13. Jasmine
thirteen
Jasmine
Evening happened all at once. No windows, no sun, just the countdown of meals and the switch from bone-white fluorescents to the colder, blue-lit ones that signaled shift change and the beginning of Adam’s prime time.
I’d half expected him to roll in with an entourage, maybe drag me out and make an example, but he didn’t.
He came alone, carrying a folding chair by the spine, bare feet silent on the polished concrete.
He set the chair outside my cell with the kind of care you’d use arranging furniture in a room that mattered, then sat down and crossed one ankle over his knee, hands laced in his lap.
He didn’t start with threats, or even small talk. He just looked at me like a math problem he was halfway done solving.
“You ever notice how everyone here gets the same breakfast?” he said, nodding at the plate of coagulated eggs and the cup of juice with its new topography. “I used to think it was about budget, but really it’s about setting expectations.”
I stayed on my cot, back against the wall, arms draped loose at my sides. I made eye contact, held it, and said nothing.
He studied my face for a beat. “I’m not here to negotiate or to punish. I want to talk.”
He waited, as if expecting applause or at least a snort. When I gave him nothing, he pressed on.
“You had routines, outside. Not big ones—small things. Like what time you woke up, whether you ate before or after a run, the way you always lined your shoes up so the left one was an inch ahead of the right.” He said it without affect, like reading a grocery list. “You took your coffee black, with one sugar. Never more.”
It was the kind of detail a stalker would get wrong, but he didn’t.
He watched me for a flicker of a smile. “I make a study of people. I want to know what’s real about them, not what they present.
” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Your favorite music, for example: not what you say it is, but what you put on in the car, alone, when nobody’s listening.
You played Motown first, then always dropped into some angry girl shit—early ‘00s, maybe, something with a lot of fuck-you in the hook.”
I didn’t blink. I did let my mouth twist, just a fraction, which was more than he’d gotten from me before.
He clocked it. “See, I like that. That’s you. The others, they all try to be someone for me, but not you. You just sit there.”
I looked past him, to the wall where the cinder block changed color halfway up—bad paint job, evidence of a cover-up rather than a renovation.
I thought about all the time and effort he’d spent learning these details, and how none of it mattered.
People are easy to decode, especially when they don’t believe they have secrets.
He didn’t need my help, but he wanted it.
He looked up at the ceiling, as if measuring the distance between here and heaven, then back at me. “You want to know about me, Jasmine?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“My mother worked nights—hotels, then restaurants, then the hospital laundry. She brought home every man who made her feel seen, which was all of them, for about a week at a time. She’d cycle through her own personal clockwork, never quite learning the lesson that if you expect anything from people, they’ll find the most efficient way to let you down.
I had two sisters. Neither of them lasted.
One’s dead, one’s in a place where she can’t be found.
” He didn’t make it a tragedy, just said it as if listing weather conditions.
I kept my hands open, visible, in my lap. I kept my mouth shut.
He leaned back, arms folded. “I spent my life trying to understand what the world does to women. The answer? It breaks them. Or if it can’t, it throws them out.
I built this place to interrupt the process.
To strip out the variables, give you a shot at something clean.
You think this is a prison, but it’s actually the first real chance most of you get at being honest.”
He didn’t say “with yourself,” but the implication hung there, sticky and unavoidable.
He looked at the lock, then at my face, then at the lock again. “Most people fight their own stories. You fought harder than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Still, I didn’t say a word.
He smiled, barely. “Consent is a lie. It’s a story you tell yourself to justify what was always going to happen anyway. The only choice is how much of yourself you want to keep in the end.”
I waited for the threat, but there wasn’t one. Just a long, slow exhale that fogged the air between us for a moment.
He steepled his fingers. “You’re different. You don’t perform. You just wait. You’re not trying to win; you’re just trying to outlast me.”
He let it hang, as if expecting me to rise to the bait. I didn’t.
The “conversation”—if you could call it that—lasted for two hours.
He asked about my childhood. What kind of lunchbox I had.
Whether I played sports. If I remembered my first kiss, and if so, why it mattered.
He never pried, never got emotional, just presented the questions like a series of stones for me to step across or drown in.
I answered nothing. I let my face do what it wanted. I did not break eye contact, not even once. I watched his micro-expressions, the way he pressed his thumb against his own palm whenever he wanted to change topics, the way his left foot would tap out a silent code when he hit a wall.
He finally stood, folding the chair with a snap, and lingered with one hand on the backrest. He looked at me for a long, loaded second.
“You’re the most honest person in here, Eve Eight. Everyone else performs. You just sit there.”
He left the chair propped against the wall, then locked the cell with both padlocks—one after the other, slow, so I could see it. He walked away, boots making zero sound on the concrete. The light above my cell buzzed, then steadied.
I didn’t move. I sat there, hands open, pulse steady, and wondered if he was right.
Maybe I wasn’t performing. Maybe I’d just become the story he’d written for me.
I stared at the lock, then at the chair, then at the shadow his body left on the far wall.
I wasn’t going to break. I was going to bend so slowly he’d never see it happen.
Then, one day, I’d finish the job.
Adam didn’t leave, and I knew that meant it was time for another performance. He stopped at Lina’s cell.
“You know, Eve Eight, this could be you at any time.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
Lina opened her cell and stepped out into the aisle.
“It takes very little effort.” He slid Lina’s shirt off without even looking at her, his eyes on me. “Because, in the end, you will be happier.”
He placed a hand on Lina’s head and pushed downward. She went without so much as a flinch.
“What they experience isn’t fear.”
Lina unbuckled his pants, lowered his zipper, and pushed them to the floor. He didn’t bother stepping out of them. She pulled down his boxer briefs.
“In fact, I would argue that most, if not always, it’s ecstasy.”
Lina grabbed his erect cock and slipped the head into her mouth. I tried to send her a mental message to bite down as hard as she could, but nothing happened.
“You’ll see that I never leave them unpleased.”
Lina worked his cock in and out of her mouth, occasionally gagging. He placed his hands at the back of her head and started fucking her mouth as if he were banging her cunt.
“Once I’m finished, she will get hers.”
“You’re a fucking psycho,” I said. “You’re holding these women captive.”
He bucked a couple of times, his jaw tightening. I watched Lina’s throat, swallowing once, twice, three times.
“You’re wrong about that, Eve Eight.”
He snapped his fingers, and the other women opened their cell doors, even Renata. Lina wiped the mess from her lips and stood.
I watched the women walk out the door one by one.
“You see. I’m holding no one captive.”
“Then let me out.”
“Except for you.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter what you do; Sniper will find your ass, and I can’t even put into words what will happen to you.”
He pulled up his pants and fixed himself, eyes still on me when the women returned, each going back into their cells.
“You could have fucking left,” I screamed. None of them looked at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You have no power here, Eve Eight.” He chuckled. “This is my Eden. Yours is next door.”
He turned away and headed to the open door.
“Good night, ladies.”
The door closed, and I screamed. “Renata,” I said calmly. “What the fuck is going on?”
“He’s a good man,” she said. “He takes care of us.”
I moved back to my cot and curled up into a fetal position. “Sniper. Where are you?”