Page 24 of Caged In

He loses his battle with blinking, pinching his dry eyes shut—blinking rapidly as his eyes fill with unshed tears.

Opening his eyes, he—

Is back in his cell. No longer vertical, but horizontal and staring at the low-cut ceiling of his little caged room—weird, his hips aren’t digging into the metal beneath him.

Dragging his heavy head off his pillow, he slumps in a sitting position. Holding his head in his hands. Whatever he smoked is wearing off, leaving behind a sick nauseating feeling in its retreat.

“You doing better now?” Izz can hear the amusement in his cellmate’s voice.

“I think so . . .” Izz mumbles. Lifting his head to find his cellmate in front of him, sitting on his own bunk across the way. When had Reni come in . . . ?

More importantly, when had I come back to the cell—

Izz’s ass is cushioned, he can’t feel the hard cold metal beneath. It’s surreal. Like he’s sitting on a real bed—

His mind is spinning with thoughts he can’t keep a tight hold on. Switching and shifting, sliding away before racing back—

Perhaps the drugs haven’t worn off as much as he presumed—

Izz jolts to his feet—closely resembling a weaving strand of grass, blowing about in the breeze—reefing back the blanket covering his mattress.

He finds his mattress—like he expected—what he hadn’t expected, is the second mattress sitting on top of it.

Where did that come from . . . ?

His cellmate whistles low in his throat, “you giving it up already.”

“Giving what up?” Izz analyses his cellmate’s words, his drug-addled mind blanking on their meaning. Poking his finger at the second mattress to check it’s really real.

Turning to face Reni when the man doesn’t say anything further, he inspects the smug expression on the other man’s mug—

Izz’s eyes widen as his mind clicks onto what Reni is implying. “Fuck off, I did not sell my ass for a bloody mattress.” He grins at his cellmate’s raised eyebrow, like the other man doesn’t believe a word he just said.

Izz chooses to play a little. “I mean, I would have, if asked . . . but I didn’t.” He jokes, making his cellmate snort a laugh and punch Izz playfully.

“You may joke, newbie. But people have done worse for far less in this place—” Reni rubs his chin, pondering, his eyes scanning the second mattress. “Whoever this mattress fairy is, you might want to pray they’re not the stalker type.”

Izz’s clueless where the mattress could have come from. Clearly it’s from Commissary, but why? How . . . ? Who?

He remembers complaining to his cellmate about lying on the terrible metal slabs, but his cellmate is clearly shocked, so the man isn’t responsible.

He told that weird counsellor guy? Didn’t he? He doubts the depressive man would do this. And the cute junkie, Vince, smoked more than Izz did so they’re out of the suspect pool.

Who does that leave? He can’t recall anyone else—wait. He mentioned it to the beefy server, it was in vague passing, but he had mentioned it. Could the server have done this? But why? Those mattresses are extremely expensive—

Izz dismisses the thought.

No way would the server—who he has barely spoken to—buy him an expensive mattress. A little extra food is one thing, hundreds of dollars on a mattress is an entirely different story.

He should be worried, but he’s extremely appreciative to whomever gifted the mattress to him. After all, he’s not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth. If that is the saying?

“It’s alright.” Izz smirks at his cellmate. “They can stalk away, I know my ass is luscious.” He waggles his ass at Reni, joking around light-heartedly.

Plopping back down onto his bunk, Izz groans at how it absorbs his weight, cushioning his ass and not hitting him with the bed’s metal base. “Man, this feels like wonder bread. Heavenly. No more back pain for me.”

Reni scoffs, laughing, “you’ve been here a day. Try years on these damn things, then you can complain about back pains.”

Izz nestles in, tucking up into his blankets, loving that his hip bones don’t grind into metal as he snuggles into a comfortable position on his side, facing his cellmate who’s pegging him with an expression of fixated scrutiny.

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