Chapter 8
Eight
Adrian
Ishoved my uniform in my locker, grateful to have the shitty polyester off my body.
I never wore it out of the building, taking it off the second I could.
It made my skin crawl. I hated the way it looked on me, the way it made me feel.
Everything was wrong about it, fake, like I was wearing someone else’s skin.
When I was a detective, I loved the uniform. It was my own clothes, but the badge I wore was right, made every bit of clothing sit correct against my skin. Without it, things felt wrong, off kilter. I never lived for my job, but I was damn good at it.
And now I was here, in this dump, in these hideous clothes, still not living for my job. But damn terrible at it.
My mood plummeted even more when I checked my cell, finding messages asking how I was, if I was doing okay… People from my old life trying to stay relevant.
I was going straight out to the bar down the street tonight with a group of colleagues, and no way would I wander into anywhere, even if it was close to a prison, dressed like this. After weeks of pestering to go blow off steam with the people I spent all day with already, I caved.
They were insane.
No one liked prison officers. Almost as much as they loathed cops. And in a town where the prison loomed over the high street, it was only exacerbated. We were part of the festering rot of the looming building, the soul sucking, life draining concrete blocks shadowing the entire town.
“You almost ready?” Anderson asked, only having loosened his collar.
He was one of the better guys here, maybe the only I’d bonded with at all over the months I’d wasted grinding toward the top.
He was a fellow corporal here, and we got on just fine.
Fine. Only fine. But that was enough. I wasn’t here for deep friendship. Or a long time.
Most of my time away from here was spent alone, to the point I’d almost forgotten how to socialize, so it took me a minute to muster up social norms, friendly and engaging reactions. Fuck this.
“Yep,” I grunted, shoving a black t-shirt over my head and flattening my dark hair back down. “Good to go.”
Anderson snorted and shook his head, and together we made our way through the corridors and out of the building, through the gates, checking out as was routine, and heading to our cars.
Leaving the prison was as much of a ball ache as entering it, and it festered an emptiness in me.
I was leaving her there. A place she wasn’t safe, a place she couldn’t flee.
I wanted her out, with me and away from this hellhole.
Sighing, I sank into my car. It was a mess, full of takeout wrappers and old coffees, dog blankets I hadn’t bothered to take back inside after my spaniel soaked them with rain and mud. I just ignored it, like I always did, and took myself off to the closest bar I’d been directed to.
Working in the prison was… not what I expected.
Surrounded by these feral women all day had ruined all illusions of it being a good career.
The guards were decent for the most part, but there were bad eggs, and the prisoners, well, they were all bad eggs.
Every one of them tried something. Sex. Violence.
Tears and sympathy. I soon stopped wondering if the system was broken when yet another of the fuckers proved she should be there.
But there was that one, with the confidence that went from soaring to plummeting mid-sentence, with green eyes and almost black hair that she kept messy and loose.
She might be the baddest egg of all. I thought of Karner, lying in that hospital bed after whatever the fuck happened with Randal, and my teeth creaked and threatened to crack from the pressure.
She lied to me, and when I confronted Randal about it, finding him dopey eyed and half asleep in the break room, he’d shrugged, seeming fully baffled by her state. Either he was a great liar, or she was. I didn’t like either option. When I’d— Shit.
My jaw ached from the pressure I was putting on it, so I turned the radio up to drown out my thoughts. Dark thoughts.
The wrong ones.
Randal was well hated amongst the staff for pushing his luck with the inmates. The female COs found him disgusting for his brazenness and the worst of the men for taking their tail.
I rubbed my hand over the stubble on my chin and sighed.
The bar was busy when I pulled up, but I managed to grab a spot near the back of the parking lot, away from the entrance.
I watched the rest of the group arrive and file in before I followed, refusing to have to make awkward as shit conversation with the first lonely fucker there.
In a crowd, I could just linger, listen, pick up on the clues they laid down about their character and judge.
It was also easier to blend in or fuck off if I wanted to. Irish goodbye that motherfucker.
“Hey!” Sally, the nurse I was hoping to catch, gave me a smile as I arrived at the table, a beer in hand. Luckily, she was on the end, so I could sink in next to her. There were a good number of bodies in the bar, but it wasn’t overwhelming; plenty of space to spread out and chat.
Sally was one of those rare colleagues who didn’t give off bad energy.
I was good at reading people from years on a corrupt force, and she read well.
Lonely, maybe, but solid. She was also the nurse who’d tended to Karner this morning, who had filled me in on her mood before I stepped into the small, curtained bay.
And I’d got the impression they’d been… nice to each other.
“Sally,” I said with a nod of my head. “How are you?”
“Tired!” she replied, taking a slow sip of her frosty wine glass. “But you know how it is.”
We fell into easy chatter. I turned on the charm as best I could, letting her rant on about her shift, nodding and making noise in the right places. Everyone else flitted in and out of the conversation, and I made sure to engage them all.
“It’s just such a hellscape sometimes, when they keep reducing our funding but expecting more,” Sally huffed, two more glasses of wine in. “I have half a mind to go and give the warden a piece of my mind.”
I smiled, knocked my bottle against her glass, imagining this slight woman yelling at Warden Domingo. “I’d be right there with ya,” I said. “I can be the muscle.”
She snorted a laugh and whacked my arm, rolling her eyes. “We’ll make it work, Adrian. Don’t you worry. We always do.”
The conversation around the table drifted again. It was a decent mix of COs from our shift and admin staff, some nurses, all just unwinding after a difficult day surrounded by the worst of society.
Sally was getting tipsier, and her inhibitions dropping as she continued to rant and rave, mixed with giggles and gentle chiding of others. She really was a delight. I leaned closer.
“The inmate you had in today, the one I had to question, what can you tell me about her?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. Failing, but she was too tipsy to notice.
Sally thought for a moment. “Karner?”
I nodded.
“She’s done awful things. I know that,” she blurted, then hiccupped. “But she was polite. Grateful.”
All that, like Karner hadn’t murdered three innocent men. Like she hadn’t destroyed lives with her ripple effect of evil and madness. But I inclined my head, encouraging Sally to carry on. I just needed to hear her say it.
Karner’s murders were some of the most brutal I had ever seen, sustained, deeply disturbing deaths given to these poor saps for no apparent reason. Nothing she had ever said in interviews, not the stand because she didn’t take it, gave a clue.
But I needed to know if my words to Randal had done what I’d suspected.
It had been stupid, a way to put that distance back.
Make it clear to Karner where we stood, that this didn’t mean a thing, that she was just another inmate to fuck about with.
I couldn’t have her thinking there was anything special about her.
I’d panicked, sure. But now she knew her place with me.
Maybe I’d bring her something. Chocolate, or good coffee. Something from the outside to remind her how this worked. What this was supposed to be. Couldn’t have her thinking she had any say in this game.
“Karner’s one sick bitch,” Anderson blurted, leaning in from across the table, surprising me with the roughness of his words. “Don’t think many of us don’t have a story about her screwing with us.”
“The men, anyway,” one of the female COs I hadn’t spoken to interrupted, frowning. “She only screws with the men who screw with her.”
Anderson scowled, others stiffened. “I don’t know what you think you’re implying, Boulet, but you’d best keep your mouth shut.”
For a second, the tension at the table built. Like we were at work, words unsaid, faces turned away from the despair and corruption.
“So you didn’t almost lose a finger a few weeks ago after slipping your way into Karner’s cell?
” Boulet spat back, her voice raising with the flush of red in her cheeks.
“She bragged, you know? That you tried it with her.” Boulet sat back and crossed her arms. “Fucking men and their audacity. Think the killer will be different for them…”
“Fuck this,” Anderson grunted, standing and downing his drink. With each swallow, my opinion of him cracked. He’d tried to fuck Karner?
Life as a prison officer wasn’t easy; it was damn lonely, in fact. And we were all in it. And we were all apparently as bad as each other. I was no better than Anderson, really, but hot, hypocritical anger built anyway.
I gulped down my beer, the glass squeaking in my grip. The urge to hurt him bubbled, so I focused on the cheap beer, on calming my pulse. My anger issues were new, and I didn’t want to get a handle on them yet.
A few months ago, my spaniel, Boba, had gone to live with my mother.
I’d sold my apartment and moved somewhere unsuitable for a dog.
It wasn’t a good spot, no garden, but more fitting for my needs, so my only regular company lived with another lonely person.
My mother. The dog liked it more there now anyway.
And Boba was a pleasant companion for the forlorn, broken woman that had birthed me.
I was no good for a good anymore, unmotivated, distracted. But giving Boba up had done nothing for my stability.
Anderson went to open his mouth, dig him and our gender in deeper, when I spoke up.
“Did she tell you anything more about what landed her in medical?” I asked Sally to distract myself from the building tension, pushing my luck; confidentiality was a tricky subject here.
Technically, as Karner was a prisoner, she had no privacy rights, but the nurses tended to stick to civilian rules when it didn’t cause any harm.
Earlier, Sally had refused to divulge more than the basics, but maybe with a few wines swimming through her veins…
Sally shook her head. “She… though she did say ‘he’, before biting it back.” Sally shot Anderson a glare, before he huffed and left, muttering under his breath as he weaved through the crowd and fucked right the way off.
Sally’s angry gaze hit the rest of the men around the table. But not me. “You know what I think…”
“Stop it, Sally,” another CO bit back.
They glared at each other, then Sally stood, sighing. “I’m going home,” she muttered, swaying a little, but holding her own. The female CO across the table rose with her, Boulet, I think, along with most of the women.
Testosterone increased, along with awkwardness. One of the remainders coughed. Another swigged his beer. Had every single one of them abused the women behind those bars?
He. Karner’d made clear reference to a he. So it was cum on her, blood and cum and sweat. A male CO had gone into her cell and taken advantage of her position. Randal, it was 100% Randal and 100% my doing. What the hell had I expected?
It hadn’t been my full intention. Randal was crude and impulsive from what I’d heard. I should have accounted for that. But she was the danger here. She was the one behind bars, the one who couldn’t be left alone in any company without being strapped down.
Penelope Karner was the killer, the psychopath, not Randal, and not me. Some people were built wrong. And you didn’t fix that, you contained it, squashed it. I’d told Randal what had happened, hinted he could have the same kind of fun.
But it pissed me off that Randal had done exactly what I’d hinted he should. She complicated matters, and it was interfering with my judgment. I said, thought, acted one thing, then did the other right after.
Ignoring the others, I slammed my empty glass on the table and stood, storming from the place without a backward glance. My body was violent with anticipation, itchy and rashy, fired up.
It wouldn’t be long now, and things would fall into place. Everything would start in motion; it just needed to push along a little longer, without Karner causing any more problems.
But having Randal put her in that place wasn’t possible, I’d proven that in my reaction tonight.
At home later that night, not even bothering to turn the lights on in my small apartment, I crashed into the bedroom and stripped off my underwear. It was Karner’s face that forced its way into my addled brain as I jacked myself off.
Penelope, underneath me, pinned down by her throat as I fucked her raw. Her blood would look so pretty coating my cock, dripping from the tip and into her mouth. She stopped fighting in my head before she ever would in real life.
I came hard, grabbing the jar I had to hand. Every spurt, all of it saved.
He had his cum all over her, and in my sleep-infested, beer-fogged mind, that couldn’t stand.
I relaxed after, content, sleepy. I had to own that. Stop fucking about. I’d read all her files, studied her in such great depth that I knew her almost as well as I did myself.
She was fascinating, deranged, damaged, irreparable. Yet, somehow, enigmatic.
And soon, I’d paint her skin with blood and cum too.