Page 23 of The Way We Rot
He frowned and stood.
Shattered. I sagged and turned the shower off.
He stayed away as I dried myself and dressed.
And when he told me to return to my cell, to keep my mouth shut, I obeyed without word.He was going to deal with Meth Teeth. I didn’t even know if she was alive, didn’t want to. Here, I would soon learn. When she came for me, when the COs came to add to my sentence, throw me in front of a board for extreme violent behavior or what the fuck ever.
As I walked past Darling, nodding a thank you I had no desire to really give, his hand landed on my hip, stilling me for a moment.
Our eyes locked while I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. A heaviness sat between us instead.
“Go,” he demanded with a nod of his head, and I did.
CO Darling was on my skin and clawing his way underneath too.
Eleven
Adrian
“What do you mean, the food supplies are low?” I said, my voice rising from the back of the room. “Surely we have the fucking funding to feed a few hundred women?”
We were in a weekly meeting, getting ready to start our shift with dragging feet and heavy shoulders, and the warden was throwing this shit on us. I couldn’t cope with anything but the standard day – routine, predictability, a contained, measured twelve hours in this shit tip.
Since yesterday, when I’d thrown that fuckhead Alabama Sinclair into solitary for starting a fight with my… with my little killer, my skin had been on fire, my mind a mess. I couldn’t work out if I was trying to protect her or protect myself.I stopped before Sinclairdied, remembering where and who I was, at the last minute.
Sinclair was now in medical, and would be heading to solitary for an extended stay. Long enough that Karner would never see her again, I hoped. I was only a corporal in this place, just a step above grunt, but it still afforded me more power than it should. Corruption ran deep when no one gave a shit.
As it stood, Karner wasn’t safe in here; I couldn’t predict what might happen. If she’d been just a little slower, if I hadn’t been there to interfere, things might have ended up much worse. Her life might have been snatched from me before I had the chance to make it mine. This prison had ceased to be the place for her. For me and her. Not anymore.
If I wanted to move forward with her, it had to be out of here.
“Let them all starve,” Saggy Sal grunted, making me frown. It was a nickname the inmates had come up with, but even the COs called him it now after he more than proved the likeness. I scoffed, like he knew anything about starving with his greasy face and round belly; the man was almost never not eating something.He sat on his chair in the corner of the room, looking half asleep, a fleck of yogurt on his chin whiskers. “Not the first food shortage, not the last.”
The warden sighed, stared at Sal for a minute like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard, then turned back to us, the dozen or so COs waiting to start their day, perched around the small staff room, some standing, some on chairs. I hovered near the back, arms crossed, glaring at fucking Sal. Where the hell was the money going?
“We have enough for the week,” Warden Domingo said, “but we need to begin rationing. Funding’s been cut, CO Darling, and they’re not saying when it’ll improve. Some issue with one of the men’s prisons further south, and they’re pulling resources from wherever they can. The fucking BOP aren’t making my life easy here. Less food is better than none.” He frowned, looking about as pissed off as I felt.
This job was only a job, a means to an end, but it still wasn’t right, wasn’t fair on these women. Most of them here were not among the worst of us. Something I’d had to reconcile about my time here — they weren’t all evil cunts.
Some were.
Like raven haired killers who did as I asked.
Who obeyed.
Who covered themselves in my cum. Watching the little killer rub it away in the shower lived in my head like a permanent song. Under the harsh shower lights, with splatters of another inmate’s blood mixed with cum and sweat, it was a delicious sight. One I hoped to repeat many more times before this was over.
I never expected it, even considered she might be able to match my energy, that she would be as into the same freaky shit as me.
The other COs groused, but no one said anything against the warden. He wasn’t a bad guy from what I’d seen, but trying to make the best of bad situations, and damn tired. I had a begrudging respect for him.But the funding…
“Listen,” he finished as we all stood, getting ready to change over shifts. I had a feeling he was going to be telling the night shift the same thing in a few short minutes, and didn’t look happy about it. “Just… keep the women calm, yeah? If this doesn’t let up, we’re going to have to drop to two meals a day soon enough. It’s either this or…” He grunted. “We’ll be looking at overtime freezes, no PTO, even job losses.”
“Let them suffer before we have to,” Sal added, nodding his jowly head.
“Don’t they tell you how to cut the funds? I doubt they said feed the prisoners less,” I spoke up, the whole thing sitting very wrong with me.
The warden shot a scowl at me, and glanced around the room at all the uncomfortable, anxious COs under his command.
