Miriam was talking again, a mixture of half-heard pleas and warnings as the women faced off. Stepping away, she turned to beckon Peterson into the room, the guard pretending to be too busy on his radio.
The other residents had given up all pretence of working on their sculptures. Their heads were bowed, hands anxious in their laps, very small and very still.
‘You have no idea how many people like you I’ve met,’ said Amanda, her chair scraping behind her as she stood. ‘You’re empty. You pretend like you’re not, but you’ve got nothing. And the only way you make yourself feel better is by making everyone around you feel worse. So every time you kick off, I’m going to be there slinging your own shit back at you. These women don’t deserve to take your shit, so why not try shutting the fuck up for a change.’
The door opened. In the moment Amanda’s eyes flicked to see Miriam sticking her head out of the room, begging for Peterson’s attention, Anderson attacked.
The larger woman had been growing pinker and pinker as Amanda had talked. Now she was bright red, as residents scattered, chairs tipping, to get out from under her heavy-footed charge.
Amanda grinned.
Moving just in time, Anderson’s first blow caught her hard in the ear, deflected off her forearm. The second came in tight after the first from the other direction, smacking Amanda on the ribs. Fists turning to claws, Anderson grabbed her, driving her back into the wall so all Amanda could do was tuck her head to her chin and try not to crack it into the brick.
They crashed into the Behaviour Charter, the collaged and signed paper ripping under her back.
The whole room was in an uproar, everyone shouting, as more residents rushed to get out of the way. Anderson was bellowing obscenities, flecking Amanda’s face with spit.
Amanda’s grin hadn’t budged. She didn’t say a word, just kept her eyes on Anderson’s, making sure the woman knew she was enjoying this.
Anderson pulled her close, only to slam Amanda back into the wall. It was a punishing, bruising blow, knocking the air out of her and making her cough. But not enough to stop her from smiling.
‘That it?’ Amanda demanded. ‘That it?’
The larger woman’s eyes bulged. Releasing her grip, she pulled back an arm to let fly with another punch. But she’d been so intent on Amanda’s grin she hadn’t noticed where the smaller woman’s hands had been.
Amanda raised her fist, opened it and blew.
The woman screeched and suddenly her weight was off Amanda as she fell away, cursing and spluttering, tears streaming as chilli powder burned at her eyes and nose.
Amanda had screwed up her face against the blowback. Letting the twist of paper drop to the floor, she followed up with a half-decent punch to the woman’s head.
Anderson backed away, in full retreat now, retching. Wiping at her face only made it worse, the powder caking in her tears, collecting on her fingertips and going straight back to her eyes again.
The ladies in the kitchen hadn’t asked questions when Amanda had asked for it, too scared to argue. They’d know why she’d wanted it by lunchtime, now.
Blinded, the larger woman swung a fist to keep Amanda at bay, but her opponent was already walking away.
Peterson was still in the doorway, Miriam wringing her hands out in the hall. The guard scowled as Amanda approached.
‘Sorry for the paperwork.’
* * *
‘Hello again, Amanda.’ Doctor Bowers greeted her with a sigh. ‘Another fight.’
Amanda shuffled on the infirmary bed, sitting at its foot. It had been a long wait for the doctor to see her, Bowers treating Anderson first. The pair were being kept in different rooms, but Amanda had been able to hear her opponent’s bellowed promises of retribution through the walls.
‘Not much of one. She was giving the other women a hard time.’
‘Let’s have a look at you then.’
Amanda allowed herself to be poked and prodded. The doctor shone a torch in her eyes, checking for concussion.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine. Ribs a bit sore.’
‘I thought we’d agreed I wouldn’t have to see you again.’
‘Not much of a choice. She’s been spoiling for a fight.’
‘And there you were to give her one.’
‘Peterson put us together on purpose. He’s always had it in for me because I stand up to him. He’s just as bad. If you saw how he—’
‘Amanda, just stop. We can’t keep pretending.’
‘There’s no pretending. This place is bad enough without people like them making it worse.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. And you…’ she sighed again. ‘Lift up your top, please. Let’s see.’
Amanda winced as she complied, her right side feeling tight from the blow Anderson had landed.
‘Did you think about what I said last time?’
‘Ugh,’ Amanda grunted in pain. ‘Careful.’
‘You can’t keep doing this. I see a lot of different kinds of pain in this place. You might pretend it’s not there, but I can see it. Just…’ she raised her voice before Amanda could retort. ‘Just hear me out. Every time there’s trouble, there you are. Peterson out there thinks you’re a troublemaker. But I know that’s not it. I’ve seen it before. You’re looking for trouble. As much as I’d like to believe you, you don’t care about those women out there. You barely talk to them. You attend the classes, you sit with them at meals, but I’ve never seen you be one of them. But when there’s trouble, all of a sudden there you are, putting yourself in front of it. You don’t care about what’s going on here. You just want to hurt someone and you want them to hurt you.’
‘I think I’m good now,’ said Amanda, pulling down her top.
‘I don’t know what you’re punishing yourself for,’ Bowers insisted. ‘But there are people you can talk to. I know you don’t get any visitors or make any phone calls, but if there are people you can reach out to—’
‘There’s no one. At least, no one who wants to hear from me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘Yeah, well that’s what makes you a doctor, isn’t it? Always so sure of everything.’
Amanda hopped off the bed, forcing Bowers to step out of the way.
‘Just think about what I said. Whatever it is, you have to forgive yourself. It’s the only way to move on.’
‘If people wanted me to move on, I don’t think they’d have locked me up.’ Amanda headed to the door and turned, hand on the handle as she waited for permission to leave.
Bowers folded her arms. ‘And why is it, when you say that, I think the only reason you’re here is because it’s where you think you deserve to be?’
‘You must think you’re real fucking smart.’ Peterson was waiting for her outside, ready to escort her through the prison.
It seemed that everyone had an opinion on what was going on in her head these days. That was the thing about prison, even your thoughts were everyone’s business. How you behaved, where you looked, who you spoke to and how you said it, it was all there for others to pick over.
‘Couldn’t tell you,’ she replied, fixing on her smile. ‘I suppose when I’m comparing it to you thinking sticking Anderson in a room with me will solve your problems, I’m Albert Einstein.’
They began to walk, Peterson letting her go in front. It made Amanda press her tongue against her teeth. You wanted to keep men like Peterson where you could see them, but it wasn’t like she had much of a choice.
‘Keep laughing,’ he said. ‘It’ll just be more time on your sentence.’
‘More time for us to get to know each other, then. Maybe I can finish teaching you how to stop being a world-class arsehole. I mean, come on. It wasn’t exactly the most unexpected plan ever. She might be bigger than me, but have you ever really thought that mattered?’
The guard didn’t reply, nothing but the sound of his heavy shoes as they neared the next set of steel gate
s.
The smell of bleach stung at the nostrils. The maintenance vocation group had been by. The prison corridors were cleaned four times a day, sometimes. All those women learning a new trade for when they got out needed a lot of practice.
‘Not that way,’ said Peterson as she paused before the gates.
He nodded around the corner, where another long corridor led them towards the resident quarters.
‘We’re not heading to the canteen?’ Amanda couldn’t keep the nerves from her voice. ‘Almost lunchtime.’
Peterson smiled. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t like being on your own?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just—’
‘Get going then,’ the man nodded again, enjoying himself. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m just saying it’s almost mealtime. It’d just be easier if—’
‘You should have thought about that before you started blinding inmates. Something’ll get brung to you, don’t worry.’ His eyes glittered as he watched her squirm, daring her to protest.
‘Fine,’ she said, keeping her voice light. ‘Let’s go.’
She started off down the corridor, walking fast so he had to hurry to catch up.
‘Everyone knows you hate being on your own,’ Peterson started up again. ‘You act like you’re tough, but you aren’t fooling anyone.’
‘You want to get this gate or hand me the keys?’
He needled her all the way back to her cell. She did her best not to show her nerves until the door locked behind her.
Her cellmate was away at her own classes, leaving Amanda alone with the four walls, the distant shouts and clangs of prison life muffled.
There wasn’t much room to pace, but that’s what she started to do. The doctor’s words rattled around her head as she screwed up her fists, angry tears spilling down her cheeks. Bowers had called it right, but that had only made her feel worse. Like she’d been caught naked.
And why shouldn’t she be angry? At this place and the world that had put her here. And herself most of all. What business was it of anyone else’s? If they knew half of what she had done, they would hate her too.
They couldn’t know about the demon that had killed her family. They couldn’t know about the lengths she had gone to to get her revenge. How she had murdered her best friend with her bare hands. How he had let her do it. They couldn’t know about the young girl she had sacrificed, used for her skills in magic and then left for dead in a Russian hospital, her fingers shredded to the bone for taking on too powerful a spell. They couldn’t know about the months afterwards. Living with her one remaining daughter, who had known everything she’d done and had hated her for it.
Michaela had filled the air with silent recriminations every morning. And every night, they kept each other awake with the screams of their nightmares. Amanda had tossed and turned, sweated the sheets through. Her dead husband and murdered children accused her of failing them. Her friend Caleb choked out words of hurt betrayal as her hands tightened around his throat. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ She muttered the words over and over again, leaving her throat sore when she woke. Every day, she’d wanted to talk through her dreams, but Michaela had always made an excuse to leave, refusing to share her own. Until the day Amanda had come home to find her daughter’s room emptied.
Her friend Jamison had fallen ill soon after that. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to call and find out how he was, too afraid of what she might say when she heard his voice. What he might say when he found out where she was now. His disappointment.
Neither Michaela nor Jamison could know how she had tried to go back to work. To pull a few jobs, get her groove back, make some money. Instead, with so many of her old friends and contacts dead, all she had managed was a rocky tumble of bad decisions in the company of questionable people.
Arrest had been inevitable. The job had been half-baked, the crew unreliable. Once, she would have shaken her head and walked away. But she’d just kept her eyes down, her head filled with Caleb dead under her hands, the girl, Steph, with her ruined hands, her family sprawled on the stairwell, their blood soaking into the carpet, and Michaela out there somewhere, alone.
They’d have saved everyone a lot of time by just handing themselves in at the nearest police station. As it was, there had been a lot of running and shouting. Amanda had found herself face-down in the dirt with the rest of them, cold metal at her wrists.
There had been a court appearance. They hadn’t known who she was; Jamison had fixed her up with a new identity when she’d come back from Russia. If she’d told them who she really was, they’d have hanged her in an instant. The government was still sore that no one had been caught in connection with the murders of so many innocents perpetrated by the demon Reeves – they’d have leapt at the chance of a scapegoat. But something had stayed her tongue: the thought of her daughter, out in the world, alone.
But bars on the doors and windows hadn’t kept the nightmares at bay. Simon, Emily, Darren, Caleb, Steph, their eyes filled with as much sorrow as anger. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she pleaded, knowing the words were false. She was right where she deserved to be, and she deserved everything that this place could throw at her.
Amanda paced until her legs ached, her self-recriminations bouncing off those four tight walls.
It was only when she sat in the room’s only chair, her ribs burning, that she saw the package tucked under her pillow.
It was a white Jiffy, nothing but her assumed name on it. On top there was a slip of folded paper: ‘Jonsey wants to see you.’
Jonsey? She had seen the woman around but had never spoken to her. Jonsey was part of the criminal infrastructure – the woman people went to for a bit of contraband. She had a line with the outside world too, could put a resident in touch with anyone they wanted, though Amanda hadn’t paid enough attention to know how she did it. A stash of burner phones most likely. But why did she want to see Amanda?
Flitting between curiosity and anger, turning the envelope over in her hands, she debated with herself whether she would go at all. Who would want to send her something?
The package was unopened.
The staff here were shits when it came to inspecting the mail, ripping and tearing through the contents in the pursuit of smuggled items, stuffing them back carelessly when they were done.
This package had found its way into the prison by other means.
Her name on the package was typed, no indication what it might be or where it had come from.
Amanda gave it a shake. Nothing shifted inside, the envelope packed tight but light. Whatever it was, it was nothing good. Every internal alarm bell was ringing.
Lips pinched, she ripped open the seal and peered in. She blinked, unable to make out what it was. It looked like a swatch of brown material, curled to look like fur.
Taking a hold with thumb and forefinger, she pulled, frustration giving way to surprise and then spiralling between confusion and anxiety as a toy slipped from the package, limbs unfolding and head lolling from its confines.
It was Bear, Michaela’s stuffed toy from when she was a toddler. Even now, in her late teens, when most stuffed toys had become a thing of the past, Bear had survived the cull, a lifeline to a time before.
Amanda’s hands were at the door before she even knew that she’d crossed the room, pushing and rattling the steel plate in its frame. She screamed with frustration as the door refused to budge, turning and pacing the too-small room again, hands up to her head as angry tears began to flow.
Her daughter was in danger. It was the only thing this could mean. Michaela wouldn’t send this to her of her own volition. She was in trouble and Amanda was stuck in here, unable to help or protect her.
‘Fuck!’ she shouted at the room. ‘Fuck!’
How had she let this happen? How had she been so stupid to let herself get locked up for some stupid half-planned robbery when she should have been out there watching over the only family she had left? What was wro
ng with her?
She collapsed onto her bed, wiping a forearm across her face to stem the tears. Reading the message again, she screwed it up in her fist and rolled onto her side, staring at the blank wall beside her. This morning, tomorrow had looked like any other day; now it couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
The next day and the other shoe still hadn’t dropped on her actions in the art class. The gears in prison ground slow and, as Amanda was released back to her regular routine, word was that Anderson was still in the infirmary.
‘Can’t have hit her that hard,’ Amanda said to her cellmate, but they all knew the truth. Anderson was just being kept apart from Amanda. Word of what she’d vowed to do if she saw her again was already travelling through the prison grapevine.
But the morning came and went, and no guards came to collect her. Somewhere, reports were being filed, meetings had, decisions made. What to do about her? Twenty-four hours ago, she wouldn’t have cared – extra time, solitary confinement, whatever. Now she dreaded it. She couldn’t let anything stop her from talking to Jonsey.
She’d hugged Bear through the night, breathing in her daughter’s scent off it, squirming in bowel-wrenching terror, torturing herself with a dozen scenarios of what it could all mean. The envelope was in shreds, flushed down the toilet. She’d ripped it apart looking for a second message, any clue as to what this was all about.
Heart in her mouth, she’d left Bear hidden under her pillow. Wherever she was in the prison, going through the motions of breakfast, showering, anger management therapy, she could feel it there, those glass bead eyes staring out at her.
When the doors were unlocked for ‘community time’, she near sprinted for Jonsey’s cell, flexing her fingers around Bear and setting her jaw. By the time she got there, she’d worked herself up to a storm.
Jonsey looked well for a dead woman. She was small, white, in her late fifties, hair cut close to her head. Her aging skin did strange things to the fading tattoos that covered her neck, chest and arms. Her baggy hoodie only accentuated how skinny she was.
Strange Ways Page 3