CHAPTER 9
BLOODY DEEDS
They spent most of the rest of the day in Rowl’s cell, up until supper, when another array of culinary delights was served up. They ate, talked, and had to cut short their planning when the CO’s ordered all inmates back to their cells for the night. The cell doors locked shut once more. Nox sat up late on his hard bunk, thinking, planning ahead for the big bust. It seemed foolish to Nox when he looked at the plans they had from an outsiders point of view, but what the hell else was there to do?
Who cares if I end up dead anyway? Sure Stollin and Wrask would be shocked, Dran wouldn’t even know who I was by then, and Loke probably wouldn’t give a shit. After all, I did try to kill him, inadvertently. What’s waiting for me back at Slig Barracks? Jack shit, that’s what.
You’re here to live out the day to day life, not career! Stuff your career! That went out the window when you survived the ‘D&M’ war!
Don’t listen to him, Nox’y! Go down fightin’ my son! Start a riot! Kill as many CO’s as possible! Leave a fucking mark!! Heh heh…
Eventually, he drifted off, and was awakened by a whistle blow some hours later.
♠♠♠♠♠
“Breakfast, y’all!” A CO shouted from the ground floor. Another whistle blow.
Nox got up off his bunk, to see the cell doors had already been opened, and so he left his cell and joined the slow-moving huddle around the stairway. Eventually reaching the ground floor of the hall, and sitting at a table, waiting for his fellow inmates, and an unappetizing breakfast. First to sit at his table was Rowl.
“How yeh doin’, Nox? Ready for work?” He greeted.
“Yeah – what?” Nox replied.
“Rowl laughed, “That’s right soldier! Work!”
“Why didn’t we do any yesterday?”
“Ah, well when a new prisoner enters the prison, the place is put on hold the day after, while that lot down there,” He indicated down the corridor Nox had entered the prison facility through when he first arrived, “Sronti, the glukkon boss, and his fellow CO captain of the guards, Rolin, sort out your paperwork. Its only a small prison compared to others. You remember Rolin from yesterday don’t ya’? Nearly caught us planning to escape?”
“Oh yeah. So today’s work as usual?” Nox asked.
“Yup. But it should be easy for you, seeing as you’re a soldier an’ all.”
A mudokon gave Nox and Rowl a tray of breakfast mush each, and returned to the trolley to deliver yet more trays to hungry inmates.
Same shit as the day before.
Glon appeared next to Rowl, and carefully placed his tray on the table whilst sitting down.
“Mornin'.” He muttered.
Rowl started to laugh at the grimace of face-tentacles on Glon’s face.
“What you laughin’ at?” He muttered again.
“I told yeh that shit was strong stuff! He makes it in one of the broken boilers here, sells it to the guards.”
“What stuff?” Nox asked.
“I got Glon here some liquor, that an associate of my associate makes an’ sells to people. Glon gave me two packs of fags to give him! I couldn’t even keep some for myself! I’ve been gaggin’ for one for ages!”
“The hung over Glon rubbed his head and began slowly eating breakfast, “Today of all days for work.” He mumbled.
“Serves ya’ right for not givin’ me a smoke!”
“There bad for yeh health, I was doin’ yeh a favour!” Glon patronized, jokingly.
Billy slammed his tray down onto the table next to Nox, and without saying a word,began wolfing down the mush.
“One day you’ll choke.” Rowl commented. Billy wasn’t listening.
“What work do ya’ do?” Nox questioned, spooning some mush into his mouth.
“Oh you know, not hardcore stuff, just washing laundry, cleaning sheets, sometimes cleaning out the stove the kitchen staff use for cooking. But if you step outta’ line, or a CO takes a particular disliking to yeh, you’ll end up in the chain gang, doin’ nothin’ more than mining useless rock in this mine they got out there. I wasw put there for a week once, ‘cu I cussed a CO. hardest week o’ my life! I can tell yeh that! Just do as they say and don’t get sent down there. Billy was down there for three years! That’s why he’s so…well, big! But he wont say what he did to deserve it.”
“That reminds me,” Glon said, “What did yeh do to end up here?” He aimed at Nox.
“Oh…well I got murder dumped on me.”
“Murder?!” Rowl exclaimed, spitting mush out.
“No, he said it got dumped on ‘im, you know, when they cant be arsed to investigate a crime and bin the sentence on the next criminal they find.” Glon said in a ‘matter-of-fact’ tone.
“Well why the short sentence, Nox?” Rowl asked.
“Well, the judge said there wasn’t enough evidence that said I did it, so I got three months,” Nox didn’t want to mention the fact that he was quite possibly insane, “What did you do anyway, Rowl?”
“Me? Argh, you know, stole this, that, and the other. Then got caught with it in me hands. Three years.”
“Before yeh ask,” Began Glon, “Attempted murder. I was working security by Rupture Farms stockyards actually,” He added, as if old memories had come flooding back, “Yeah, superior officer being a moron, and for trying to kill ‘im I got five years. Don’t bother askin’ Billy. He don’t tell no one. Don’t even know how long he’s got left.”
After breakfast, all the inmates were told to stand in lines in the yard, and were sorted into different working groups for the week. Nox and a few others were set to laundry washing, whilst Glon and Rowl, among others, were set to cleaning out the thick charcoal that had set at the back of the prison stoves, unluckily. Billy and some others were set to ironing sheets.
They were immediately sent to their working positions, and Nox’s group for laundry washing was marched back through the hall and down the other corridor, led by a couple of CO’s, taking the first door on the left. Seven massive vats, more wide than they were tall, were situated in the laundry area, filled with boiling water and industrial strength washing powder, ladders attatched to the sides leading up to a thin walkway around the brim of the vat. They were given a long, thin wooden pole each, and the others began climbing the ladders to the tops of the vats. Nox followed suit.
When Nox reached the top of one of the vats, he saw the other inmates begin poking and swirling around the laundry in the vats, washing them. It didn’t take Nox long to get to grips with it.
Nox worked up until dinner, where he ate alone, seeing as his friends had had dinner early. Nox understood how Glon must have felt constantly, and found it hard not to act paranoid with all the whispering going on around him…at least he thought there was whispering.
Your going loopy Nox! Heh heh, loopy loo Nox’y noo!!
Nox noticed a folded newspaper lying on an unoccupied table next to his, and leant over to pick it up. He scanned the front page of ‘The Daily Deception’ to see that it was a couple of days old, the front page heading; RUPTURE FARMS ALMOST OUT OF BUSINESS! ANIMALS NEARING EXTINCTION! Nox, not caring what was going on in the outside world, simply placed the paper down, and waited.
Soon, dinner was over, and they were led back into the laundry room, to wash yet more bed sheets and pillowcases in vats of boiling water. Then, something terrible happened.
A fight broke out in the laundry room. Nox didn’t know if it was the intense heat of the room, the boredom of the job, or an old grudge, but it happened. Only this time, someone ended up dead.
Nox had been swirling a particularly dirty sheet around in the hot water with his pole, from a distance, when he heard a mudokon shout from the ground floor. He looked down from the top of the vat to see two mudokons circling each other, one with a homemade shiv in his hand, the other had nothing but his fists.
The armed mudokon lunged at the other mud, shiv first, who dodged it and counteracted with a powerful-looking right hook into the other mud’s nose, popping it with a cry. Blood drizzled from his nostrils, and the armed mud slashed in criss-cross style whilst advancing towards his enemy.
By now, a small crowd of mudokon and slig inmates had gathered around the two scrapping mudokons. No one offering help. Only goading, half-chanting ‘Fight! Fight!’.
The unarmed mud backed away from each slash, and dropped to the floor rather athletically, better than any slig could perform, and kicked the mud’s legs hard, forcing him to fall to the ground with a thud. Seizing his chance, the unarmed mudokon crouched over the downed mud, and repeatedly punched him in his bloodied face, grunting with effort, the other mudokon yelping with each blow.
The beaten mudokon gained enough sense during his battering to plunge his sharpened shiv deep into the soft flesh of the attacking mudokon’s belly. Hot blood covered the downed mud, and the other rolled sideways off of him, clutching his stomach, moaning; the homemade shiv still sticking out of his body. The crowd backed away from him, emitting a low gasp at the bloody sight. A pool of blood had already gathered around the stabbed mudokon when the CO’s arrived.
Nox was wrong to think they would bring peace to the situation, and he watched in numb horror as the CO captain, Rolin, pulled out his pistol, pulled back the loading mechanism, put it to the top of the injured mudokon’s head, and pulled the trigger. A sharp bang.
The bullet burrowed its way through the skull of the mud, passed smoothly through the goo of its brain, and burst out the other side, near his neck, with an explosion of splintered bone and bloodied mush that was moments previously a perfectly formed brain. The bullet then hid itself deep in the concrete floor, as it attempting to evade justice for what it had done. The mudokon fell onto its side, and twitched for a few seconds as the crowd of inmates took in the gruesome sight.
Nox had seen sights similar to this during the ‘D&M’ war, and so was hardened by it, allowing himself to think rationally as the others bathed in the silence of post murder. Thing is, his mind was blank.
The CO captain, Rolin, spoke.
“I want you lot to get back to work. He was no good…beyond saving.” He shouted almost robitcally, as if practiced by repitition, “And I don’t want to hear anything more about it. Anyone thinking of revenge, or simply breaking the boredom, I will personally shoot down and fucking torture! You hear me!” He sputtered, then clearing his throat, gaining self control with a small silence. He put his smoking pistol back in its holster, and bent down to pull the blood-stained shiv from the stomach of the mudokon. “Right…you two,” He pointed it at two of the CO’s, “Get this lump of shit outta’ my sight.”
“We’ll get the mudokon staff to –”
“NOW!!”
“Yes sir!”
The two did as they were told in fear of receiving a severs beating, one picking up the feet, the other, the arms. The dead meat was carried out of sight, and Rolin characteristically took one last look at the vats, and followed them out, eyeing the shiv he was holding. The small crowd slowly dispersed, along with the beaten mudokon, and by the time the mudokon staff had arrived at the scene to clean up the pool of blood, all the inmates were working as usual, as if nothing had happened. Nox was in slight shock, but not at the scene he had just witnessed, it was at the heartless reaction of the inmates.
No time for fucking sorrow!! Get a grip!
Nox hadn’t moved from the top of the vat, and he had had a birds-eye view of the whole fight…or murder. And so, he carried on washing the sheets, after all, clean sheets were more important than dead bodies in this place.
Nox worked until supper time, where he was the last in the laundry room; he hadn’t realized it was supper before he noticed he was the only one still working on the vats. The others had all already climbed down and began filing out the door. He must of missed the whistle; it was quite noisy in the laundry room.
Nox made his way down the tall ladder, and by the time he’d reached the ground, he was the only inhabitant of the room. Then…he heard a noise…it came from behind him…
Nox, half expecting a group of slig or mudokon inmates to be standing behind him, slowly turned around. What he saw took his breath away.
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things start to get interesting after this chapter.
which characters do you find heroic, AlexFili? oh, and by the way, thanks for reading.
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