Zeddie patted her shoulder and motioned to a counselor.
Sandra sniffed. According to her falsified bio, Carl was her fake son, based upon her real son, Aaron, who had turned away from her in real life, when she developed magic and transformed his dad into Big Bird. Just like fake Carl, Aaron never accepted her calls and he never wrote. It had broken her heart. And that made playing out the scene they had planned so much easier. She whispered, “I miss my life.” All that was true. Tears slithered down her face.
Dani reached over and took Sandra’s hand. “He’ll come around. I’m sure he will.”
“Maybe this will make you feel better. I’ve got dessert.” Zeddie reached back behind him to pick up plates from his rolling cart. “We have lemon cream pie.”
It wasn’t cream pie. It was gelatinous goo. Sandra dropped the envelopes into her lap and burst into tears. “I want Harold back!” she wailed. “I want Carl! I want my church and . . . and . . . I wantmy life back!” Tears flooded down her face, the emotions easy to feel, the words easy to say, because it was all true. She banged her fists on the table. “Harold. Harold.What have I done?”
The counselor, a void who helped the inmates deal with emotional trauma which could potentially set off unexpected, uncontrolled magic, knelt at her side. “Here. This will help.” She handed Sandra a pill. “Take this. You can skip afternoon classes and take a nap. You didn’t sleep well last night.”
“And how do you know that?” Dani shouted. “How do you know she didn’t sleep well?”
Dani shoved back her chair and it turned over with a thump. Loudly, she said, “The only way you would know that is if you reallyaremonitoring us! Hey, everybody!” Dani turned to the room. “They know Sandra didn’t sleep. They really are monitoring us! They watch us all the time!”
Several of the inmates shoved back their chairs too, getting up slowly. But what happened next wasn’t slow. It all happened at once.
Dani
One woman screamed, “In the bathtub? You perverts!” Her magic zoomed out like a gunshot, the tectonic force breaking a ceramic pot of silk flowers, which tumbled to the floor in pieces.
Another man stood and shouted, “You mean they watch me with my wife?” His wife was a goat, and Dani’s brain slid sideways, not thinking about that one.
A woman shrilled something unintelligible and the electric lights browned out all through the dining room as her magic zinged away from her fingers.
“I want Harold back! I want Carl!” Sandra wept loudly, her fists banging on the table.
When she raised her head to wail, the counselor dropped a pill into her mouth. Sandra coughed and drank her water. She had been warned not to swallow the pill however, and when she put her head down to wail again, Dani watched to make sure she was able to spit out the pill and tuck it into her pocket.
When Sandra was safe, Dani turned to the room, ready to become TriDevi’s sacrificial lamb, in a plan they all had helped to craft. Unexpected fear washed through her. If this didn’t work . . .
She pushed the fear away. Her friends would get her out. They had never let her down.
Dani shouted, “We need to take over this place! It’s not what they say it is! The food is garbage! Look at thecream pie! It’s nothing butJello!”
The staff were calling for backup. All the eyes were on Dani.
“Think about it,” she called, raising her arms, drawing her power to her. “They told us there was no way to control our powers without their anti-magic tech, but they say there isn’t enough anti-magic tech for all of us.”
She pointed at the other tables scattered around the room, each table with four classmates who were of similar power signatures, or who had been admitted close to the same time. Every resident-student had been ripped away from their lives and their families to learn to control power they didn’t want andthat could be dangerous, and each of them were being forced to eat disgusting food.
“They watch us,” she shouted. “They teach us nothing. And this lemon stuff they call cream pie is mostly cornstarch! The whipped cream isn’t even from a mammal. Its main ingredients are water, high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated vegetable oil.” Old people had few demands, but privacy and decent food were high on the list. Dani picked up her pie plate and slung it across the room. “It’scrap. I bet the warden and her staff get therealwhipped cream.”
“I’m lactose intolerant,” Marvin shouted. “The dairy stuff makes me fart. But no way am I letting them watch Mable and me!” He stood too. “Fuck this! Fuckety fuck this.” The newly replaced plastic light fixtures overhead turned to dirt and dribbled down. The bulbs still burned, but now too bright.
“And we need to know the truth about the rumors. About Table J.” Dani pointed at the empty table, ignoring the pain under her arm from the recent amateur surgery. “And about that building they don’t talk about!” She pointed in the general direction of the windows. “I think we’re right! The failed magical geezers are probably living their final days in a drugged haze, their magic harvested to make money for the school!”
Which was the truth. The truth was a powerful thing and the geezers all around her knew truth when they heard it. So did the medical and security people. Uncertainty and worry showed on all their faces.
Around the room, there were little explosions of magic: a small fire as the fake flowers on one table flamed; a mini earthquake shook the floor, sending the water in the glasses shivering; a tiny puff of wallboard dust erupted as a wall cracked from ceiling to floor. The geezers were losing control. It was spreading.
An explosion sounded from the kitchen. The chef squealed in shock and pain.
A glass shattered on one table. A stoneware plate cracked.
“Maybe we were right!” Dani shouted. “Maybe they really do surgically implant plugs in the back of our heads, directly into our brains.”
The man who had set the fire shouted, “I told you so! They hook us up to supercomputers that run the world!”
