Sinn'ous is gone before the alarms call them to mealtime.
10
ROGERS
Being a correctional officer isn’t all good days and bad days. It’s not leave your time at the door on your way home. Especially not for Collin Rogers, when he brings the scars home. The risen white blemishes in his skin that tell the story of how he nearly died. And would have, had it not been for the intervention of one crazy Satanic worshiping motherfucker.
It’s been a year since the day he discovered he has no morals. Not when it comes to survival. Deleting video footage. Destroying evidence. The hole he fell into on that day had a shovel, and like any not-so-sane person he picked it up and kept digging that hole deeper. It’s so far down now, not even the light of who he once was can reach him.
And why should it. The people he works for didn’t prevent him from being ambushed and nearly killed. They refused to even cover half the medical bills. Placing it on him for not abiding by the rules of traveling in pairs. Never mind the fact that there are no security cameras in the laundry or in half the rooms in Sandstone Correctional. It’s considered‘not ofimportance’and a ‘waste of resources.’ Yeah, thanks prison board of desk huggers for telling me that getting shivved in a room without cameras is not of importance.
They were quick to point out the binding disclosure contract he signed when he started. He probably should have read and fully understood the fine print of that before he signed. It tied his hands on being able to do anything about the treatment of himself and blatant disregard to his care after being injured on the job due to their negligence. The threat of‘he’ll face prisontime’went unsaid, but it was as obvious as his mental and physical scars are paralysing.
His medical bills had been covered though. An ‘anonymous’donation. He knows by who—now—but at the time he was in too much pain and filled with so much rage and stress he hadn’t questioned it. It had been a relief off his shoulders. And when his two months of sick leave were spent he’d had no choice but to come back. Bills don’t pay themselves. And with no education past high school his job options are limited.
He’d come back jumpy and in the grasps of PTSD. Expecting to be grabbed from around every corner or pulled through any door or any cell. He’d stuck to his rock of a co-worker like literal shackles held them together. Nolan Thomson, who helped him out of his dark days after the stabbing.
That first day back, Thomson had waited by the stairs while he’d spoken to the inmate who saved his life. As he thanked him again for it.
Little by little he’d come to the realisation that the other inmates didn’t fuck with him anymore. They abided by his instructions minus the usual level of sass and eye rolls. He’d voiced this observationto Thomson, who’d exposed the news that rumours said he was bending over for Sinn'ous.
Suffice it to say, he still to this day has not dispelled those rumours. The prison board won’t help him, he’ll take help from the resident psychopath over the prospectof being attacked again.
A loud buzz cracks him back into the present. His ID card tapped to a boxy square card-reader that lets him into the building’s outer doors. Having an early shift when the sun hasn’t bloomed the horizon is torture.
“Hold it.” Nolan Thomson jogs across the parking lot, juggling two mugs of coffee and a brown paper bag Rogers already knows is filled with bagels and cookies courtesy of his saint of a wife. Hehands Rogers a cup as he barrels past into the cold interior that’s less inviting than the outdoorstemperature.
“Thanks.” He sips the still hot wake-me-up, burning his tongue in the process.
Today is already starting out in the shit column.
Welcome to SSC, otherwise known as Sandstone Correctional, where the inmates stab and the coffee bites back.
~~~
Kitchen duty. Collecting inmates from various cells to make their way to the kitchen to undertake the marathon that is cooking for hundreds of men. They have three hours before the cells open to have everything cooked and ready to serve.
He’s in charge of collecting half the Wings and Thomson has the other half. They’ll meet in the middle and count inmates at the door before they unlock anything. You have to have a guard pass to turn on the electricity to start any stoves or to unlock any doors in the kitchen. That on top of two keys to access the lock box bolted into the back of a locked cabinet where the knives are kept.
“Hurry up, Levis, get your ass out.”
“Coming, boss.” Levis drawls, and his cellmate snickers, because that’s a hilarious word.Coming. What is he? Trapped in the mind of a teenager? No one thinks that’s funny.
Levis is a sleaze, but chances are good he won’t stab you in the back. Unless it profits him, and even then he’d most likely send one of his underlings to do it. Buzz cut hair cropped close to the scalp, bulky build, your typical gang style tattoos, and the mark of the StaZos in the shape of a star above his eyebrow.
The eerily quiet Wing has all the hairs on Rogers’s body raised, even with—or probably because of—the rest of the prisoners still sleeping.
The kitchen staff are supposed to be non-violent offenders. Tell that to his flight response. Every instinct in him is alive, pumping adrenaline and adding fuel to his already caffeinated mind. If he lets it, he’ll drift into the realm of seeing figures hunched in dark corners.
This prison has no place to be so gloomy and hair-raising.
He pulls the cell’s door shut and waits for the electronic click. Levis might be paged in as non-aggressive but his cellmate sure as shit is not. He is not the type of person Rogers wants to worry about creeping up on him. Convicted of several counts of aggravated assault, including one count of attempted murder on an arresting officer.
No more scars need to be added to his already ample collection.
He does need to swing back around to A-Wing to check on Jasper’s progress, he’d left the cell open. The kid looked like the embodiment of the living dead. Bags under his eyes, hair mushed at odd angles, clothes dishevelled. And Reni is in solitary so no worries over a second inmate slipping out. Jasper doesn’t strike him as anyone to watch your back around.
Levis ambles over to the collection of men clustered in front of B-Wing’s corridor exit. A picture of disinterested men in prison issued greys. They straighten when Rogers pulls in behind Levis, and walk on at a flick of his hand down the corridor. They all know the drill.
