"Sorry that took so long, I had to find the keys. They weren't in their spot. You guys ready to see these cells?" Jaz asked walking back into the room a few minutes later. We were all silent, awkwardly looking around to avoid eye contact with the other group of people, Colby's arm tightly wrapped around my waist.
"Yes we are!" Niall said excitedly. I was glad he'd spoken up and sounded so upbeat so we wouldn't have to awkwardly explain to Jaz why we were all sulking.
"So, you said these were called the body rooms?" asked Sam.
"Yes, they are. This is where things get a little gruesome. There were a lot of deaths in the prison. Many died from mining accidents, and others from diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and syphilis. There were also natural causes and exhaustion factors. The death penalty was never carried out at this facility.
"However, the amount of bodies that accumulated was substantial. While waiting for morgues and funeral services and family members to come retrieve the bodies, they were stacked in these cells. There are twelve cells in this pod, and sometimes they would completely fill up," recited Jaz.
The next part of the tour took us down another set of stairs into what definitely qualified as a basement. We went through the fairly standard laundry room and made our way to a hall way with one door at the end of it.
"Welcome to the hole," said Jaz.
"This should be good," Sam said.
"This is where prisoners were brought as a form of discipline. The longest anyone was ever put in here was a month. It's a small cell with absolutely no light source whatsoever, and only one person was allowed in at a time. All the inmate could have in the cell were two buckets. One was full of water for drinking and washing, the other to be used as a restroom. Early on in their punishment, inmates would try to physically mark the buckets in some way to make sure they were able to distinguish between the two. The maximum sentence of one month was decided after they determined that was how long it would take a man to go mad in there. The only man to be put in here for more than 28 days ended up bashing his head against the wall until he killed himself," explained Jaz.
We made our way back upstairs and out to the giant exercise yard in the back.
"Welcome to the yard. This is where inmates got their outside time while not working. Intended as a place of recreation, it quickly became a place of attempted murder and gang activity. One inmate was crushed to death by a weight bench, when some other convicts intentionally stacked too much weight on either side of the bar. The man lifting the weight ended up dropping it on himself, cracking his sternum from the weight and essentially damaging his internal organs. There were also a lot of poisonous snakes out here, both then and now, so be careful," she reported.
"What the hell is that?" Jake asked, pointing over to a wooden platform with a post on it.
"This is one of the more gruesome disciplinary techniques. Inmates were tied by their wrists to the post, and whipped as punishment," said Jaz. I shot a look over at Jake, who mouthed 'kinky' as I knew he was going to. "There's a story about the post that said one man got whipped so hard, his prison uniform cloth fibers got embedded into his skin. This was used when inmates didn't meet their daily coal mining quota or for publicly disobeying a guard. If the whipping post wasn't used, the inmates would be lashed with thick leather straps, sort of like a belt."
"Over here is a basketball court, right outside of this door here that leads to the gymnasium," said Jaz. We followed her into the next section of the building, walking past some old barrels filled with basketballs and footballs.
Jaz showed us the maximum security unit, an area with two floors of cells that had big steel doors, no bars, just a single small window in the upper middle part of the door. Finally, she led us to the guard housing unit and quarters.
"Alright, before we wrap this up, here's a few more tidbits about this place that really outline for terrible the living conditions were. Prisoners also died from yard fights, some from makeshift prison shivs and shanks, one person even died from a meat clever being thrown in the cafeteria.
"The most gruesome account of murder in the prison was a stabbing. An inmate was, of course, stabbed, then gutted," Jaz started. My stomach twisted when she said that. "The attacker then cut off the hair of the victim...,"
"Oh, god," I said. I slapped my hand over my mouth and turned to run down the staircase back onto the main floor of the building and squatted down, leaning against one of the walls. I tried to breathe, tried thinking of anything other than what Jaz had said.
"Vanessa! Baby, no, what happened!" Colby screamed. His knees made a thumping sound on the hard floor as he dropped down and slid over to me.
"Oh fuck!" Sam yelled, his footsteps following into the room.
"Call a fucking ambulance RIGHT now!" Colby screamed.
I could barely hear them over my screaming, my crying. I was laying in that big pool of blood, feeling the thickness and warmth seep out of my wound and into my clothes.
"Nessa, please, say something," he pleaded. I knew he was crying by how his voice sounded. "Baby, please," he whispered.
"What the hell happened to her?" a man's voice asked. I was in the ambulance, someone pushing down on my giant cut, another one wiping away all of my blood. My vision was foggy, I barely felt the needle pushed into my arm from the sedative shot.
"I don't, I don't know. I just went up to the attic and she was crying and...wait, she's not crying anymore. Why isn't she crying? Is she okay? She can't die. That can't happen, please, no, she can't—,"
"Nessa. Ness," someone said, pulling me back to right now, back to reality. I snapped my head up and my eyes popped open.
"I didn't—," I said. I stopped talking when I saw Colby crouched right in front of me, his hands holding my face. I felt his thumbs wipe away the tears I hadn't realized were rolling down my cheeks.
"What? You didn't what?" he asked softly.
"Uh... die," I said awkwardly, responding to what he'd said in the ambulance since I hadn't been able to back in October.
"N—uh, no. You didn't die. I'm sorry, what?" he asked. I shook my head.
"In the ambulance. You said I can't die. I didn't," I said.
"In the am... what are you...?" he asked. "Oh, shit." He definitely realized what I was talking about. "You heard all of that? I thought they knocked you out."
"Yeah, they did. That was the last thing I heard," I said. "I should have tried to answer you. I don't know what I would have said, though. I mean, I thought I was as good as dead."
"Not to be a downer or anything, but you sort of were. You didn't wake up for three weeks. They didn't know if you were ever even going to," said Colby. Yeah, he was right. No one had said that to me directly, but I knew everyone had been thinking of it. Three weeks unconscious, two more after that in the ICU. Literally everyone thought I was going to die. Including me.
"Hey man, is she good?" I heard someone ask from behind me. Colby dropped his hands from my face and stood up.
"Uh, yeah. She's... shit, I don't know. Ness, you okay, baby?" Colby asked. I nodded and joined him in standing up, then turned around to see Niall standing there.
"I'm alright," I said.
"Sorry if it seems weird I came up here. I just, uh... I think I know who you are. You were on the news and shit, like, all the time a little while ago, right?" Niall asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"And that same thing happened to you?" he asked, pointing back at the stairs with his thumb to refer to what Jaz had explained.
"Basically exactly the same thing, yeah. Except I managed to live," I said. "What was the rest of that story, anyway?"
"You sure you want to hear that?" asked Niall. "Shit's pretty gross."
"Yeah, can't get much worse to me than what she already explained," I said.
"Well, okay. They skinned the guy, then, uh... cut him up. Like, into little pieces. Then they flushed the little pieces down the toilets to get rid of the body and all that the guards ever found was this trashbag full of bones," explained Niall.
"Jesus fuck," said Colby.
"Yeah. Also, I'm really sorry about Ross and Levi. They're total jerks, especially about girls," Niall said.
"Yes, they are," said Colby.
"It's okay, though. Nothing I haven't dealt with in LA," I replied.
"Cool. They probably won't say sorry, but you deserve to hear it so I decided I'd be the one to apologize," said Niall.
"Well thank you," I said.
"Yeah bro. I appreciate it," said Colby.
"Of course. Are you guys staying the night, too?" asked Niall. "That blonde guy, Sam I think, was talking about it."
"We are. For that series we were talking about," explained Colby.
"Well, good fucking luck. Jaz said people who've spent the night have reported shit like being touched and shoved and scratched and growled at," said Niall.
"Oh joy," I said sarcastically.