Page 5 of No Way Back
Intake is a farce of a show. It’s kind of hard to believe the douchebag yelling in my faceisn’tan actor, but I’m gauging by the boner in his pants thatmaybehe’s a real cop. No one else would be getting off at possessing this kind of authority. We’re all given orange jumpsuits, and I’m not surprised when Naya raves about it being her color.
It really is.
Kyle rolls his eyes, and I’m suddenly doubly annoyed that the cop is storing my knife in a fake evidence bag and putting it in a locker. “You’ll get all of your possessions back at the end of the night at release.”
I can endure a night without it.
I can get creative. After all, a girl is only as dangerous as her imagination.
The thought is barely a seed in my mind when the abrasive guard begins to physically shove us through a narrow hallway after everyone has been fake fingerprinted and added to “the system.” I’m looking over my shoulder now, trying to find Demetri in any dark corner, but wherever he’s gone off to is far from my line of sight.
Gnawing on my dry cuticles is the only distraction I have. I’m fully dissociated from Naya’s blabbing, my vision practically blurring while we walk through the hall, the anemic glow of ancient lights struggling to cast a whisper thin puddle of light.
The first chainsaw goes off in the distance, two girls in our group screaming as they clutch each other.
A smile spreads over my face.
Finally.
I’ve been waitingallyear for this. I fucking love Halloween.
A hysterical clown runs past us so quickly, it’s not until he’s at the front of the group that I even see his face paint. One eye is fully whited out, the other with a red contact, but it’s the machine guns in his hands that are drawing my attention.
No props. I snort at the tour guide’s earlier words. As if they’d be giving haunt actors real weapons, unloaded or not. The liability is way too high to take the chance, but I always appreciate the attempt for theatrics.
The clown doesn’t make direct eye contact with any one of us; he just walks back and forth past us in the hall, menacingly taking up what little space is allowed for a single person as he pushes us into the wall with his shoulders. His fingers hover the trigger of his guns, but he keeps them pressed to his side. He paces back and forth like a bulldog, cutting through us until we’ve created a single file line.
The clown sniffs the air as he stops at the front of the line, taking a pause before hocking a loogie into the grated ground below us.
“Creepy as shit.” Naya’s words are a rushed exhale.
The tour guide disappears into the darkness of the corridor, leaving only the clown actor with our group. “Welcome to cell block A.” The clown turns his head to the side slowly before another hysterical bout of laughter escapes him. “Home of the Murderesses.”
A banshee shriek fills the air, another haunt actor in the distance certainly, but it's the hushed whispers inside the cells that drape me with dread.
Murderesses.
Every woman in this cell block has taken a life. The only things separating me from them at this very moment are iron bars. Well, that, and the likelihood that a small percentage of them are actually innocent.
I catch the glow of two eyes in a shadowed corner, a haunting premonition slithering up my spine. It vanishes before it can sink its fangs into the flesh of my psyche.
Not tonight.
I will not let the guilt of my actions consume me tonight.
“Where’s Demetri—” Just as the words come out of Naya’s mouth, they’re replaced by a startled scream.
Absolute darkness.
Full silence.
Not a hum of electricity, not the sound of a generator kicking on in the distance.
Dead silence.
An orchestra of panicked voices rise simultaneously, the clown’s charade dropping as he works to calm the frightened girls at the front. “It’s a power outage. No cause for worry. Wecan continue.” He waves his flashlight, the only source of light in the entire cell block.
The female inmates are a loud droning of misery, demanding the warden and the guards attend to their needs. But it’s not just them—the deafening quiet is gone now, replaced with the buzzing of every inmate’s discontent growing louder even beyond these walls.
