Chapter 11
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 Sinclair died, 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.
Then he sighed. Shook his head and muttered under his breath before speaking up again. “The BOP said this will be temporary, let’s maintain order, yeah?”
The room shifted after that. Chairs creaked, boots scraped, irritation thickened the air as we all braced ourselves for what was to come. Hunger made people stupid, violent.
I tracked each movement without meaning to, cataloging which of them was angry, who looked bored.
Who was excited for the chaos.
I thought more on my ignored question, if the Federal Bureau of Prisons had suggested cutting food, or just thrown the budget cut at the warden and expected him to decide. Either way, he was implementing it, so he was to blame for anything bad that happened.
And I could fucking feel it in the air that bad was coming. Even the other COs seemed antsier, itchy with pressure as we left the room.
“These fat bitches live for their food,” Randal muttered under his breath, sniggering as he walked past me.
“This is going to be a fucking shit show.” My jaw tightened as I held in my anger for the cunt; he was one of those fuckers who relished in the misery of this place, fed off it.
His energy was full of excitement, glee.
I hadn’t let myself register that he was here, on the same shift as me again.
We were synching up, like he was becoming my shadow, always just behind me, or around the corner as I turned it, ready to remind me what a shithead I was.
I had to wonder if it was on purpose, some cosmic joke to make my life even worse.
Since I’d given him that ill-fated tip about Karner in a moment of weak anger, he was becoming more and more a beggar, a fucking cancer on my skin.
Asshole still hadn’t got what he deserved from me. I was biding my time, though, waiting for that perfect moment to strike. Ruin him. He’d listened to me in a dark moment, reveled in it.
I’d made a mistake, but that didn’t excuse his going and forcing an inmate to her knees. My inmate. Even if I’d told him to do it, he shouldn’t have. We were just as bad as each other, but at least I knew it. Understood it.
Randal was ignorant, dangerous in it.
I followed him out into the hall and through the gates to the officer’s desk, ignoring his yapping as we handed over.
A few violent incidents last night. Someone on Karner’s floor had tried to kill themself — wasn’t her — and another had spent the last seven hours screaming for their boyfriend’s dick, again, not her.
My eyes drifted to Randal as he moved through the hall, and I fought back the desire to have myself locked away, killing him in front of hundreds of witnesses just to satisfy the clawing urge under my skin.
Braying women at their cell doors, desperate for their meager meal, for a bit of entertainment however they could get it.
I really thought it through as I stood there, how I might do it, letting my mind drift to images of his bloody corpse, of dragging Karner along for the ride then ending her too.
But no. I was patient. I’d proven that to myself more than once. Randal wasn’t dying.
If I killed Randal now, the scandal would be all that was on their lips for years to come.
But I always came back to Karner, up on that second floor, biding her own time.
I wanted to see what she was doing every damn minute of the day, to watch her and command her, to carve into her skin and make her my marionette.
I had the tools, the research.
She would look so pretty if she were unable to move any of her own muscles. Beautiful as a doll, frozen in time, gaze vacant, lips unmoving, limbs bent just how I wanted them.
Anger struck through me like lightning; she never wandered far from my mind.
That evil witch of a woman with the skill to kill men twice her size and chuckle about it in front of police officers, lawyers, family.
But I did. She existed under my skin now; we were burrowing into each other free roaming and unfettered.
I hated even more that she turned me on.
I should stop. Leave. Nothing had gone too far yet, I could simply walk away. Turn tail, maybe rejoin the police force, or move towns and start fresh somewhere else. I didn’t have to linger in this.
With deep, steadying breaths, I pictured Karner. Imagined her here without me, under someone else’s control.
My chest squeezed.
Fuck, this place was making me sloppy, making me forget the whole damn point of all of this. I turned my back on Randal, looked away from the second floor, and focused on the notes being shoved into my hand by the departing night shift officer.
Penelope Karner would not have my power.