“Every night, I have nightmares. I dream of murders, violence, torture. I dream of closed doors, bars, and worse: I dream that I can't lock my door. Each time, death enters, and unfortunately, every time, I wake up. I wake up screaming, in my new cell, waking up half the block. I get a 'shut up' or 'someone kill him,' but nothing more. In the old prison, the one in Duli, I would have been stabbed for that, and much worse. But here, everyone is afraid of me. News travels fast, but they don't know a hundredth of what happened that night; and they're already terrified.
I have no one to talk to (or rather, no one wants to listen), but I'm tired of keeping all this to myself. I need to tell my story, so I'm going to take my pen and write everything down. I don't know who will read these lines (maybe no one will ever read them) but I hope you are far, very far from Duli, and that you will never (re)visit.”
Raphaël stopped, eyeing the teenagers after this grim warning. He only got a shrug from Thomas:
“He's right, this dumbass, that town is a pain in the ass...”
Seeing that this introduction didn't interest them much, he continued:
“It took just one mistake to screw up my whole life. My record will tell you that I committed a 'homicide,' it will give you all the details of that day, and much better than I can. Because that morning, I was mixing up a blend of opiates and horse tranquilizers with my 'friends,' and I woke up in a hospital room the next day. A few hours later, without understanding what was happening to me, I landed in hell. I was told that I stabbed the guy forty-eight times. That I had fled, that there was a witness, or something like that. I was high as a kite in court, I remember almost nothing.
Maybe I really killed that man (I think he was a homeless person). Maybe I was defending myself, maybe I was innocent, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've had time to think about it during all these years in prison, but it makes no difference: the worst mistake of my life, I'm sure I'm responsible for that. I should have never touched drugs.
It started after my accident. I was very young, only fifteen and without a license, but that didn't stop me from messing around on a motorcycle. Apparently, a car hit me, and it was the first time but not the last that I woke up in the hospital. I had broken vertebrae, and the doctors had given me a new opiate for the pain, ten times more powerful than morphine. Except what they didn't know (or maybe it was on purpose...) is that it was ten times more addictive. When I got out of there, I had a fever and my whole body was itching. At first, the pain was unbearable, but what I didn't know was that it was withdrawal, not the accident. So they gave me more opiates. When my prescription ended, I went through the worst moment of my life (at least at the time...). The pain I thought was unbearable had multiplied by ten. So I went out on the street, and I started to hang around.
At first, we couldn't find anything stronger than heroin, so I started to shoot up: I didn't feel anything, but the pain was a bit less worse. And then, very quickly, the dealers adapted, and you could find the new pharmaceutical opiates on the street, a hundred times cheaper and a hundred times more dangerous than heroin. I was already hopelessly trapped, living on the street, doing odd jobs or stealing to pay for my fix: it was simply unthinkable to be in withdrawal, as if I had been partying for years without ever stopping drinking to push back the hangover, knowing that the longer I waited, the worse it would be.
And yet, I hadn't hit rock bottom. After a few years of back and forth to the hospital, waking up on a mattress in a derelict building with shoes that weren't mine or without the sweater I had the day before, the street chemists had gone even further: they started mixing tranquilizers and opiates. And then, people started dropping like flies.
Two pieces, that's all it took for me to take my dose. And my god, it was powerful: three times I woke up next to corpses. And the worst part was that it was a vicious circle with no way out: when withdrawal hit, even taking heroin or opiates did nothing to avoid the crisis and convulsions. It was kiddie drugs compared to that. Sometimes, even the withdrawal crises were deadly. So you had to take more not to die. But it was SO powerful, you never knew if you were also going to drop dead from an overdose by taking a cocktail.
During that period, my memory was like Swiss cheese. I lost two years of my life, erased or fogged in my sick brain. At least until one day I killed a man. And then, I left one hell for another. They took me out of the hospital in handcuffs, and after a long ride in a police car, I remember my arrival as if it were yesterday, with impeccable clarity: the high fences with barbed wire, the huge red brick building with its sinister windows, the heavy and imposing black door. When I entered, and it closed behind me, a feeling hit me like a hammer blow: I would never leave this place alive. Even if I didn't get life, I would die before serving my sentence.
And my god, how I wish that had been true...”
***
“Eh bah damn, the old guy wasn't joking!” Thomas exclaimed. “What an explosive cocktail! And to think I was scared of trying cocaine... But I've heard of all these drugs, it's no joke.”
Raphaël added nothing, though he knew it all too well. His hands trembled, and his mouth had gone dry listening to this speech and these experiences he was all too familiar with.
“Come on,” the young man continued, “it's time to take a tour inside.”
The three of them headed toward the now doorless entrance, followed by Raphaël. Arriving at the foot of the building, he looked up and was struck by its height: “One more step forward, and it will swallow me whole,” he thought to himself. Beyond the doorway, the afternoon light filtered through the bars, striping the room with light. The dirty walls were covered in graffiti; on the row of chairs against the tainted concrete, only two remained intact.
“So, storyteller!” he heard someone shout from inside, “Where to? What's this guide you've given us?”
He sighed and stepped over the heavy black door lying on the ground. Entering, he felt struck by the same thought that had overwhelmed Eustass, almost knocking him over: “NO ONE WILL GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE.” But it was just his imagination. It was just that, right? He saw the three teenagers to his left, leaning against the reinforced glass counter. No one was there to greet them, though; only a few pens lay hidden under a layer of dust. Someone had tried to break the glass - during or after the riots? - but had only managed to crack it. The door on the other side of the counter was closed, its small window covered in black grime. The corridor led to several doors with different signs – “TOILETS,” “BLOCK 1,” “DO NOT LEAVE OPEN” - as well as a reinforced steel grille wide open leading to another seemingly endless corridor.
“So, are you coming? Or are you chicken?”
Thomas's comment made his two companions laugh.
Raphaël, though reluctant, complied, wondering why he hadn't left yet - because Jordane would kill me, he thought - and approached them. Suddenly, he heard a sharp crack under his feet and jumped: looking down, he saw that he had stepped on the debris of a beer bottle. The group burst into laughter, the sound echoing through the building, and he hid his frustration as best he could.
“Don't worry, we're just joking,” Michelin said, uttering something other than a mere insult for the first time that day.
“But of course,” Thomas added, “we're here for a little scare, aren't we?”
Then, he ceremoniously gestured for Raphaël to continue the reading. He complied, but not entirely reluctantly: he was beginning to find interest in the story.
“From where I write these lines, on my tiny desk, I can see the sky (through bars, but it's better than nothing) and the guards pass by from time to time, calmly or whistling. Somehow, today I am in the nicest room I have known since I left my parents' house. It's much better than the street, but especially so much better than Duli.
When I arrived, I quickly understood that this place was going to be hell. Back then, I was mostly suffering from withdrawal. I was busy vomiting, trembling, fainting (and when they questioned me after the riot, they blamed everything I said on my addiction, saying I had hallucinated, but at that time, I had been clean for more than a year...). But I still remember how they made me join a line of other guys, all with mean looks, tattoos, or scars. They stripped us and showered us with icy water jets. I think at that moment, I didn't feel anything because the withdrawal was so intense. They took us to block 3 (I later learned it was called The Hole): of course, to get to block 3 at the back of the complex, we had to walk past blocks A and B.
Naked.
We had to go outside and walk down a corridor formed by two high fences while the prisoners in the yard of block A on the left and B on the right mocked and intimidated us. Some were already choosing their future prey, announced out loud. I, on the other hand, was staring at the sky, probably with drool dripping from my mouth, fingers clutching my folded prisoner's uniform as if my life depended on it, and my toes curled in pain, nails scraping the cold ground. Once I arrived at The Hole, I...”
“Wait wait wait!” Emilie exclaimed, “we're late here! We need to find this famous corridor and get to block 3!”
“You're right Mimile,” Thomas agreed, “you can even strip if you want to be historically accurate.”
She blushed and tried to hit him on the shoulder, but he dodged and her fist hit his backpack, making a metallic sound.
“Stop!” he shouted, somewhat panicked. “That's worth more than you, everything in my bag!”
“Pff,” she hissed, “what's so precious in there anyway? Your family jewels? I thought they were in your mom's purse...”
He playfully slapped the back of her head, but his smile fell for a moment when he briefly caught Michelin's eye.
“Stop your nonsense,” he said, “and let's go. Let's visit the hole.”
He led the way towards the open grille, followed by the three others. Raphaël checked his phone: no news from Jordane. He thought about asking where she was but decided against it, not wanting to be left behind.
They entered the long corridor littered with doors on both sides: none had been left intact. Some lay on the ground in the opening, revealing a locker room with overturned benches and torn lockers, others stood but were dented as if a rhinoceros had charged into them. Another was even cut in half, standing halfway like a door in an old western saloon. This part seemed reserved for the staff: on their left, they had seen a black mark spreading on the ceiling from the door frame, as if an ectoplasm was escaping the room and crawling on the ceiling. They had come across a room completely charred inside, except for the metallic structures of the locker rows sticking out of the ashes like steel bamboos. On the grey door warped by the old fire, “INMATE FILES” was still written, and Raphaël seemed to understand who had set the fire, and why. Maybe they thought that if they destroyed their files, no one could prove they had to serve a sentence? Times were different before computers, he thought.
He saw Thomas pull out his phone in front of him, unlocking it to take a picture – 6969 was his PIN, yes, it was wrong to look, but it was just professional deformation...
He took a selfie, with the incinerated room behind him, soon joined by Arnaud and Emilie, giggling and bursting into laughter, like the young people they were.
“Hey hey, what's up, losers!” he sang spiritedly, jostling with the others for a spot on the phone screen. “While you guys are loafing around like loafers, we're having fun at the Duli Penitentiary, just like that! Ghosts, here we come!”
Raphaël took the lead and headed to the end of the hallway, where a heavy grille with three sawed bars allowed light from the main courtyard to filter through. Once outside, the gentle wind caressed his hands, and the sun warmed his cheeks. The sky was clear blue; only a few pristine white clouds seemed to lazily drift along the air currents. In front of him lay the vastness of blocks A and B's yards, deserted and desolate. One of the large fences lay collapsed in various places, its steel rods bent like reeds, providing direct access to block A. The building was a simple rectangle of reinforced concrete with regularly spaced barred windows. The yards were just barren lands with a few timid tufts of grass here and there. To his right, behind the barbed wire, stood its twin, block B, equally forbidding. And then, in front of him, the famous hole. It was an older, larger block, also made of red brick. It had no windows, and in its corner, a huge guard tower with a pointed wooden hat.
“You could pack a lot of cattle in there,” Thomas said from behind him.
Raphaël nodded:
“Do you know how many prisoners there were at the time?”
“I have no freaking idea,” he replied, shrugging. “Anyway, people say they were seriously overcrowded, piled on top of each other.”
He then took the lead, and all four of them walked down the path that brought newcomers to the Hole, imagining the horror and violence that awaited them on either side of the fences. The double doors of the block were open, as were the heavy grilles that once isolated the different parts of the building. Upon entering, they saw a control post on their left with all its security windows shattered. There was a panel filled with buttons, the structure too old to have known screens and cameras. The post's seat, or rather a plain plastic chair, lay in three pieces on the ground.
“So this is where the bugger landed,” Thomas remarked. “Which was his cell?”
He nodded at Raphaël, signaling him to continue his story. Clearing his throat, he read aloud:
“Once I arrived at the Hole, I had nothing else to do but fight my addiction. This place was supposed to be a buffer zone where you awaited your trial, a matter of a few days. But for me, it lasted a month. Maybe they were overwhelmed there with the drug wave starting to hit the region, or maybe they were waiting for me to be clean to judge me. In any case, the beginning was a real nightmare. They gave me the cell at the very back of the building, the one with the luxury of a window, but especially the one that wasn't insulated from the cold. And the first week, every night I woke up sweating but shivering from an icy cold, frozen to the bone. I slept on a mattress as thin as a book's page, as dirty as a sheet of toilet paper. Speaking of which, the toilet was just a hole in the ground, in a corner of the cell (two meters by three meters, I almost stepped in it by mistake during the night). There was nothing to wipe with, and the flush was part of a unique water distribution system: once a day, the valves opened for a minute. The toilet flushed on one side, and on the other, the tap started running. You had to be alert and take the opportunity to drink, wash, and brush your teeth (it took me two weeks to get a bucket that I could fill with water). Moreover, the water arrivals were irregular: sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. At that time, I was always parched, and once the water came while I was sleeping: I spent an extra day without drinking, my tongue felt like sandpaper.
I lost quite a bit of weight too, as we only received a vegetable broth and a slice of stale bread per day, and rice every three days. I was between four walls, with a steel door with a visor that opened once a day to reveal a meal tray. I was isolated, sick, fighting symptoms, cold, hunger, dehydration.
A month had passed like a year. It felt like living in a waking dream, or being a zombie. Sometimes I talked to myself in the dark, closing my eyes for a second only to reopen them in broad daylight, my body sweating with cramps everywhere, then closing them again to reopen them and find myself in the middle of the night, trembling with cold. Eventually, they came to get me. During the trial, I was in a daze. My court-appointed lawyer spoke to me, and I just nodded. I was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, and I didn't flinch. I returned to Duli in a police van, with other inmates, and this time, I didn't enter through the main entrance, like last time. This time, I entered through the back door, straight into the jungle.
Emilie rushed down the corridor to be the first to arrive at the back cell. They passed several doors, all heavily closed. This block seemed to accommodate a good forty people, judging by the different wings branching off perpendicular to it. The floor was of raw concrete, the walls oppressively red, and a system of old neon lights - most broken, making the ground crunchy under their feet - ran along the ceiling. They reached the end of the hallway, Eustass's infamous first cell: Emilie threw herself at the closed door to open it, but it didn't budge.
“Damn it,” she cursed, “it's locked!”
She used her entire body to try to pull on the steel mass, but the cell remained as sealed as in the past decades.
“Damn it,” she swore, “this is crap!”
“Relax,” Thomas ordered tiredly, “it's not the end of the world...”
He approached, playfully bumping her with his shoulder, eliciting a playful cry of frustration from her. He too tried his luck, shaking the door, working the handle, but everything was frozen. He tried to slide the small peephole to at least peek into the cell, but it was also stuck. He sighed and slumped against the door, producing a heavy, hollow sound that filled the corridor. Amused, he knocked on the door three times, the sound echoing endlessly in the brick sanctuary. A second later, three loud knocks came from inside in response. He screamed, jumping back. Everyone jumped, and Emilie screamed, shattering Raphaël's ears.
“Damn it, you're really an asshole!” she yelled, hitting Thomas, frozen in place. “Stop messing around, you scared the life out of me!”
He didn't react, his eyes fixed on the door.
“There's only him to be so stupid!” she raged. “You're really not funny!”
She left the scene like a hurricane, and Raphaël saw Michelin chuckle, looking at Thomas, patting him on the shoulder and whispering, “Nice one, buddy!” Then, he scrutinized his face: there was only confusion and fear.
He let out a nervous laugh and left without a word.
Outside, Emilie had calmed down. They joined her, relieved to be in broad daylight and far from the decrepit building. Thomas rummaged in his bag for a cigarette, and Raphaël saw him light it with a trembling hand, taking barely two puffs before tossing it to the ground agitatedly.
“So, what's next?” he asked, as if to chase away thoughts.
“From what I know,” Emilie said, “there are four blocks in this dump, plus the hole. Block A and B for the clowns, C for the snitches, the gays, and the child molesters, and D for the tough ones, the telepaths...”
“The psychopaths, idiot,” Michelin interjected, evidently in good spirits.
As the two argued, Raphaël saw Thomas discreetly slip a pill into his mouth.
“What's that?” he asked involuntarily.
“Why?” Thomas retorted, “are you a cop?”
“No...”
“Then mind your own business, boss. So? Which block did that mooncalf end up in?”
“I was thrown into block A, in 'general population'. 'Gen pop' means that everyone is mixed, and there's no one to protect you. They put me in a cell with Clarence, a skinny guy, and the guard gave me my toothbrush and my cup. Then he said, 'It's three hundred bucks for a mattress', and when I didn't understand, he came back with just a simple straw mat for a bed: that set the tone right away.
The first day, nothing happened. I found a quiet corner to sit in the yard without bothering anyone, and no one bothered me; but there were the looks. Sideways glances, all day. I even thought I'd been pointed out by a group, at one point. But evening came, and I returned to my cell in one piece. I thought, like an idiot, that everything would be fine. Except Clarence came to me, and said calmly, looking me straight in the eyes, 'Mathia has chosen you to be his bitch. You know what that means, right, or are you stupid? It means you're going to suffer every day, be at the very bottom of the food chain. Him and his buddies will take care of you, vent their anger on you. Good luck, man.'
I cried all night.
In prison, everything runs on reputation. At the top of the food chain are the guards. Because they, they're part of the system. They can beat you with batons, send you to solitary (that damn room...) or deny your visitations. You didn't want to cross them. Then, there were the 'damned'. They were serving life: it meant they had nothing to lose. Most were in block D, the block of the furiously insane, the most violent criminals, but there were some in block A. And most of them, including Mathia, had already killed in prison. Then, the victims started: there were the 'fish', like me, serving a fixed sentence and who would get out one day. Generally, the shorter their sentence, the worse it was. Since they had the chance to leave prison one day, they owed respect to the 'damned'. That's how it was. Some fish turned into the damned, it had been seen. For example, a guy named Niño was caught for drug possession, five years max. He was immediately hassled, didn't take it, and fought back. He killed two damned with a sharpened toothbrush (the thing is to aim for the stomach, even if it doesn't pierce far, it's the infections that kill the victim. They agonize for days in the hospital and die.) and he got life. He ended up in block D.
'Life's a bitch,' as my father used to say.
Anyway, then there was the bottom of the barrel, those who always had to look over their shoulder: the 'dolls'. They were the child molesters, people who lost all their rights as soon as they set foot in prison. Designated victims. They were supposed to live in block C, reserved for their safety, but sometimes the transfer wasn't immediate, there could be 'file errors', and other schemes and twists of fate. And finally, there were the snitches. That was the worst.
Prison operated on reputation and respect: the order was well established, but in a way, it was always the inmates against the guards. The players against the system. Those damned bastard guards always came to hassle us, and we always had to grit our teeth. So, when a guy 'sold his soul' and played the snitch for favors from the staff, it was the worst possible betrayal. A snitch was sent to block C, where they didn't fear the weak, but an inmate could easily slip a bill for there to be a 'file error' or a 'temporary transfer', sending you back into the jungle of A, B, or even sometimes D!!! with a 'come beat me up!' sign so glaring that you had to be an idiot to play that game. A snitch in gen pop wouldn't last a day. Or, they decided to really punish you and made you pass through the inmates for weeks, the guards turning their backs and their pockets full.
Still, the next morning, having not closed my eyes for a second all night, I stayed seated in bed. All the doors unlocked, Clarence scurried away like a mouse, sensing the storm coming. Me, I stayed still. I had scraped my toothbrush against the floor to make it somewhat dangerous: I was going to jump on Mathia and stab him until his intestines were mush. Supposedly, I had stabbed the bum forty times, well now I was ready to hit a hundred times. Until I was sure he wouldn't get up. I was going to get life, but I didn't care anymore.
Then, a shadow appeared at the doorway, and Mathia walked in with his three buddies. He was a good six feet tall, maybe 240 pounds of muscle. He was bald, closely shaved, with a sly smile and a lecherous eye. He was the least muscular of the four. I was done for, it was over.
“You know how this works?” he said in a deep but strangely smooth voice. “You belong to me now. When I say come, you come. When I say suck, you suck. When I need to vent, or I don't want to see your ugly face for a few days, you say 'Yes Mr. Mathia', and when you come back from the infirmary, you say 'Thank you Mr. Mathia'.”
His buddies weren't laughing; this was clearly not a joke or a figure of speech. I stayed silent.
“It's going to be twenty-five long, very long years... But don't worry, once it's done, you don't feel anything anymore. And once too old, you'll only be good for a punching bag.”
I started trembling, and I wanted to die right there. A heart attack, a stroke, anything, as long as my life ended now. Barely arrived in this place, I had already found my place: a victim. I wasn't strong, nor brave. I had nothing to survive. 'All this because of that damn bike', I thought to myself.
“Or...” Mathia continued, “you turn out to be useful. A lifer has no hope of tasting freedom again. But a lifer has a family, friends outside. And he also needs a little money inside, to afford some pleasures.” He pretended to smoke a cigarette.
“In the building across from the old cinema downtown Reigner, you can climb the west-facing wall. You'll come to a row of garages. The fourth one from the right isn't locked. If you open it and remove the sixth brick from the third row at the back, you'll find a bag with five hundred drug bills.”
I spoke in one breath, without thinking: I even heard myself talking from afar, spilling out as if they were my last words. Mathia stood still for a moment, eyeing me as if he had the ability to detect lies, still smiling.
“Be careful baby girl, if you waste my and my friends' time, it's going to go very badly for you. But if you're telling the truth, you just bought yourself a week.”
Then, he simply left as he had come. I felt a ton of weight drop on me, like the counter-effect of having survived a horrible event, and I burst into tears.
In a way, I had been clever in my monumental stupidity: back then, when the new drugs had just come out, dealers didn't quite know how to dose them. So, it happened that people died of an overdose from a certain batch of 'production'. The news spread quickly, and the junkies, instead of avoiding this batch, rushed to it because it meant it was stronger than the others. People are stupid. But I took advantage of it: I did my best to buy it back before everyone else did, and sold it more expensive. Or, I put it aside, like the one in the garage opposite the cinema. I was stupid too.
Anyway, I had done a mental inventory of what I had on the side, good plans I could share, and I calculated that I could survive about three months. Three months out of twenty-five years. I had to find a solution during this respite, but even under Mathia's protection, I had to be on my guard: for the first two months, I learned the workings and mechanisms of the Duli penitentiary. As long as I stayed in my place, no one came to attack me; but tensions were slowly rising, because every day fresh meat was brought to the slaughterhouse, and we were starting to suffocate with so many people. Most of the newcomers returned more battered than they had arrived, but I looked away. Conditions were getting worse: the food was disgusting, we were served rotten meat, and some fell seriously ill. The hygiene in the cells was deplorable, with sewage water occasionally backing up into the toilets and feces flooding the cell for several days. I had bought a decent mattress from the bastard guard, but some couldn't afford it, and one day a guy even died eaten by bed bugs!!! Seriously!!!
Speaking of the guards, the city had less money since the local mine had closed. Their pay had decreased, so most of the somewhat nice or qualified guards had gone elsewhere, and they had been replaced by real bastards, who had no training and were probably too shady to do anything else. So now, in addition to being extorted by the lifers, we were being extorted by the guards. Those sons of bitches had a long reach: one of them took away my mattress for a week because I didn't call him 'Sir', others had been beaten up for just sighing while the officer was doing a cell inspection and had trashed everything. They also used solitary confinement. And that, that wasn't funny: they left you in a completely dark room just big enough to sit, but not lie down, for days. No exit, nothing. A hatch opened once a day for some broth, and we returned the bucket in exchange (sometimes, it came back as dirty as it had gone). Strangely, that was what we feared the most: I never went there, but when they sent a guy there, he came back changed. And there were all sorts of stories about that place: those who went there talked about hearing and seeing things. They talked about big eyes staring at you from the corner of the cell, in the dark, until you went mad. At the time, I put it down to psychological stress or something, but now...
Anyway, everyone found this punishment inhumane, and it made everyone angry.
The situation was becoming alarming: the more difficult the conditions, the more black glares towards the guards or fights between prisoners broke out, the more our lives were made hellish. It had quickly turned into a real pressure cooker ready to explode: I didn't even care about my twenty-five years, or the month I had left before facing Mathia with nothing to offer but my behind, but whether I would make it through the day, or end up in that damn isolation cell for the slightest misstep (a guy had stayed there for more than a week!! He had jumped on a guard because he had grabbed his girlfriend's butt when she came to visit. They also beat him up pretty good, and since then he's sat all day without moving, staring at the ceiling).
The only thing we had to hold on to was alcohol. A guy, Mitch, knew how to concoct super brews from rotten fruits. He would ferment it in a plastic bag hung on the outside edge of his window. His stuff circulated all over prison, even in block D. We would get smashed on his stuff; he was very popular. Those damn bastard guards were crazy, they inspected all the cells trying to find the booze, tearing up mattresses with knives, ripping pages out of books, and smashing cups. We'd had enough of them, but no one snitched: they had now become even more hated than the people in block C.
Days passed, the atmosphere became palpable: prisoners were sent either to the infirmary or to isolation in droves. One guy came back from the infirmary paralyzed for life, and more and more stories were heard about the isolation cell. Some came back and started praying to the Virgin Mary every night. Others had sleep paralysis after being there, seeing figures slip between the bars of their cage, monsters emerging from the bed, and more. It was said that this cell was haunted, that the devil lived inside it. It had become the ultimate punishment. And since the prisoners couldn't take revenge on the staff, they tore each other apart. There were several murders, 'fish' being brutally tortured, sexual abuses on the rise... I felt that scratching a single match in block A would have blown up the whole prison.
I was so preoccupied with that, that it was only when one evening, on my way to my cell, Mathia and his gang took me aside and told me I hadn't provided anything for two weeks, that I realized I had given everything I had outside.
“So?” Mathia repeated, flanked by two giants crossing their arms. The last one was keeping watch.
I didn't answer: I had nothing to say.
“You know what's going to happen to you, right? A young, not yet damaged guy like you, you can't find them here anymore...”
Twenty-four years and nine months.
There was no one around, strangely. Everyone had taken the side corridor to return.
He nodded towards his companion who began to take off his pants. My heart started beating wildly, I even felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. And damn, I wish it had, even in hindsight. They approached me, cornering me against a wall: there were no more sly smiles, no lecherous eyes; just tight lips and empty eyes, as if there was nothing left upstairs but the instinct of the predator, filling their skulls. Then, a whistle, at the corner of the entrance: the three brutes immediately backed off, before I realized that it was the signal from the fourth one who was on the lookout. A few seconds later, the same bastard guard who had extorted money from me for the mattress appeared. Reiner, that was him. But man, at that moment I would have kissed his feet.
“What the hell are you doing here, girls!” he bellowed, baton in hand.
No one answered; everyone looked at the ground. These three scumbags ran off with their tails between their legs without a second thought, but that didn't mean I was completely reassured.
“That's it, get lost before you end up in isolation, you idiots!” he continued. “I'd take you all straight to the infirmary myself! So behave!”
They left without protest, not even a sigh: it must be said that at that moment, even the toughest could turn pale if isolation was even mentioned. Everyone had agreed that it was haunted by Satan himself, and that you left your soul there. But me, I didn't move: he had simply replaced them to put me against the wall.
“So son, rumor has it that Mathia got his hands on you...”
I nodded, still looking at the ground.
“Bad luck, bad luck...” (a fucking falsely sorry tone) “I've known that thug for a while, and he's broken guys. And tougher than you... We've done a lot of stitches in the infirmary, and guys can't sit for weeks, if you get my drift! And when he's done with you, when he's passed you around to all his little buddies, and they don't want you anymore, then it's back and forth to the doc, and not just in the ass, the stitches, I tell you! It's not a pretty sight.”
I already knew all that. Reputations spread fast here. But I said nothing and waited for what came next:
“Twenty-five years, right? That's no life!” (This son of a bitch was a real torturer, I wondered how he hadn't ended up in block D, on the other side of the bars. At least, before the riot...)
Once again, I nodded.
“All this is because of alcohol. It's a real poison that runs in this damn prison, and fries people's brains like him. Then he goes and takes it out on honest guys like you!”
It was bullshit, but he knew it. I understood what he was going to ask me next, and for a moment, I regretted that he had come to save me a few moments ago.
“If we got rid of it, everything would be back to normal. Everyone would calm down, and be more at peace. No more psychosis because of tainted alcohol. All I would need is a little help. Someone who could point the finger at the responsible party.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but I didn't even have time to make a sound before he cut me off:
“I know, dumbass!! Snitching isn't well seen! But I promise you'll be rewarded! Block C for twenty-five years, just that! You'll be at peace for the rest of your life! You'll be the king among all those fairies! No one to bother you! No 'file errors', or 'temporary transfers', you have my word. You'll be treated better than in a damn hotel, and safe for the rest of your stay! No one will have to know it was you.”
I knew it was false: everything is known in prison. If I gave a name, I was a dead man. But well, was it so bad? A few hours of suffering, compared to a quarter century of being violated? And maybe he was right, maybe I would end up with the other snitches and child molesters, like in a criminals' paradise. I think at the moment, I really believed what he was saying. I think I could have believed anything not to end up as a human skewer, but it's mostly what he said next that decided me:
“You know, maybe a little week in isolation will help you think it over...”
And then, it came out. Eyes glued to my sneakers, my voice no louder than a kid caught stealing candy from the jar: “...Mitch... Under the window...”
***
Raphaël paused, his throat dry from speaking so much. The three teenagers had been captivated by the story, even though Thomas seemed restless, fidgeting with his fingers and clenching his jaw: “I bet it's not paracetamol you swallowed...” he thought to himself.
“What a fucking snitch!” Emilie exclaimed. “But honestly, in his place, I wouldn't have been so brave either...”
“Yeah,” Michelin retorted, “at least you make money by getting screwed like that!”
“Shut up, dickhead!” she yelled. “You don't even know what sex is!”
Their argument seemed to be the funniest thing Thomas had ever heard, and he burst out laughing, tears streaming down his face. The other two laughed a bit nervously with him, everyone noticing his now dilated pupils.
“So, are we going into this prison or what? What are we doing standing around in the middle of nowhere?” he blurted out.
“Exactly,” Emilie agreed, “block A is just to the right, the fence is bent right here...”
“Then let's go, damn yeah!” Thomas exclaimed excitedly.
Raphaël followed their lead: he stepped on the flattened fence and carefully avoided the barbed wire by lifting his legs. He walked along the courtyard, a bit behind the others. The entrance to the long building was also open, and he slipped inside too.
The place was quite different from the hole: the structure was on two levels with a large hall, resembling a big shopping center. The red brick had given way to a vast expanse of gray concrete. The floor was flooded with large puddles of stagnant water full of blackish and viscous solid heaps, perhaps a mix of soil and something else. Each cell had a front of steel bars, and overturned bed frames and broken porcelain toilets could be seen inside. Not a single cell was intact, as if each had housed a raging boar or bear that had torn everything apart. They moved forward, each of their steps echoing in the immensity of reinforced concrete. Some walls were streaked with black stains, sometimes spreading onto the floor. They encountered a control post in the center of the block, illuminated by a hole in the ceiling. The opening let a curtain of golden light pour in like a natural spotlight. A tree with intensely green leaves had grown in the post, taking advantage of the broken windows to spread its large branches. The glass shards still on the ground shone in the sun like precious stones.
Emilie marveled at the sight, while Thomas popped another pill into his mouth.
“Lame,” he said. “Where are the ghosts?”
Then he picked up an iron bar lying around and wandered off on his own, loudly striking the steel bars.
“What an idiot he can be sometimes...” Emilie commented.
Raphaël took a tour as well: aside from the completely destroyed state of the cells, the place seemed simply abandoned. The black marks on the walls could be rainwater, the windows perhaps broken by local kids. What was he supposed to find? A trace of a monster? A corpse? He had no idea what to look for. He could finish Eustass's story and get out of here, hoping this whole adventure would end with that.
He climbed the stairs and arrived at a level between two floors that seemed to be the canteen. Hundreds of trays were overturned on the floor, cutlery scattered everywhere. Some tables had been completely torn from their bases, and that couldn't have been the elements. Nor kids. More like enraged adults.
“Or a monster,” he thought.
An object on the ground caught his eye: he bent down to pick it up and examined it in his hands. It was a roughly shaped blade with a handle wrapped in tape. The sharpened part was covered in a brown stain: dried blood, no doubt.
“Find anything interesting?” he heard behind him.
He jumped, and the weapon fell to the ground with a metallic clang. Thomas had caught up with him. His eyes were red.
“Nothing at all,” he lied. “Just a big mess.”
Somewhere above them, in the distance, they heard a door creak loudly before slamming shut with a crash. Raphaël jumped on the spot, but Thomas simply looked in the direction of the noise, a distracted smile on his lips, letting the echo fade away in the large hall without a word.
His gaze returned to Raphaël, and he added as if nothing had happened:
“It's clear that it's a mess... When you treat people like animals, they become animals.”
Raphaël remained perplexed, as Emilie joined them running, panicked.
“Did you hear that? What was that noise? Are we not alone?”
“Probably a ghost,” Thomas replied with a sardonic smile.
“Well, what are we waiting for? We have to film it!” she said.
“No,” Thomas countered. “I want to see the isolation cell first. Lead the way, boss.”
“Well, I don't know where it is,” Raphaël replied.
Thomas shrugged and pointed to the book: if the information was anywhere, it was there. Raphaël grumbled, annoyed at playing the narrator, but continued nonetheless.
“I went back to my cell without saying anything. Clarence gave me a worried look, but quickly lost interest and returned to his business. Me, I sat on my bed: what was going to happen to me? Whether I stayed here, or they found out I snitched on Mitch, I had a target on my back anyway. The thing to do would have been to turn my toothbrush on myself, slit my wrists with it, but I didn't have the courage, I'm a coward.
At one point, we heard noise coming from the end of the corridor: people were talking loudly, someone was knocking over objects. Batons sounded throughout the corridor, soon overtaken by screams of pain. It lasted a good five minutes, until the screams died down. The beating continued a little longer while the victim no longer made any sound, as if they were hitting a sack of potatoes. Then, I saw two guards dragging an unconscious man on the ground, leaving a trail of blood on the floor in front of my cell: they were heading to isolation, at the far end of the transverse corridor.
Clarence was asking me what was going on, but I didn't know any more than he did. Well, actually, I did know, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. A murmur rose from cell to cell, like the rising tide, and the news soon reached our cage: Mitch had been snitched on. They had found the alcohol. He was in for a trip to isolation. My blood froze upon hearing that. Not for Mitch, but only because I was terrified that they would find out it was my fault. Yes, I know, it was selfish, but everyone has their own shit to deal with.
The news had spread, and now the whispers turned into discussions, suppositions, and conjectures. There were talks of luck, betrayal, and revenge. I tried not to listen, to block my ears and force myself to sleep. But the voices continued long after lights out, cursing the guards and the snitches. Planning the tortures they would inflict on the rat. But it didn't concern me. Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn, I would be in block C, far from all this and its consequences. At least, that's what I naively believed as I finally fell asleep.
I was deep in my dreams when a scream slowly rose. At first, it was very distant, and my brain struggled to keep me immersed in my slumber. But the cries of terror grew louder, drowning out the voices in my dream, and I woke up abruptly. Shouts of horror and pleas filled the entire wing, mixing with the echoes bouncing off the walls. Everyone seemed awake, and prisoners from other cells were shouting: “God, help him!” “Someone do something!” Clarence had his head stuck between two bars, swinging and shouting, “Sons of bitches! Go help him! You're going to just stand there, you bastards?”
It was Mitch screaming to death from the isolation cell in the distance: “HELP!! COME AND HELP ME!! HE'S RIGHT THERE, BEHIND ME!!” He was crying out in anguish, weeping and begging. I emerged, still wondering what was happening.
“THE EYES ARE HERE!!! MAKE HIM STOP LOOKING AT ME!! STOP HIM FROM LOOKING AT ME!!! I'M GOING MAD!!!! HELP!! GET ME OUT OF HERE, I BEG YOU!!”
“Those damn dogs!” Clarence yelled back, shaking the bars with a strength I didn't know he had. Then he looked me straight in the eyes: “Eustass! If we find the little shit who snitched on Mitch, we're going to unleash hell on him! Being the bitch of the whole D block will be a walk in the park compared to this, right, buddy?”
“Yes,” I heard myself say from afar, very, very far away.
“You hear me!!” he continued, screaming and shaking the bars even more, “you damn snitch, you see what you've done? I know you hear me, we're all coming for you!!!”
I thought I would faint if I heard another word from him, and fortunately, Mitch took over, and his hoarse voice covered all other sounds.
“HE'S GOING TO KILL ME!!! HE HAS GLOWING EYES, HE'S RIGHT THERE!! OPEN UP, PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU, HELP ME, I DON'T WANT THIS, NO, I DON'T WANT THIS, MOM, I WON'T DO IT AGAIN, I PROMISE, MOM, HELP ME, MOM, COME SAVE MEEEE...”
His voice died down, and there was complete silence for the minutes that followed. Even for the rest of the night, until the early morning.
It wasn't a whisper that rose the next morning, but a rumble. The news had broken, and it was swirling through the penitentiary like a storm: Mitch was found dead in the isolation cell. His mouth agape, his eyes wide with terror. It was assumed that the guards had badly beaten him before putting him in there. There were even rumors that they had given him a second beating during the night and killed him. Enough was enough, anger was rising along with the sun, and by noon, the center was seething with rage.
I later learned that on that day, three guards had called in sick and gone home. The two chefs who served in the canteen had done their duty and then deserted the place without a word: they had sensed the imminent explosion. As for me, I was secretly escorted to block C; even though I was walking through empty corridors, with my handcuffs, chains, and two bodyguards, I could feel the electric atmosphere. The storm was coming, there was no doubt. From a distance, I saw a few inmates: whispering, looking over their shoulders.
It was certain, the powder keg was about to ignite.
I crossed the center through service corridors. At every straight line, we stopped so that the central could open the gates for us to move forward. At every turn, I was sure that a band of enraged inmates would tear me to pieces; but no, I arrived at block C without any trouble, as promised. Just in time to settle in before the start of the riot.
***
“Damn!!” exclaimed Emilie, “this is so cool!”
Raphaël nodded despite himself: his hands were trembling, as if something was wrong.
“Follow me,” Thomas added, “I know where to find the isolation cell!”
They followed him as he headed to the second floor. He moved his arms and head uncontrollably at times, as if in spasms, attributing it to the drug he had taken, whatever it was. They passed a row of cells just as dilapidated as the first: one even had its bed wedged across the door. The security grilles were all open, leaving the way clear. Raphaël caught sight of a piece of rope firmly attached to a concrete pillar and hanging in the air: he hoped there hadn't been a noose at the other end, but he thought he was wrong. They entered a long corridor with no more cells, which reminded Raphaël with an eerie chill of the mine he had visited that morning. Thomas stopped without hesitation in front of the room with the heavy half-open door at the end of the hallway.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” he said, swallowing another pill.
“Take it easy with that stuff,” gasped Michelin, exhausted from climbing so many stairs.
“Don't worry about it,” Thomas replied.
Raphaël, like the others, cautiously approached the cell. The inside was shrouded in darkness, making it hard to see clearly; yet, he seemed to discern something on the walls.
“You noticed, right?” Thomas said cheerfully. “Come closer and see what it is, you'll love it.”
Michelin and Emilie slowly backed away from him, visibly more and more uncomfortable. Thomas held the half-open door, inviting him in with a predatory smile on his face. His pupils were fully dilated.
“Come on, don't worry, there's nothing in there!”
He flung the door wide open to illustrate his point. Raphaël moved closer, intrigued. He now stood just in front of the opening, the youth's breath on his neck. He leaned in closer, examining the wall, and finally understood what he was looking at.
“Yeah, my man, it's exactly what you think.”
All the walls of the cell were covered in nail scratches, across their entire surface. Like the coffin of a victim buried alive, dozens of men had scratched the concrete, even the steel door, trying to escape. Or was it just Mitch's work?
“Yep,” Thomas said behind him, “Mitch did all that.”
Then he pushed him into the cell and closed the door behind him.
