Page 17 of Babalon

I miss him so much.

Unlocking the door to the truck, I quickly climb in and shut it behind me. Locking it shortly after, can’t be too careful, you know? There are criminals out there; the thought makes me laugh. I’m good at the physical aspect of my job, but the mental one, not so much. I can thank my childhood and my past trauma for that. I mean, we all have some sort of trauma, and I am sure others have it far worse but nothing gets me going like remembering what I went through as a teenager and letting it ruin my entire day.

Some days are worse, some not so bad. The terrible ones are the days where I fuck with Kace the hardest; today was one of those times. I know what I did was wrong, technically breaking a federal law—the good ol’ Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. To detect, prevent, and respond to inner facility sexual abuse of inmates. The poor guy hasn’t deserved a single thing I have done to him in the past three years outside of our initial interaction. I just keep doing it because… well, I’m bored and I want to.

Sighing, I sit in my truck for God knows how long. Staring at the only thing I managed to snag from Rey’s apartment in town before his parents emptied it and terminated the lease, a silver chain that now hangs from my rear-view mirror. Seated here, I keep thinking about how Kace felt in my hand. That man is something else. I never flocked to his kind when I was in school; he seems like the closed off, use my looks to get what I want, and always in the classroom type. He’s quiet, with a smart-assed mouth that I can’t stop thinking about. He can be kind of funny at times too, so I give him that. It makes up for being such a dipstick.

Honestly, I think it’s because he sticks out so much. Not just by his looks, but by his behavior and how being a criminal isn’this entire identity like the rest of the inmates in there. He was, unfortunately, dropped in here when he could have been sent to a minimum-security prison instead. Nonetheless, he’s the object of my daily focus, and sometimes, he consumes my nights as well. Everything about him, and anything I have ever fathomed, is illegal.

My first week at Darkwater I ran into him, literally. The fucker had the prettiest eyes I have ever seen. His five o’clock shadow paired with his white-blonde hair, he was just so attractive. I quickly schooled my expression that day and put him in his place. Why you ask? When I was going through my guard training, our instructor stated that there will be times where inmates attempt to test you as a guard, to see if you’re going to be weak or not, and that you needed to establish dominance immediately.

As others watched the interaction between us, I did just that, he went down on the floor, but not without a bit of a scuffle. With how much I use to scrap when I was in high school, it pissed me off when he started getting the upper hand so out came my baton and I beat the snot out of him with it. I likely wasn’t the first person to send him to the medical bay, but I did that day.

What was once confusion and apologies is now sarcastic retorts and the insistent need to goad me, at least that’s how I see it. I reminisce about that day all the time, the way he looked at me over his shoulder and the look of hatred filled those pretty blue eyes. So, now I keep him on edge.

I damn sure did today, and not in a way I had ever anticipated. I just… it was wrong. I should really apologize to him for what happened. Yet the longer I sit here and think about the power I felt, the more my own past comes back to haunt me. He deserved it, every man in that building is entitled to the poor treatment they received based solely on the way they have regarded other people.

So, fuck him, fuck all the insignificant men inside DWCI. Kace is incarcerated for a fucking reason. Does that mean he deserves to be assaulted? I’m not the one to make that sort of call, obviously, but I’m not going to feel sorry for the guy. He killed someone, he deserves to tough it out, even if he did not sound like he was suffering when he was moaning.

Is that what I sounded like when someone assaulted me? Did I sound like I wanted it?

Fuck, I think I’m going to vomit. I need to stop thinking about this.

Slamming the key into the ignition, I started the truck and waited for the radio to come alive;The Devil in Iby Slipknot now blaring through the speakers. With my belt on, I put the truck in reverse and push on the gas, turning to look out the back window to make sure I don’t run into anyone’s car or end up in a cell because some moron decides to walk behind a moving vehicle.

Back in drive, and pulling off the property, I set into my decent drive home. The road to the prison carves through a forest that lines the southern side of the mountains. Making it difficult for prisoners to escape; they would likely get lost and killed by some wild animal, die of starvation, get hurt, or freeze to death if it was winter. Every day I drive through this area, before the road finally opens into a four-lane highway, thinking of the ones who have attempted to flee. The ‘State Prison Ahead Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers’ sign fueling those thoughts every time it comes into view.

I mean, if they die during an escape then perhaps, they deserve that too. Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty but there are plenty of inmates that warrant it. Maybe they’re doing the rest of us a favor by escaping and never making it out of the woods.

Months into my employment, I saw so much shit it created this dark void within me and an underlying hatred for the men I was supposed to supervise. They are dreadful, speakill of anyone around them, violent to the point they kill their own, manipulative, unapologetic, and hygienically disgusting. Dismembered bodies, heads smashed on the floor, broomsticks shoved into places that should never be voyaged, prisoners burnt alive. Hell, even the officers and staff were assaulted. One of the last female officers that started after me was raped, obviously she is no longer at this facility, and I hate that something like that happened to her. She just didn’t get enough time to figure out the roles officers needed to play to be safe.

Imprisoned criminals are still criminals, they don’t stop because you slap them on the back of the hand. In fact, they can become worse. They develop hatred, malice, and a thirst for pain in some instances.

They are animals.

Everyone merits their karma, like my dad deserves the cancer he now has for the way he treated me. My mom, wherever that bitch is, earned what she has coming. What comes around, goes around, and I know my time is coming too. Not only do I treat inmates like trash, but now I have sexually assaulted one.

I’m still beat up about it and a bit of me probably will be for a long time. I know what it’s like to be taken advantage of; therefore, I don’t know what came over me or why I thought it was acceptable. When he started getting into it, I couldn’t stop. It made me eager to keep going, to see what else I could get out of him. Listening to Kace groan, feeling him thrust into my hand even though there wasn’t any sort of skin-to-skin contact, it was so erotic. He took what I gave him, begging for the scraps of some sort of human contact.

Maybe that’s what I needed, true connection with someone. Other than my friends and my job, Kace is the only constant in my life that hasn’t done me wrong. Maybe my trauma is influencing the way I approach him. I mean, that makes a lot of sense when you think about it. I tease and taunt, belittle, treathim as if he were less than I am; just like my dad use to do. Now that I have assaulted him, it’s like I’ve turned into the man that took advantage of me.

Feeling a wave of nausea hit me, I yanked the steering wheel until the tires were rolling over the gravel on the side of the road. Shoving at the door, I almost didn’t get out fast enough before I was retching. Dropping to my hands and knees into the green grass that I now clench in my fists. The very ones that harmed Kace, hands I can’t stop staring out. Wishing they would fall the hell off.

Fuck, I’m just like them.

What have I done, what the fuck do I do now? How do I come back from something like this?

Situating myself, I put my ass on the gravel and gaze out into the tree line. Listening to the road noise as other drivers travel past me without so much of a concern. I didn’t mean to push things as far as I did but now that things were said and done, I feel disgusted with myself. Why is it other people don’t feel this way when they harm others? I’m fucked up enough as it is, I can’t fathom why they choose to repeat the same behavior, if given the chance.

Maybe I’m not like them after all.

I don’t know if I can truly come back from this, or if Kace would be willing to forgive me but what I do know is that I need to keep my distance for a bit. Let him have some breathing space, and if I end up in the interrogation room with IA then I know where I stand with him.

With a slow and deep breath, I push myself up from the ground and climb back into my truck. My face felt like it’s throbbing from how hard I was retching; thankfully, I didn’t actually vomit. Reaching up, I flip the visor down and flick up the little plastic covering to see if I look as terrible as I feel.

The haunted silver eyes that peer back at me are mine, that I know, but they’re now blood shot and a few tears left briny trails down my cheeks. There is empathy and regret deep in there, I just know it. I can feel it in my heart.

With both hands, I wipe my face free of the salt left behind by my tears. Hooking loose strands of dark hair behind my ears I then flip the visor back up, drawing in a deep breath to calm myself.

---