You might think that after taking note of the Bloody Boy's warning, I spent the rest of my day in pure agony. Eyes darting everywhere as I searched my surroundings in hopes of spotting any threats, sniffing around for clues like a guard dog smelling danger, biting my nails like a nervous wreck.
Nah. I didn't do any of that shit. I went to one of the TV rooms, sat down in an ugly orange chair made of plastic, and wasted a solid two hours of my life watching Escape from Alcatraz.
To be fair, I did bite my nails.
It wasn't that I wanted to watch an old, shitty movie from 1979 starring Clint-fucking-Eastwood. It was simply my only option. A group of Korean girls had claimed the TV room as their territory, and while some shot me looks that implied they wanted scratch my eyeballs right out of their sockets when I entered, they allowed me to stay as long as I lingered in the back of the room with my mouth shut and my eyes on the screen.
Suggesting to watch anything else was out of the question, but I didn't complain. I had the uncomfortable seat I wanted, where I could sit alone and in peace, managing to tune out Korean girls' chattering and could let my mind go blank. With my eyes glued to a movie I had no interest in, I sat back, not thinking about anything, not doing anything. The world around me faded, turned into background noise, and for some blessed moments, I could pretend I was somewhere else. Anywhere was better than here, as long as it smelled like home and served a half-decent meal.
I could have gone out of my way to look further into the Bloody Boy's warning. But I didn't. And why not? I'll tell you why not. Because I didn't believe that to be worth the effort, that's why. Even if I or someone else might be in danger, how out of the ordinary would that even be? I said it before and I'll say it again and again and again: we were in prison, juvie, medium-sec. Danger and risk lingered in the air by default and I had no desire to put more on my plate than I could handle by adding ghosts and warnings to my list of annoying personal issues.
I believed I could avoid the potential threat waiting to suffocate what little peace I still had by ignoring the warning entirely. I truly did. If I kept telling myself I'd get through it all without breaking a sweat and managed to sound convinced, it could become the truth eventually.
So I sat and watched, thinking and not thinking at the same time, until the movie I hadn't been paying attention to showed credits rolling and my new Korean friends up front began bickering over a bag of KitKats one of them had smuggled in. Before their vocal fight could turn into a physical one, I left the TV room with my stay out of trouble-philosophy in mind, the Koreans' voices shrinking further away with each step I took.
When I noticed my eyes drifting around Lonewood's cold grey halls, searching instinctively for a threat I didn't actually want to see, I forced myself to stop and once again shoved the Bloody Boy to the back of my mind, cursing his continuous tugging at my sanity. Desperate to ignore the anxiety pooling in my stomach, I let my imagination run so wild it risked getting out of breath. I began asking myself the real questions, like: why had the Koreans willingly watched a boring, old-as-balls prison movie? The lack of a decent alternative, a strong sense of irony? Or had those chicks started a cult dedicated to Clint Eastwood in secret?
You see? When I said desperate, I meant desperate.
"Hey, nothing better to do than walking around lost in thought? You could be bailing me out right now, but I ain't seeing you make any sweet moves to get that done."
The sudden feeling of a hand on my shoulder startled me. I bit back a shocked yelp as I spun around to face my cellmate, glare searing. "Stop doing that, I swear," I hissed, more hostile than I wanted to be.
My cellmate gave me an easy smile, baring yellow teeth and licking her lips, hands moving towards her dark brown hair to adjust her messy ponytail. "What? The touching or the joke?"
Way too cheerful, way too casual. I never knew what to do with it. What I did know was that I wanted to look my father dead in the eyes and tell him he should've objected when my mother suggested naming me Bailey. It was an unfortunate name to have in prison, attracting people who thought themselves full of witty jokes to me like moths to a fluorescent lamp.
"How about both?" I huffed, vengeful ideas taking over my mind. If my cellmate wanted to joke around, I'd do her one better. "That would be great, Dane."
Dane grimaced upon hearing the nickname I knew she despised. While my cellmate loved giving her fellow prisoners the most absurd nicknames, she grew irritated when the tables got turned on her. As her cellmate-slash-friend, I could usually try my luck and get away with calling her that name, though I steered clear of using it when her mood soured.
Others? They weren't so lucky. I didn't know the unfortunate soul who'd pitched the grand idea of nicknaming Daniela Guerrero 'Great Dane', but I couldn't imagine that poor girl wasn't scarred for life. A vivid memory of Dane unleashing verbal hell on an arrogant bitch who'd dared to call her that during dinner ("¡Soy dominicana, no danesa, hija de puta!") danced before my eyes. I still wasn't certain if it amused or scared me.
"Touché, Bails. You're relentless." Dane rubbed the bridge of her nose, easy smile never fading. The nickname didn't suit her, in my opinion. She was brash and all over the place, a loud Hispanic teenager with a short temper, but unlike the dog she found herself compared to, she was all bark and no bite.
I thought. I hoped.
"Where were you, anyway?" Dane asked, as if not going out of my way to talk to her after class was a capital offense. "Nicking food? Getting caught up on the latest gossip? Making out with a girl somewhere?"
"Jesus Christ, I'm not you. I was watching a worthless movie in the TV room."
My cellmate frowned, shivering as we strolled past rows of telephones lining the walls, small groups of girls and ghosts clustering around them under the watchful eye of old cameras, all illuminated by Lonewood's harsh lighting that always made my eyes burn. I was tempted to tell Dane it was rude to walk straight through a dead gentleman, but decided against it like I always did. Instead, I asked: "And you? Where have you been hanging out?"
Blinking. She'd expected me to know. "D-block."
I could indeed have known. "And you accuse me of making out with a girl somewhere? Unbe-fucking-lievable."
"Keep on complaining, Bails. At least one of us has an interesting love life." That obnoxious, shit-eating grin Dane always gave me made its way onto her face. How she was still so relaxed and easy-going after four years in Lonewood for carjacking amazed me. I respected her for it. Almost made me forget she tended to act like an idiot.
She had an extra reason to be cheerful, too, I reminded myself. I still had eleven months to go, but Dane would be released within two weeks. I was happy for her, but couldn't deny I was jealous, too: she'd go home, back to the outside world and freedom and life. And while she'd be gallivanting outside to her heart's content, our fellow inmates and I could only sit and wait impatiently for our own second chance.
"What with the way you're clinging to her, I'd almost think you're afraid your girlfriend's not gonna miss you when you're gone."
"Oh, I don't worry, not much. My impressions are made to last." This time, when Dane made to touch my shoulder to pull me along, I saw it coming and didn't flinch back. "Come with me for a minute and wait, will ya? Gotta piss."
It wasn't like I had anything better to do with my time. I didn't reply, but nodded as I let Dane drag me to the nearest bathroom, the faint smell of urine mixed with lavender-scented cleaning detergent assaulting my nostrils.
I regretted tagging along the moment I saw which bathroom we neared. A vague nausea sprang up in my stomach and I gazed at the ground in front of me, watching a pool of blood at my feet staining epoxy flooring a dark crimson color.
Residue ectoplasm. A grim reminder of whatever had once happened there.
Dane, blissfully unaware of the ghastly red substance beneath our feet, trudged right through it without a care in the world. I, on the other hand, glanced down at my shoes and grey pant legs as if the icky ghost blood had contaminated me.
Don't get me wrong: I had nothing against the bathrooms in Lonewood, even though they offered very little privacy. My ability to see ghosts had made me immune to caring about being watched as I did my business. But the bathroom Dane took me to, the one nearest to our own block, gave off even worse vibes than that creepy bitch from The Ring. The place reeked of sulphur and danger, caused my brain to feel like someone had pierced it with a sharp needle, made my throat tighten and my heart pound hard in my chest.
Whatever had happened in that bathroom wasn't pleasant and neither was the entity haunting it.
Dane hummed the melody of a song I didn't know and made for the nearest toilet. While I hated entering B-block's bathroom, I didn't want to give off the impression I was loitering to any officers actually bothering to do their job in this shithole. So I went after Dane and pretended I needed to use the sink. My nausea intensified ad I let the water flow, but I still managed to enjoy the liquid's coolness on my feverish skin when I washed my face.
Running water, Dane humming, footsteps in Lonewood's halls, and still no noise could drown out the alarm bells in my mind going haywire in that bathroom. I leaned on the sink to myself upright, staring at my reflection in the mirror, and realized how awful I looked, almost sickly. My blonde hair had been thin and dull even before I ended up in prison, and my sunken eyes had been dark and tired for as long as I could remember, but combined with my pale face and my shabby grey prison jacket (Lonewood Medium Security Juvenile printed elegantly on the back), I reminded myself of a foul zombie. Something dead.
I might as well have been a ghost myself.
I needed all my strength to keep from doubling over, my fingers gripping the sink's stainless steel tighter with each passing second. In the back of my mind, the warning I'd been trying so hard to forget resurfaced. Despite the relentless dark energy surrounding it, I'd never had this strong a reaction to B-block's bathroom before. Was that what the kid had been trying to tell me? Watch out for toilets, or you're going to assault a poor sink by projectile-vomiting?
"Where are you?" I mouthed, my frantic eyes darting over the mirror in search of anything out of the ordinary. The spirit in the bathroom, who- or whatever that could be, was the private sort. I'd never been able to look them in the eyes, which was strange: it was as if the spirit went out of its way to avoid my critical scrutiny, leaving me with nothing but a sulphuric smell and sickness to remember it was even there at all. But sometimes, on good days, when the ghost got careless, I saw glimpses in the mirror. A transparent hand or foot, or a dark eye gazing into my soul.
I had no such luck that day. The mirror showed me nothing, gave me no answers. All I saw was my own, ghastly face.
"You okay there, Bails?"
I slowly stepped away from the sink, fighting to keep my dizziness at bay, and allowed Dane to take my place. She rolled up her sleeves, washed her hands. I glanced at the black tattoo on her wrist, eager to focus on anything but the dark presence in the bathroom with us. A tattoo of a gagged skull, a gang sign. Silencio. One more reason why I never, not in a million years, wanted to mess with Dane Guerrero, even though I couldn't think of a single occasion in which she'd meant me harm.
"Earth to Old Bailey? Gonna answer me or not?"
Remembering she'd asked me a question, I gave her a weak nod. "I'm fine," I said, already preparing to get out of that damned bathroom faster than Speedy Gonzales himself. "Hungry, I guess."
Dane shook her head in exasperation like a disappointed parent dealing with a naughty child and flicked droplets of water in my direction. "Idiot. You gotta take care of yourself. This is prison. It's common knowledge at this point, or not?"
I agreed. What else could I do? Tell her I had an in-built radar for evil spirits? I think you and I can both agree it would've been a bad idea. Off-putting. Weird and creepy. I didn't need the one friend I'd bothered to make, courtesy of being cooped up in a cell together, to see me that way. I just wanted to sit out the remaining eleven months of my sentence in peace.
When we were having dinner later that evening, I almost thought I could have that peace. I prodded at my bland mashed potatoes with my plastic fork, as if that would somehow improve the food's taste, and let Dane distract me from every strange supernatural occurence of the day. I smiled and nodded and listened to her cheeky anecdotes and ramblings about whatever bothered her most at the moment ("I keep waking up with, like, bruises and stuff. What the actual fuck you think is going on with that? You wouldn't know if I toss and turn in my sleep that much, right?"), and I suffered through far too many bad jokes.
Even when I caught my attention wandering, my eyes roaming over the dining hall to see if Liz and her dead escort were there, I didn't feel as panicked as before. When I couldn't spot either of them in the vastness of the room, I almost sighed in relief and allowed myself to think the Bloody Boy's warning had been about the bathroom and nothing else. It seemed plausible, didn't it? He could've known the bathroom spirit was in such a bad mood it would make me sick. He could've felt sorry for me, simple as that.
I had every reason to assume the heads-up was about the bad bathroom reaction, and when I got into bed that night, I mentally thanked the Bloody Boy for his warning, even though I'd ignored it on accident and gotten sick anyway. I made myself as comfortable as I could ever hope to be on the hard lower bunk of the bed and tuned out Dane's light snoring. Sleep came over me soon enough and I forgot every hardship of the day.
But when I woke up in the middle of the night, blinking sleep out of my eyes while the scent of blood filled my nostrils, I knew I'd miscalculated. A sharp pain flared through my hands, and when I looked at them, I could make out a single deep gash in each palm, hot blood trickling down and staining the floor. I grit my teeth, pressed my palms to my legs hard to try and stop the bleeding, and looked up. What I saw chilled me to the bone.
There, on the wall opposite of me, someone had left a message in big, messy letters, clumsy and jagged. Written in blood.
My blood.
'THE BITCH MUST DIE'
And when the meaning of those words began to sink in after what felt like ages, I knew I was in bigger trouble than ever before.
~~
A/N
Translation of the Spanish, if I did it right: 'I'm Dominican, not Danish, daughter of a whore'