Page 33 of Pulling Strings

But I felt absence. Dead space surrounded me, heavy, thick, and hard to breathe.

Stopping before yet another door, Clipboard Bitch rounded on me. “You do head magic, huh?”

“Yeah.” I adjusted my armload of supplies.

“I figured. It’s worse for those types.” She waved a hand in the air. “They get dizzy. Sometimes sick. But if you throw up, you clean it up.”

Pain twinged in my already unsettled stomach. After subsisting on alcohol and potato chips for the past two days, I didn’t have much in the tank.

I nodded, nonetheless. “Got it.”

She hit the door’s crash bar, swinging it out. I paused behind her, looking up and down the multistory atrium of Thorngate Correctional Institute. Cells lined curved walls ringing a large, open area going down at least four floors. Inmates milled around, passing in groups of two or three.

Unlike the guard staff, they showed marked interest in me. Whispers chased me as I moved down the walkway.

“Fresh meat!” someone hollered, prompting a callback of shrill whistles.

I looked for the source of the voice, dizzy as predicted, but it was impossible to know who spoke in the blur of bland canvas clothes and too-attentive eyes.

Clipboard Bitch was several paces ahead, and I hurried to catch up to her as she came to a stop in front of a drab cell similar to all the others.

“Here we are,” she said.

A bunkbed occupied one half of the room and a small table and chair took up the other. My cellmate hunched over the desk, doodling in a composition notebook. I could only see the back of him, broad, buzz-cut, and unbothered by my arrival.

The wall above him was papered with pencil sketches in a haphazard collection a few candles short of a shrine. Serial killer vibes; I would know.

Clipboard Bitch nodded toward him. “Clyde here will help you get settled in.”

Clyde didn’t respond, too busy scratching his pencil against the pages of his notebook.

The faint smell of food wafted in, mingling with less pleasant odors of sweat and despair. Pain stabbed again at my gut.

“When’s lunch?” I asked Clipboard Bitch, catching her in mid-retreat.

“You just missed it,” she said. “Dinner’s at five, so… four more hours.”

I groaned.

She surveyed the two of us once more, me swaying on my feet and Clyde doing his best to wear out that pencil. “You boys play nice,” she said, then took her leave.

I entered the cell and turned toward the bunkbed. White sheets and thin pillows occupied both mattresses, and I already knew it all stunk of bleach. Needing somewhere to offload my necessaries, but not wanting to crowd my new roomie, I gestured to the beds.

“Am I top or bottom, big fella?”

Clyde gave no response, predictable at this point, so I scrutinized the bunks. Both looked freshly made, but the lower bed had an unmistakable trench down the middle left by a large body. It made sense that a manwith Clyde’s proportions wouldn’t want to climb a ladder into bed every night.

“You know,” I began, “I’m usually on bottom but, for you, I’ll make an exception.”

I slung the basket of supplies onto the upper bunk but didn’t have it in me to follow them. Instead, I stepped back against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor, waiting till the room stopped spinning to speak again.

“Please tell me you’ve got an escape tunnel behind that.” I gestured to the collage above Clyde’s head.

“Knock, knock,” came a voice from outside the cell.

“Door’s open,” I said reflexively.

A man with sallow skin and stringy black hair entered. “Hey, Big C,” he greeted.

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