Page 9 of Homebound
The Operations Overseer - OO or Double Zero as he was not-so-affectionately referred to behind his back - held immense power over the prison employees. While inmates and their families went out of their way to curry favors from the warden, OO reigned supreme over the fate of anyone providing services inside these walls. The lowly cleaning folk like Gemma were especially vulnerable to his moods for they were a dime a dozen in the godly eyes of OO.
The fifth floor was a disaster. Guards had corralled the chained prisoners in a corner to allow the cleaning people access to the cells. The stench took Gemma’s breath away. Ruby had been on point: shit was everywhere.
Several fellow janitors were already at work with rags and mops, vigorously scrubbing surfaces in an effort to restore the exceptional cleanliness of the prison that Warden Heis liked to boast about to the City mayor. By the looks of things, everyone had been made well aware of OO’s intent to personally inspect the cell block, and people were putting forth a good show of doing their best for the sake of the guards who observed the cleanup efforts with keen interest.
“God, please, open the windows! I can’t breathe,” someone complained.
The prisoners, crowded together, snickered.
“Oh, yeah, motherfacka?” one hollered, rattling his chains. “You ain’t smelled nothin’ yet if you ain’t smelled Big Chugga’s backdoor tuba.”
“Yeah, c’mon, Chugga, bring on some ass haze!” others chimed in.
Egged on by fellow inmates, a big guy with facial tattoos, presumably Chugga, obligingly bent his knees into a slight squat and regaled his audience with a deafening, pistol-shot loud fart.
“That bomb was fetid!” The prisoners whistled and clapped.
But the guards weren’t amused. A baton was promptly sunk into Big Chugga’s gelatinous belly, and he grunted, doubling over. The dull thud of the weapon striking flesh went straight to Gemma’s core. Another baton swung and connected with the prisoner’s face, smashing his nose. Blood poured, bright red, on the floor. Chains holding the inmates together rattled like some hellish wind chimes.
Gemma couldn’t look away.
A helper muttered under his breath about extra clean-up, pulling her out of her horrified daze. After seven months at the prison, the commonplace violence was still jarring to Gemma’s senses. Yes, these men were criminals, yes, they shit all over the place and now she had to clean it - and she still couldn't see them hurt so methodically and deliberately. She was a poor fit for this job.
As she grabbed a bucket already filled with water, Gemma saw Arlo, ill-tempered and scowling, coming in to help. He wore rubber gloves that she hadn’t known existed at the prison. She had surely never been offered a pair.
“Good morning, Arlo,” she called out to him.
“Morning,” he muttered.
Ruby also noticed the gloves. “Hey, where did you get these? How come the rest of us have to handle this filth with our bare hands?”
“I’m special.”
Ruby placed her hands on her hips. “Oh, we know you are, hun. A diamond in the rough.”
“Listen, I hurt my hand, alright?” Arlo pulled one glove off to demonstrate gauze covering his palm.
Ruby remained unimpressed. “Doing what? Handing out gruel?”
“It’s a bad gush, the skin’s split from here to here. It hurts, by the way. They gave me the gloves at the medical bay so I could be here to help y’all without catching the bubonic plague.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby scoffed, his plight earning him zero points in her opinion. “Looks like a knife cut to me. Who’d you piss off, Arlo?”
He put the glove back on and shot Ruby a mean look. “Mind your own business, Ruby. Go clean shit or whatever.”
He snatched the nearest bucket and rolled it away from the two of them.
Ruby clucked her tongue. “I swear to God, one day he’ll get his dues. Back to his old tricks, I see.”
“What do you mean?” Gemma asked.
“Nothing. Come on, let’s go clean some shit.”
By the time OO made an appearance on the fifth floor, the contamination was largely eliminated, thanks to the mass effort put forth by the groaning, gagging cleaning crew. No one liked their job on a good day, but this task was rough compared even to their regular toil of picking off dried up boogers and wiping the yellow crust from the toilet rims.
OO’s thick-soled boots stepped carefully on the freshly mopped floor leaving behind clear tracks. His hand held a taser stick, and he was tapping the taser casually against his thigh encased in gray uniform pants. He wore glasses, and when he turned his gaze on Gemma clustered together with Ruby, Arlo, and the others, the light gleamed in the lenses, making it seem that his eyes shone with an unholy light.
Gemma’s animosity toward him had been immediate and instinctive, and at the beginning, she hadn’t been able to figure out why. He spoke well and didn’t patronize. He was firm but polite in his orders. Yet her entire system would go on high alert when he drew near.
