Page 23 of Caged In

Izz seizes the blunt when it’s held out to him—brushing the man’s fingertips as he pinches the tightly wound paper—dragging the smoke deep into his starving lungs. Holding it in, until his lungs are screaming with the strain—

He blows out a thick cloud of smoke, slumping back further against the wall. The buzzing tingle warming his veins, unlocking and loosening the kinks and knots. He hadn’t been aware how much tension was within him. He’s beyond grateful to have this opportunity to release it.

~~~

They talked for an extensively long time. Izz can’t say he tracked the entire conversation, or that it didn’t spin out intoweirdlife-valuesandshower-thoughts. What he can remember is the cute inmate’s name.

Vince.

Vince is in here for con artist things. He’s apparently extremely skilled in manipulation and deception. Using the skill set to construct deals and garner protection in this hazardous cage.

The whole afternoon had disappeared in a flash, the bell sounding out, to inform them of dinner’s arrival, too soon for his zonked-out mind to comprehend.

They say their goodbyes and part ways.

Izz glides off to find The Gang in the cafeteria and fetch some dinner. He’s feeling the munchies coming on. His skin prickling and warm, like it’s so hungry it’s beginning to eat itself.

And Vince, disappears around the cafeteria building, heading off to—who knows where.

~~~

Izz hunches over his dinner, alone in his usual place. His back to the kitchen, his front facing the back corner. No clue where The Gang is, they may be still finishing their jobs?

His wacked-out mind keeps picking up imaginary signals, telling him he’s being watched. He knows it’s a delusional issue, brought on by whatever was in Vince’s blunt—he’s figuring out prison is a whole other world where he doesn’t have the run-down of what is in the available substances. Who knows what may have been mixed with the blunt? He should have thought about it before it’s already in his bloodstream. Too late for regrets on that front. As long as it doesn’t kill him, he isn’t too fussed—

Someone is definitely watching me. It can’t all be a paranoid delusion.

Izz swivels his head around—bracing his hands against the table’s surface when the sharp movement threatens to topple his rapidly-fading balance. His head is a million times heavier than humanly possible, straining his neck to keep it attached atop his body.

His eyes scan. Vision fluctuating in and out, like a camera’s zoom on the fritz. The colours of prisoners’ clothing are swirling together in blobs of grey and white mixed with blue and black from a few individual inmates—

There.

Across the path splitting the room—and the sea of churning colours—two vaguely familiar blurs catch his eye. They’re seated at a table which is swishing and tossing like a cracked boat on a rough sea. He has to strain hard to force his eyes to comprehend why the blurred silhouettes are drawing him in.

He shudders when their sleazy mugs come into focus. It’s those two scaly inmates from his Wing. The ones his cellmate said aren’t a worry. They sure resemble a worry with how they’re ogling him.

He scrunches his nose in distaste at how their squinting beady eyes bore into him. Like they’re undressing him in their minds. Their leering gazes have him feeling dirty and unclean. He doesn’t want to know how he’d react if he’s forced to interact with them again. From the way they’re grinning at him, he’s going to be interacting with them again, it’s enviable. Whether he wants to or not is irrelevant. He prays it’s in the far, far off, distant future—

Izz sighs in relief—louder than he intended too, his mind still a groggy mess—when The Gang bursts in through the double doors. Flowing over to the dwindling line to collect their meals.

He’s grateful for the distractions—and company—to pull his focus from the sleazy inmates. A concern he can easily shove to the back of his mind, now that he is not alone. He welcomes the distraction as The Gang trickles over to join him one by one, their food trays in hand. Slowly filling the places at their table.

Reni is a no-show, Izz’s way too out of it to form the words to find out about his cellmate. He elects to stay silent and eat his dinner, he barely remembers picking out the foods on his tray. Some kind of meat and mashed potatoes, with a heaping side of cooked carrots that taste faintly like honey. He fancied the sweet orange vegetables over the rest of the meal.

What his rattled mind does pick up on—outside of the chattering voices that came to him as if in a foreign language—is Erik’s weird antsy behaviour. The skinny inmate is squirming, drumming his fingers on the table, eyes rolling around to bounce off everything yet taking nothing in. Pupils dilated.

Izz scoffs to himself, guess he isn’t the only one out of it tonight. Wonder what Erik’s drug of choice is? The skinny inmate is way more out of it than Izz. Or at least, what he feels like he is. He doesn’t think he’s as far gone as Erik. But then again, he also feels like a crewman straddled over a wildly rocking table-ship. So presumably his judgement, currently, is not to be trusted.

~~~

The showers are uneventful. He has no serial killer to cut off his path. Reni and Erik are both no shows. The floor has a mind of its own and the only way to ensure it doesn’t run off, is for him not to take his eyes off it.

So he spends his shower with wide eyes fixating on the tiles, trying not to blink, in fear of missing the tiles retreating and him falling into the black abyss.

Isco keeps giving him the side eye. He isn’t sure what he did to deserve the judgemental gaze of the scarred inmate, but he isn’t about to draw attention to it. He knows who will win in a fight between them, he will be picking his teeth off the floor. If he doesn’t die before that. Or if his teeth don’t fall through the wobbling churning sea of floor tiles. Perhaps the watery tiles will help him out in a fight? And swallow Isco down into their depths.

David gives him nothing to work with, eyes squinting at Izz every time he looks at the other inmate. He has heard the man talking with the others but so far the guy hasn’t spoken a word to him. Or has he? Izz can’t recall.

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