LJ Idol Topic #4: Cracks
They make me mop the floors.
They call this Level Five. It’s called Level Five not because it’s five stories up, but because it’s five stories down. The lowest level in this subterranean prison.
I came here from Level One. Children, most of the children are on Level One. It’s the only level that’s above ground, where they keep the people who are in here “for their own safety,” as they always say.
Before the prison, there had been planes, dropping fire from the sky, and explosions that gave off bright purple smoke. The smoke gave us blisters, and made our eyes water, and smelled like a cross between sulfur and cotton candy. Our homes were destroyed; the wells were poisoned. We had nowhere to go. They put us on Level One.
I saw the way the Chief Warden looked at my mother, his eyes boring through her threadbare shift. I saw his fingers slide across her thigh when he thought none of us were looking.
I saw her shift away, and I saw-- we all saw, how could we not see?-- when he jabbed the lit end of his cigar into her shoulder, glowing orange embers against her smooth brown skin. I saw him grab a hank of her hair, tip his head down to inhale the scent of it, although we all know that in here, everything only has two scents: sweat and antiseptic.
Then I went mad. Wild dog mad, the kind of mad they always said we’d go. I remember the feel of his bones against my teeth, the taste of his blood on my tongue. I can only imagine what they say about me up there now. Remember little Ruth? You’re all like her: pretending to be human like us, but savage beneath. I know they say things like that. They use every excuse they can get.
I don’t remember being shot with the tranquilizer dart, but when I woke, it was on Level Five. With the rebels and insurgents and murderers and rapists.
The Chief Warden paid me a visit, smiled that sickly smile at me. He told me that he knew I would be on my best behavior from now on, and what would happen to my mother if I wasn’t? And then he left a mark on my forearm, to match my mother’s. The flesh hissed, and stung, and then it blistered and oozed and the skin peeled away.
So I behave. And mop floors.
They forget how much I see. I walk the halls, trailing my bucket and mop. Vomit. Urine. Mostly blood. More blood than could ever be spilled by accident.
Sometimes, there are chemical smells, too. Burning smells. I see where they go, where they come from. I hear the sound of a blowtorch, see the brilliant lights through the tiny window in the door to Examination Room 4.
And I hear what begins as a plea become an agonizing scream. The scream becomes nothing.
I see the men come out of the room, in their white fireproof suits. They send me in, with my mop and bucket, and tell me that they want to see their reflections in the tiles when I am done. The tiles are caked with soot and ash. I have to take the pieces of charred bone to the garbage chute.
I don’t know where the garbage chute goes. But it tells me that something is beneath Level Five. The thought sends a shudder up my spine.
But this time, after the fear subsides, it makes me feel something else. Something I have not felt in a long time.
One day, I am called in to mop up something viscous and green. It is thick and oozing, and seeps into the crevices.
The Chief Warden shoots me a saccharine smile on his way out. “Don’t forget, Ruth,” he says, in his smooth voice, “I want to see my reflection when you’re done.”
After five hours of scrubbing with little to show for it, one of the guards takes pity on me. She gives me her key to the supply closet and tells me what vat to open.
I go to the closet. I find the liquid she described, the first one, and pour a bit of it into my sudsy water. But then I smell something familiar. A scent of sulfur and cotton candy. It is coming from a large vat in the back of the closet.
I tip up the lid. The fumes from the purple liquid inside make my eyes water. I take my finger away: a blister is already rising on it.
I lock the door and bring the key back to the guard.
It is not so many days before I find myself at the garbage chute again. I am tipping in a bloody mass of tangled, matted hair. I don’t know whose hair it is; I only know that it is too light to be my mother’s.
Two hands grab me. I am in the air, dangling over the chute, my feet flailing into black nothingness.
It is the Chief Warden. He leers at me, his eyes sharp and piercing. He holds me there, and enumerates every single thing that he has done to my mother. Is doing to my mother. Will do to my mother. Things my mother lets him do for fear he'll hurt me.
I try to kick him in the groin. He laughs and hauls me up. Carrying me like a sack of potatoes, he drags me into the Examination Room. I try to fight, but when he is prepared, I am helpless. And there are guards everywhere.
He straps me to a table; there is a mirror on a swing arm above me, positioned so that all I can do is stare at my own face as he reaches for a set of pliers and clamps down on one of my teeth.
The pain is excruciating. It shoots up through my gum into my cheekbones, and suddenly the pain is everywhere: pounding in my head, throbbing in my neck. I pass out.
When I wake, I have been unstrapped from the table. All four of my incisors are missing. I sit up and spit out a mouthful of blood. There is blood everywhere. My blood. My head aches; my vision is blurry.
“You’re awake,” observes the Chief Warden. “Perfect timing. I want to see my reflection when you’re done.” He deposits my empty bucket and mop in front of me. Then he puffs his cigar in my face.
I go to fill my bucket. But instead of filling it with soap, I go to the supply closet. I unbend the handle of my pail: the wire fits in the keyhole. With the door shut behind me, I fill the bucket with the purple liquid. I am wearing gloves, but I can still feel blisters rising on my hands. I clench my teeth.
I go to get extra rags. But instead of rags, I take one of the white suits.
When the door to the Examination Room is closed, I put on the suit. And then I go to work, scrubbing away at my own blood, inch by inch, until the entire room smells of sulfur and cotton candy.
Finally, I sit back, and rest. The room seems to be tinged purple to me, but I can’t tell if that is my imagination.
The door creaks open. He walks in, cigar in hand. “What are you doing with that suit, you little shit?!” he demands, and stalks over to me. I run backward, toward the table.
He moves to grab me, and I pull the swing arm forward. The mirror shatters on his forehead, blood blooming across his face, tiny shards of glass scattering everywhere.
“You... wanted to see your reflection?” I manage, although my mouth is sore and every word is a strain.
He snarls at me and throws down his cigar.
I shut my eyes and take a deep breath.
It ignites. I am thrown back; the table and I both slam against the wall. I feel something pop in my shoulder, but there is no time to check it: I scramble to my feet and open my eyes.
The world is in flames. I can barely make out the charred figure of the Chief Warden through the thick purple smoke. My suit protects me from most of it, but only barely.
I hear a siren blasting. The sprinklers come on in full force.
I run. I run to the only way out I know. Whatever is down the trash chute, below Level Five, it must be better than this.
The worst it can be is the incinerators. And if I am gone, my mother will be free.
I close my eyes and dive in.
They call this Level Five. It’s called Level Five not because it’s five stories up, but because it’s five stories down. The lowest level in this subterranean prison.
I came here from Level One. Children, most of the children are on Level One. It’s the only level that’s above ground, where they keep the people who are in here “for their own safety,” as they always say.
Before the prison, there had been planes, dropping fire from the sky, and explosions that gave off bright purple smoke. The smoke gave us blisters, and made our eyes water, and smelled like a cross between sulfur and cotton candy. Our homes were destroyed; the wells were poisoned. We had nowhere to go. They put us on Level One.
I saw the way the Chief Warden looked at my mother, his eyes boring through her threadbare shift. I saw his fingers slide across her thigh when he thought none of us were looking.
I saw her shift away, and I saw-- we all saw, how could we not see?-- when he jabbed the lit end of his cigar into her shoulder, glowing orange embers against her smooth brown skin. I saw him grab a hank of her hair, tip his head down to inhale the scent of it, although we all know that in here, everything only has two scents: sweat and antiseptic.
Then I went mad. Wild dog mad, the kind of mad they always said we’d go. I remember the feel of his bones against my teeth, the taste of his blood on my tongue. I can only imagine what they say about me up there now. Remember little Ruth? You’re all like her: pretending to be human like us, but savage beneath. I know they say things like that. They use every excuse they can get.
I don’t remember being shot with the tranquilizer dart, but when I woke, it was on Level Five. With the rebels and insurgents and murderers and rapists.
The Chief Warden paid me a visit, smiled that sickly smile at me. He told me that he knew I would be on my best behavior from now on, and what would happen to my mother if I wasn’t? And then he left a mark on my forearm, to match my mother’s. The flesh hissed, and stung, and then it blistered and oozed and the skin peeled away.
So I behave. And mop floors.
They forget how much I see. I walk the halls, trailing my bucket and mop. Vomit. Urine. Mostly blood. More blood than could ever be spilled by accident.
Sometimes, there are chemical smells, too. Burning smells. I see where they go, where they come from. I hear the sound of a blowtorch, see the brilliant lights through the tiny window in the door to Examination Room 4.
And I hear what begins as a plea become an agonizing scream. The scream becomes nothing.
I see the men come out of the room, in their white fireproof suits. They send me in, with my mop and bucket, and tell me that they want to see their reflections in the tiles when I am done. The tiles are caked with soot and ash. I have to take the pieces of charred bone to the garbage chute.
I don’t know where the garbage chute goes. But it tells me that something is beneath Level Five. The thought sends a shudder up my spine.
But this time, after the fear subsides, it makes me feel something else. Something I have not felt in a long time.
One day, I am called in to mop up something viscous and green. It is thick and oozing, and seeps into the crevices.
The Chief Warden shoots me a saccharine smile on his way out. “Don’t forget, Ruth,” he says, in his smooth voice, “I want to see my reflection when you’re done.”
After five hours of scrubbing with little to show for it, one of the guards takes pity on me. She gives me her key to the supply closet and tells me what vat to open.
I go to the closet. I find the liquid she described, the first one, and pour a bit of it into my sudsy water. But then I smell something familiar. A scent of sulfur and cotton candy. It is coming from a large vat in the back of the closet.
I tip up the lid. The fumes from the purple liquid inside make my eyes water. I take my finger away: a blister is already rising on it.
I lock the door and bring the key back to the guard.
It is not so many days before I find myself at the garbage chute again. I am tipping in a bloody mass of tangled, matted hair. I don’t know whose hair it is; I only know that it is too light to be my mother’s.
Two hands grab me. I am in the air, dangling over the chute, my feet flailing into black nothingness.
It is the Chief Warden. He leers at me, his eyes sharp and piercing. He holds me there, and enumerates every single thing that he has done to my mother. Is doing to my mother. Will do to my mother. Things my mother lets him do for fear he'll hurt me.
I try to kick him in the groin. He laughs and hauls me up. Carrying me like a sack of potatoes, he drags me into the Examination Room. I try to fight, but when he is prepared, I am helpless. And there are guards everywhere.
He straps me to a table; there is a mirror on a swing arm above me, positioned so that all I can do is stare at my own face as he reaches for a set of pliers and clamps down on one of my teeth.
The pain is excruciating. It shoots up through my gum into my cheekbones, and suddenly the pain is everywhere: pounding in my head, throbbing in my neck. I pass out.
When I wake, I have been unstrapped from the table. All four of my incisors are missing. I sit up and spit out a mouthful of blood. There is blood everywhere. My blood. My head aches; my vision is blurry.
“You’re awake,” observes the Chief Warden. “Perfect timing. I want to see my reflection when you’re done.” He deposits my empty bucket and mop in front of me. Then he puffs his cigar in my face.
I go to fill my bucket. But instead of filling it with soap, I go to the supply closet. I unbend the handle of my pail: the wire fits in the keyhole. With the door shut behind me, I fill the bucket with the purple liquid. I am wearing gloves, but I can still feel blisters rising on my hands. I clench my teeth.
I go to get extra rags. But instead of rags, I take one of the white suits.
When the door to the Examination Room is closed, I put on the suit. And then I go to work, scrubbing away at my own blood, inch by inch, until the entire room smells of sulfur and cotton candy.
Finally, I sit back, and rest. The room seems to be tinged purple to me, but I can’t tell if that is my imagination.
The door creaks open. He walks in, cigar in hand. “What are you doing with that suit, you little shit?!” he demands, and stalks over to me. I run backward, toward the table.
He moves to grab me, and I pull the swing arm forward. The mirror shatters on his forehead, blood blooming across his face, tiny shards of glass scattering everywhere.
“You... wanted to see your reflection?” I manage, although my mouth is sore and every word is a strain.
He snarls at me and throws down his cigar.
I shut my eyes and take a deep breath.
It ignites. I am thrown back; the table and I both slam against the wall. I feel something pop in my shoulder, but there is no time to check it: I scramble to my feet and open my eyes.
The world is in flames. I can barely make out the charred figure of the Chief Warden through the thick purple smoke. My suit protects me from most of it, but only barely.
I hear a siren blasting. The sprinklers come on in full force.
I run. I run to the only way out I know. Whatever is down the trash chute, below Level Five, it must be better than this.
The worst it can be is the incinerators. And if I am gone, my mother will be free.
I close my eyes and dive in.