Page 5 of The Reaper

“It might be good to have Hannah here, it might help his amnesia,” the male doctor said.

Amnesia? Fuck. He felt the panic rising in him further. He’d quashed it, of course, he didn’t panic, he had trained hard and had it drilled into him not to panic. His panic turned to frustration, aggression. That’s how he’d been trained, reprogrammed over the years. He didn’t know much, but he knew that. Why did he know he’d been trained to disregard panic? Why did he know his heart rate would probably be about 60 beats a minute and he could swat this doctor on the back of the head to knock him unconscious and get himself out of there? Why was he thinking about how to get out?

“So, just replay things again for me, you found him behind the bins, in this state? And he’s your boyfriend?

“Yes,” she said, trying to sound calm, but he could hear her voice trembling.

“You didn’t know he was going to be there?”

“No.”

“You didn’t know anything about him being beaten up and-”

“No, nothing,” she said, moving on to dressing his ribs slowly.

The blackness kept threatening to pull him in again. He had to blink, he had to keep blinking and breathing. He didn’t want to sleep anymore.

“It’s okay, Jack, I’m here now,” she said, somehow knowing. But of course she would know.

Hannah, his blonde, pretty girlfriend, said his name. Jack. He knew at that moment that he didn’t really recognise it. Hewasn’t sure he was Jack at all. Who was he? His mind reeled. It was all a blur, a haze. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t know.

Hannah. The thought of her was like balm on the angry prickle that the word ‘prison’ had induced in him. Somehow, he felt pulled towards her. Yes he was confused, he was aching all over physically and couldn’t remember anything, nothing about himself, or her, except a few snippets that were really quite useless, in terms of the practical facts. Yes, he had a strange sense that he didn’t belong, that all of this around him wasn’t quite right. But he did know he wanted more of her. He wanted more of her company, more of her presence. If he was honest with himself, he wanted her body, he wanted that orgasm that was flickering like a broken video behind his eyes on repeat.

He was feeling foggy. He was feeling like he needed to fight, he didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to remember.

He snapped out of his head for a second and realised another nurse was injecting something into his cannula.

“It’s a sedative, it will help you rest, you need to rest,” she said. The nurse blurred in front of him. “You have amnesia. You have a very bad head injury. You were left, all beaten up, this is Eastward Prison-”

He groaned again at that word. Prison? What the actual fuck?

“Broken ribs,” he heard the older man doctor supervisor mutter, as he tried to take the dressing from Hannah’s hands.

“Gentle with him!” she exclaimed, batting the hands of her supervisor off.

“Hannah, you shouldn’t be in here for this, you should go-” The hands of her supervisor took back the dressing.

But a hand shot out lightning fast. And clasped onto her wrist. His hand. His tattooed, blood caked hand. And he held onto her wrist, tight. He held onto her, the salvation, the redemption she offered. The blinding hot passion and the soothing safety he felt in every cell of his aching body.

“She stays,” he commanded. His voice sounded like thunder.

Everyone in the room stilled. “I don’t know fuck all about anything else, but the one thing I do know, Hannah is fucking staying.”

CHAPTER

THREE

HANNAH

Hannah feltherself shaking as she walked down the corridor.

Not just her hands. Her whole body, her whole soul.

The corridors of the prison that had seemed so familiar to her, now she felt she was walking along them for the first time. She’d worked there for years, it had become her second home. More familiar to her than the box of a flat she rented. That felt temporary, somehow the prison felt eternal. She could swear sometimes she heard the walls talking. People said it was talking. People said, stone remembers. She wasn’t sure whether she believed what they said. But the sense of strangeness was throwing everything off. Were prisoners genuinely whispering as she walked passed? It wouldn’t have been the first time someone was to be facing a moral dilemma within these walls. And she wouldn’t be the last.

What would those whispering transcendent voices advise her to do right now? The ghosts of the past, prisoners held here, their hopes and fears and life and souls lingering still. She liked the company. She worked in the infirmary, yes, but she didsome cell visits, and was familiar with the interview rooms, the visitors area. And this big event happened, throwing everything off, tipping her world upside down. It made the prison walls seem colder. The lights were harsher. Her footsteps on the floor echoed louder.

She licked her lips, trying to hide the panic she felt. There was a line between thrill and panic, she was realising, and this whole situation wavered between the two, constantly flicking, like a needle on a pressure dial, flicking under and over, thrill and panic and thrill and panic. Excitement and dread. Her heart raced.

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