Page 70 of Caged In

It’s been a week. A week since Izz . . . murdered . . . He’s finding it hard to sleep, every time he closes his eyes or the lights shut off, he can see the guard. Lying in a puddle of blood. Unmoving. Lifeless. Dead.

No matter how many times Izz tries to save the guard in his dreams, he can never do it. The guard always dies. The dreams always end in blood. He always wakes up in a panicked frenzycovered in a cold sweat. The only upside, in the—some could argue, self-imposed—lockdown is his new clothing. No longer the stand-out orange newcomer. He is an official member of the prison crew. A criminal home among other criminals. A murderer behind bars . . .

How long will the guilt last?

Will it never leave? Is this his life from now on? Never able to sleep without seeing the guard’s face. Without reliving the events that transpired in the filing room. Without wishing and hoping for time to rewind and the incident never to occur.

Will the guilt leave if he confesses? Or will that only make it worse? He needs someone to talk to. Someone to help him make sense of everything he’s done, everything he’s feeling—

He cuts off his thoughts. Demanding them to focus elsewhere. He’s desperate to take a proper shower. Sick of having to wash in the sink. He would give almost anything to take an actual shower. He feels tacky and gross.

How did people survived back in the days before showers were invented? He couldn’t have done it, he’d have found a waterfall or something—anything—to wash the ickysensationsaway. He’s unsure if it’s the lack of a shower, or that he can still smell the metallic stench of blood on his hands—

A clunking bang signals the cell door opening, for the first time since lockdown started. The bars sliding back, the prison beyond awaiting the inmates’ return.

Does this mean the lockdown has lifted? Does this mean they didn’t find any evidence to link him to the murder? Surely he would already have been dragged out of his cell by now if they found anything on the body to incriminate him. Surely?

Izz wants to sprint straight to the showers, firstly however, he has someone he wants to talk to.

He follows Reni out the door, his cellmate paying little attention, talking a mile a minute about going to the Rec-Room—must be the room with the TV they played cards in a lifetime ago? He can’t believe he hasn’t been in here for a year, it isn’t even close to six months. Too much has happened in too short a time.

He has only one destination in mind, and it isn’t the Rec-Room. Ignoring Reni’s yelled attempts to gain his attention, Izz manoeuvres himself past the inmates heading in the opposite direction. Elbowing his way down the platform to the cell on the end. The Satanic cell that holds an inmate who he can talk to. To throw everything off his chest. He needs to expel it before it corrodes his soul further than it already has.

Legs numb and cold, breathing uneven and skin clammy. Izz edges down the line of cells, neither recognising nor taking note of the inmates he passes. His focus solely on his targeted goal . . .

He discovers an empty cell. The Satanic artworks hanging in all their glory. But their owner . . . The occupant of this particular cell . . . Gone . . .

Where could Sinn'ous be? The cells literally justopened. And the only way out is the stairs. The stairs Izz had passed on his way here. He had not seen Sinn'ous.

Had Sinn'ous been let out early? Or was Izz completely unobservantand walked right past him?

Guess I will take that shower after all.

22

The warm water flowing over Izz’s skin is calming his nerves. A cleansing to wash away his sins. He prays it lasts, prays his guilt washes away alongside the water swirling down the drain. He shouldn’t hold guilt over what happened, what he was forced to do, to a bad person who wanted to do bad things to him.

But he does. The guilt is there and it’s a hard thing to live with. He wants it gone. He wants to go back to how he used to be, before he was caged up. He fears those days are long gone and he will never return to who he once was.

“Hello, Beautiful.” The hand on Izz’s back would have caused him to break out into an anxiety attack—and scream like a girl—if he hadn’t recognised the deep voice.

A soothing presence he welcomes with theoreticalopen arms. Sinn'ous is the only inmate aside from Reni and Zidie, and maybe Blake, who he trusts. He shouldn’t trust anyone in prison. But he can’t help it. He needs to hold someone close, needs the human connection. Hewill gocrazy if he doesn’t have someone to talk to.

Izz watches Sinn'ous through the water’s flow as the male stalks around him and leans against the tiled wall. He needs to say something to open up to everything else he wants to get off his chest. But what?

Act normal. Be polite. Say anything—

“Ahh—hi.”Wow. Great work Izz. You nailed that one.He’s like a clueless teenager who has zero vocabulary.

Sinn'ous’s eyes run up and down Izz’s front. Making him squirm. Not from fear, rather a primaldesire he refuses to look too closely at.

Izz had been secretly hoping the killer would come here. He’d tried not to think about how vulnerable he is in the showers. How alone he is—metaphorically speaking, as the showers are packed with inmates in his same mindset to get clean, only he trusts and knows none of them. And his experience last time . . . when he was without The Gang . . . He does not want another guard scenario transpiring in the prison showers. He doesn’t want to add to his guilt pool‘shivvedman in prison showers’.

“Heard you were looking for me,” Sinn'ous folds his arms over his broad chest, “you enjoy what I gifted you.”

How did Sinn'ous hear Izz was searching for him? Does he have eyes watching? Or is it more along the lines of him spotting Izz at his cell?

Should I ask, or let the subject drop? Do I really want to know?

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