Page 42 of Caged In

Pull yourself together man.Izz inwardly scolds.

“Yes, sure thing, I can do that. That’ll be fine.”

You’re rambling. Izz’s inner voice pipes up. It would be more helpful if his inner voice told him what to say to the dangerous male in front of him, so he doesn’t say the wrong thing and piss off a serial killer.

His hands are trembling, he tries his best to corral them into cooperation, failing miserably. Doing his best to ignore the tremors, to pretend his hands aren’t shaking leaves caught in a hurricane. He scoops out a hefty heaping of mash. Carefully placing it down on the tray. He isn’t sure how much the killer is expecting to be given . . .

Not wanting to be stingy Izz gathers another mound of mashed potatoes. Best safe than sorry. Especially when it comes to dangerous inmates. Who may or may not be capable of murdering you in your sleep.

He slides over to the pasta dishes. Inspecting the different selections of pasta as if it were his first time seeing them. Not as if he’d spent the last . . . hour? serving countless inmates.

He has no clue which ones taste any good. He’s never eaten any of them. He didn’t help cook them, he has no idea what’s actually in any of them. Has no idea if the ingredients were measured correctly, if the flavours are to perfection or salty as shit. It could be a wonderful meal or it could be a disgusting sticky mess.

Shit.

He is in the whole tell-the-truth faze, isn’t he? It hasn’t really kept him out of trouble so far. Though faking it would end badly if the pasta he picks turns out to be a rubbery sludge and not thebest pasta choice.

“I actually don’t know what’s good. I’ve never eaten any of these.” Izz’s going with the truth, and hoping it doesn’t turn around to bite him in the ass.

It would be worse to lie to the killer.

“I’m new here—” Izz gestures to his orange shirt, like that isn’t obvious without pointing it out. “—I haven’t tried all the foods the prison cooks.”

And I hope to not be in the kitchen long enough to learn how each meal is made.

“Whichever you think would be best.”

The killer’s eyes bore into Izz’s soul. Surprisingly though, he doesn’t feel afraid. He feels as if the killer is silently checking if he’s okay. Which is weird. He has to be imagining it . . . ?

Maybe he is as pale as he feels and the killer is expecting him to pass out into the pasta. That would be an embarrassing incident he would never live down. He’d take himself to The Hole indefinitely so he wouldn’t have to look the killer in the eyes ever again.

“Alright . . . But if it tastes like shit, just letting you know, I warned you. I also didn’t cook it, so there’s that too.”

Izz hears a sharp intake of breath down from him—guess that server was part of the pasta cooking team. He has to say, he is not sorry for throwing any of them under the bus. None of them did shit when Leviswas putting his disgusting hands all over him. The multiple times that assholehas done it.

Screw them.

He flicks his eyes over to the inmate beside him—who had made the small distressed noise. One of those who deliberately turned away when he was being groped.

He sends the inmate a smirkedpaybacks-a-bitchand is deeply satisfied when the other man pales somewhat. He has to bite his lip to stop the laugh from escaping his throat.

He decides on the Bolognese type pasta—it’s the one he would go with, the nicest looking of the dishes—and delicately places it down on the killer’s tray. Extra careful not to splash a drop of food anywhere out of its little section. He does not want to flick pasta sauce off the tray in fear of hitting the killer.

How did Izz die? Well he flicked Bolognese sauce on a serial killer.

Izz bites his cheek to suppress the laugh he almost let loose. He is not yet a crazy person. He has to hold his composure as long as possible. Laughing at his own mind’s ramblings is not agood look on a sane person. Not when you want to stay out of the Psych-Wing.

“Would you like a drink or cookie?”

Okay, offering a cookie to a serial killer is laughable. And nothing Izz ever thought he would do in his lifetime, but here he is. Offering a cookie to a killer. Oh, how his life has changed drastically.

“Chocolate. And a water.”

Again with that deep voice, sending sparks through Izz’s body. He is so out of whack he can’t determine what the sensations means.

It has to be a fear response. Right?

“Perfect,” Izz cringes as soon as the word leaves his lips, spinning away swiftly to prevent the killer fromglimpsing the involuntary shiftin his expression.

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