Vices

  Chapter 7

  It’s good to have a cause to believe in. It’s nice having a niche to fit into, whatever kind it may be. We continue to speak at dinner, but now I finally feel more connected to them. I officially have two allies, and that’s the most I’ve ever had. Maybe I’ll even gain some more, but no need to get all greedy.

  Most of all, I feel relieved. I feel hopeful. And for the first time in ages, I truly feel alive.

  Every day as we sit eating our dinners, they give me more information on this cause of theirs. First Mara tells me who exactly it is I should keep my eye out for and why.

  We’re looking for a man named Devlin. He’s tall, dark-haired, and broad-shouldered. He’s in his thirties. Not all that descriptive really. He’s got brown eyes, which continues the trend of how unique this man sounds, then they mention the fact that one of his eyes is fake, that he had lost it in battle or something. Alright, there’s something that should stand out. They also mention that he’s very masculine and rough looking and that he’s got a thick European accent, another key thing to listen for. He’s muscular, but not brutish. Evidently he’s also got a lot of fight in him.

  The way Mara talks about him makes me wonder if she fancies him. According to her, “his eyes glow in ways you cannot even fathom.”

  But I’m starting to wonder how exactly we’re going to be able to do anything for this man, being that we’re on the female side of the prison and this man’s obviously on the men’s side. I’m not quite sure what exactly their plan insinuates at this point in time, but I don’t want to get overly nosy and start asking a ton of questions, so I keep my mouth shut and listen.

  Apparently this man is one of their “group” leaders. Yet another thing that I’d like to touch base on—but I still keep my mouth shut and my ears open. They say he’s one of four brothers that lead this group of theirs and that they desperately need to get him out of here.

  Hmm. So this plan of theirs really doesn’t seem much like a plan quite yet. It seems more like a wish or maybe a very distant dream. I don’t know if I have the heart to tell them we’re in a highly guarded government-controlled prison that really doesn’t put up with people who enjoy their freedom. I still take the silent route. People can make their mistakes themselves.

  We sit there, me wondering if they’re going to fill me in on those holes in their plan; them, wondering if I’m going to ask about these holes they’ve left open. We really need to work on our conversational skills, but hey, they always said that the art of conversation is dead, so I’m guessing now that over half of the world’s population is dead, it probably (really) is too.

  I finally speak up and ask some very important questions that have been rattling in my brain ever since they started filling me in.

  “So what exactly is this group of yours, some religion-affiliated thing? Or a group rebellion? Or maybe just a book club?” I realize that I probably shouldn’t have said that last part, but it’s too late and they both send me a two-second glare.

  My sarcasm, like a wild beast, cannot always be controlled.

  Nor can my curiosity.

  “We’ll let you in on what this group really is once you do something for us. If you can do this for us, you’ll be made an official member of this group of ours,” says Mara.

  I give them a quick nod and stand up, having heard the end-of-dinner bell ring. We go our separate ways and I join the line to return our trays. I’m behind that bitchy girl that chewed me out that one time and in front of the African American woman who has a cell next to me. I don’t acknowledge either of them. I’ve talked enough for today.

  But then I hear something. I hear a sound that makes me tremble; a sound that causes all of our hearts to stop for a split second-- the blast of a gunshot.

  We all slowly turn our gazes toward the direction of the sound and we all give a sigh of relief when we see that no one’s life has been taken-- that it had just been a display to get our attention. The guard who has the particular liking to cause pain is the one that holds the gun. He smiles when he sees the stunned looks on our faces.

  He has a hoarse, nasally sounding voice that could never sound appealing to a woman. It has the same amount of appeal as a scratched record. “Good evening, ladies. Sorry this is the way I had to get yer attention, but I’m just not really in the mood to be patient with yer bunch tonight.” He flashes an evil grin and I can see a shiver travel through the girls to my right.

  The other guards start lining us all up and now I’m really starting to get nervous. The images from that Jewish holocaust back in one of the first world wars flash through my mind and I start to wonder if I’ll ever really be able to join this cause I’d been invited into. The guards have never used a gun to get our attention before. Ammunition is very hard to come by nowadays and I’m wondering if its use is an attempt to show the severity of the situation.

  We all stand in a line, heads down, waiting to see if our lives will be taken or if we can do something to pay up-– to get out of this, to keep our lives.

  “Look up. Look at me,” the guard with the gun shouts.

  He begins his slow walk down the line. He stops in front of the first girl and looks her in the eye. He’s at the far end from me. This is either a good thing or a bad thing-– I’m wondering if it’s just prolonging the inevitable, maybe they’re going to make an example out of me or something.

  I think I’m just being paranoid.

  We stand in silence, fearful of making any sound that could draw his attention to us. He takes his time, looking every single one of us in the eye. It seems as though we’re all frozen in time, like this could last forever, a new hell created in the hell that is this prison in this life we’ve been given. We hardly breathe. The night is getting darker and I hear the wind howl through the distant trees outside the prison. He takes his time moving from person to person.

  Why are they doing this? What’s going on?

  I really wish they’d be straightforward and tell us, rather than make us suffer, but then again, they enjoy making us suffer and this is certainly an opportune time to drive us a little crazy. Cheeky bastards.

  He continues walking down the line, stopping occasionally to make another inmate break down in tears or start trembling. I start to feel numb. I feel as though this is some sort of sick dream-- that it’s not even real. I calm myself. Might as well not make this worse than it already is.

  He’s halfway through the line when he finally stops and raises his gun. The girl who’s his target doesn’t even look up. She doesn’t shake. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t even speak. It’s like he’s invisible.

  But he’s not. He’s as real as I am. We all hear a single click.

  We all cringe as we hear the gush of blood and the thump as her body hits the ground. The two girls that were on either side of her are both trembling. Some of the other girls in the line are crying. I wonder if she was a friend of theirs. Maybe she was a good person. I don’t know. I won’t ever know.

  Oddly enough, anger, not fear, courses through me like adrenaline and it takes all of my self-control not to step out of line.

  The guard who pulled the trigger looks down at her lifeless body and smirks. He’s a monster, an absolute animal. If I were holding the gun I would shoot him in both of his arms and legs and let him bleed to death. He’s the kind of man who will never deserve an honorable death and I hope to God he never gets one.

  “Well ladies, we’ve been told that there’s been an infiltration of our prison by a certain group of...” he pauses and looks down the line. “Freedom fighters. If yeh have any knowledge of who these perpetrators might be, please let us know. Yer life will be saved and you’ll get a special treat... We may even let yeh out of this here hellhole. Now wouldn’t that be nice?”

  No one moves. No sideways glances. Nothing. He looks a little displeased with our lack of reaction, but he knows his offer is out in the open and anyone in their right minds would want to scoop th
at offer up. They dismiss us and we all walk back to our cells in silence.

  I feel as though I’ve been punched in the gut. Should I turn them in or do I stay loyal to them? Mara and Taylor have been the only two people that have even acknowledged my existence in the past 5 years, let alone become friendly with me. I feel anxiety creep through my bones, wondering if they’re just using me. Maybe they’ll turn me in and I’ll be the next one to encounter the hangman’s noose.

  I feel conflicted and afraid. So much for a renewed sense of hope.

  There’s a terrible shroud of hopelessness and despair wafting through our cells now. We all continue with our daily lives, except for now mine is slightly different. For four days my companions are nowhere to be found. I’m really starting to get nervous. Maybe someone else was in on their plan and they turned in Mara and Taylor. What if they know that I recently joined in and I’m next?

  I live in fear. Every time we eat dinner I glance around and sit alone, shaking; hoping and praying that I don’t hear the sound of gunfire ring through the air like the sound of shattering glass. I start to wonder if they ever existed (here’s my anxiety talking again) and I start to really wonder if I’m going crazy. Or wait, maybe that I am crazy; I’m not completely sure which I should be more concerned about.

  It’s quite amazing how fast emotions go through me now. I feel angry one moment and paranoid the next. Occasionally even a fleeting feeling of hope passes over, but it never stays long. My mind always drifts back to my lost friends.

  When I had them to eat lunch with there would be endless chatter, but now it’s mostly quiet except for the occasional rumor spreading from inmate to inmate about why that girl was shot and where some of the other prisoners are. Mara and Taylor aren’t the only ones missing. There are maybe half as many of us as there were before and the ones that are still here are all giddy with fear. Maybe some are giddy with the soon-to-be taste of freedom. I wonder if there are traitors among us.

  I try to listen in on the rumors, but I usually can’t hear very well; we’re all quite skilled at remaining silent to the guard’s ears that occasionally our voices are silent to each other’s ears. But then I hear something that makes my heart sink and my hands go cold.

  “I heard the ones they took are supposedly conspirators, especially that red head and her mute friend,” says a dark-haired Indian woman, “And I heard that her ‘mute’ friend wasn’t even mute; that it’s all just a lie to keep ‘em together so they can do their funny little conspiracies and get our whole lot in trouble.”

  “I swear, if they get us all sentenced to hang,” says a more sophisticated sounding woman, “I will ring their necks and make sure they die in a most unsatisfactory sort of way; the kind of way that the papers would avoid writing about because it’ll so gruesome.”

  After hearing that little snippet of information, I put my fork down and put my head in my hands. What am I going to do? What can I do? I feel my bones begin to tremble and remember where I am. I can’t break down here. They’ll think I did something I wasn’t supposed to do. They’ll hurt me. They may even kill me.

  I cannot be weak. I cannot break down.

  One thing people do is use scapegoats, and a girl having a mental breakdown a couple of days after the whole group getting interrogated would sure seem suspicious.

  I try to calm myself down. I notice a few tears on my cheek and wipe them away. I hug myself, feeling incredibly alone and incredibly afraid. I hope they’re okay. I feel as though I’ve had a change of heart; maybe dying for a cause is better than rotting in prison for the rest of your life.

  I wish I could do something to help them; something that could save them from an untimely fate, or out of the torture that these men may inflict upon them. I look around at my fellow inmates. They all look so pitiful, so pathetic. I will not allow myself to give up hope-- I will not stand for it. I have to do something to help them.

  I hardly know anything about this cause I’m standing up for, but I know it’s the right thing to do. I have nothing else left to live for. It’s better to die for something than to live for nothing.

  I sit there alone, but with a renewed sense of pride and strength. My mind wanders. I think about what I’ve done and all the plans I had had for my future. I think about all of my lost memories, of all of my lost friends, of all of my lost family, of everything about myself that I’ve lost. I feel a fire rise up inside myself that, if I had been allowed to live my life as I wanted it to, I would’ve never felt. I know I can make a difference. I am a lost cause, but their cause is not.

  I start to ponder about morality and about good and evil. I feel as though these things were never really something I had thought about in my life before. I feel like we had taken our choices in life for granted; that we never really cared about a greater cause; we only really cared about ourselves. We never really looked around and actually saw. We only saw what we wanted to see.

  I remember hearing about people who went around doing horrible, sinful things, and going to a church to have themselves cleansed of their sins. It made me wonder why they couldn’t have just done the right thing in the first place. Sure we’re all human and we make mistakes, but honestly I think you can make at least one right decision every once in a while. I know now that I have to do that. I have to do the right thing and I can’t back down. I can’t give up for any reason; I can’t think of myself. I have to think about the others. I cannot allow fear determine my fate.

  The dirt underneath my feet is dry and as I tap my foot, a cloud of dust comes up. I watch the dust rise up and then fall once more. Why do I always find myself pondering about life from before? It’s over, it’s done with, and it will never be the same. But hopefully I’ll live to see a brighter day when we aren’t locked away and forgotten by our dear government.

  As I sit here I wonder if maybe this cause of theirs is a cause trying to overthrow this tyranny. I hope it is. I know I may not know much about this cause, but it’s something to believe in.

  I make a choice that most people will never have to make in a lifetime, a choice that could either end up saving me or sending me to my grave.