These people surrounding me in tattoo speckled skin and glaring eyes were coming to a boiling point.
“Hello.” I waved with a sincere smile. “Lovely to meet you all.”
The guards flanked me from behind as I completed my walk of shame through the mass of inmates. Criminals in their red outfits and offensive body odour scowled at me across the sea of the concrete floor and up upon each level of the prison as if they were Gods.
I should have hunched like a trodden thing, but there was nowhere to hide, and I remembered my name. My chin stayed pointed high, my shoulders arched back, and I slapped on a polite smile waving to those I passed as if they were old friends. They spat at me.
Some faces I recognised swiftly from previous Execution Battles. People who had plucked eyes out of heads, severed limbs and bashed rocks into skulls, all while laughing like lyre birds. All these people were well-muscled from time spent preparing for the end of their days with minds moulded into chaos. Their skin pierced, their tattoos inked deep, their sneers unstitchable. They looked at me with hunger, with slick grins. Laughter cackled. Shouts started to be thrown. Fingers pointed. A man pulled down his pants and tugged on his erection. No one had any semblance of normalcy.
This was a circus.
My lodgings were cell thirty-six and I was given bunk one that lived under five other bunks. Upon the top bunk two men were having sex and did not care to stop and greet me. There was no air to breathe. The walls spotted mould like constellations. The rest of my cell mates hung off the bars.
I turned to the guards to ask if I could change accommodation.
They left.
A woman slunk off the bars and collected with a gang of three who came to welcome me into their abode.
“Well, well. Look at this, the De Astor bitch.” She circled me like a shark.
She looked like someone who would mistake ‘there,’ ‘their,’ and ‘they’re.’ “Lovely to meet you. Thank you for my nickname. What may I call you?”
“We’ve been looking at this face for a long time.” She wagged a chewed nail at my nose. “I think I might carve it off and wear it myself.”
“Oh, no thank you. Excuse me.” I walked past them and was not able to get far in the walkway when threat number two came next, in the form of a man.
He took up the space of the cell door, not allowing me to exit. “Where are you going bitch? You and I need to have a little talk about your insides coming out.”
“I do apologise but I have only just moved in and am unable receive visitors. Please come back at five.” I slipped past him.
The walkways were narrow, and the metal flooring screamed through each of my footsteps, pipes overhead dribbled brown droplets. The place smelled like sickness. Inmates diseased against the walls and hung off bars and sat on balustrades. They snickered as I wove past, they called me every name but my own and I narrowly dodged a tattooed hand that came for my left ass cheek.
I made my way down to the front common room where guards sat behind thick safety glass watching pornography on their computer screen.
Before I could knock and gain their attention a hand snatched my shoulder and spun me around.
A man three times my size crossed his meaty arms that bore etchings of naked women and peered down at me with eyes like a hawk.
Vil.
I knew well of Vil. A man shaped into a mountain who could crush a person’s face like a grape with only his hands. I had witnessed him do so a few times on television during the Execution Battle and to my personal guard on the street.
Quite a few of these Soulless had attempted to put Uandra’s politicians into an early grave with their Soulless desires. Vil had snuck up on me a few years previous when I was doing a charity event. He had lunged to snatch me and pop my skull—as was his signature move—however, my guard had done his job and saved me, putting himself in the way. When Bernie laid on the pavement, head in a more flattened shape, my other guards and police had apprehended Vil and placed him here.
“How are you?” I held out my hand to shake. “Lovely to see you again, how are you keeping?”
His eyes narrowed and stayed trained on me. “De Astor.”
“That is my name.” I kept my hand out mid-air.
“Your brother killed my brother.”
“My brother is not Soulless, he does not murder people.”
“He put Benny in this hell.”
“Your brother was Soulless who sold illegal drugs and caused great pain to others who suffered addiction.” He was still yet to shake my hand, so I tucked it back into my pocket. “Him dying in his first Execution Battle was proper punishment.”
