Breakout

by Annalise Clark

  I knew for sure that we had vampires, shifters of various types, fairies, gargoyles, elves, half-elves, centaurs, orcs, witches, wizards, trolls, and angels. And on the other side was the men’s prison, and they seemed to have the same.

  We would catch glimpses of them in passing, or when out in the yard for rec breaks. Double fencing separated our side from theirs, and if we got too close and tried to talk to them, the guards would chase us away.

  Speaking of guards, it was almost time for one to bring the daily slop along the line, pushing it through the narrow slits in our gates, a pitiful excuse for “food”. Today, I intended to get his attention.

  As the guard made his way down the center aisle, dragging his stick along the bars creating a horrible sound, same as he did every night, I called out to him.

  “Hey! Hey you!” He turned at the sound, stopped, and came back to my cell. “I demand to speak to my attorney!” I shouted at the guard through the bars, but he only laughed at me.

  “Freaks don’t get attorneys,” he said with a chuckle, then walked away.

  “Hey!” I yelled again as he continued walking, never looking back, but laughing louder. What a jerk!

  “Our rights don’t matter here,” I heard Kallisto say quietly from the cell across from me.

  “Yeah, I see that,” I muttered under my breath, still really angry about the whole thing. They had kept me here against my will for over a week.

  What kind of madhouse were they running up in here? I had not been read my rights, I was not allowed to speak to an attorney, and no one in here was being treated properly. To say there were abuses was a massive understatement. They were kidnapping people and holding them prisoner here.

  Did no one care?

  Maybe no one knew.

  I let out a deep sigh and sat down on my cot. My decision to drop ties with everyone and move to an unknown location to fall off the grid may have worked a little too well.

  There was no one to miss me.

  That meant… no one to realize I was gone to this god-forsaken place.

  Chapter Two

  That night, I cried myself to sleep, quietly. The last thing I needed was for someone in here to think I was weak. They preyed on the weak. Not that it was weak to cry, but in a place like this, you always needed to wear a hardened shell in front of others. It might be the one thing to save your life.

  I did not cry because the guard made fun of me. Hell, I wasn’t even crying because I was stuck in here (although I wouldn’t fault others for it; this place was awful). I cried because I missed her. And as I thought about who I would call if I were privy to a phone, I knew I wanted it to be her. But it could not be her…

  We hadn’t spoken in months. We’d parted ways after a years-long, intense relationship with ups and downs. No matter what happened, I always knew I loved her and that she loved me, but sometimes it just felt like we were barreling down the road on completely different paths. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life; walking away from someone I knew I was madly in love with.

  The thing is the relationship had grown toxic. Bitterness had made its way in and was festering. We had each given so much for so long, that we’d lost ourselves in the relationship. We love one another more than we loved ourselves. This parting had been a way to find ourselves again, and although she’d sworn she’d never let her heart get broken by me again, there was a part of me that always secretly hoped fate would bring us back together.

  Maybe it was a pipe dream, but on nights like this, a dream was all you had to keep you warm and sane.

  I must have slept for at least a couple of hours, although in here it was hard to tell, when I was woken to the sound of them dragging another woman in. There were bangs and curses, and what sounded like them hitting her with a baton. She wasn’t screaming like a lot of them, just whimpering lowly. I wondered if she was badly injured, or just shy and scared. Maybe both? Probably both.

  “Shut up!” one guard grunted before they slammed the cell shut and left the ward.

  My heart hurt for her and I wished I could reach out and soothe her or tell her it was all going to be okay. The problem was, I didn’t believe that myself. So instead, I cried softly with her until I fell back to sleep myself.

  It was another long, cold night and waking to the sun shining through the tiny bars at the top of my cell was bittersweet. At first, I awoke hopeful each day; hopeful that this would be the day I got out of this awful place. Now, I was grateful to be alive but unsure of where this was going, why I was here, or how long I would be here. Each day seemed to wear me down a bit more than the one before.

  I wasn’t made for a place like this. I mean, I suppose that no one was, but I needed wide, open spaces. I needed to run. I needed to be free. Yet here I sat, like a caged bird. I marked the wall behind my cot with another slash mark using the rock I’d found in the rec yard.

  Day nine.

  When I went out for rec, I saw a new face. She must have been the one they brought in last night. She was small, pale, with pink pouty lips fixated in a permanent frown. I bet she was cute when she smiled. Now she looked worn and ragged like the rest of us, but somehow still innocent and soft.

  She sat alone on a stone bench on the farthest side of the yard, opposite to the fence shared with the men. It was probably for the best, since I imagined they’d be catcalling her. The clothes she came in with were ripped and torn. They didn’t give us uniforms in here. From what I could tell, everyone was still wearing what they came in with.

  A lot of the women washed their clothes in the bathroom sinks when we showered. Some of the women washed them in the shower, and some just showered with them on. This place was so gross, I’m not sure it mattered all that much.

  It wasn’t clear how she ended up in here, but she definitely didn’t look like she belonged in this grungy place. She was sweet as pie and this place was dark and ugly.

  I dated a girl once like that; a sweet, bubbly blonde with the cutest smile. I often thought of her and wondered where she ended up. This world always seemed too hard and cruel for the sweetness of her. Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy, I thought as I watched the girl, curled up on the bench, as if she were trying to keep herself warm and safe.

  “She doesn’t belong in here,” I said, nodding at the new girl.

  “None of us belong in here.” Kallisto retorted.

  As we chatted, Kallisto did some body weight exercises. Her tall, stocky frame was still in good shape, despite the fact they didn’t give us any workout equipment. I saw her doing pushups and squats in her cell for hours on end, so I suppose that was part of it.

  “Well yeah, but I’m sure that’s what everyone locked up says,” I replied a little more harshly than intended.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said, scratching her head. “But in this prison, it’s true.”

  I looked around me at all the scared women in our ward. Maybe she had a point. Since realizing I was getting nowhere with the guards, I had started taking inventory of who was in here with me. It had been apparent from the start that we were all supernatural or paranormal beings of some sort. Those things they had implanted under our skin were dulling our abilities. I wasn’t quite sure what they were or how they worked, but I aimed to figure that out as well.

  “You need to start working out, too, skinny Minnie,” Kallisto said to me, mid-lunge.

  Eh, she had a point. Those guards were big and strong and without my powers, I was pretty helpless against them. Maybe it would serve me to start strengthening my muscles.

  “Are you going to be my trainer?” I nodded in her direction.

  “Does a bear sh- never mind. Yes! Yes, I will.” A huge smile beamed from ear to ear on Kallisto’s face. She seemed genuinely pleased to help me. It must be hard being a protector who was locked up and couldn’t protect anyone, herself included.

  I know Athena would have been going mad in here.

  “Get inside maggots!” One of the guards yelled out into the
courtyard.

  “Maggots?” Kallisto said, arching an eyebrow.

  I laughed as I started to make my way to the doors. “Well, that’s a new one. Maybe someone gave him a dictionary.”

  “I can think of some things I’d like to give him, but it ain’t a dictionary, unless it’s a slap up the side of the head with one,” she said, falling in line behind me.

  I stifled the laugh that was bubbling up. They would beat us for laughing in here. I’m pretty sure there was a sign in the warden’s office that read, “NO Fun. Not Ever.”

  ***

  Once back inside, when the guards had left, we talked across the narrow hall from one another. Kallisto began showing me some exercises I could do in my cell.

  “You’re lucky you’re so small and don’t have a roommate. You have tons of space in there,” Kallisto called across the way, as she instructed me through some warmup exercises to get my muscles ready for working out.

  I wasn’t that small… at 5’7”, I was average for a woman. I had a thin, sporty frame but I wasn’t frail by any means. Of course, next to Kallisto, most women would look small, so from her perspective, she had a point.

  Sitting v-style on the floor of my cell, I stretched my arms out to my left foot first, held for five seconds, and then to my right foot. I was naturally flexible, but I could feel all the muscles getting looser and longer as I stretched. If nothing else, exercising would also be good for my mental health.

  In addition to getting into better physical shape, I was going to continue learning all that I could about the other women who were in here with me.

  “What’s with her?” I asked, pointing to a thin redhead curled up in the corner on her bed, adjacent to me. I had been here for days now and I never saw her speak or interact with anyone.

  “Oh, that’s Red. She got here a couple weeks ago. Never talks to anybody.”

  “Can’t say that I blame her…” I muttered under my breath, making a mental note to learn more about her, when I could.

  “Get that booty up. It’s time for some cardio!” Kallisto yelled much louder than necessary.

  “Alright, alright.”

  ***

  Now that she had given me a good routine, I worked out in my cell every day. Pushups, lunches, squats, running in place, jumping Jacks, wall sits, wall presses – you name it, and I was doing it. Honestly, I was starting to feel a bit better now that I had taken on this exercise habit. At least, as good as you could feel when you had been kidnapped and thrown into some weird paranormal prison.

  Another day awake meant another day alive and judging by the scratched marks on my wall, I was on Day 13 here.

  Trying to get more information about Red, I chatted up the other inmates, but no one else had any news to share. It wasn’t all a waste of time, however, since I did get to know a lot of the other women who were in here with me. The ones who were friendly enough to talk were more than willing to tell me their stories. I didn’t have paper or a recording device in here, but thankfully, I had an excellent memory. Every detail was filed away in my brain for when I needed to access it later.

  Once the women realized I was friendly, a lot of them sought me out. This made things a lot easier, since I didn’t want to come off like some sort of investigator. If the wrong woman thought I was a narc or a mole, she might give me a swift and hard beating, and that was the last thing I needed.

  “Name’s Vixxie!” said one of those who approached me in the yard. She was short, stocky, with green skin and big, bright, almond eyes. Her white hair was tied up in high pigtails on the top of each side of her head. I couldn’t even begin to guess her age. Goblins were notorious for looking really young and they could live for hundreds of years.

  “Hi Vixxie, I’m Cale.”

  “Nice to meet you, Cale. Rumor is, you’ve been asking all the girls about themselves and how they got in here.”

  I had never actually met a goblin before, at least, not as far as I knew. There were goblins who used magic to change their appearance so they wouldn’t face discrimination when out and about, but since magic didn’t work in here, we saw everyone’s true appearance.

  “Yes,” I explained. “No one knows why we are in this place and everyone I’ve talked to has little memory of how they got here, but most were kidnapped and taken forcefully.”

  “Yup,” she nodded. “They are rounding us up like cattle.”

  “What do you think they want with us?”

  “My guess? They want to kill us off.”

  “But… if they were going to do that, why didn’t they just kill us where we were instead of kidnapping us.”

  “Now that,” she said, wagging her finger at me, “is the real question we should be asking.”

  I chatted with Vixxie a few minutes more before the guards brought us back inside. Then, as I exercised in my cell, I thought about what she had said.

  Despite the outcome of the Great War, there were still some people who wanted to eradicate us. Mass genocide against all paranormal and supernatural races would have brought them great joy. However, if this was some secret mission to destroy us, why hold us hostage?

  Something bigger was going on here. This was organized and planned and quite obviously financially funded. And they wanted us alive. Beaten and bruised, maybe, and without our powers, but alive, nonetheless.

  Why?

  That question would remain at the forefront of my mind for a long time. As my body jumped and pushed and moved within the tiny space of my 4x5 cell, my mind wandered to all the possible scenarios.

  Who could be behind this? Why did they bring us all to Oblivion Penitentiary, and what did they intend to do to us? Adding to my mental files, I thought of all the facts that I could recall from my time here.

  The guards were almost all male. I had seen one female in my two weeks here. They were big, burly men, nearly bursting out of their uniforms but they were not supernatural. I was sure of it. My sixth sense could tell me these things, even if they were masking it.

  Their uniforms were professional made and they had official badges that read Oblivion Penitentiary, only I’d never heard of any correctional facility anywhere in the United States by that name. And I was fairly sure they had not taken me out of America. I was never on a boat or plane. Although I am not sure how long I was out, for a bit there I remembered riding in a van with a bag or cloth over my head.

  Use your five senses. I reminded myself of my training. Thinking about all that I could see, hear, smell, touch and taste… I could use all my senses for more clues about where we were. We had been taught to do this when we were blindfolded, captured, or otherwise trapped. It had been years, but using my training was like riding a bike.

  When I was in my cell, which was most of the time, I thought about what I could see, hear, smell, and touch here. There were birds outside the window. What kinds of birds? What time did they come near the window?

  I did not hear cars, but I did hear the occasional tractor or all-terrain vehicle outside. We were definitely not anywhere near any highways. I couldn’t even hear any vehicles like you might on a back road somewhere. Sometimes late at night, I thought I could make out the faint sound of a ship’s foghorn. And it was damp and muggy inside. The cement walls and flooring often felt damp, as if they were soaking up the moisture in the air around us.

  When I was in the yard, I tested my senses even further. It seemed we were on flat ground. While the building blocked most of the view, there were no visible mountains or hills outside around us. I could smell the sea out here even stronger than from my cell. We had to be near the ocean!

  The birds? Definitely seagulls and there were also sandpipers. We were very close to water, although I couldn’t actually see any from the rec yard. It was seemingly intentionally built in the very center of the facility so we could not see out, and no one else could see us inside, either.

  In the short times we were let out each day, I would continue to concentrate on all of my senses and wha
t they were telling me. Hopefully, I’d be able to continue bringing in clues to help me narrow down where we might be. I still had no idea what I would do with that information once I had it, but one step at a time.

  The days were long and boring. There were long periods of nothing – just sitting in our cells – and then short periods of violence and aggression from the guards. They hardly spoke to us, and when they did it was to yell or mock, or give a gruff order, but it was never to explain anything that was going on or why we were here. They weren’t able to muster even the slightest bit of humanity for us. Thinking on it, that might be another clue as to what we were doing here.

  We were all supernatural… they didn’t treat us like humans… There had to be common threads here.

  During the many hours in my cell, I busied myself with exercise, building my muscles and stamina for the day when I would undoubtedly need to use them. When the guards were not listening and watching, I chatted with Kallisto. She told me all about her family, where she grew up, and how she used to spend her days before coming here. If you could tune out the gross atmosphere and abusive conditions, it almost felt like two old friends just hanging out and catching up.

  And in the times when I wasn’t doing any of that, my brain was reviewing all the information I had obtained since I got here. From the names and the stories of the women in here with me, to the memories I had of getting here, to the information files I was creating in my mind of the guards – their names, their physical descriptions, mannerisms, scents, foods they brought with them for lunch breaks, and more.

  At night, I soothed myself with thoughts of Athena. Imagining her face, her big, toothy smile, how her arms would wrap so tightly around me, and how her hair always smelled like apples was the only thing keeping me sane when things got touch.

  She had been my one true love. Some might call her “the one who got away”, but I always believed we’d come back together at some point. You don’t just walk away from a love like that forever. I guess time would tell, but I had left it up to fate. No more trying, no more chasing, no more trying to force something that wasn’t meant to be. We’d either come back together one day, or we wouldn’t; and I had finally accepted that truth as my reality. It was a peaceful revelation.