Nurse Penny exhales her smoke as staff drag Jefferson to her by his frail arms. His body severely beaten with his legs being completely broken, his head caved in with large indentions making small pockets of blood across his skull.
They pause for a moment holding the broken shell of a man, he looks up begging for pity with his eyes. Penny smiles and leans in close to him. “So, you wanted to be in the womb again, is that right sweetie? That’s all you wanted right?” Her botched makeup barely covers her acne scars.
Jefferson smiles back and tries to nod his head but the egg shell top of his head screams with pain every turn or movement.
“That’s precious love.” Biting down onto the b**t end she reveals a dark smile. “Did you know you can have birth defects and complications in the womb? Anophthalmia for one. I doubt you went to school for long, so I’ll explain it to you. It’s a defect when you are born without one or both eyes. Rare, but it does happen. Now that isn’t too common, but since you wanted to be ‘born again’ how about you come out different this time? No fun repeating the same thing twice right baby?”
She looks up at the guards and winks turning around. A guard from each side position their thumbs inward and push forward into Jefferson’s eyes. He shakes uncontrollably, unable to yell through his cracked jaw. He chokes on spit and blood as they pull out their gooey fingers and continue to drag him out of the room. Jefferson jerks violently through muscle spasms, the body leaves a snail trail of body fluids as they drag him out.
“And don’t forget Patricia when you get back. Add her to the pile, they can have seconds tonight.” Penny sits down in her squeaky chair and drops the cigarette in a cup of coffee. The burn outs spin in a slow circle of liquid energy as her face makes a grimaced expression in it.
“Why didn’t you see his sheet it was in the book you dumb broad.” Penny looks at the book to see a page ripped out at the front, a place where Patricia would have seen that Jefferson was in for murdering his mother, tried to climb inside her stomach and stayed there until a neighbor complained of a smell.
“Simple minded girl. Hope your kids enjoyed their life, Angels Of Mercy Orphanage is all they have to look forward to now.” She looks up at the Patricia’s body being carried out and whispers, “God I love this job.”
Across the hall a man turns away from his window and sits down on his bed losing himself in his thoughts.
To think that was completely normal here, was no wonder not many talked back here. I witnessed Jefferson get beat by three guards from my room across the hall. Sure he was a very sick man but to be bludgeoned to death I don’t know if he deserved that. He was actually sick, not crazy like most people here. My name is Gil, I was across from Jefferson.
He seriously thought the woman whos body he vacated was his mother, as he shook her crying for her to save him after they broke his left knee cap. Oddly enough his voice sounded child like, even after they held him down taking turns turning his head into a bowl of meatloaf.
Pain and torture is as normal as a family praying before dinner here.
I’ve been beaten and broken here. My first month here I was beaten by two guards daily. Lenny was one of them of course, punishment for lashing out at Mrs.Cranston for making me walk naked. She never took her eyes off me as they threw me to the ground bending their sticks on my ribcage, she had such a wicked smile.
I didn’t know it was ‘routine’ here to walk a naked mile in a crowded place. A way of stripping you of pride I suppose. Guess they wanted to make an example of me, they only grew angrier when I couldn’t feel the beatings.
They couldn’t understand how they could break me apart leaving me sprawled on the floor like a lost puppet. The night sticks broke my left eye socket into a pouch of dust while I taunted them, laughing like a madman.
I was thrown into a room and left to starve for five days. Nothing but murky water from an old sink to drink. When you’re alone for that long and in a different kind of pain than usual, all you can do is think.
And think I did, I burned their faces into my mind. I want to hurt them, I want them to bleed from every orifice. I want them to suffer to their very last breath, this place is a home of evil. I would sell my soul to get revenge if I believed the devil existed, but he doesn’t.
I’ve seen pure evil, it doesn’t hide behind a mask. It’s in plain sight, the demons we call our staff. And maybe I belong here, but my sins have been overpaid if you ask me.
I feel sick to my stomach, my legs feel weak and my head feels light. Jefferson’s death isn’t what got to me though, that was nothing to look twice at.
You ever heard the expression, “I’d die a thousand deaths before so and so?”, I did. One day I said it and for that simple expression I’m paying for it. Every single night. I’ve been here for two years, but my nightmare started long before I got to this s**t hole.