T-Bag!
Title: Mutinies
Character/Pairing: Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell
Prompt: 088. Control
Rating: R
Summary: He called Jimmy a couple days after he came visiting just to make sure that everything was still held together just right, making sure Loot was across the yard with some of the Alliance boys at the time, but he got Kelly on the line instead.
Author's Notes: Well, Visitors was a little bit cheerful. This is a little bit. Less cheerful. :P And there is Roach. Finally. Warnings for some violence, gory images and swearing.
Mutinies
He called Jimmy a couple days after he came visiting just to make sure that everything was still held together just right, making sure Loot was across the yard with some of the Alliance boys at the time, but he got Kelly on the line instead.
“Theodore Bagwell, I’ll be fucked.” Her voice was that hoarse sort of pitch of somebody who smoked too much and got pinned up against the wall by the throat by some jock boy at her school who tried to rape her three years ago or something like that. He couldn’t remember exactly how long it’d been. Didn’t matter really because she’d gotten the guy in the balls and stabbed him in the side with a pen and almost had to do some time for it, but didn’t in the end because people liked blonde girls. “How’s life in prison?”
“You’d know better than me.” He enjoyed the fact that he could antagonize her over the phone and she couldn’t do shit about it. “How’s life out there? You keepin’ all them boys on their toes still? I’d be disappointed if you’re goin’ clean.”
She laughed roughly and there was a pause, probably her breathing out another lungful of toxins. “Knew there was some reason I liked you. And if you wanna know how I’ve been with the boys, you outta ask your cousin. Been keepin’ him standin’ up in ways other than just his toes, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Nice… just what I expect o’ you.” He glanced over across the yard just to make sure Loot was still slouching over there between Wallace and Ginger keeping out of the way. “Trust my dear old cousin informed you ‘bout my little impetration…”
“Impewhat?” There was a long moment of just Kelly laughing and then a bit of silence to accommodate more of her smoking before she spoke again. “What the fuck, boy? You been readin’ the dictionary again? How ‘bout you step back down to my level here and talk straight to me, huh? Nona this ‘impenetration’ bullshit, you got me?”
Something about that little exchange gave him a bit of a thrill.
“Impetration. My request of your services, Blondie. Thought ‘bout it any?” He leaned up against the phone box and looked over at the rugheads all gathered ‘round together. He made a little gun with his hand and mouthed bang, bang, cocking it a bit and picturing in the back of his head them all hollering and shouting and backing off when two of their little comrades fell down dead with bullets lodged in their skulls. It was a relaxing sort of image.
He could almost hear that little scowl Kelly’d get on her face whenever he called her Blondie come whispering over the telephone line. “You’re such a fucker Bagwell. ‘Course I been thinkin’ ‘bout it. Went visitin’ the doc yesterday. Carly Brown. Sweet lady. Had this little ponytail I just wanted to yank. Wears her weddin’ ring too. Never expect that of a lady married to a jailbird.”
“Uhuh…” He slid his gaze back over to Loot and the Alliance boys before turning back to the phone box, staring at the numbers and considering them for some reason in the back of hid head. “What’s your thoughts on the whole little thing, hmm?”
“Sounds interestin’.” There was another little bit of a pause before she kept going. “She’s pretty nice lookin’, you know? Hard gettin’ away with killin’ pretty people, ‘cause the rest of the world actually gives a shit.” She sighed in a heavy kind of way. “Still, not like I got anythin’ better to do. You callin’ to let me know it’s go time or just checkin’ in to see whether or not we’re takin’ you seriously?”
It was about then that some arm obviously belonging to someone who wasn’t a nigger and who’d been shooting up something at some point or another snaked around him and clicked the little trigger type thing that promptly ended that little conversation. “Phone time’s over, boy.” Roach whispered in his ear, not in an entirely threatening sort of way but in one that meant there wasn’t any room for argument.
He was remarkably amused by the little situation. He hung up the phone and swivelled around so he was face-to-face with Roach, barely a breath between them but he wasn’t complaining, except to say that Roach was too damn tall for his liking. “Nice to see you again too.”
Roach laughed a little at that and T-Bag could taste from the other man’s breath probably pretty much anything he’d tasted in the past little while. “Gotten cocky pretty fast, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Roach-boy.” T-Bag drew all the words out nice and long and craned his neck up a bit to try to even out the height difference and to try to get Roach to stop looking over him and look him in the eye. He had a feeling Roach was somewhat wary of what he’d find hiding there. “And I don’t know why you had to come over here and interrupt my little interlocution when I ain’t got nothin’ to discuss with you.”
Something in that got Roach looking at him again with those eerie grey-blue sort of eyes that would look particularly nice carved out and left on the floor somewhere in a bit of a pool of blood, which was one of those images that made T-Bag lick his lips a little bit. “Interlocution, huh? Tell me, retard, can you even spell interlocution or are you just throwing around words from your cellie who actually graduated high school?”
Retard was one of those words T-Bag had heard a whole lot of times growing up.
Your mom’s a retard!
Of course, he was not about to let all go like he did to that kid when he was eight years old and knew better but didn’t care because there was a CO not looking at the moment but standing close enough to sink a bullet somewhere in him in a second’s notice with the right sort of encouragement. So he swallowed the urge to leap at Roach and strangle him with his bear hands and tilted his head to the size a little bit and let out a short sort of laugh. “Now, don’t you got a dirty mouth?” He tried to keep his voice even but it wasn’t working. “Callin’ me a retard. Might have to shut it before I step in and make you.”
“Inmates! Put some space between you, right now!” The good CO called out, taking a bit of a step in their direction, which was initiative for Roach to pull back a fraction and suck his lips into his mouth with some kind of expression on his face T-Bag couldn’t read.
Roach gave the CO a sharp kind of nod. “Will do, boss.” He turned back to T-Bag a second, looking at him with his pretty eyes all narrow like he was considering doing things that T-Bag would be prone to considering. “Later, Bagwell.” And he slunk off in a predatory kind of way that T-Bag envied of people with actual height.
He wondered briefly at what point he became ‘Bagwell’.
He drifted back across the yard towards the Alliance boys, looping his arm around Loot’s neck and pulling him closer to him just to stake out his territory, giving Wallace and Ginger appropriately dirty looks. “Well, boys, how you been keepin’? My boy here been stayin’ outta trouble?”
Ginger, who was a small sort of guy with a shitload of tattoos in for dealing smack to little kids on the playground after school, twitched a little bit and quirked the kind of paranoid smile T-bag was coming to expect from him. “’Bout as much as can be expected. Who you callin’ so early in the mornin’?”
“Nobody important.” T-Bag ran his fingers through Loot’s hair, tugging at it just hard enough to get the point of who was in charge of this little situation very clear to his little boy. Loot seemed to get the point and took hold of the pocket hanging at T-Bag’s side. Contented, he glanced up at Ginger and Wallace again. “Take a walk, boys. Me and Loot here need to be havin’ a bit of a discussion here, huh?”
Ginger and Wallace gave him those looks he was becoming awfully familiar with, seeing them more and more often when the Alliance boys looked at him like he was just a silly little teenage boy who didn’t know what was what in this here penitentiary, and he was starting to get tired of it. Things were rearing to get rearranged and he was damn willing to do it the moment and opening presented itself, he was patient enough to wait for it for now, but he was starting to have his own little share of doubts about his little boy with the big college graduate words and pretty doctor wife and silent little expression he wore when looking out at nothing thinking about things he probably shouldn’t be thinking about.
Prison was making him awful paranoid.
Still, Ginger and Wallace shuffled off like little boys who’d been spanked and it gave him a little bit of pride to see them go so easily. And Loot got that sort of tense feeling about him like he really wanted to be anywhere as long as it wasn’t with T-Bag.
He enjoyed getting this reaction and planned to take full advantage of it as long as possible.
“You been flappin’ your mouth when you shouldn’t be, boy?” He roped his fingers through Loot’s fine hair and yanked it backwards so Loot’s head fell back exposing his pretty little neck that it would just take a little bit of effort to puncture and leave him bleeding out on the cold dirt.
Loot managed as much of a shake of his head as he could with it yanked back like that and he looked so damn vulnerable T-Bag wanted to drag his tongue across his throat and then slit it and kick him to the ground just to watch him bleed there to prove that he could. “I didn’t say anything to anyone.”
He leaned in just to invade that oh-so-precious personal space Loot could make such a big deal about at times. “Good to hear, boy. Very reassuring to hear that. And you’d better keep it that way.”
Loot gave a rough kind of shrug that settled T-Bag a lot less than he would have liked.
And things settled down about then for a little while.
But it was only so long until life heated up again and he lay awake in his bunk at night some day or another and stared at the wall and traced it with his fingers, pretending that the invisible pictures he was drawing there were enough for someone to see them. He mime-drew Roach with his eyes carved out looking like the living dead, little trickles of blood running down from empty, hollow sockets and Loot bleeding everywhere with a belt tied up ‘round his neck like a dog and Ginger and Wallace carved into forty individual pieces with all manner of blood and tissue and bone sticking out all over the place. And for a second he’d figured it out so perfect in his mind he could actually see them there, just like they were real, drawn there with pencil or pen or blood or something like that.
But when he looked away and looked back there was nothing there but brick.
He got frustrated with it all of a sudden and wanted to shove a shank into the bricks even though it wouldn’t do anything. Instead he rolled over and made up his mind to take it out on Loot in the morning. Forget about the sheet, he’d make everybody watch just to see them all squirm.
He was in the showers when it happened.
‘Bout seven guys, five of ‘em rugheads and two his own Alliance boys crowded round him with the kind of style that suggested preplanning and determination to do this right the first time through. It was like all the boys at school who would pack up on him when he was out of sight of any teachers who actually cared, of which there were only about three at best, and they’d swarm from the back and the sides and the front just to make sure there was no escape and a few would hold him down while the rest of them stamped on him and hit him until satisfied they’d done the job right, at which point they’d spit on him and scamper off on home to their mamas and daddies saying they were innocent little ones again. They’d have his blood or his skin on their clothes or under their nails and they’d still get welcomed home like heroes.
He wasn’t entirely sure where the first hit came from, left or front or right, but it hit him right in the eye socket and knocked him back into someone else and then it was all just a blur like high school and elementary school and juvie where they all decided to beat on the freak. Die. He was curious to know what it’d feel like to die someday but eighteen and in prison wasn’t the way he wanted to go out.
And he was too small to keep all them off him though he got a good kick and hit in at some point he was sure if the blood that wasn’t his that scattered across his face was any indication, even if it was gone moments after, washed away with the water that people kept hitting on to hide the evidence.
COs took their time breaking it up. They’d decided pretty early it seemed to him that they didn’t like him very much.
It occurred to him as the COs dragged him roughly up to the hospital wing that he hadn’t been visiting there yet, which felt somewhat unusual to him for some reason or another. He remembered the infirmary in juvie better than anything else about the place and he remembered all his special visits there for one thing or another. Someone trying to shank him. Drug overdose. All sorts of things. It felt strange for it to be his first visit to the place in here and he was almost welcoming it if it weren’t for the fact that he was bleeding all over the place.
“What the hell happened?” It was never comforting to hear a doctor working in a prison exclaim something like that upon seeing you. It was some man doctor with long hair in a ponytail and big blue eyes staring at him like nothing else. “Get him on the table!”
CO Riley was right by him, talking in this calm sort of voice that suggested he’d seen this before, seen worse than this before and would see it all again and was resigned to that fact at this point. “Theodore Bagwell. Eighteen. Caught a few inmates trying to pound him into the shower floors.”
It was about then he sort of snapped to the fact that he was ass-naked and beat to a pulp lying on a table being scrutinized by a bunch of bulls and a doc none of whom really cared one way or another whether he lived or died about then. And it was one of those moments he decided he’d be perfectly tempted to grab some scalpel that was probably hiding in one of the drawers right in there and cut them all up and let them bleed down through the poor drainage and clog everything up with all their blood and all their inner organs. Lots of inner organs in this many people. They wouldn’t be looking at him quite the same as they were right now if they knew he would slice them up as quick as look at them.
Fuckin’ die all o’ you. Fuckin’ die or I’ll make you die.
He wasn’t entirely sure if it was the beating or something innate in him or just because he was thinking too much but he was sure he heard it said aloud somewhere by someone and maybe it was him. But it didn’t matter because he was already spinning out of consciousness anyway so it was only a matter of seconds before it was all gone.
He woke up with the doctor man hovering somewhere near the sink looking at something or fiddling with something though he couldn’t entirely tell because the world was on some kind of a skew for some reason or another so he just flopped backwards a bit the second after he pulled himself up and let out a low kind of moan. “Feel like I just went through the organ grinder o’ Hell. Don’t you got no sedatives, doc?”
The doc replied without even turning to look at him, just continued doing whatever it was he was doing while talking in a bored kind of tone suggesting he really didn’t want to be having this conversation, or any conversation at all, with someone like him. “I read your records from juvie. Decided against putting any more chemicals in your system than necessary considering your history.”
T-Bag did a messy little shrug and curled his lip at the ceiling. “Was just a time or two, here and there. Nothin’ to worry ‘bout, doc. I just need somethin’ to stop this shit. Fuckin’ dyin’ here and you clearly don’t care. You keep this up, I’m gonna be payin’ a little visit to your superiors, hear me?”
“Bagwell, you go right ahead. Good luck with that. But, just so you know, it’s not going to change anything.” The doctor turned around and looked at him with those big wide eyes that reminded him of little Johnny and made him lick his lips just a bit. “Riley said you’re eighteen. That true?”
He went for snark because that was all he felt capable of in his current condition. “You said you read my file, doc. Why don’t you go figure that out for yourself, huh?”
Doctor Whoever laughed a bit without any humour attatched to it and paced over next to him, regarding him with one of those expressions he couldn’t entirely wrap his mind around. “Theodore, you’re eighteen years old. You’re in a penitentiary for attempted homicide. You keep going on this track who knows where you’re going to end up.” He paused for a second, scratching at his head and ruffling up his pretty hair just a bit. “You’ll end up in worse places for this, that’s for sure. Is that really what you want in life, Theodore?”
It was almost painful listening to all this pointless, irritating drivel of a man going out of his way to try and stop the inevitable and he heard himself laughing just at the sheer idiocy of it all. “Doc, doc, doc, give up now, doc, ‘cause you ain’t gonna talk me outta a life ‘m already assigned to.”
Giving him credit, the good doctor backed off fast, even though he gave T-Bag the kind of look suggesting he hoped pretty damn hard that he’d end up in a very special Hell someday. And he figured someday he would anyway. There would be no disappointments for the doctor on this subject. T-Bag was damn sure of that.
He healed pretty slow compared to most people and the boys had dealt him a good enough beating to keep him up in the pretty infirmary for about a week, and then he got a nice little visit from CO Riley who dragged him along down to the visitor’s room where he found himself with a nice little company of Jimmy and Kelly.
“Say, would ya look at that.” He slid down into the seat, sniffing slightly and regarding the two of them with something of curiosity. “Visitors, for little old me?” He turned and winked at CO Riley who seemed to be trying very hard to restrain himself from making an expression of disgust. “Who would’ve guessed, eh boss?” He swivelled back around and looked at Kelly and Jimmy, his tongue darting out along his lips a little. “To what do I owe the distinction of this little visitation?”
“What’d I tell you?” Kelly whacked Jimmy in the shoulder and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, taking a look at CO Riley who was clearly more than interesting in her little hair flicking. “Talkin’ like some kinda college boy now. Wha’s that all ‘bout, Teddy-boy? You gettin’ some kinda education in here we ain’t hearin’ about?”
Jimmy grunted a bit, looking off at some other con visiting some old hag sort of lady who was going on in some language T-Bag wasn’t fluent in. “Sound like one of ‘em smart boys.”
“Why, thank you, Jimmy.” There was something like pride in hearing that he was sounding like someone intelligent to the point of superiority. He couldn’t help glancing around a bit just to see whether or not all the other inmates or any of the bulls for that matter heard that little comment. He was only somewhat peeved to see they hadn’t. “Now, back to business, right? What brings two fine, upstandin’ citizens like yourselves down here to associate with the lowest of the low, hmm?”
“Just checkin’ up on ‘bama’s youngest little badass.” Kelly said smoothly, leaning over the table so her blonde hair went everywhere and her eyes had that crazy look they’d get before she ran off and set fire to something. “You’re lookin’ like someone beat the crap outta you big time, Teddy-boy. What’s with that? Thought you were tougher than that, Bagwell. Somewhat disappointin’ to tell ya the truth.”
She was that kind of bitch people let get away with it ‘cause she was so smooth as she did it.
“Yeah, and what’ve you been up to, Kelly-doll?” He leaned over to meet her there, staring her deep in her crazy eyes as some kind of a test to see if she could match him in this sort of game, in the game where everybody lost and won and the point wasn’t that, it was trying to destroy as many bystanders as feasibly possible before you went down. “Burn any houses down lately?”
“Only yours.” She replied with that kind of smirk she saved especially for him.
“Then you been doin’ me a favour. Was gonna get to that myself some day, if it weren’t for this irksome little prison sentence I got here.” He bit his lower lip and sucked on it a second before saying anything else. “Look, you guys ‘member what I talked to you ‘bout last time? ‘Bout the good doctor and all that.” He slid his eyes over to CO Riley, just to make sure it was vague enough to keep the warning signs all shut off. And maybe the CO looked a little suspicious, but it seemed more like a permanent facial expression rather than an actual emotion.
Jimmy finally seemed to put in his full attention. “Yeah.”
Kelly laughed and rubbed at her nose a little bit, her eyes dancing like a little girl on Christmas, except he knew for a fact that on Christmas she was always hanging ‘round Jimmy’s house with a bottle of beer and a lighter talking about burning the school down or worse, though he guessed it made no difference ‘cause she got that high from it. What else mattered? “You got style, Bagwell. Fuckin’ style. If I didn’t like your cousin so much I’d jump ya.”
“Aw, Kelly-doll, ain’t you just a flatterer?” He darted his tongue out over his lips and smirked at her, glancing over at Jimmy just to see the reaction and was amused to see absolutely nothing. Jimmy knew his girl damn well. “Anyway, I was just thinkin’, maybe it’s ‘bout time to put all that stuff into action, know what I mean?”
“Done deal.” Jimmy got a bit of a smile to his face that T-Bag hadn’t seen very often. The kind of expression that sometimes came about when he was trailing after Kelly and T-Bag one summer while the two of them lit fire to things. “When you need it by?”
T-Bag didn’t have to think long about Loot, lingering with Ginger and Wallace while he was on the phone with those falsely innocent eyes and then the eyes of Wallace as he sunk a fist into his face. He darted his tongue out over his lip again, just where it was still a bit swollen from one punch he had no idea who dealt. Yeah, he’d be fine with this getting done as fast as possible. Or faster.
“When can you have it done by?”
Kelly let out one of those laughs like people in the psycho ward in bad cop movies and stuff and she leaned over to give Jimmy a long wet kiss because on some level the idea of breaking laws and getting away with it excited her more than anything. She didn’t give a shit about actually doing it. She just liked knowing she’d done something wrong and nobody said a word. “Baby, we got work to do. Why we hangin’ ‘round here with the condemned?” She gave T-Bag a little wink. “You ain’t the only one who knows some big words, jail-bird.”
Loot didn’t look too pleased to see him being led back to the cell, but he wouldn’t either if he were Loot. Boy had to know that he knew he’d been set up. That there was more to that little raid in the showers that immediately met the eye and pissed him off knowing that Loot knew it. He regretted abruptly not telling Kelly and Jimmy to make Carly Brown’s passing as painful as possible.
But only seconds later he reminded himself that Jimmy knew him well enough to make that assumption for himself.
“Well, boy, you proud o’ you-self?” He asked in a low voice as CO Riley shuffled away and they were all alone in an itty bitty enclosure where there was nowhere to go and all Loot could do was pray to God that he didn’t slit his goddamn throat right there. “You think you successfully got rid o’ me now? Temporarily or not?”
“I’m not thinking.” Loot used that monotone, like some kind of prisoner of war.
Dignity was something T-Bag was getting awfully tired of.
“And you think I believe you for even one second, boy?” He took a step towards Loot, just that kind of half step that made people flinch in an oh-so-satisfying way and he licked around the outside of his lips and felt his leg twitch. “Well, you got another thing comin’, now, doncha, boy?” His hand fit ‘round the back of Loot’s neck so easily and it was so hard to keep from trying to snap his neck so instead he just squeezed it, watching Loot suck in breath and tilt his head slightly back to escape. “Maybe you were hopin’ they’d actually kill me in there, huh?” He leaned in close and bit Loot’s ear hard enough to make the silent boy gasp, which was the greatest sound he’d heard all day. “That what you were planin’, huh? Guess ‘m a little harder to kill than they all thought, huh?”
He watched Loot’s Adam’s apple bob as he looked nervously around, looking for an escape that didn’t exist. “Guess so.”
T-Bag laughed at him, whacking the back of Loot’s head like he did all the time only without the underlying affection and instead with more than a little dose of hostility in its place. “You just wait, boy. You gonna get what’s comin’ to you soon enough.”
He caught himself tracing pictures on the wall again that night. Strange little pictures of Doctor Whoever with his long hair all being yanked out in seven different directions with spikes pressed to his pretty little face and his mouth open in some kind of a scream saying he wanted anything but this and pictures of CO Riley gutted like a fat fish and Roach without his eyes being hung from the gallows by a mob of people he didn’t know names for and Loot strung up with holes through his arms with blood flooding down over everything.
He made himself stop before he could be disappointed that there was nothing there.
“Gonna get you, boy.” He muttered into the darkness and from the little hitch in Loot’s usually steady breath he knew that the boy was listening. “Gonna get you. Gonna gut you. Gonna tear your little tongue outta your mouth to make sure you can’t go blabbin’ to nobody else, make sure you can’t be persuadin’ nobody to try and do me in again. Gonna take your limbs off with some kinda blunt instrument and I’m gonna let you bleed out all over the concrete. See what your pretty wife says when the CO calls her and says to her. Says to her: ‘Carly Brown, I’m sorry to say that your husband got cut up last night into twenty pieces and his blood’s all over the place and we need you to come pick up the remains if you can even tell what they are.’ And she’s gonna spend all day cryin’ ‘cause she don’t know what else to do. Best be lookin’ forward to that, boy. Gonna get you one o’ these days…”
He was in the yard the next day pointedly avoiding anyone who seemed to be looking at him with anything similar to the looks he’d been getting just before all hell broke loose in those showers, Loot trailing along silently behind him with those deep eyes of somebody who didn’t sleep all night because they were too busy with mental images.
“Look who’s back.” Roach strutted over, a cigarette between his teeth and his big new cellie walking behind him a pace like his own bitch, almost two feet taller and at least three wider than Roach was. “Bagwell. Thought they might’ve beaten you hard enough to keep you out of here a month, but look at this. Back already.”
T-Bag curled a lip at him and smacked Loot’s hand from the pocket so he could take a step forwards, closing what little of a gap there was between him and Roach, so he could smell that sweet tobacco and foul breath and sweat. “Why, if it ain’t Roach. Good to see you again, boy, though I’d like a bit of an introduction to your cellie here, if you’d oblige.”
Roach laughed bitterly tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and stubbing it out with his foot. “Aw, for you, Bagwell? Anythin’.” He motioned briefly with one hand which made the big guy step forwards, smirking slightly in that sort of way that always suggested legitimate insanity. “This here’s Nigel. In here for a triple homicide.” One of Roach’s eyebrows went evenly up, challenging in that cocky sort of way that made T-Bag want to kill him. “How many d’you have to your name again, Bagwell?”
He wanted to pull Roach’s eyes out.
“Lee.” Warden Whoever and CO Riley stalked over, behind that thin wire fence they all thought would keep them safe from all the freaks inside. “I need to have a word with you. In private.”
T-Bag worked very hard not to grin as Loot followed them away.
“What’s got you so happy, Bagwell?” Roach pulled his attention away from the retreating backs and he looked at Roach, tilting his head to one side a bit just to regard the man at a different angle. “Aren’t you gonna miss your little girlfriend there?”
Nigel snorted and hissed a word under his breath. “Faggot…”
T-Bag felt himself veer slightly, face the much, much bigger man with that kind of incredulity. Faggot. He could remember his daddy calling him that when he pinned him against the wall and fucked him one time and he could remember the time his mama heard him say it and took to murmuring it under her breath in that weird, demented kind of way when looking at him until he lost it and threw something at her and they had to take her to the hospital because she wouldn’t stop crying.
“You watch your mouth.” He hissed to Nigel, stepping closer to him and not feeling the size difference as much as he should. “You think you can take me here? You really think you can move fast enough to stop me from snappin’ your neck, cuttin’ your cock off and makin’ you eat it?” There was something satisfying about the way Nigel looked unnerved. “I thought so.” He paced off because he knew they wouldn’t do anything to his back like that.
They were under that mistaken assumption that there was some code of honour among criminals.
He wandered over to the phone and punched in Jimmy’s number on default, leaning on it and looking over at the assembly of rugheads, trying to pick out of the crowd the ones who participated in the little shower beating so he could take them out later. “Jimmy, you done this right for me, you’re my new best friend…” He muttered under his breath, scratching at the buttons and giggling a little bit.
He hadn’t felt this excited since he had little Johnny bleeding out on the ground in front of him, his to do with what he pleased.
“’Lo?”
“Jimmy!” He laughed, twisting the cord of the phone around his fingers and staring at the numbers as if trying to memorize them into his head so he could picture them at night and call people in his sleep. “Somethin’ interestin’ just happened ‘round here. My little boy Lee Brown got called off by the warden, who looked like he was bearin’ some less than felicitous news. You wouldn’t know nothin’ bout that, would you?”
Jimmy’s little laugh, that chuckle that was so definitely high, came back along the phone line. “Should see the front o’ today’s papers. Carly Brown, found dead in her own backyard. So bad, they’re sayin’ some wild animal did it.” Jimmy was a hell of a lot more garrulous over the phone.
“Oh, I bet one did.” T-Bag laughed and glanced over at Nigel and Roach, standing near Wallace and Ginger in an awfully friendly sort of way. “Tell me the details, Jimmy. Give me all the snippets o’ blood and guts and wire and bullets and bone and all that nice shit involved in things like that, hmm? She scream? You rape her? She beg for her life in those last few seconds ‘fore she was lyin’ in the cold dirt without a breath of life left in her?”
“Kelly burned the body.” Jimmy sounded high as a kite and T-Bag could hear Kelly giggling and rambling on in the background. Definitely high. “Got her out in the back and hit her over the head with a shovel. Tore her throat open like an animal would. Set her on fire.”
“You take the shovel with you?”
Jimmy sounded distracted and Kelly’d shut up in the background. Listening to Jimmy’s voice hitch T-Bag could guess what was going on. “’Course. And the gasoline. And the lighter. And left nothin’ there. Oh, Christ…”
T-Bag cackled. “Your little wife-to-be good at givin’ head, Jimmy?”
“Better n’ you.”
The click and the dial tone was enough for T-Bag and he hung the receiver back up with a smirk. He pictured Carly Brown burned and cut up and bleeding in her own backyard with no way of telling how it happened or who did it or whatever else there was. Because Kelly and Jimmy were nobodies, had no motives to do this to anyone, let alone Doctor Carly Brown. Who could track a murder like that through to him and ever understand the reasoning behind it? He was satisfied with that thought process.
The best part, of course, was the look on Loot’s face when he was led back to the cell.
He actually had an expression, unlike all those nonchalant masks hiding who knew what behind them and his breathing was rapid as opposed to perfectly timed out on the same intervals the same times again and again and again. And once the COs were out of sight he almost flew forwards and pinned T-Bag against the wall with a look on his face like he might just kill him. “What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do to her?”
T-Bag laughed because he couldn’t find it serious at all. It was all just a joke to him still and he was on the winning end of the string. “I done nothin’, boy! I done nothin’! Now, get off me ‘fore I take advantage o’ this cozy little situation we got goin’ on here.”
Loot pulled back looking like he wanted to kill him or spit on him or strangle him or just die himself. “Fuck you. Fuck you! I made you who you are! I’m the only reason you’ve got all this!”
“Aha, yes, you raise a good point, pretty boy.” He took a lazy step forwards, the kind of predatory move just to test the prey and he felt suitably rewarded that Loot didn’t flinch. “But, let’s look at the facts o’ this whole thing, hmm? Why don’t we do that?” He took another step forwards and Loot shuffled maybe a fraction of an inch back. “How ‘bout we talk about you settin’ me up for a nice little beatin’ in the prison showers? And keepin’ the whole thing goin’ like that? How long you been plannin’ to off me, boy, and how come you thought you could get away with it without me findin’ out?” And then it was just one quick movement to have him pinned up back against the bars breathing in his face just to make his point perfectly clear. “I might not have your fancy little college education, boy, that don’t mean I ain’t clever enough to see the obvious. Think I ain’t gonna notice you settin’ me up like that? Think I’m gonna let you keep gettin’ away with it ‘til you actually make it work out?”
Loot didn’t say anything. Which worked because there was nothing he could possibly say at this point that wouldn’t dig the hole deeper.
“Let’s just keep this one thing clear here, boy.” He hissed right up close, against Loot’s skin so he could see him squirm just a bit and look at the remains of lines from crying about poor Carly Brown dead in her backyard. “I am in control here. You are here for my amusements and I am not goin’ to entertain you tryin’ to off me every second Saturday.” He pulled back and smirked at the look in Loot’s eyes of familiar resign to this being the end of something. Mona before he stabbed her all those times. Little Johnny right before the last blow. Except this wasn’t the end of his life. Not yet. “We clear on all that, boy?”
He knew the answer before he heard it. “We’re clear.”
“Good to hear.” He smacked the side of Loot’s face gently and smirked at him, cocking his head towards their bunk. “Now, enough o’ the hatin’ hear, doncha think? Hang a sheet, boy, we’ll get onto happier things.”
He loved watching how much it hurt Loot to do it.
Character/Pairing: Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell
Prompt: 088. Control
Rating: R
Summary: He called Jimmy a couple days after he came visiting just to make sure that everything was still held together just right, making sure Loot was across the yard with some of the Alliance boys at the time, but he got Kelly on the line instead.
Author's Notes: Well, Visitors was a little bit cheerful. This is a little bit. Less cheerful. :P And there is Roach. Finally. Warnings for some violence, gory images and swearing.
Mutinies
He called Jimmy a couple days after he came visiting just to make sure that everything was still held together just right, making sure Loot was across the yard with some of the Alliance boys at the time, but he got Kelly on the line instead.
“Theodore Bagwell, I’ll be fucked.” Her voice was that hoarse sort of pitch of somebody who smoked too much and got pinned up against the wall by the throat by some jock boy at her school who tried to rape her three years ago or something like that. He couldn’t remember exactly how long it’d been. Didn’t matter really because she’d gotten the guy in the balls and stabbed him in the side with a pen and almost had to do some time for it, but didn’t in the end because people liked blonde girls. “How’s life in prison?”
“You’d know better than me.” He enjoyed the fact that he could antagonize her over the phone and she couldn’t do shit about it. “How’s life out there? You keepin’ all them boys on their toes still? I’d be disappointed if you’re goin’ clean.”
She laughed roughly and there was a pause, probably her breathing out another lungful of toxins. “Knew there was some reason I liked you. And if you wanna know how I’ve been with the boys, you outta ask your cousin. Been keepin’ him standin’ up in ways other than just his toes, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Nice… just what I expect o’ you.” He glanced over across the yard just to make sure Loot was still slouching over there between Wallace and Ginger keeping out of the way. “Trust my dear old cousin informed you ‘bout my little impetration…”
“Impewhat?” There was a long moment of just Kelly laughing and then a bit of silence to accommodate more of her smoking before she spoke again. “What the fuck, boy? You been readin’ the dictionary again? How ‘bout you step back down to my level here and talk straight to me, huh? Nona this ‘impenetration’ bullshit, you got me?”
Something about that little exchange gave him a bit of a thrill.
“Impetration. My request of your services, Blondie. Thought ‘bout it any?” He leaned up against the phone box and looked over at the rugheads all gathered ‘round together. He made a little gun with his hand and mouthed bang, bang, cocking it a bit and picturing in the back of his head them all hollering and shouting and backing off when two of their little comrades fell down dead with bullets lodged in their skulls. It was a relaxing sort of image.
He could almost hear that little scowl Kelly’d get on her face whenever he called her Blondie come whispering over the telephone line. “You’re such a fucker Bagwell. ‘Course I been thinkin’ ‘bout it. Went visitin’ the doc yesterday. Carly Brown. Sweet lady. Had this little ponytail I just wanted to yank. Wears her weddin’ ring too. Never expect that of a lady married to a jailbird.”
“Uhuh…” He slid his gaze back over to Loot and the Alliance boys before turning back to the phone box, staring at the numbers and considering them for some reason in the back of hid head. “What’s your thoughts on the whole little thing, hmm?”
“Sounds interestin’.” There was another little bit of a pause before she kept going. “She’s pretty nice lookin’, you know? Hard gettin’ away with killin’ pretty people, ‘cause the rest of the world actually gives a shit.” She sighed in a heavy kind of way. “Still, not like I got anythin’ better to do. You callin’ to let me know it’s go time or just checkin’ in to see whether or not we’re takin’ you seriously?”
It was about then that some arm obviously belonging to someone who wasn’t a nigger and who’d been shooting up something at some point or another snaked around him and clicked the little trigger type thing that promptly ended that little conversation. “Phone time’s over, boy.” Roach whispered in his ear, not in an entirely threatening sort of way but in one that meant there wasn’t any room for argument.
He was remarkably amused by the little situation. He hung up the phone and swivelled around so he was face-to-face with Roach, barely a breath between them but he wasn’t complaining, except to say that Roach was too damn tall for his liking. “Nice to see you again too.”
Roach laughed a little at that and T-Bag could taste from the other man’s breath probably pretty much anything he’d tasted in the past little while. “Gotten cocky pretty fast, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Roach-boy.” T-Bag drew all the words out nice and long and craned his neck up a bit to try to even out the height difference and to try to get Roach to stop looking over him and look him in the eye. He had a feeling Roach was somewhat wary of what he’d find hiding there. “And I don’t know why you had to come over here and interrupt my little interlocution when I ain’t got nothin’ to discuss with you.”
Something in that got Roach looking at him again with those eerie grey-blue sort of eyes that would look particularly nice carved out and left on the floor somewhere in a bit of a pool of blood, which was one of those images that made T-Bag lick his lips a little bit. “Interlocution, huh? Tell me, retard, can you even spell interlocution or are you just throwing around words from your cellie who actually graduated high school?”
Retard was one of those words T-Bag had heard a whole lot of times growing up.
Your mom’s a retard!
Of course, he was not about to let all go like he did to that kid when he was eight years old and knew better but didn’t care because there was a CO not looking at the moment but standing close enough to sink a bullet somewhere in him in a second’s notice with the right sort of encouragement. So he swallowed the urge to leap at Roach and strangle him with his bear hands and tilted his head to the size a little bit and let out a short sort of laugh. “Now, don’t you got a dirty mouth?” He tried to keep his voice even but it wasn’t working. “Callin’ me a retard. Might have to shut it before I step in and make you.”
“Inmates! Put some space between you, right now!” The good CO called out, taking a bit of a step in their direction, which was initiative for Roach to pull back a fraction and suck his lips into his mouth with some kind of expression on his face T-Bag couldn’t read.
Roach gave the CO a sharp kind of nod. “Will do, boss.” He turned back to T-Bag a second, looking at him with his pretty eyes all narrow like he was considering doing things that T-Bag would be prone to considering. “Later, Bagwell.” And he slunk off in a predatory kind of way that T-Bag envied of people with actual height.
He wondered briefly at what point he became ‘Bagwell’.
He drifted back across the yard towards the Alliance boys, looping his arm around Loot’s neck and pulling him closer to him just to stake out his territory, giving Wallace and Ginger appropriately dirty looks. “Well, boys, how you been keepin’? My boy here been stayin’ outta trouble?”
Ginger, who was a small sort of guy with a shitload of tattoos in for dealing smack to little kids on the playground after school, twitched a little bit and quirked the kind of paranoid smile T-bag was coming to expect from him. “’Bout as much as can be expected. Who you callin’ so early in the mornin’?”
“Nobody important.” T-Bag ran his fingers through Loot’s hair, tugging at it just hard enough to get the point of who was in charge of this little situation very clear to his little boy. Loot seemed to get the point and took hold of the pocket hanging at T-Bag’s side. Contented, he glanced up at Ginger and Wallace again. “Take a walk, boys. Me and Loot here need to be havin’ a bit of a discussion here, huh?”
Ginger and Wallace gave him those looks he was becoming awfully familiar with, seeing them more and more often when the Alliance boys looked at him like he was just a silly little teenage boy who didn’t know what was what in this here penitentiary, and he was starting to get tired of it. Things were rearing to get rearranged and he was damn willing to do it the moment and opening presented itself, he was patient enough to wait for it for now, but he was starting to have his own little share of doubts about his little boy with the big college graduate words and pretty doctor wife and silent little expression he wore when looking out at nothing thinking about things he probably shouldn’t be thinking about.
Prison was making him awful paranoid.
Still, Ginger and Wallace shuffled off like little boys who’d been spanked and it gave him a little bit of pride to see them go so easily. And Loot got that sort of tense feeling about him like he really wanted to be anywhere as long as it wasn’t with T-Bag.
He enjoyed getting this reaction and planned to take full advantage of it as long as possible.
“You been flappin’ your mouth when you shouldn’t be, boy?” He roped his fingers through Loot’s fine hair and yanked it backwards so Loot’s head fell back exposing his pretty little neck that it would just take a little bit of effort to puncture and leave him bleeding out on the cold dirt.
Loot managed as much of a shake of his head as he could with it yanked back like that and he looked so damn vulnerable T-Bag wanted to drag his tongue across his throat and then slit it and kick him to the ground just to watch him bleed there to prove that he could. “I didn’t say anything to anyone.”
He leaned in just to invade that oh-so-precious personal space Loot could make such a big deal about at times. “Good to hear, boy. Very reassuring to hear that. And you’d better keep it that way.”
Loot gave a rough kind of shrug that settled T-Bag a lot less than he would have liked.
And things settled down about then for a little while.
But it was only so long until life heated up again and he lay awake in his bunk at night some day or another and stared at the wall and traced it with his fingers, pretending that the invisible pictures he was drawing there were enough for someone to see them. He mime-drew Roach with his eyes carved out looking like the living dead, little trickles of blood running down from empty, hollow sockets and Loot bleeding everywhere with a belt tied up ‘round his neck like a dog and Ginger and Wallace carved into forty individual pieces with all manner of blood and tissue and bone sticking out all over the place. And for a second he’d figured it out so perfect in his mind he could actually see them there, just like they were real, drawn there with pencil or pen or blood or something like that.
But when he looked away and looked back there was nothing there but brick.
He got frustrated with it all of a sudden and wanted to shove a shank into the bricks even though it wouldn’t do anything. Instead he rolled over and made up his mind to take it out on Loot in the morning. Forget about the sheet, he’d make everybody watch just to see them all squirm.
He was in the showers when it happened.
‘Bout seven guys, five of ‘em rugheads and two his own Alliance boys crowded round him with the kind of style that suggested preplanning and determination to do this right the first time through. It was like all the boys at school who would pack up on him when he was out of sight of any teachers who actually cared, of which there were only about three at best, and they’d swarm from the back and the sides and the front just to make sure there was no escape and a few would hold him down while the rest of them stamped on him and hit him until satisfied they’d done the job right, at which point they’d spit on him and scamper off on home to their mamas and daddies saying they were innocent little ones again. They’d have his blood or his skin on their clothes or under their nails and they’d still get welcomed home like heroes.
He wasn’t entirely sure where the first hit came from, left or front or right, but it hit him right in the eye socket and knocked him back into someone else and then it was all just a blur like high school and elementary school and juvie where they all decided to beat on the freak. Die. He was curious to know what it’d feel like to die someday but eighteen and in prison wasn’t the way he wanted to go out.
And he was too small to keep all them off him though he got a good kick and hit in at some point he was sure if the blood that wasn’t his that scattered across his face was any indication, even if it was gone moments after, washed away with the water that people kept hitting on to hide the evidence.
COs took their time breaking it up. They’d decided pretty early it seemed to him that they didn’t like him very much.
It occurred to him as the COs dragged him roughly up to the hospital wing that he hadn’t been visiting there yet, which felt somewhat unusual to him for some reason or another. He remembered the infirmary in juvie better than anything else about the place and he remembered all his special visits there for one thing or another. Someone trying to shank him. Drug overdose. All sorts of things. It felt strange for it to be his first visit to the place in here and he was almost welcoming it if it weren’t for the fact that he was bleeding all over the place.
“What the hell happened?” It was never comforting to hear a doctor working in a prison exclaim something like that upon seeing you. It was some man doctor with long hair in a ponytail and big blue eyes staring at him like nothing else. “Get him on the table!”
CO Riley was right by him, talking in this calm sort of voice that suggested he’d seen this before, seen worse than this before and would see it all again and was resigned to that fact at this point. “Theodore Bagwell. Eighteen. Caught a few inmates trying to pound him into the shower floors.”
It was about then he sort of snapped to the fact that he was ass-naked and beat to a pulp lying on a table being scrutinized by a bunch of bulls and a doc none of whom really cared one way or another whether he lived or died about then. And it was one of those moments he decided he’d be perfectly tempted to grab some scalpel that was probably hiding in one of the drawers right in there and cut them all up and let them bleed down through the poor drainage and clog everything up with all their blood and all their inner organs. Lots of inner organs in this many people. They wouldn’t be looking at him quite the same as they were right now if they knew he would slice them up as quick as look at them.
Fuckin’ die all o’ you. Fuckin’ die or I’ll make you die.
He wasn’t entirely sure if it was the beating or something innate in him or just because he was thinking too much but he was sure he heard it said aloud somewhere by someone and maybe it was him. But it didn’t matter because he was already spinning out of consciousness anyway so it was only a matter of seconds before it was all gone.
He woke up with the doctor man hovering somewhere near the sink looking at something or fiddling with something though he couldn’t entirely tell because the world was on some kind of a skew for some reason or another so he just flopped backwards a bit the second after he pulled himself up and let out a low kind of moan. “Feel like I just went through the organ grinder o’ Hell. Don’t you got no sedatives, doc?”
The doc replied without even turning to look at him, just continued doing whatever it was he was doing while talking in a bored kind of tone suggesting he really didn’t want to be having this conversation, or any conversation at all, with someone like him. “I read your records from juvie. Decided against putting any more chemicals in your system than necessary considering your history.”
T-Bag did a messy little shrug and curled his lip at the ceiling. “Was just a time or two, here and there. Nothin’ to worry ‘bout, doc. I just need somethin’ to stop this shit. Fuckin’ dyin’ here and you clearly don’t care. You keep this up, I’m gonna be payin’ a little visit to your superiors, hear me?”
“Bagwell, you go right ahead. Good luck with that. But, just so you know, it’s not going to change anything.” The doctor turned around and looked at him with those big wide eyes that reminded him of little Johnny and made him lick his lips just a bit. “Riley said you’re eighteen. That true?”
He went for snark because that was all he felt capable of in his current condition. “You said you read my file, doc. Why don’t you go figure that out for yourself, huh?”
Doctor Whoever laughed a bit without any humour attatched to it and paced over next to him, regarding him with one of those expressions he couldn’t entirely wrap his mind around. “Theodore, you’re eighteen years old. You’re in a penitentiary for attempted homicide. You keep going on this track who knows where you’re going to end up.” He paused for a second, scratching at his head and ruffling up his pretty hair just a bit. “You’ll end up in worse places for this, that’s for sure. Is that really what you want in life, Theodore?”
It was almost painful listening to all this pointless, irritating drivel of a man going out of his way to try and stop the inevitable and he heard himself laughing just at the sheer idiocy of it all. “Doc, doc, doc, give up now, doc, ‘cause you ain’t gonna talk me outta a life ‘m already assigned to.”
Giving him credit, the good doctor backed off fast, even though he gave T-Bag the kind of look suggesting he hoped pretty damn hard that he’d end up in a very special Hell someday. And he figured someday he would anyway. There would be no disappointments for the doctor on this subject. T-Bag was damn sure of that.
He healed pretty slow compared to most people and the boys had dealt him a good enough beating to keep him up in the pretty infirmary for about a week, and then he got a nice little visit from CO Riley who dragged him along down to the visitor’s room where he found himself with a nice little company of Jimmy and Kelly.
“Say, would ya look at that.” He slid down into the seat, sniffing slightly and regarding the two of them with something of curiosity. “Visitors, for little old me?” He turned and winked at CO Riley who seemed to be trying very hard to restrain himself from making an expression of disgust. “Who would’ve guessed, eh boss?” He swivelled back around and looked at Kelly and Jimmy, his tongue darting out along his lips a little. “To what do I owe the distinction of this little visitation?”
“What’d I tell you?” Kelly whacked Jimmy in the shoulder and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, taking a look at CO Riley who was clearly more than interesting in her little hair flicking. “Talkin’ like some kinda college boy now. Wha’s that all ‘bout, Teddy-boy? You gettin’ some kinda education in here we ain’t hearin’ about?”
Jimmy grunted a bit, looking off at some other con visiting some old hag sort of lady who was going on in some language T-Bag wasn’t fluent in. “Sound like one of ‘em smart boys.”
“Why, thank you, Jimmy.” There was something like pride in hearing that he was sounding like someone intelligent to the point of superiority. He couldn’t help glancing around a bit just to see whether or not all the other inmates or any of the bulls for that matter heard that little comment. He was only somewhat peeved to see they hadn’t. “Now, back to business, right? What brings two fine, upstandin’ citizens like yourselves down here to associate with the lowest of the low, hmm?”
“Just checkin’ up on ‘bama’s youngest little badass.” Kelly said smoothly, leaning over the table so her blonde hair went everywhere and her eyes had that crazy look they’d get before she ran off and set fire to something. “You’re lookin’ like someone beat the crap outta you big time, Teddy-boy. What’s with that? Thought you were tougher than that, Bagwell. Somewhat disappointin’ to tell ya the truth.”
She was that kind of bitch people let get away with it ‘cause she was so smooth as she did it.
“Yeah, and what’ve you been up to, Kelly-doll?” He leaned over to meet her there, staring her deep in her crazy eyes as some kind of a test to see if she could match him in this sort of game, in the game where everybody lost and won and the point wasn’t that, it was trying to destroy as many bystanders as feasibly possible before you went down. “Burn any houses down lately?”
“Only yours.” She replied with that kind of smirk she saved especially for him.
“Then you been doin’ me a favour. Was gonna get to that myself some day, if it weren’t for this irksome little prison sentence I got here.” He bit his lower lip and sucked on it a second before saying anything else. “Look, you guys ‘member what I talked to you ‘bout last time? ‘Bout the good doctor and all that.” He slid his eyes over to CO Riley, just to make sure it was vague enough to keep the warning signs all shut off. And maybe the CO looked a little suspicious, but it seemed more like a permanent facial expression rather than an actual emotion.
Jimmy finally seemed to put in his full attention. “Yeah.”
Kelly laughed and rubbed at her nose a little bit, her eyes dancing like a little girl on Christmas, except he knew for a fact that on Christmas she was always hanging ‘round Jimmy’s house with a bottle of beer and a lighter talking about burning the school down or worse, though he guessed it made no difference ‘cause she got that high from it. What else mattered? “You got style, Bagwell. Fuckin’ style. If I didn’t like your cousin so much I’d jump ya.”
“Aw, Kelly-doll, ain’t you just a flatterer?” He darted his tongue out over his lips and smirked at her, glancing over at Jimmy just to see the reaction and was amused to see absolutely nothing. Jimmy knew his girl damn well. “Anyway, I was just thinkin’, maybe it’s ‘bout time to put all that stuff into action, know what I mean?”
“Done deal.” Jimmy got a bit of a smile to his face that T-Bag hadn’t seen very often. The kind of expression that sometimes came about when he was trailing after Kelly and T-Bag one summer while the two of them lit fire to things. “When you need it by?”
T-Bag didn’t have to think long about Loot, lingering with Ginger and Wallace while he was on the phone with those falsely innocent eyes and then the eyes of Wallace as he sunk a fist into his face. He darted his tongue out over his lip again, just where it was still a bit swollen from one punch he had no idea who dealt. Yeah, he’d be fine with this getting done as fast as possible. Or faster.
“When can you have it done by?”
Kelly let out one of those laughs like people in the psycho ward in bad cop movies and stuff and she leaned over to give Jimmy a long wet kiss because on some level the idea of breaking laws and getting away with it excited her more than anything. She didn’t give a shit about actually doing it. She just liked knowing she’d done something wrong and nobody said a word. “Baby, we got work to do. Why we hangin’ ‘round here with the condemned?” She gave T-Bag a little wink. “You ain’t the only one who knows some big words, jail-bird.”
Loot didn’t look too pleased to see him being led back to the cell, but he wouldn’t either if he were Loot. Boy had to know that he knew he’d been set up. That there was more to that little raid in the showers that immediately met the eye and pissed him off knowing that Loot knew it. He regretted abruptly not telling Kelly and Jimmy to make Carly Brown’s passing as painful as possible.
But only seconds later he reminded himself that Jimmy knew him well enough to make that assumption for himself.
“Well, boy, you proud o’ you-self?” He asked in a low voice as CO Riley shuffled away and they were all alone in an itty bitty enclosure where there was nowhere to go and all Loot could do was pray to God that he didn’t slit his goddamn throat right there. “You think you successfully got rid o’ me now? Temporarily or not?”
“I’m not thinking.” Loot used that monotone, like some kind of prisoner of war.
Dignity was something T-Bag was getting awfully tired of.
“And you think I believe you for even one second, boy?” He took a step towards Loot, just that kind of half step that made people flinch in an oh-so-satisfying way and he licked around the outside of his lips and felt his leg twitch. “Well, you got another thing comin’, now, doncha, boy?” His hand fit ‘round the back of Loot’s neck so easily and it was so hard to keep from trying to snap his neck so instead he just squeezed it, watching Loot suck in breath and tilt his head slightly back to escape. “Maybe you were hopin’ they’d actually kill me in there, huh?” He leaned in close and bit Loot’s ear hard enough to make the silent boy gasp, which was the greatest sound he’d heard all day. “That what you were planin’, huh? Guess ‘m a little harder to kill than they all thought, huh?”
He watched Loot’s Adam’s apple bob as he looked nervously around, looking for an escape that didn’t exist. “Guess so.”
T-Bag laughed at him, whacking the back of Loot’s head like he did all the time only without the underlying affection and instead with more than a little dose of hostility in its place. “You just wait, boy. You gonna get what’s comin’ to you soon enough.”
He caught himself tracing pictures on the wall again that night. Strange little pictures of Doctor Whoever with his long hair all being yanked out in seven different directions with spikes pressed to his pretty little face and his mouth open in some kind of a scream saying he wanted anything but this and pictures of CO Riley gutted like a fat fish and Roach without his eyes being hung from the gallows by a mob of people he didn’t know names for and Loot strung up with holes through his arms with blood flooding down over everything.
He made himself stop before he could be disappointed that there was nothing there.
“Gonna get you, boy.” He muttered into the darkness and from the little hitch in Loot’s usually steady breath he knew that the boy was listening. “Gonna get you. Gonna gut you. Gonna tear your little tongue outta your mouth to make sure you can’t go blabbin’ to nobody else, make sure you can’t be persuadin’ nobody to try and do me in again. Gonna take your limbs off with some kinda blunt instrument and I’m gonna let you bleed out all over the concrete. See what your pretty wife says when the CO calls her and says to her. Says to her: ‘Carly Brown, I’m sorry to say that your husband got cut up last night into twenty pieces and his blood’s all over the place and we need you to come pick up the remains if you can even tell what they are.’ And she’s gonna spend all day cryin’ ‘cause she don’t know what else to do. Best be lookin’ forward to that, boy. Gonna get you one o’ these days…”
He was in the yard the next day pointedly avoiding anyone who seemed to be looking at him with anything similar to the looks he’d been getting just before all hell broke loose in those showers, Loot trailing along silently behind him with those deep eyes of somebody who didn’t sleep all night because they were too busy with mental images.
“Look who’s back.” Roach strutted over, a cigarette between his teeth and his big new cellie walking behind him a pace like his own bitch, almost two feet taller and at least three wider than Roach was. “Bagwell. Thought they might’ve beaten you hard enough to keep you out of here a month, but look at this. Back already.”
T-Bag curled a lip at him and smacked Loot’s hand from the pocket so he could take a step forwards, closing what little of a gap there was between him and Roach, so he could smell that sweet tobacco and foul breath and sweat. “Why, if it ain’t Roach. Good to see you again, boy, though I’d like a bit of an introduction to your cellie here, if you’d oblige.”
Roach laughed bitterly tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and stubbing it out with his foot. “Aw, for you, Bagwell? Anythin’.” He motioned briefly with one hand which made the big guy step forwards, smirking slightly in that sort of way that always suggested legitimate insanity. “This here’s Nigel. In here for a triple homicide.” One of Roach’s eyebrows went evenly up, challenging in that cocky sort of way that made T-Bag want to kill him. “How many d’you have to your name again, Bagwell?”
He wanted to pull Roach’s eyes out.
“Lee.” Warden Whoever and CO Riley stalked over, behind that thin wire fence they all thought would keep them safe from all the freaks inside. “I need to have a word with you. In private.”
T-Bag worked very hard not to grin as Loot followed them away.
“What’s got you so happy, Bagwell?” Roach pulled his attention away from the retreating backs and he looked at Roach, tilting his head to one side a bit just to regard the man at a different angle. “Aren’t you gonna miss your little girlfriend there?”
Nigel snorted and hissed a word under his breath. “Faggot…”
T-Bag felt himself veer slightly, face the much, much bigger man with that kind of incredulity. Faggot. He could remember his daddy calling him that when he pinned him against the wall and fucked him one time and he could remember the time his mama heard him say it and took to murmuring it under her breath in that weird, demented kind of way when looking at him until he lost it and threw something at her and they had to take her to the hospital because she wouldn’t stop crying.
“You watch your mouth.” He hissed to Nigel, stepping closer to him and not feeling the size difference as much as he should. “You think you can take me here? You really think you can move fast enough to stop me from snappin’ your neck, cuttin’ your cock off and makin’ you eat it?” There was something satisfying about the way Nigel looked unnerved. “I thought so.” He paced off because he knew they wouldn’t do anything to his back like that.
They were under that mistaken assumption that there was some code of honour among criminals.
He wandered over to the phone and punched in Jimmy’s number on default, leaning on it and looking over at the assembly of rugheads, trying to pick out of the crowd the ones who participated in the little shower beating so he could take them out later. “Jimmy, you done this right for me, you’re my new best friend…” He muttered under his breath, scratching at the buttons and giggling a little bit.
He hadn’t felt this excited since he had little Johnny bleeding out on the ground in front of him, his to do with what he pleased.
“’Lo?”
“Jimmy!” He laughed, twisting the cord of the phone around his fingers and staring at the numbers as if trying to memorize them into his head so he could picture them at night and call people in his sleep. “Somethin’ interestin’ just happened ‘round here. My little boy Lee Brown got called off by the warden, who looked like he was bearin’ some less than felicitous news. You wouldn’t know nothin’ bout that, would you?”
Jimmy’s little laugh, that chuckle that was so definitely high, came back along the phone line. “Should see the front o’ today’s papers. Carly Brown, found dead in her own backyard. So bad, they’re sayin’ some wild animal did it.” Jimmy was a hell of a lot more garrulous over the phone.
“Oh, I bet one did.” T-Bag laughed and glanced over at Nigel and Roach, standing near Wallace and Ginger in an awfully friendly sort of way. “Tell me the details, Jimmy. Give me all the snippets o’ blood and guts and wire and bullets and bone and all that nice shit involved in things like that, hmm? She scream? You rape her? She beg for her life in those last few seconds ‘fore she was lyin’ in the cold dirt without a breath of life left in her?”
“Kelly burned the body.” Jimmy sounded high as a kite and T-Bag could hear Kelly giggling and rambling on in the background. Definitely high. “Got her out in the back and hit her over the head with a shovel. Tore her throat open like an animal would. Set her on fire.”
“You take the shovel with you?”
Jimmy sounded distracted and Kelly’d shut up in the background. Listening to Jimmy’s voice hitch T-Bag could guess what was going on. “’Course. And the gasoline. And the lighter. And left nothin’ there. Oh, Christ…”
T-Bag cackled. “Your little wife-to-be good at givin’ head, Jimmy?”
“Better n’ you.”
The click and the dial tone was enough for T-Bag and he hung the receiver back up with a smirk. He pictured Carly Brown burned and cut up and bleeding in her own backyard with no way of telling how it happened or who did it or whatever else there was. Because Kelly and Jimmy were nobodies, had no motives to do this to anyone, let alone Doctor Carly Brown. Who could track a murder like that through to him and ever understand the reasoning behind it? He was satisfied with that thought process.
The best part, of course, was the look on Loot’s face when he was led back to the cell.
He actually had an expression, unlike all those nonchalant masks hiding who knew what behind them and his breathing was rapid as opposed to perfectly timed out on the same intervals the same times again and again and again. And once the COs were out of sight he almost flew forwards and pinned T-Bag against the wall with a look on his face like he might just kill him. “What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do to her?”
T-Bag laughed because he couldn’t find it serious at all. It was all just a joke to him still and he was on the winning end of the string. “I done nothin’, boy! I done nothin’! Now, get off me ‘fore I take advantage o’ this cozy little situation we got goin’ on here.”
Loot pulled back looking like he wanted to kill him or spit on him or strangle him or just die himself. “Fuck you. Fuck you! I made you who you are! I’m the only reason you’ve got all this!”
“Aha, yes, you raise a good point, pretty boy.” He took a lazy step forwards, the kind of predatory move just to test the prey and he felt suitably rewarded that Loot didn’t flinch. “But, let’s look at the facts o’ this whole thing, hmm? Why don’t we do that?” He took another step forwards and Loot shuffled maybe a fraction of an inch back. “How ‘bout we talk about you settin’ me up for a nice little beatin’ in the prison showers? And keepin’ the whole thing goin’ like that? How long you been plannin’ to off me, boy, and how come you thought you could get away with it without me findin’ out?” And then it was just one quick movement to have him pinned up back against the bars breathing in his face just to make his point perfectly clear. “I might not have your fancy little college education, boy, that don’t mean I ain’t clever enough to see the obvious. Think I ain’t gonna notice you settin’ me up like that? Think I’m gonna let you keep gettin’ away with it ‘til you actually make it work out?”
Loot didn’t say anything. Which worked because there was nothing he could possibly say at this point that wouldn’t dig the hole deeper.
“Let’s just keep this one thing clear here, boy.” He hissed right up close, against Loot’s skin so he could see him squirm just a bit and look at the remains of lines from crying about poor Carly Brown dead in her backyard. “I am in control here. You are here for my amusements and I am not goin’ to entertain you tryin’ to off me every second Saturday.” He pulled back and smirked at the look in Loot’s eyes of familiar resign to this being the end of something. Mona before he stabbed her all those times. Little Johnny right before the last blow. Except this wasn’t the end of his life. Not yet. “We clear on all that, boy?”
He knew the answer before he heard it. “We’re clear.”
“Good to hear.” He smacked the side of Loot’s face gently and smirked at him, cocking his head towards their bunk. “Now, enough o’ the hatin’ hear, doncha think? Hang a sheet, boy, we’ll get onto happier things.”
He loved watching how much it hurt Loot to do it.