that would be great! puts faces to the names.
anyway, i may aswell post the next chapter while i'm here.
CHAPTER 13
UNLUCKY NUMBER
The riot didn’t last long, all in all, and prisoners that weren’t shot dead, were sent back to their cells. Nox and the group were shown no sympathy for their wounds, as with others, and were simply locked in their cells, Nox thinking about the kid, and if it saw any of the fighting. He knew what it was like to witness violence at an early age; it wasn’t nice.
The fragile relationship that had formed between slig inmates and mudokon inmates during the riot was smashed when the CO’s opened fire, and ultimately ended up back to square one. Quite possibly never forming again.
Nox and his friends never spoke of the child or the escape again. Nox wasn’t sure why, but he continued to look after the mudokon, ducking and diving CO’s and inmates in the laundry room. Nox had been kept on laundry since the day he first started work there, and didn’t know why. Nut one afternoon, two months into his sentence, during dinner, when Nox was feeding the kid and generally keeping it occupied, two CO’s entered the room and he found out just why. Luckily, they didn’t see the hole in the wall and what it contained.
“You sure like washing sheets don’t ya’!” One CO taunted, both walking towards him from behind.
Nox said under his breath, “Don’t look, kid.” And turned to face them, noticing their batons were out and ready.
Then Nox realized who one of them was; the CO that had threatened Nox in his cell on his first day. This was going to hurt.
“What’s wrong? Heh heh, don’t ya’ remember me?” The CO spoke, the other patting his baton threateningly.
“Yeah. I remember.” Nox spoke wearily, knowing he was about to receive a thorough beating.
“You know why we’re here then?” The other CO said.
“I can only assume.” Nox said back to him, moving out of Lage’s line of sight so the child wouldn’t see what happened.
They both reached Nox in what seemed an eternity traversing the room towards him. And by the time they reached Nox, savouring every moment, her had butterflies in his stomach, tensing for the pain.
One whack of a truncheon onto his shoulder, almost breaking his coller bone. Nox fell to his knees, not bothering to resist, just taking every last ounce of nerve-shredding pain.
The other CO had his turn, and beat Nox once into his chest with a grunt, making Nox’s breathing staggered, badly winded for a few moments.
“Fuckin’ fight me! Fight me!!” One of them shouted. Nox didn’t know which one, he just concentrated on Lage in his mind. It helped block the pain.
“You stupid fucking moron!! What are ya’?! A coward or somethin’?!”
Baton to the face-tentacles, and bone-splintering pain, again.
Fight ‘em fucker! NOW!!
No…
A frustrated fist to the side of Nox’s head. Stars, and then concrete floor. He’d been knocked out.
The deliverance of pain set by harsh words on Nox’s first day of prison life had been emitted, now Nox had less to worry about. Lage was the only thing that seemed to matter anymore.
He dreamt of woodlands as far as the eye could see, and Lage growing up there, happy with other mudokons. But he knew he would never be able to watch the kid grow up in that environment. He would never be accepted, but it mattered to the kid, and that’s all Nox needed to fuel his determination to keep it safe and secure, have a decent childhood, and grow up in a typical mudokon area, like woodlands or small villages, not factories, businesses and prisons.
Such is prison life.
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bit of a short one. hope you both like it.
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