Greyfriars Reformatory

by Frazer Lee

  Muted daylight washes over the next corridor, which has similar observation windows to the swimming pool running along one side. A glass-paneled door leads outside onto an exercise yard. Principal Quick opens the door for us and gestures for us to head outside. We file out, and the principal has us line up against the far wall.

  A glimmer behind the spot where Principal Quick is standing catches my eye and I see what looks like a mirror set into the connecting wall nearest the door. Then I realize it’s a window, paned with reflective glass. For surveillance, I guess, so we lucky inmates can take our exercise under strict observation at all times. The walls are high, and cast long shadows across the already rather grim space. A single, bare tree stands crooked at the center. Its trunk and branches look diseased. Any bark left on it is hanging loose like post-liposuction skin. Maybe it’s been killed off by lack of natural light.

  (I wonder if that’s the fate that awaits us all.)

  “Supervised recreation helps you to absorb the day’s learning,” Quick intones. “Two thirty-minute periods per day.”

  (Ah, no such luck then. I think we’re doomed to be kept alive to endure her ‘vigorous regimen’.)

  Principal Quick has us exit the recreation yard and then follow her along yet more nondescript corridors. I begin to zone out for a bit, the gray walls and viewless windows merging inside my head until there’s just a sickly pale mist drifting across my eyes. I guess I should probably explain that I have these out-of-body things fairly regularly, so I’ve learned to just ride them out. It’s less alarming that way, if I just try to accept them as and when they happen. Everyday sounds usually bring me out of them and, true to form, I become aware of the swish of a sliding door opening on its runners.

  The sound brings my surroundings back into sharp focus, but it’s only when the bright lights hit me that I even realize we’ve entered the refectory. A row of plastic bowls stand waiting for us on a Formica table. Each bowl is covered with cling wrap, and has a disposable spoon next to it. Single-use plastics seem to still be a thing at Greyfriars Reformatory. Gray bucket seats are attached to metal frames, which are bolted to the floor. It’s like a motorway service food court, only a million times more depressing than that.

  Principal Quick instructs us to sit down, and then to remove the cling wrap – and eat. The only thing on today’s menu is some pretty ghastly, lukewarm porridge, I discover. The principal waffles on, with no apparent sense of irony, about the importance of nutrition. She says the dining staff aren’t around to cook for us right now, but that we can soon look forward to ‘a nourishing breakfast’. Those words strike fear into my heart, based on what lurks in my bowl right now. I manage to swallow some of the sludge and can almost feel it expanding in my stomach like a medical balloon. Whoever prepared this gruel – Quick herself? – has never heard of seasoning. I glance around the drab space, hoping some salt or sugar might magically appear. But there’s no magic here, only the miserable faces of the other girls. I return to my meager meal and attempt to turn my gag reflex into another swallow.

  “Evening meal before washing, then lights out,” Quick recites. “Routine clarifies mind and body. Heals the soul.”

  (Yay, she sounds like a life coach for the recently deceased.)

  I lift my spoon and see a congealed lump of porridge at its center. I give up the ghost and place my spoon back into my bowl. The refectory has fallen silent, save for the clicking of plastic spoons. Jessica, I notice, hasn’t actually eaten any of hers. Although she is admittedly very good at manipulating her spoon to make it look as though she’s eating, I can see she’s just moving the spoon in an elaborate series of circles-within-circles. It’s as though she’s performing some kind of spell, with the plastic spoon her magic wand, hypnotizing the onlooker into thinking she’s joining in with the tepid porridge feast. Maybe there is some magic here, after all.

  I look away, and see that Saffy is watching Jessica too, very intently and with that silver-spoon smirk all over her chops. Saffy sees me looking and takes a huge scoop of porridge onto her spoon and then, with theatrical relish, into her mouth. She chews and swallows like she’s enjoying a fine steak.

  (You go, girl.)

  A true survivor that one.

  Disgusting meal quickly and thankfully over with, Principal Quick has each of us place our bowls in a stainless-steel wash-down area. We each then rinse them out, creating a thin sludge of porridge around the plughole. The principal watches over us in the manner of a cooking-show host who is about to critique our work.

  (Beautiful sludge, girls. But I think it needed more flavor.)

  After we’re all done, Principal Quick crosses to the door, then slides it open and beckons us out. I’m last, as per usual. Quick glances around the refectory as I approach her, and her expression strikes me. It looks like she’s mislaid something. I hear the door click shut behind me, and then hear the jangling of the principal’s keys as she locks it.

  * * *

  If the refectory was depressing, the dormitory beats it, hands down. Neatly made camp beds stand in rows beneath barred windows. Thin, pale gray drapes flutter in the breeze from the partially opened windows, high above. At least there’s some fresh air I guess, but when the sun comes up there’ll be no hiding from it. Principal Quick directs each of us to a bed, and tells us to stand beside it. Mine is nearest the door. Drab, uniformly gray nightclothes lay folded atop each of the beds. Each bed has been crisply made up with white sheets and gray blankets. There is a small locker beside each bed.

  “You will find all the essentials required for personal hygiene in your lockers,” Principal Quick says. “You are responsible for the care of each of your own items. No replacements will be issued.”

  The principal then gestures to a door at the far end of the dormitory.

  “Scrub up and get changed,” she says, and then pauses at the end of Saffy’s bed. As usual, Saffy has that smirk on her face. Principal Quick stiffens, and it’s as though her entire body is demonstrating her dominance over Saffy. What an exciting pissing contest this is.

  “Lights out in thirty minutes,” Principal Quick concludes, before leaving the dormitory.

  All the other girls, except Saffy, set about investigating their lockers. Saffy just stretches and yawns, looking like a cat. I decide to open my locker. Inside, I find a small bar of soap, a bath towel and a clear plastic toothbrush with a tube of toothpaste. I bundle the soap, toothpaste, and brush inside the towel and then place the bundle on top of my nightclothes. A couple of beds away from mine, Victoria throws herself facedown onto her bed and begins sobbing into her pillow. She’s really going for it – I mean, full-on snot and tears.

  “What’s her fucking problem?” Saffy asks.

  She glances around, looking to each of us for some kind of reaction. Receiving none, Saffy opens her own locker. After retrieving her things, she tosses her towel onto her shoulder and trots toward the bathroom, humming an annoying tune as she goes. I wait for the others to follow before tucking the towel bundle under my arm. The sound of Victoria’s sobbing echoes around the dorm as I walk to the bathroom door.

  The bathroom is just as gloomy and authoritarian as the other ‘highlights’ of the reformatory we saw on Principal Quick’s whirlwind tour. It has an unpleasantly moldy odor to it. Cracked tiles and musty mirrors hang above a row of sinks, opposite a line of gray-doored toilet stalls. At least the bathroom is big enough to allow each of us some space to do our thing. I cross to the nearest unoccupied sink and place my towel beside it. After unwrapping the contents, I pick out the toothbrush and rinse it under the tap. I squirt a line of toothpaste onto it and begin to brush my teeth. Uppers first, front then back, followed by my lower teeth. I have never had a filling in my life and would like to keep it that way. While I brush, I glance at the reflections in the other mirrors.

  Saffy is attempting to style her hair, it seems, and I wonder why on e
arth she would be doing that. No one is going to be looking at her except her fellow inmates, and I doubt if any of us will give much of a shit what her hair looks like. Jessica appears to be doing the opposite of Saffy. She’s actively un-styling her hair, back-combing it with her fingers and pulling the tousled strands forward until they are obscuring her face. Lena just stands there, hands on the sink and staring straight ahead with unblinking eyes. I notice how muscled her arms are compared to the rest of us. She looks like a prize fighter waiting for her next knockout bout. Annie ducks into a bathroom stall and closes the door.

  I finish brushing my teeth and change into my reformatory-issue smock. It feels rough against my skin and I wonder how I’ll ever sleep in it. On the bright side, at least skin exfoliation will be a feature.

  Saffy voices her displeasure at the reformatory-issue clothing, and a couple of the other girls join in, making a chorus of disapproval. The sounds of their whining and sarcastic laughter echo around the bathroom. This, coupled with the ever-pervasive moldy odor, begins to make me feel a little queasy. I splash my face with cool water and then dry off with the towel. As I blink away the last of the moisture, I hear the door creak open.

  Reflected in the mirror, I see Victoria step into the bathroom. Her shoulders are rounded and her head hangs low as she clutches her toiletries to her chest. She sniffles, and the other girls fall instantly silent. The only vacant sinks are right at the far end of the bathroom, and Victoria has to walk the gauntlet past each and every one of us to reach them. All the other girls are standing stock-still now, watching her. I lean forward slightly so I can see her better, and watch her place her stuff on the side of the sink before turning on the tap and filling the sink with water. She soaks her flannel and sets about washing her face, which is pink from crying.

  I hear the sound of a toilet flushing and seconds later Annie emerges from the stall. She walks over to the only remaining unoccupied sink and washes her hands.

  Saffy stops messing with her hair and makes a big show of sidling up to Victoria.

  “Feel better now?” Saffy asks. But her tone is the opposite of caring.

  Victoria glances at her nervously and, right under her nose, Saffy reaches out and snatches her toothbrush away. Holding it aloft like a trophy, Saffy dances across the tiled floor, grinning in triumph. She taunts Victoria with the brush, then backs up to the bathroom stall that Annie just vacated and bumps it open with her ass. Chuckling, Saffy dances into the stall and holds the toothbrush above the toilet bowl. She raises her arm, teasingly, then drops the brush into the bowl. It makes a loud ‘plop’ as it hits the water in the bowl. Saffy turns and approaches Victoria, who recoils from her.

  “Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” Saffy says. “Retard.”

  Saffy marches over to the door, accompanied by howls of amazed laughter from the other girls.

  “Come on, girls,” Saffy says, “let’s give Moaning Myrtle some privacy, shall we?”

  I listen to their laughs as they follow Saffy out of the bathroom. I can see Victoria’s forlorn reflection in her mirror and it strikes me how laughter can sometimes be such an unhappy sound.

  When I return to the dormitory I find Saffy waiting for me. She’s sitting on the end of my bed, her legs crossed casually. She supports her body weight on one arm. For some reason the flat of her hand pressing down onto my bed bothers me the most. It’s like she’s invading my personal space in the most subtle, yet completely arrogant, way possible. Which is, of course, exactly what she’s doing. I stop still a few feet away from her, and from the end of my bed.

  “We haven’t been formally introduced,” she says, her voice silky smooth.

  I glance over to the door and see Lena standing beside it, staring through a narrow gap in the doorway. Oh, I get it. She’s the lookout, in case Principal Quick comes to check on us.

  Saffy moves, and I see she has extended her right hand for me to shake. It hangs there in the exaggerated space between us, and that ringing in my ears starts again. The air around me grows thick somehow, and my eyesight blurs slightly. Then there’s only the ringing sound and Saffy’s hand, haloed in my swimming vision like some alien artifact on display in a museum. I see the vague outline of Saffy’s face. Her already indistinct features begin to melt, dripping like melting crayon across the gray of her nightclothes. The dark oval of her mouth starts to swallow the rest of her face, and—

  “Whatever,” I hear Saffy say through her distorted mouth, and someone behind me sniggers. The two sounds snap me back into the room, and into reality.

  “I’m not one to stand on ceremony anyway,” Saffy asserts.

  She withdraws her hand and I realize she’s trying to style it out – the fact that I didn’t shake it. My out-of-body moment has left me feeling a bit numb, and I just want to climb into bed. But I can’t, because she’s still sitting on it. Saffy tosses her hair back and puffs her chest out. It’s quite a sight, let’s just leave it at that.

  “This is how it’s gonna work,” she says. “You’ve been in here before. That’s potentially useful to me. Think of me as the real principal, yes?”

  Her voice trails off and I see her looking over my shoulder. I follow her glance and see Victoria enter, shoulders hunched as though she’s trying not to be noticed. I turn back to Saffy, who watches Victoria with a sly grin on her face. I hear Victoria’s bedsprings creak as she climbs onto it, and Saffy returns her unwanted attention to me.

  “If you do good by me, you won’t have anything to worry about,” she goes on, apropos of nothing, “but if you don’t….”

  She’s really grinning now, showing all her perfect white teeth as she stares across the room again.

  I turn to see Victoria pull back her bedcovers. Her face falls into a look of utter dismay. She pulls an object from inside her bedcovers. It’s a roll of toilet paper. Saffy shrieks with laughter and the other girls join in. Victoria drops the toilet roll to the floor, climbs into bed and hides under her covers.

  I turn back to face Saffy, who is wiping tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes. She blinks and looks at me – and I mean really looks – frowning for a second as though she can’t figure me out. I guess it’s because I’m not laughing along with the rest of them. Nor am I crying like Victoria was.

  “So, who is she?” Saffy asks.

  I’m not sure what Saffy means. I glance around the room. “Who?”

  “The other inmate.”

  “We’re all…here, aren’t we?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. And really, I don’t.

  “You’re the old timer,” Saffy goes on. “Come on, you must’ve seen her, up in the clock tower, watching us when we arrived?”

  I think back to when we arrived. I remember the hiss of the hydraulic brakes, the dust cloud when the bus drove away. The hands of the clock in the tower stuck on seven o’clock. Was there someone watching me from the clock tower? I can’t be sure. My mind conjures the fluttering of cloth, but maybe it was just a curtain.

  “Do not fuck with me,” Saffy says.

  I lock eyes with her through my confusion and I see something twist, and turn, in her expression. Her lips draw thin with anger. She reaches out and grabs my wrist.

  “Actually I do stand on ceremony, particularly when it comes to social skills,” Saffy says, her voice dripping with bile, “and when I offer you my hand, you take it, bitch.”

  Saffy twists my hand around sharply. It feels like my bones are going to snap.

  “You feel me, Emily darling?” Saffy snarls, and her grip tightens.

  I open my mouth to breathe, but the pain stops the air in my throat. I try to pull away, but it makes the pain even worse. She’s strong, and she’s hurting me. This is who she really is, under all the blonde hair and sideways smirks.

  “She’s coming!” Lena says from her position by
the door. Lena closes the door quickly, but quietly, and the other girls each snap to it, climbing into their beds.

  Saffy makes a show of slowly releasing my wrist from her painful grip, then prowls over to, and into, her bed. Jesus, she’s like a trapdoor spider returning to its lair.

  I get into my own bed and then I hear the door open. From my vantage point in my bed, I see a long, dark shadow fall across the floor. I look over to the doorway to see Principal Quick standing there.

  “Lights out, girls. Morning inspection at zero-seven-hundred, followed by exercise, and then – and only then – breakfast.”

  With that, Principal Quick turns out the lights and closes the door.

  I listen to the principal’s footfalls as they echo into the distance down the corridor. My wrist still aches from where Saffy twisted my hand over. I tuck it under my pillow and close my eyes. I doubt I can sleep until the throbbing pain subsides.

  After a few moments, Saffy’s whispering voice pierces the semi-darkness.

  “Hey, crybaby….”

  I open my eyes and see something gleaming white fly across the room. I blink, and then I realize that Saffy has hurled the toilet roll at Victoria. How depressingly childish of her. It rebounds, off Victoria’s head. Victoria just pulls her blanket up and over her face.

  “Sweet dreams,” Saffy purrs, and a couple of the other girls respond with more cruel taunts.

  I pull my covers over my head too, hoping to block them, and their games, out.

  Chapter Three

  The Seven Virtues

  I’m drifting in blackness when I hear a faint musical sound.

  It sounds like a child’s music box, the kind with the little handle you turn to make the chimes ring out. I open my eyes and find the dormitory is still shrouded in darkness. In all honesty I don’t yet know if I’m dreaming or not, so I sit up in bed. I feel groggy and dehydrated. At least the ache in my wrist has gone away.