by Lydia Hope
The two Birdies held up their dinnerware daintily. They averted their round eyes and turned away their bizarre flattened heads almost shyly. They were clearly hungry, and the only way to get food was this forced interaction with their jailers. The two were skittish to the extreme.
“Yo, big boy. What’s doing today?” Arlo smiled at the next prisoner as he ladled the gray mush into his bowl.
A groaning, vibrating grunt answered him from the cell. Gemma jumped and took an involuntary step back, sloshing the contents of the bucket. The shape inside filled the cell’s cubic footage almost to capacity. A mountain of a beast, though he stood on two legs, looked at her out of soulful, gentle brown eyes with long lashes.
“Good God,” she muttered, making Arlo laugh.
“You haven't noticed this one? He’s hard to miss.”
“What is he?”
“An Obu alien.” Arlo added another ladle to the inmate's bowl. “The Obu can’t speak any of the complex languages, only their own, which is as much of a language as the sounds of a flushing toilet. Gurgles and oinks like a pig, nothing else.”
“Can he understand us?”
“Not sure, but not likely,” Arlo clearly reached the end of his knowledge of the Obu. “I know they conduct business and trade with other people.”
“I can’t imagine how they do it without a language.”
“Suppose it’s like a game of charades with them.”
As they moved along, the Obu emitted several low-frequency, high-amplitude sounds, his eyes glued to Gemma.
“What does he want?”
“Attention. He’s pretty tame, like a big puppy. Ruby rubs his back sometimes. Me - I’m not into rubbing no alien body parts.”
Gemma glanced at the Obu again, and his doleful eyes looked right back. The creature was clearly uncomfortable cramped into his cell.
“Aww, poor soul.”
Arlo stopped and looked her in the eye.
“They’re prisoners, Gemma. Criminals and assholes, all of them. They are not cute. Remember that.” He sounded exasperated.
Gemma shifted the bucket with gruel. “I remember.”
“Good.”
They reached cell number 34. Perali alien, Arc, who Ruby talked to sometimes, casually loitered by the bars, his bowl at the ready.
“Hello, beautiful Gemma,” he said to her and smiled. His speech held a fair amount of accent, a choppy staccato typical of the Perali. But he spoke fluently and obviously understood humans just as well.
“Hey, I come and feed you every day, and you never tell me I’m beautiful,” Arlo complained as he poured.
“My nut sack is more beautiful than your face,” came a smooth reply. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it.”
“The truth is, you’re an asshole.”
“You’ve told me that before.”
“How are you today, Number 34?” Gemma said.
Arlo snickered.
“Number 34? That’s harsh. My name is Arc, Gemma.”
Gemma only smiled at Number 34 as she and Arlo moved past. Better set the tone right from the start. She hadn’t expected alien males to make a pass at her because most found humans repelling in the romantic sense, just like the humans found most aliens too strange to contemplate a coupling. But here, bored to tears in their cells, some might try to strike a friendship.
She wanted to show this Arc she wouldn’t be game. They had specifically warned her at her training that making friends with a prisoner always ended badly. They invariably exploited their relationship with the helpers.
At the next cell door, no one was waiting for them with a bowl in hand. The darkened interior remained undisturbed by any movement and seemed unoccupied.
Simon.
Arlo wasn’t pleased. “Well, if he can’t be bothered to come out for food, then I guess I won’t be bothered to give him any.”
He made a move past the darkened cell where skeletal Simon was sitting with the blanket over his shoulders, exactly like Gemma had left him.
“Wait!” Gemma’s strong reaction startled Arlo. “Wait. He can’t stand.”
“Then he can’t eat,” Arlo countered.
“Let’s give him his portion. It’s only fair.”
“Who cares?”
“Where’s his bowl?”
“I dunno. You can ask Ruby later.”
Arlo moved along, but Gemma put the bucket down. When Arlo reached to scoop the gruel for the next prisoner, his ladle found air. Annoyed, he turned to her.
“Seriously?”
“It’ll be just a minute,” Gemma assured him and rushed back to where Ruby was cluttering her bucket that doubled as a rolling tray for dishes.
Gemma snatched the only remaining bowl from the bucket and hurried back, ignoring Ruby’s questioning look.
She made Arlo pour some food into the bowl and unlocked Simon’s cell by pressing her hand to the onyx plate. The door unlatched with reluctance as if it didn’t appreciate the disturbance of the occupant of this solitary cell. Crypt, that’s what it reminded her of. Death was coming, and no one should interfere with its arrival.
She clamped down on her imagination spurred on by the depressing atmosphere that surrounded him. He wasn’t dead yet.
“Simon,” Gemma said gently, aware that he couldn't hear her. “Food. You need to eat.”
She didn’t expect a reaction but was nevertheless disheartened to have her expectations realized. His bony hands lay limply in his lap. His sightless eyes never moved. He hadn’t moved. The rank air of the cell hung still.
“What’s taking you so long? Come on, you’re screwing up my routine!” Arlo’s angry shout brought her head around.
She carefully placed the bowl on a chair next to the cot and sank the spoon in it.
“Eat, Simon. Please try.”
She left his cell and picked up the bucket.
The lunch, by no means satisfying, tidied the inmates up until dinner which consisted of more of the same gruel with an addition of a bread roll made from sub-par, stale corn flour.
After every cell received a portion, Arlo complained that his hand was killing him and disappeared, leaving it to Gemma to take the empty food bucket downstairs. She was both miffed and relieved to find herself abandoned by her co-worker. She was beginning to realize that sometimes Arlo was more work than help. Most of the time he was more work than help.
Meanwhile, Ruby went around and collected dirty bowls and spoons, making sure everybody returned both to her. Human or alien, inmates were notoriously creative in using spoons in all kinds of inventive ways, and not to make coat hangers.
By the time Gemma and Ruby made it to the chow hall to get their own gruel for lunch, Gemma should have been ravenous, but strangely, she didn’t feel hungry. Her thoughts kept straying to the dark cell and white tangled hair. Ruby had left his bowl with him. Was he eating now? Or was a simple arm movement to pick up the spoon beyond what his failing body could accomplish?
The lumpy gruel stuck in her throat, feeling dry despite being watered down as usual. She couldn’t fathom why Simon’s condition upset her so. Maybe the creature was simply old, at the end of his natural lifespan, and nothing could be done to rejuvenate that what had declined normally with age.
Maybe…
She was trying to convince herself, to let go of her preoccupation, and it wasn’t working.
Simon was wasting away alone, in the dark, unfed and unwashed, denied basic dignity, and with no one to show him compassion.
With the last bite of her lunch, Gemma arrived at a decision.
Chapter 4
Yard time was by far the highlight of the prison life. It was doubly precious to the alien residents of the third floor who were confined to their solo cells for twenty-three hours a day. Twenty-four if the weather refused to cooperate.
Today the weather held, and two armed guards arrived to supervise Gemma, Ruby, and Arlo as they unlocked the cells and lined the prisoners up in a single file to go to the courtyard.
Despite the biting cold outside, no one asked to stay in. Even the Birdies cautiously stepped out, holding hands and peeking at the guards with their peculiar eyes. Macho Perali stretched their backward bent legs and flexed their overlong muscular arms. The hulking Obu mooed like a happy cow, shaking his entire body.
They went down the stairs eagerly.
Little Green Man wasn’t invited - the dude didn’t play nicely with others, and no guard wanted to take responsibility for his behavior. There was also fear that someone from the inmate population would squish him accidentally-on-purpose given a chance.
Another inmate left behind in his cell was Simon.
Once the floor emptied out, Gemma took the stairs down to the lobby. She approached the supply storage where a sour-looking woman signed janitorial buckets in and out like they were crown jewels in danger of intergalactic theft.
Gemma cleared her throat. “May I please have one? One of the newer ones?”
“You don’t get to choose,” the keeper of the buckets replied haughtily.
“I understand. But no one is using any right now, so I was hoping you’d be so kind…”
Mollified by Gemma’s deference, the woman issued her a newer, cleaner bucket on casters that didn’t squeak.
“Thank you.” Gemma made a show of going, stopping, touching her hair, and making an Oh-no face.
“What’s wrong with you?” The woman, who was watching her attentively for the lack of anything else to watch, asked around the finger busily picking her teeth.
“I lost my hair tie! It must’ve happened in the shower after we cleaned up the fifth floor. Yes, definitely in the shower.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed in unkind amusement. “I heard it was nasty.”
Gemma wrinkled her nose. “It absolutely was.” She humored the woman by sharing some of the more disgusting details. “Can I go back to the washroom to look for my hair tie?”
Now the woman got worried. “I’m not supposed to unlock it. But I guess…”
Acting against her own good judgment but feeling compassionate toward someone who spent all morning wiping shit with her bare hands, the woman rose and led Gemma to the washroom.
“Be quick about it.”
Gemma slunk into the washroom and looked into the corner by the drain. There it was, a sliver of soap she’d noticed earlier. Snatching it, she tucked the slippery chip into the waistband of her pants. Arranging her face into a crestfallen expression, she exited the washroom.
“It’s not there. How disappointing.”
The woman shrugged. “Someone must’ve already found it. Finders keepers.”
“Thank you for letting me in to look.”
She grabbed her rolling bucket and tugged it along. Next, she had to get warm water.
The kitchen staff proved much more easy-going than the hag at the supply closet, and with her bucket full of warm water, Gemma arrived on the third floor in the jerky elevator.
Approaching Simon’s cell, she had to stop and catch her breath, apprehension and indecision making her heart beat faster and her face flush. But the thought of him suffering in filth, alone, overrode any misgivings that the rational part of her brain was pushing forth.
It was so quiet. She could hear Little Green Man cluttering about his cell farther down the corridor, and the lonely sound stood out so much more in the unusual silence. Taking in a deep breath, Gemma unlocked Simon’s cell and went in.
She was going to touch him. Against the dire warnings of Aunt Herise and Arlo, she was going to put her hands on the filthy, foreign creature and make him clean.
She rolled the bucket close to the cot.
“Okay, now, Mr. Simon. I need you to lie down on your back with your head over here, hair over the bucket. Can you do that for me?”
No reaction, but she was prepared for that. Counting on the obedience he had exhibited when she had pulled at his blanket the other day, she gently took hold of his shoulders and pulled at him to turn him around. As if reading her mind, he unfolded his long limbs and proceeded to accommodate her by bending his arms at the elbows as he tried to lay down.
There was no space for the entire length of him.
Letting go of his shoulders, Gemma scooted down and worked to arrange his long legs by bending them at the knees and propping them against the wall for support.
Satisfied with the arrangement of his body, she pulled up a chair for her to sit on while working. The bowl with his untouched lunch was still in the seat, the gruel cold and congealed. She paused before removing the bowl and putting it on the floor.
“You haven’t eaten anything.” Distressed, she almost gave up. Why clean him? Only to place his freshly washed body in a casket? “Okay, we’ll get to it later.”
She fished out the sliver of soap from her waistband and got it ready. Fiddled with the bucket. Squirmed in her chair.
And had to admit that she was hesitant to touch the rat’s nest of his hair. The grime didn’t faze her; the intimacy of it did. Some deep-rooted primordial part of her bulked at such close contact with this creature, not knowing what kind of being his frail body hid. She was alone with him. What if? Could he harm her? Would he?
“Ridiculous, Gemma,” she muttered to herself. “He can’t harm you. He can’t even blow his nose.”
Getting a grip on her suddenly raging instinct to retreat, she resolutely reached for his hair and gathered handfuls of it - and nearly gasped in surprise. His hair, matted and greasy as it was, was pure silk to the touch. She laughed, leaning forward, her face directly over his.
“Your hair is out of this world, Simon. Bad pun, sorry. The entire you are out of this world. But it’s so soft. I hope you aren’t offended. Some men think complimenting their hair goes against their masculinity, but I mean you no disrespect. You surprised me, that’s all.” She sighed. “I know you aren’t offended. You have to hear me to get offended.”
This close, she could see the impossibly finely grained skin of his face, papyrus-thin over his skull, and his prominent, hawkish nose that looked bizarre and different from her own. Instead of two nostrils down below, his was solid in the middle with three angled slits on each side, not dissimilar to fish gills, and those slits fluttered ever so slightly with each breath. At least he was breathing. She’d take it as a positive sign.
His huge eyes with the milky film covering the entire surface stared remotely. His empty gaze unnerved Gemma, and she dropped her eyes from his face.
She dunked the length of his hair into the bucket and swished it there, carefully pulling at the strands to untangle them. She wished she could give him a trim, but scissors - or any sharp objects - were not exactly up for grabs inside these walls.
Using the soap, she worked up a good leather and rinsed it in the bucket, and then did it a second time, using the pads of her fingers to rub his scalp to thoroughly cleanse it. She started humming a light melody as she worked for she never worked in silence. Music and dance were in her blood.
He remained motionless and detached. It was like he couldn't feel a thing. It was like he didn’t care. Like he was already dead on the inside.
Gemma gave his hair a final rinse and tenderly wiped his face with her hands. He had such delicate brows, like a young girl, fine and curved, set wide apart. She couldn’t resist tracing the white downy arches with her fingers.
Sick, blind, deaf, a convicted felon - he fascinated her. What was it about Simon? Was his very impairment a beacon for the protective instincts she hadn’t known she possessed?
She tried to wring the water out of the mass of his hair, and couldn’t quite gather it into one length. Clean, it became slippery, and the fine strands escaped her wet fingers as if the threads had a life of their own, delicate as pure silk and strong like nylon ropes. She grappled with it for a spell before twisting it into a rope to squeeze as much water out as she could without dislodging his scalp.
His toilet completed, she surveyed the results with a critical eye.
The ma
ss of wet white hair spread on the cot next to Simon would have made Rapunzel green with envy. It glistened with a lustrous sheen, and there was so much of it. Gemma brushed it with her fingers, relishing in the guilty pleasure of feeling the silken strands against her work-roughened hands. She could sit and play with his hair for hours, but her break time was running out with the yard outing nearing its end.
Pulling her hair tie out of her pocket where it had been all along, - and feeling no guilt for deceiving the supply closet lady, - Gemma quickly braided Simon’s hair into a single plait. The effect was immediate and transformative. With the hair pulled back, his face emerged from the shadow of the tangle, strong, austere, and strangely powerful despite the sunken cheeks and wrinkled mouth. His bone structure bore the stamp of high intelligence and absolute self-control.
She cautioned herself against assigning him qualities she thought he should have. The fact was, Gemma had no earthly idea what kind of creature Simon had been when in full control of his faculties. He could've been a drooling, speechless wild beast like the Obu. Or a mean backstabbing snitch like the Xosa. Or a masturbating, toe-nail chewing horror like Little Green Man.
No, not that. Simon’s strong bone structure was too clean-cut for someone prone to deviant behavior. Surely degeneration would have left a mark on his pristine features.
She grasped Simon’s arms and tugged him upright. Docile, he sat up and turned like she wanted him to.
“Here. Your hair is all nice and clean. It should make you feel better. I remember when I arrived at the City, my ankle was badly broken, and I was grieving the loss of my parents and my home. My whole existence plummeted to rock bottom. It was the worst time of my life. Zeke and I were given that tiny room at my uncle’s house where I now live, and I spent weeks there in bed, unmoving. I was filthy from the trip, and so beat up, with no desire or energy to ever get up again. Finally, Zeke convinced me to take a shower. I’m sure he could no longer stand the smell,” she chuckled, the suspicion only now entering her mind. Dear Zeke, he had been so patient with her. “He helped me take that shower, actually. I hated accepting his help. The whole experience was terribly undignified. But you know what? I felt a thousand times better. Emotionally, too. Cleansed. And I learned then that sometimes accepting help is alright, especially if it’s freely offered.”