Story: Locked Up (chapter 12)

Authors: Blood_Covered_Pheonix

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Chapter 12

Title: Chapter XII:Fear

I grunt moodily as Mag attempts to move out from under me, interrupting the first nap I’ve been able to take since she raped me. She stops moving and strokes my hair. “Breakfast.” She says patiently and wraps her arms around me as she sits up, forcing me to sit up too.  

“I’m not hungry.” I protest, snuggling against her boobs. I whimper as the warm, soft pillowy comfort is pulled away as she stands.   

“Don’t lie, you are hungry. You haven’t eaten anything except the little bits that I’ve smuggled back from dinner, you drink from the sink, you haven’t left the cell in a week.” She slowly stretches out her muscles. “You need to eat.” She insists.   

“Walking hurts.” I whine and sprawl out on the bed to stretch out my sore and knotty muscles. Mag grabs my shoulders and pulls me off the bed, setting my on my feet causing my tired body to stumble against her.   

“C’mon Rizzy you need to get moving and walk it off.” She encourages but I shake my head and then let myself fall on the bed.   

“How about this, you brush my hair and then I’ll consider going to breakfast.” My cellmate lets out an exasperated sigh but grabs the hairbrush from the shelf above my bed. I sit up, purring as she sits behind me. She runs her fingers through my hair, dislodging the bigger knots gently. “Is Namine still pissed?” I ask.  Mag sighs softly. “Yeah, she still won’t talk to me.”   

“Why is she pissed off? She’s fine.” I lean back as Mag begins to scratch my scalp.   

“She feels betrayed. When this crap started I promised her that I wasn’t like Blaze, that I didn’t hurt people for no reason. Then this happened,” She pauses. “And now I’ve gone back on my word, I’ve betrayed you both.” Mag prods me to sit up straight so she could start brushing with the hairbrush. We sit in a comfortable silence as she guides that brush through my shoulder blade length hair. About ten minutes later she finished with the brush and placed it back on the shelf and I can clearly hear her stomach demanding food. She deftly braids my blonde hair into a braid that reaches the nape of my neck. She pulls me into a loving embrace that I stiffen against and resist. The red headed woman quickly releases me, murmuring a soft apology as she plants a quick peck on me forehead.  

My slightly depressed cellmate stands and offers a hand to me. I take it and she pulls me to my feet, I wince as my bare feet hit the cold cement floor. Then I realize how cold the prison is now that it’s December, it’s probably so cold because the warden doesn’t want to waste money on heating. I shove my feet into the thin white moccasins that the state of Connecticut calls shoes and shuffle after Mag to the cafeteria.  

When we arrive at the cafeteria I find Namine and Amber at a table in the far left corner of the huge room as Mag gets into the food line. Namine is slumped against the table with her arms hiding her head and face. Amber is directly to her right watching the shorter woman absently. I sit across from Amber. “What’s up?”   

“Huh?” Both of them jump at the sound of my voice. “Why so glum?” Amber shrugs and points with her chin to Namine. The auburn haired woman sighs and shakes her head, not bothering to lift her head. “What’s wrong?” I try again, wondering what was making the normally confident woman act so meek. My friend picks her head up and lean it against her hand, shaking her head in silently refusal to answer. But I am shocked by the look of her face to notice that. The right side of her face is covered in welts and over lapping bruises, so much that it looks like one giant bruise.  Her nose is crooked like it has been broken and recently reset, her left eye is bruised along the brow, making it droop slightly. Her right eye is swollen shut, both of her lips are split open, and there is a hand shaped bruise and claw like nail marks on her neck. “What the hell happened?” I gasp, strangely fascinated by the beaten face in front of us. Namine chuckles and shakes her head.  

 “Blaze!” A raspy voice behind me growls. Amber and I jump at the sudden intrusion. I glance back as my redheaded cellmate rounds to the seat on my right, as she sits down the morose woman’s bruised face hardens and turns away from us. I snatch a browning apple from Mag’s tray and squeeze it gently. It squishes in my hand, great it’s rotten. Never the less I bite into it, grimacing at the trademark sourness of a rotten apple. To distract myself from the taste of my apple, I watch as Mag attempts to negotiate with Namine.

Carefully studying her determination hardened face as she coaxes Namine to listen to her, her voice is low and gentle, but my mind won’t process the words anymore. As Mag talks Namine cocks her head to one side, she appears to be listening at least for now. Mag notices this too as her voice gains the confidence and her eyes flash with gratitude. Yet I still cannot focus on her words, it’s like she’s speaking a different language. Then a sudden wave of pain torments my head, and my vision goes white then my eyes drop closed. I feel my body slide sideways and I can’t stop it.  

I fall, for what feels like hours, my body waiting for an impact that never comes. Then something soft, yet rigid closes on my shoulder, I stop falling. I’m pulled against something similar, but bigger. A voice calls out, ringing in my head like a bell, dislodging another wave of pain; I think I cry out in an attempt to make the pain causing voice go away. Something shakes me causing the pain in my head to spread to my face, now it too begins to throb. I grunt to make these pain-causing annoyances to stop, but they continue. I force my unwilling eyes to open, whimpering as the sudden flash of light makes the throbbing in my head worse. Blurry figures loom before me, cool hands rest on my hot face while a soothing voice croons at a whisper, but it’s words I do not understand. 

I blink a few times to clear my vision before the faces come into focus. Above me is the unfamiliar face of a middle-aged man with gray receding hair and soft brown eyes; he cradles me in his arms. The man is the guard at the table, until a minute ago he had gone unnoticed. He tries to say something but his voice is too loud and his words are drowned out by pain. Then suddenly Mag appears at my side, her voice drops to a gentle whisper as she asks. “What’s wrong?”   

“I don’t know.” I rasp in a whisper. Her cool hand ghosts over my forehead and her fingers press on my eyelids, dragging them down to shut them. I feel myself being transferred to my cellmate’s arms as my muscles slacken and my body goes limp just before my mind goes dark.     

Pain slices through my already throbbing head as a wall of white appears before my eyes. A shadowy hand shaped figure swoops toward my face, it is ice-cold as it lands on my face drags my eyes closed. A gruff voice whispers, “Keep your eyes closed.” And I drift away again.  

My eyes drift open taking in the world in a blurry, fuzzy form and I notice that my head doesn’t hurt, or even have any feeling. A blur of yellow hair and glinty silver metal hovers above my face, its mouth opening and closing rapidly. Only a minute later do I realize that it’s talking. “…. Gave you an I.V drip…help the pain…” That is all I can catch of the garbled and distorted speech. I nod absently and close my eyes, intending to blink but my eyelids are too heavy to lift and I end up falling asleep again.  

I wake with a start from the black pit of a dreamless sleep. Blurry eyed, I sit up and look around me. White wall, white beds with rails and restraints, pea soup green flooring. Infirmary, I realize quickly. A blonde nurse comes over to me, her spectacled face kind. “Hey,” she greets, I nod in response and she smiles at me. “Looks like the morphine wore off.” She comments as she puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me down, I don’t resist.   

“What happened?” I croak, confused.   

“You fainted in the cafeteria.” She says, placing a thermometer in my mouth. “Don’t talk.” I nod. “You were starving, fatigued and a bit dehydrated.” The blonde retrieves the thermometer from my mouth, glancing at the read out before setting it aside. “We used a mild sedative and some morphine to keep you asleep while your body healed itself. We also kept up a glucose drip up to nourish you.” She reaches down and grabs one of the Velcro cuffs attached to the bed and secures my wrist into. “Sorry policy.” She explains and traps my other wrist.   

“How long was I out?” I ask, glancing down at the IV protruding from the crook of my elbow. “Do I still need that?”   

“Almost two days, and no you don’t need the IV, it’s just a glucose drip.” She says, quickly jerking the needle from my arm and taking the bag from the hanging stand. She set those on a bedside tray and then covered the wound with a piece of gauze held in place by a swatch of medical tape. Then she disappeared, leaving me Vectored to a hospital bed. The day that followed was the longest of my life, stuck in a starchy, stiff bed. White walls surround me, a row of four identical beds,(one occupied by a crazy old coot who growled and barked every time someone looked at her) to my right. The room I’m in is a small rectangular off shoot of the main infirmary, separated from it by the wall on my left; the nurses come in through an open doorway, which the noises of other patients drift through the doorway. Late in the day I was brought dinner, a half-frozen microwave chicken breast with half cooked frozen peas and warm milk. Lucky me I got to feed myself, unlike dog lady who was fed by Sami, the blonde nurse, and threatened with enemas every time she snapped at the nurse. After dinner I spent an hour studying the lovely white wall that separated me from the other patients, like Cloe. Sami had allowed me to keep my left hand free off the restraint because I was well behaved. Sometime during my appraisal of the sloppy paint job on the wall, Mag arrives as silent as a ninja in her orange jumpsuit; against the white back round I still don’t notice her. Until the raspy barking of dog lady roused my from my reverie, I glanced over at the old woman and saw the familiar figure.

I took a few seconds to recognize the lush curves, the baby blue eyes and her crimson hair, cut short and left spiky. Mag, the name resounded in my mind, making my placid thoughts stir and begin to read her body. Mag’s trademark grin had collapsed into a tight line of uneasy tension. She had my full attention as I had her’s, the bitch was now barking loudly, like a threatened dog, but I barely noticed. What I did notice, however was a peculiar feeling rising in my gut, a creeping cold feeling that made my skin tingle and my palms sweat, I vaguely recognized it as apprehension of some sort. My pulse jumped, but I was not angry, or aroused, my breathing came faster, shallower but I still didn’t understand.   

 A worried look passes over my cellmate’s face as our gazes lock; her baby blue eyes burn against my own, which stirs the feeling more, increasing my already rapid body functions. “She’s having a panic attack.” Sami’s voice announces, causing me to glance over to dog lady; whom the kind nurse and one of her other colleagues are trying to calm. My cellmate takes a few steps closer, a primal instinct to escape, run seizes me but my rational mind, and the Velcro restraint, stops all actions to do so. Mag approaches quickly, her easy-going demeanor turned predatory by my fear-crazed mind. My vitals peak and I begin to hyperventilate, but Mag climbs into the bed with me anyway. She envelops me in a lovingly embrace, by some strange miracle, I calm down and snuggle into her body. “It’s alright Rizzy, I won’t hurt you.”   

I open my eyes and look up at her, breathing in her musky smell. “I’m so afraid of you, I tremble even right now.” I say, bringing to attention the fact I was shaking like a leaf in the wind. “But at the same time, this feels so right, I love it when you hold me, fuck me, caress me.” I stop and sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”   

Mag smiles at me and closes her eyes. “Go to sleep Rizzy.” She commands and I close my eyes, letting my thoughts wonder for a while until I do finally drift off to sleep.

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