Chapter 2
Two
Penny
Isolation isn’t the worst place to be in here, I mean, it sucks, no proper bed, the toilet even more dilapidated than the usual, and the food was even shitter, but at least I could be alone. Alone was such a hard state to come by in prison.
Solitary didn’t make me calmer; it fed that hunger.
It was such a rare treat to be by myself, and it had only happened a handful of times since I’d been caught on that street outside the bar, covered in my last victim’s blood and trying not to throw up as I thought about it drying on my skin.
Alone meant that my thoughts could shout.
Police officers, lawyers, jurors and judges and sneering faces had all followed me until it was guards and COs and co-inmates. Not a shit nor a shower in peace or privacy unless I was in here. For eight long years, it had been that way.
It took two years for me to slip up and get caught, and nineteen before that to lose the last ebbs of my sanity.
So, the occasional fight worked in my favor, letting my mind breathe. Thanks Mandy.
“Thanks, Mandy!” I yelled, knowing she must be in here with me somewhere, just a ways down the hall with her squashed face and anger vibrating off her in stinky waves. “Hope you’re having as nice a time as I am!”
Someone rattled their door, but Mandy didn’t shout back.
I laughed to myself and settled on my thin mattress, ready to sink into wherever my mind wanted to take me.
Usually, it was to one of my kills, back when life was good and free and blood crusted my fingernails. I was in here for three murders and played a blinder keeping my mouth shut about the others.
But that last one, that expression on his face as he went, the way I saw every millisecond of life force leaving him, mmm, I could reminisce about that all day and not get bored.
It was the glittering green of his eyes, reflected with an alcohol haze and the lights from the streets, seeing all of that dull away.
The metallic stench of blood, the butcher shop scent of churned up organs… the frigid knife handle, the look on my sister’s face when she first broke…
I let my hands drift over my body, enjoying the privacy, and thought about that first one I’d been convicted of. He’d raped my sister, almost fucking killed her with how much it messed her up. His death had been a mystery for years, cold leads and dried up clues.
Apparently, I was good at what I did. My lawyer told me it made me cocky. I told her I didn’t care.
Shoving that baseball bat up my victim’s ass as he died was the least I could do for his troubles.
And I could live off the memories forever — those smells, the grunts, the idea of that final second of his life under my thumb.
Shit, something about that liminal phase, that moment the clock ticked over…
The others all blended, but the first and last. Yes. My favorites. I made myself sick with it, but the memories were irresistible.
My belly squeezed with need as my fingers grazed over my navel and lower, towards my pussy.
I’d fucked him with that bat until he bled, until shit and red coated both the varnished wood of the bat and the floor beneath us.
And I told him what it was doing to me. And why he was underneath me, tied down after I’d drugged him.
It was a miracle I didn’t vomit and spill my DNA all over him.
But he would rape no one else again. He would never breathe again.
“Shit,” I groaned as I slipped my hands into my underwear, honing right in on my clit. Another thing about prison, you get good at getting off analog. Fast and hard.
I was alone in here, but hell knows how long that would continue. The guards looped through here often, making sure none of us had found a way to kick the bucket in the overbearing silence.
I rubbed myself and squeezed my tit, rocking my hips and imagining what I would have done to that last one if I’d had time. If I’d not rushed it.
That was my downfall, the rushing of it. But fuck, it had been too much of a boon to miss. Fated, I think.
My orgasm began to build as I heard the telltale signs of a guard’s footsteps getting closer, click clacking along the hard flooring. I grinned, working my clit faster.
He muttered something to someone down the hall and moved his ass closer, opening and shutting the window hatches on the doors.
My orgasm rolled through me at the same moment CO Darling pulled my hatch open and met my eyes right on, like he knew right where I was in the room.
No shame, I stared him down, biting my lip and moaning loud, squeezing and writhing as I let the sight of him make it even better. Power, there was power in not stopping.
He watched. He said nothing, and I couldn’t see anything of his face but those vibrant eyes, but he didn’t look away.
“Oh, wow,” I moaned after, as I edged back down, still rolling my fingers over my clit, running them through my wet pussy, through all the lips and dips, just enjoying the aftershocks with the kind of audience I wanted.
Alone was great, what I thought I wanted, but the extra kick of pleasure his eyes on me gave was something to think about.
A crazy sexy man, not a snoring, farting woman twenty years older than me and twice as grizzly.
“CO,” I said when he still didn’t turn away. He seemed hypnotized, fascinated.
And as I pulled my hand free from my underwear and slipped my wet fingers between my lips, sucking off the flavor of my pussy, a shiver definitely ran through him. Not so stoic, useable. It made me hate him.
“There’s more where that came from, if you ever fancy a taste,” I told him before throwing a salute his way.
That did it.
He stepped back into the shadows I couldn’t see through, and a second later, my hatch slammed shut and his footsteps hurried away, that click clacking a little less measured than before. Mandy yelled at him for not checking on her, I think, but my mind was wiped.
I fell asleep with images of CO Darling, bathing in that blood with me, drowning in it. The last thing I saw before sleep took me was a spurt of red flying from his mouth, coating me as we swirled in death together.
I wanted his hands in me, on me, cut off and bleeding stumps.
Perfect.