Three days locked inside the women’s block punishment toilet.
A windowless concrete box barely wider than my shoulders.
No light except the thin slit of brightness creeping under the metal door.
No ventilation.
The air thick with mildew, urine, and bleach that never quite masked the rot.
They had turned it into a humiliation chamber.
The other inmates—sponsored by Harlan—had decided I needed more punishment because I refused to let Harlan have his way with me.
They treated the punishment isolation cell like a dumping ground.
Through the food slot, they would shove used sanitary pads inside, knowing I had no way to dispose of them — forcing me to live in the stench and filth because the space was too small to escape it or clean it properly.
Others would urinate into a bowl, pretending to bring me food since I was starving and barely fed.
The moment I opened the small slot in the door, they would splash the bowl of urine straight into my face — laughing as it hit my skin — forcing me to inhale the smell, forcing me to feel humiliated while I struggled not to retch.
They enjoyed it. The laughter outside the door made that clear.
Once, while I was asleep inside the isolation toilet, two of the gang leaders unlocked the door. They forced it open and shoved a freshly used sanitary pad against my mouth. I woke up choking as thick blood and filth were pressed into my throat, swallowing it against my will as they held me down.
It wasn’t punishment anymore.
It was deliberate degradation.
After they left, I collapsed onto the cold concrete floor and coughed violently, trying to force out the blood and filth they had shoved into my mouth.
My body shook as I knelt there in that small, suffocating space — useless, humiliated, and broken.
My hands moved instinctively to my stomach.
I wrapped my arms around it, protecting the small life that had once kicked weakly beneath my skin — the only reason I had not ended everything, the only thread still tying me to hope.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to my baby in the darkness.
Over and over.
“As long as I’m breathing, I’m protecting you.”
Three days.
No food.
Only water handed through a cracked plastic cup.
And the constant drip-drip from a broken pipe echoing against the walls like time itself was counting down to something inevitable.
That memory didn’t leave quietly.
It surged into the present.
“You’re bleeding...”
Ruslan’s voice cut through the spiral.
