Page 42 of The Way We Rot
“I’m going to kill you,” I told him as he pulled his taser from his belt and turned it on. “I’m going to destroy you.”
He winked at me, a smirk on his face, looking away from the door as COs poured in and took in the sight around us. The blood everywhere, their colleague dead on the floor, me covered with his insides, and CO Darling, their leader, shoving the taser against my skin.
I went down like a sack of shit, plans ruined, vows made.
Nineteen
Adrian
Ivomited the second I reached the toilets, puking my guts up as the last two hours played on repeat in my head. And it hadn’t come from what I’d seen, what I’d done with her, but what it had done to me. Fuck, what was that?
Everything went so damn wrong, and I reveled right in the thick of it, letting it happen. Watching her demon awaken and free to roam, attacking Randal like she was born to… it was disgusting, foul, gave me flashes of images I didn’t want. And that made me rage, renewed my hatred for the evil woman. For myself, for having any emotions for her beyond disdain.
But he wasn’t supposed to rape her. He was supposed to seduce her with fucking chocolate or that shower she still groused over, giving me leverage over her, making her feel shitty and used. But she’d refused, and he’d taken instead. I was such a damn idiot.
I couldn’twatch that. My temper raged. And Penelope Karner liked it. First, my hatred for Randal touching her, taking from her bubbled, then it evolved with reminders and memories, bitter resentment for her rearing up. I needed to punish.
Watching her slide that baton into her rapist’s throat got my dick hard, made me want to wipe away any touch from Randal and make her feel bliss. Bliss I should never feel the urge to give her. It was all so fucked, twisted and ruined, a tangled mess.
With harsh intention, I denied her any pleasure, bringing her to the brink over and over to fuck with her head, to remind her of her place. What she’d done again and again.
And it was going too far. It needed to end. But not like this.
This, I hadn’t planned.
After a two-hour meeting with the warden, who’d driven in from being dead asleep at home to go over all that happened in minute detail, I was free to leave. Police came, internal investigators too, and it was all a shit show.
I gave them everything I had that was close to the truth, but it turned ashy in my throat. Randal lay dead because of Penny, not because of me. At least, that’s what I made everyone believe. She stole his last breath.
And now it felt wrong to leave her here, under the fate of someone else’s decisions. She was mine to mess with, to control. I couldn’t have it if anyone else got that instead of me.
Penny wasn’t getting out of solitary again anytime soon, if ever, and it made me itchy to know another was keeping her captive.
She belonged tome. She had to.
That someone else could decide what punishments she would face, what depravity.
It wasn’t enough.
It messed with my mind.
“Adrian?” a cool voice came from the door, a woman, peeking her head into the men’s. “It’s Sally. You want to talk?”
I sat up from the toilet and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, trying to calm down the panting sweats eating me alive. I was afraid if I spoke, I would either vomit my guts up again or spill all my secrets. SoI took deep, measured breaths, as I’d trained myself, and sucked it all back in. Buried that shit until I had her under my control once more.
“Hey Sally,” I called out, trying to keep my voice even. “Sure. Just give me a second.”
“No problem,” she said, and I heard the door swinging back shut. The day shift had come in now, being informed of what shitshow had happened overnight. A loss of one of our own was a big deal, and tensions would only be growing higher. Between staff, between inmates, and between the power imbalance of COs and bored, incarcerated women.
Warden Domingo had been talking about cutting the inmates’ food even more, not letting them out of their cells for the rest of the week in a joint punishment for what Karner had done. Most of Block A had heard the commotion, some figuring it out and shouting and jeering as a placid Penny was carried past their doors. She was a rockstar to them, covered in blood, surrounded by the ashen faces of the half-asleep night shift.
Gossip spread like wildfire in this place, and Penny would be some sort of legend. Until their punishmentscame too. Then they’d hate her even more than they revered her.
The isolation wasn’t just a punishment at this point; it was a safety measure.
After spending a few minutes at the sink straightening myself out, swilling my mouth with water and washing my hands and face with the drying liquid soap, I stepped outside and found Sally waiting for me, a look of concern across her tired features.
“I have hot chocolate,” she said, shoving a styrofoam cup at me. The liquid inside warmed my hand, and I grunted my thanks as we walked down the hall. I followed her without question, grateful for the steadiness, even if I couldn’t tell her anything. I needed… I needed my mother, no, my brother. I needed to talk to him and tell him everything.
