Caged In (Caged Prison #1)

14

Izz sprints to his cell in a hunger-filled blur. Weaving around inmates. His ravenous stomach growling demands to be filled.

He discovers more snacks waiting for him in his bunk. Nestled among the messy sheets he hadn’t tucked back in.

He can’t get Levis’s words out of his head. Like the power-saving mode on an old computer screen, they bounce from one corner of his mind to the next in a hypnotising rhythm, dancing across the screen of his mind.

‘After all I’ve done for you’.

Around and around. Circling and changing. Restless thoughts, colliding with other unanswerable questions—

Izz rushes to the toilet, grasping the sides just in time for his stomach’s evac’. Little more than bile forcing its way out. No food in his stomach to expel.

Squatting by the toilet, with his stomach’s growls increasing in volume, he hangs his head over his arm, closes his eyes, and weeps.

He lets his emotions loose—the emotions which have been hidden by surges of adrenaline. Free to explode out his chest as he cries silently in his cell—alone and scared, slumped over a prison toilet bowl.

This isn’t fair. No one should have to go through this. Why is this cage so cruel?

Why do they have to target me?

Gathering a minuscule of composure, Izz shakily gets to his feet, his knees wobbling. Biting his lip through the pins and needles, he washes his face in the sink. Hitting the flusher on the toilet, as water drips off his chin to wet his shirt collar.

Gritting his teeth at the onslaught of agony riding up his calves as the feeling comes back to his legs. His body’s way of cursing him for his mistreatment, for leaving it curled up on the cold floor.

His stomach is a hollow pit. Empty and sad. He refuses to fill it. The only food he has are the snacks that creep left him. He may be many things but he isn’t stupid. He is not going to risk more repercussions for accepting food from Levis.

It had to have come from Levis?

Izz crawls onto his bunk, too exhausted and mentally drained to reach over and pull the thin sheet over his body. He can’t even pluck up the energy to kick his shoes off. His eyes heavy and swollen, his throat raw and aching. His will is frazzled and his essence numb.

With his adrenaline dropping. He doesn’t so much fall asleep as pass out cold.

~~~

When Izz had woken, he was surprised a guard had not come to collect him for the morning meal prep. Instead, it wasn’t until the cell doors opened for the whole of A-Wing that a guard rocked up to inform Izz he was to go to the counsellor’s office.

That’s how he found himself here. Seated once again in the cushioned chair. Looking over the oak desk at a furious counsellor.

“So, you’ve been moved into laundry,” the counsellor grumbles. Biting off his words as if they offend his very soul to say them.

“Really?” Izz can’t restrain his excitement, even in the face of an infuriated counsellor.

Leaning forward in his chair in case he isn’t hearing correctly. He never considered he’d be delighted to do the laundry. Then again, he’s been put through a lot of things in this cage he never thought would happen to him. And he’s only been in this Hell-hole for . . . What? Six days . . . ?

Too much has happened in too little time. His mind is going to snap. He can feel it straining to hold on to his sanity. This place is going to break him.

Only if you let it. A small comforting voice whispers to him.

“Thank you,” Izz grins. Throwing away the crap from the past, already optimistic about his new job assignment.

“You could have come to me with the paperwork—” The counsellor’s angry voice does little to quell Izz’s joy in getting out of that vile kitchen. “—not gone to the Warden. Going around me. Now I’ve got the Warden all over me. I thought I was pretty nice to you. Now you go and do this.”

Do what?

Izz didn’t do anything. What is this counsellor going on about? Who went to the Warden to get him moved? He sure didn’t. Wouldn’t even know how to find the Warden in the first place.

This counsellor guy is insane.

“May I leave?” Izz glances over his shoulder to check that he has a clear path straight to the door—

It’s clear, no unexpected roadblocks have popped up in the few minutes since he entered the office.

Refocusing back on the counsellor, Izz discovers the man glaring at him. He smiles in a way he hopes comes off as sincere and not mockery. Several long moments of glaring later, the counsellor waves a hand towards the door.

He doesn’t stick around to make sure he interpreted the dismissal correctly. He springs out of his chair like the room is on fire. Diving for the door as if the last drops of water in the world are on the other side. Practically slamming the door in his hasty exit.

Out in the corridor, he leans back against the door. Catching his breath, and composing himself.

What a weird guy.

Why is the counsellor so angry? It’s not like the man is being felt up in the kitchen by a gang member, while the rest of the inmates pretend not to notice. He’s sitting there, making it about himself. Like he has a right to get pissy at Izz for being moved to another job.

Someone else has apparently gone to the Warden on Izz’s behalf and requested he be moved. If he can believe a word that counsellor spouts. And at the current time, he believes the man as far as he can throw him. Which is not far.

What an entitled jerk.

When Izz returns to his cell after his brief talk with the counsellor, there’s more food. More snacks stacked on his pillow. A nice neat pile demanding attention, but there’s something else that has him stopping dead in the cell’s doorway. It’s a pleasant surprise, one he’s equally ecstatic and uneasy to discover.

Dull-faced and exhausted, his cellmate is sitting on the opposite bunk.

“Hey,” Izz greets Reni, delighted to see his cellmate out of The Hole—speaking of which, “how’d you get out of The Hole so soon? Didn’t I hear it was going to be two weeks or something?”

He could have sworn he heard a conversation when Reni and Zidie were being dragged away. Inmates whispering to each other how unlucky they were, how they’d be stuck in The Hole for weeks for being involved in a gang fight.

“Good behaviour,” Reni mutters dryly. Which tells Izz absolutely nothing.

Did his cellmate break out of The Hole? Is that possible to do?

He’s letting his movie imagination run wild. In real life, no way could someone break out of The Hole without the guards noticing.

“So what’s that?” Reni enquires. His eyes gluing to the snacks lying on Izz’s pillow.

Izz blinks out of his puzzled state of mind—it would take a James Bond movie scene to explain Reni’s return—following Reni’s line of sight to check out what he’s referring to.

He isn’t sure if Reni is only now noticing the pile on the pillow. Or if he had seen it ages ago and couldn’t hold the question in any longer.

Izz scrambles to gather all the snacks into his arms, rushing them over to his cupboard. Stuffing them out of sight behind his spare towel. As much out of Reni’s line of sight and questioning, as it is out of temptation for Izz. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and he isn’t entirely sure who’s leaving the treats. If it is Levis, he doesn’t want to discuss it with his cellmate. He would prefer Reni doesn’t know what has been happening in the kitchen.

“Nothing,” Izz hastily dismisses, stuffing the last of the packets into their hiding place. As though his rushed grab and hide isn’t suspicious in the slightest.

Smooth Izz, real inconspicuous.

Reni gives Izz a look which he decides to misinterpret. “So . . . thank you. For . . . you know, stepping in.” Izz rubs the back of his neck, having to admit he needed someone to defend him, made him feel like he’s some kind of weakling.

He knew he wouldn’t have come out of that fight alive without the intervention of his cellmate . . . His friend. And of course Zidie, who can forget about his best friend, he is more than fine referring to Zidie as such. It would be strange not calling the two of them friends, after they jumped in to save his life. A very best-friend thing to do.

“Nah,” Reni waves a hand dismissively. Like it’s no big deal, and he has no idea why Izz’s making a fuss over it. “Don’t mention it, it’s what any friend would do. I have to go to an anger management class now—and don’t change the subject. Who’s leaving you food? Or did ya magically get money in the last couple of days?”

His out of sight, out of mind logic hadn’t worked. If only it had. He doesn’t want to go into all the details, to try and explain his situation to his friend.

Izz sighs, knowing Reni won’t drop the subject until he hears some information, “I don’t really know, though I have my suspicions. It’s not important. Forget it.”

I’m terrified Levis is going to trap me and no one will be there to help me . . .

He bites his tongue to hold back what he really wants to say. He can’t tell his cellmate what’s really going on. What if Reni looks at him differently? Or worse, stops talking to him. He can’t lose one of the only people in here who he can talk to.

Izz mimics Reni’s dismissive hand gesture, dropping the subject and hoping his friend will let it slide. “I’m glad you’re back. Missed your energetic butt being around to keep me occupied in this boring cell.”

Reni grins, his chest inflating with importance at his presence being missed, “I knew ya loved me.”

Izz snorts a barked laugh, shoving Reni playfully in the shoulder, earning a chuckle from his friend.

~~~

Reni convinces Izz to go to breakfast with him. It doesn’t take much persuading, his stomach is beyond empty.

Having Reni around gives Izz back some of his strength. It’s also a bonus to have his cellmate nearby when they’re being served, it keeps Levis’s trap shut, no lewd comments or inappropriateness. Granted, the kitchen boss is hostile and glaring at Izz, and barely speaks more than a few words to him, for which he is grateful.

For the first time he is not being polite to someone serving him food. There is no ‘thank you’ or ‘please’ or ‘I would like’. Nothing remotely polite leaves his lips, it’s all ‘I want that’ and ‘give me some of those’ . He throws in a sarcastic ‘cheers’ at the end, in a mocking thank you. Meeting Levis’s hostility glare for glare.

He is filled with bravado with Reni standing right next to him, backing him up. There to protect and defend him if things turn sour. Not that his cellmate knows about any of it.

Izz finds himself understanding why people play up and act tough in gangs. The back-up reinforces arrogance in you. Inflates your ego to the point where you think you can take on anyone. A whole group of tough-acting people like that is a dangerous combination. It feels great though, the feeling of power, however artificial it may be.

For the first time since the fight, Izz sits at the table with the rest of The Gang. He’s on edge, knowing at least three inmates at this table have been talking crap about him behind his back.

“Yo, Reni, what happened in The Hole? We heard rumours about the guys you got thrown down there with. Care to share the details?” Erik peers past Isco’s massive bulk, wide eyes blinking at Reni—pleading for gossip.

“I don’t know,” Reni shrugs, digging into his food. He looks like he wants to avoid the question altogether.

Izz’s interest peaks, he hadn’t heard about anything happening in The Hole, but he has mostly been keeping to himself these past however many days—it feels like months since the fight.

What is Erik talking about? What happened in The Hole?

“Come on Reni, spill,” Blake chimes in.

Izz leans in closer, so he doesn’t miss a single detail. Prison gossip is the only real form of entertainment in this cage. Some inmates would argue a good fight is better entertainment, but it’s not his thing to watch some poor sap be beaten to death and place bets on it. With his luck, he would be the poor sap.

“Alright. Alright.” Reni throws his spoon down, shoving his tray away, as if he’s lost his appetite due to the direction of the conversation, “they’re all dead.”

When Reni doesn’t elaborate, Erik scoffs, “come on, man. You have to give us more than that. We already know that part.”

Izz sure didn’t know it. How is it possible they’re all dead? The one who had been on the floor—who was carried away by guards presumably to Med-Wing—could have died, if he hadn’t already been dead. But the rest of them . . .

Reni scrubs at his face, the irritation he feels showing in the tense lines of his shoulders. He’s usually so open about everything that it is next to impossible to get him to shut up. His silence made Izz very uneasy, he’s acting completely out of character.

“They were all locked in cells—” Reni begins, his soft voice barely loud enough to carry over the thunderous volume of the busy cafeteria, “—single windowless cells, down in The Hole. No guards came in or left, no new inmates were thrown in. Nothing. But that first night in . . . by morning . . . they were all dead—killed—inside their locked cells. Not a sound was heard from any of them.” Reni’s eyes dart and flicker over the room, which has Izz subconsciously doing the same. On alert, checking their surroundings. “I couldn’t sleep, The Hole always gives me the creeps. And I heard absolutely nothing. No one walked up that corridor. Nobody left. I heard no doors clanging open. Nothing.”

“So, what?” Erik pipes in sceptically, “they killed themselves? All three of them?”

“—and that’s not all of it,” Reni ignores Erik’s comment, “the one who went to Med-Wing. He didn’t wake up the next morning either.”

“He looked like death when they dragged him out,” Isco states dryly, shovelling in the last of his breakfast, casting his spoon off to the side.

The rest of the table have forgotten their own breakfast or, like Izz, are too grossed out by Reni’s story to continue eating. He wonders whether these hard men around the table are still capable of being grossed out by anything that happens in this cage? They hold themselves like they’ve been through Hell and back—tough and unflinching.

Except Reni whose stricken features betrayed his confusion and terror.

“No,” Reni spits out at Isco, “I mean, his throat was slit. I don’t know if that was before or after the rest of them were killed. But Med-Wing is locked down tighter than The Hole.”

“Whoa,” Erik utters, his scepticism wavering, “so how’d the ones in The Hole die?”

“Their throats were slit.” Reni leans into The Gang, dropping his voice lower to whisper, “there was so much blood, it seeped out from under the solid doors. That’s how the guards figured out something was wrong.”

“Who did it? Or did they have a suicide pact?” Erik leans in further, entranced by Reni’s story and hanging onto every word.

Reni smirks, eating up the attention Erik and the rest of The Gang are directing at him. “No. I heard the doctors talking in The Hole, there were stab wounds in them, the wounds were done post-mortem . And I’ve watched enough TV on the outside to know that means after death .”

“Does it?” Erik ponders and peers at Blake to see if the other can confirm. He receives a shrug in response.

“Sure it does. Who would willingly stab themselves multiple times, for a suicide, then slit their own throat.” Reni slaps the table, leaning forward. “I’m telling you it was the SC-Ghost.”

Wait? What?

Reni’s revelation is met with loud groans and exasperated dismissals. Everyone complaining over the top of each other in a mash of the English language.

“Are you kidding me—”

“You made up the whole story, didn’t ya—”

“Was anyone even stabbed—"

Who’s the SC-Ghost? Is there another serial killer in this cage? That’s all he needs, more serial killers living right next to him. Eating in the same space, showering in the same room, sleeping within the same vicinity.

“Who’s the SC-Ghost?” Izz blurts, he had meant to keep the question to himself. Too late now, it’s out absorbing airtime.

Reni turns wild eyes on Izz, “the Solitary Confinement Ghost. It’s the ghost of an inmate who was killed down there years ago. It haunts the place.”

He isn’t sure what to say. Does his cellmate really believe this? He is relieved it’s only one of Reni’s dramatic stories and not an actual person who could kill him—

Well, whoever did do it is still in here, so maybe he’s jumping the gun on the relief train. Thinking he’s safe and relaxing his guard. That’s when everyone gets killed in horror movies. A sigh of relief, then bam, out jumps the serial killer and you’re done for—

“Ren, you got to stop spreading ghost stories,” Blake chuckles, straightening up as he loses interest in Reni’s ghost tale.

“What? How else do ya explain it?” Reni pouts at The Gang, crossing his arms over his chest.

“The guards did it,” Isco states flatly.

The only obvious answer to the mystery. Who else could kill multiple inmates while they’re locked in individual cells. Alone, with no bars for any inmates to stab them through. The guards have the keys.

“Boring. You wanted me to tell the story. And this is it. The SC-Ghost killed them,” Reni concludes, not accepting anyone else’s logic. His story set in stone in his own mind, and he is not budging from it.

“And what? It floated up to Med-Wing to kill the man there. Why not kill you as well?” Isco points out, garnering a furious glare from Reni.

“Get out of here with your buzz killing. It has no place at this table with my ghost stories,” Reni scowls at Isco who smirks in reaction to the hostility. “The SC-Ghost had to be one of their victims who came back to take revenge. That’s why I wasn’t a target.”

“Thought you said the ghost never left,” Isco’s smirk widens. He’s enjoying poking fun at Reni and watching his annoyance grow.

“Whatever, man. It stuck around all this time waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.”

Isco isn’t finished debunking the story, “so it haunted The Hole for years, waiting for them to be thrown in there at the same time. Only to leave, and kill one in Med-Wing, that same night. Could have killed them in their cells years ago and been done with it.”

“He has a point,” Phelix chimes in, shrugging his shoulders.

“Boring,” Reni groans, shooting Isco and Phelix his middle finger. “Maybe the SC-Ghost wanted to intimidate and haunt them first—”

Isco raises a brow, “From the Hole—”

“Shhhtt. No more from you,” Reni slaps his fingers over Isco’s mouth, hushing the scarred man from saying another word, “you’re killing my perfectly flawless story.”

Isco chuckles, shoving Reni’s hand aside, grinning wildly. A gun that sends shivers down Izz’s spine and has the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He hasn’t figured out why Isco puts him on edge. His fight or flight receptors always perk up and whisper whenever Isco’s close.

What crimes did Isco commit to be thrown in this cage?

Izz redirects his focus from Isco back to his cellmate before his mind crumbles into a powder of worry. “So what really happened to them?”

He’s leaning more towards Isco’s analysis. The guards had done it. But why? Were they paid by another gang to murder them? Or did they do it just because they could? Because they would get away with it? Because society won’t care or look too closely at a few dead inmates?

“Don’t know,” Reni shifts like a switch flicked over to a new line of fact sharing, “probably a hit from another gang or something. Who cares. Good riddance, I say.” Reni verbally waves off Izz’s concerns, and confirms Izz’s suspicions in one statement.

So it had been a hit. But why—

Never mind, it would have something to do with drugs or turf wars, no doubt. Nothing Izz wants to be involved in. He’d prefer to stay as far away from the gang dealings as possible. Adding more time onto his sentence is not his goal. He wants to get out of this Hell-hole sooner rather than later.

“It was the SC-Ghost,” Reni grins—winking at Izz—when Isco gives him an exasperated look.

Izz bites his lip, suppressing a smile—

“Wait.”—he can’t believe it took him this long—“What about Zidie? He didn’t get kill—”

“Nah. Nothing can kill that unkillable fucker,” Reni mutters, sliding his tray back over, reconsidering his decision not to eat.

Izz breathes a sigh of relief, he’s not sure he could live with the guilt of being responsible for the murder of his best friend.Zidie never would have been in The Hole—to end up in the crosshairs of a hit—if Izz hadn’t been losing the fight and Zidie hadn’t stepped in to save his life.

Those other inmates wouldn’t have been there either, if it hadn’t been for you—

No, that wasn’t his fault. If a hit was out on them, those inmates would have been killed either way. And he hadn’t done anything to deserve them attacking him. He’d been walking to the cafeteria, minding his own business. They attacked him, and he can’t say he feels sorry for what happened to them. He never wanted them to die, but he isn’t sad they have.