Chapter 4
They stripped me naked of my white Georio dinner dress and offered me a new selection of clothes.
Standing under the stark light with my hands covering myself as much as I could, my skin pebbled from the chill in the police station. It smelled like peroxide and dread.
“Ah, no thank you,” I said to the woman holding out the bright red pants and top to me. “I cannot wear that, I will look like a criminal.”
She shoved them at my stomach. “You are a criminal.”
“I am not.”
“You are.” She let the clothes fall on the peeling linoleum floor. “But if you want to be questioned naked, you’re welcome to.”
My gut churned with a recipe of anxiety and fear. I threw up before I got dressed.
“There has been a mistake.”
My four words were impotent to the women officer who peered over me on the other side of the desk. They handcuffed my wrists as if I could hurt her.
“I have done nothing wrong,” I said. “Merely visiting a friend.”
She brushed her eyes over a file that had my photo upon it. “You were getting an illegal insignia.”
“I need to call my brother.”
“Soulless do not have the right to a phone call. Your family will be notified of your arrest and sentencing.”
“I need my lawyer.”
“Soulless do not have the right to council.”
I lifted my finger to argue and found that she was correct. Many human rights had been taken away from the Soulless, including the opportunity to have medical attention. Thankfully my appendix was not currently bursting.
“I am not Soulless,” I said amending my circumstance quickly. “I still have three days until my twenty-fifth birthday.” Above us the clock ticked over to one am. “Apologies, two days.”
“You were engraving an illegal insignia. Only Soulless need illegal insignias.”
“You have no proof.”
She gave me a dumb look.
“I need a trial. I still have three—two days.”
“After an arrest we are required to hold you in jail and judging by the mass amounts of evidence we will need to sift through, you will be with us here for a few days. At least two.”
“Two days!” My stomach flopped. “You cannot hold me in here for two days! I will turn twenty-five and then I will be considered Soulless and then I will never get out of here. That is unfair.”
“Are you suggesting I break the law? What a Soulless remark.”
“I’m not Soulless!”
They placed a wire over my heart which connected to a monitor. It showed my heartbeat. Slow. Perfect rhythm. No heavy thrashing. Not seeking it’s matching mate.
The heartbeat of a dying thing.
The heartbeat of a Soulless.
“You don’t feel anything do you?” The woman asked. It was a whisper. A sad, pitiful voice that curled over my ears.
To see my true nature upon a screen forced me into silence.
I threw up again.
The holding cell I was shoved into looked as if it were suffering from a terrible puberty. I was not alone in my new abode; I had a bunk mate. A man who sobbed a pitch not even Beethoven could master.
Crying was a useless activity. Leaking water. Nonsensical blubbering. I was not very good at handling people who cried. Probably because I had never cried before.
I patted his back. “There, there. Do not worry, we will sort out this awful trouble together and—”
“He got caught stealing women's underwear.” The officer fiddled with the lock in the door.
I tore my hands away from the sobbing man. “Excuse me?”
The guard flipped through his keys.
I pointed to my newest companion. “Is he panty snatcher?”
The officer chose not to elaborate on this very disconcerting piece of information and promptly closed the door, locking me in with the sobbing, probably-panty snatcher man.
“You can’t leave me in here with him!” I ran to the door and banged on it. “Let me out! I can’t be in here with a panty snatcher. I’m wearing Pearla lingerie! Help!”
“If it makes you feel any better.” The sobbing man wiped his nose. “I only like panties you've worn during your ovulation cycle.”
I screamed.
Two days later, I had not connected. The only thumping in my body came from a migraine knocking on all the doors in my head from sleeping on a plastic mat and breathing recycled air.
The panty snatcher wished me a happy birthday and I thanked him and asked him if he would consider ending his life for being Soulless and he refused.
I was taken out of the cell and sat back at a desk with a phone pressed up against my ear and mouth.
“Duckie?” Magnus breathed on the other end.
The tension in my shoulders knotted away, my stomach ceased it’s heaving, any pain hammering in my head fell away in favour of my brother’s voice. He sounded like home.
“What did you do?” His voice was deep.
My lower lip quivered. “A reckless thing.”
“You attempted to save your life. It wasn’t reckless, it was brave.”
“My ankles are cuffed by a chain. It was reckless.”
“Duckie, listen to me. I’m working on this.”
“It’s my birthday.” I bit down hard on my lower lip until I tasted blood. “I’m considered Soulless now.”
The silence of the phone hummed between us. “Just do as they say. If you do not cooperate that will only give them cause to think you are Soulless.”
“But I am Soulless—”
“You are not. You are a good person.”
“But Magnus—”
“I love you Duckie.”
The officer took the phone away and hung up for me.
“Now, I will sentence you.” She brought out paperwork.
I ran through what she had said. “I need a trial.”
“I am legally permitted to condemn you with the evidence available.” She took a stamp off her desk and smashed it upon my file. “There. You have now been sentenced.”
“Sentenced? Sentenced?” If my heart wasn’t thrashing before, it was now.
“Life in prison.”
“Life in prison? Life in prison?”
“In Ricker Prison.”
“Ricker Prison? Ricker Prison?”
Ricker Prison was the toilet bowl of evil. Every wicked creature hived in the concrete box and was only brought into the sunlight when they showed in the annual Execution Battle.
“I cannot go to Ricker Prison! That’s a prison for Soulless.”
She tapped my birthdate on the file. “You are Soulless.”
“No! I’m a good person!”
She stood out of her chair and collected her paperwork.
“I’m a good person!” I said louder. “I’m a good person!”
She left.
A windowless van chauffeured me for several hours and when it finally halted my body was weeping in knots and muscle aches.
They couriered me out of the van and white gold sunlight filtered across my skin.
I gulped in fresh air as though I had been drowning.
The moment of small relief and reconnecting to nature was swallowed up as I came to meet the playground of evil.
Ricker Prison speared high, penetrating the clouds in a wash of jaundice yellow. Barbed wire adorned fences, guard posts watched.
A billboard showed my brother’s face. He smiled with all his pearl white teeth in the photo, giving the prison a thumbs up. It was my family who had managed much of the bills regarding Soulless prisons and their upkeep.
Judging by the direction of the tiny metal laced windows, the prisoners had an unobstructed view of my brother, reminding them which family kept them caged. At least they did not know my face.
The billboard’s shutters changed to a new photo. ‘De Astor,’ printed boldly in glittering gold and my brother smiled again, this time I stood next to him with my own large smile.
“Oh freckles.” I cringed.
The guard prodded my back to move.
Inside, I was lectured and processed. The warden looked me up and down, a faint grin over his lips. I was a De Astor in his palm. He could fold over his fingers and crush me if he pleased.
When introductions were over two guards flanked me in front of a set of double doors that would welcome me in the general population of the prison’s inhabitants. The smell of sweat perfumed the air. My blood pumped in my ears. A muffle of zoo animal sounds scratched on the other side of the door.
“I cannot go in there.” I dug my heels in the ground. “They will know who I am. They will know it is my family who has assisted in putting them all in there.”
The guard used his baton to nick my side. “Maybe they won’t know who you are.”
The guards opened the doors and pushed me in like food to a lion’s den.
Layers of floors curled up like a snail shell holding hundreds of inmates in matching red, their clamour and clatter ceased as they twisted their heads to see their newest neighbour.
A woman with a tattooed face pointed at me with a grin. “It’s Delphine De Astor!”