me past the door. We increased our pace, the sad thump of his head hitting the glass continuing as we moved away.
Before I could ask, Denis answered. “Level Four is for those who have lost the ability to mentally cope with imprisonment.”
“You mean it’s for the ones who’ve gone crazy,” I snapped. I knew I would end up here after a few days of imprisonment.
He nodded. “Look, they’re still watching us, even if they can’t hear us. Dad instructed me to put you in cell seventeen.” We stopped in front of the door. It had no barcode on it and must have been empty. “Just for one hour he said, to give you a scare. I have to do it, Rosa, or he’ll suspect something is up.” His eyes looked less sympathetic and more uncomfortable.
I shrugged. What choice did I have?
Denis leaned in to punch the code Solomon had handed him.
“Does our attitude offend you?
As do our glorious, defiant eyes?
Coz we laugh like we’ve got the world’s riches
Piled under the place we lie.
You can test us with your swords,
You can hurt us with their cries.
But we’ll surprise,
Surprise you when we stand up,
When we stand up,
Up together in our misery and our triumph
You’ll hear it in our voices,
You’ll see it in our eyes, eyes, eyes,
In our eyes...” sung the prisoner.
A voice from another time. A place I tried not to revisit because it hurt too much. My body shook with the fear that it might not be her. It shuddered at the thought that it could be her, because when my eyes slid to the small slide tag under the window, it read, Test Subject, in large, lazy marker.