The corridor has been quiet for an hour, and Nicky allows herself to unwind, tension unspooling from her body like tape from a cassette, all of her songs played out. She is nothing but an empty case now.
Each shaky exhalation bounces off the breezeblock walls like an echo. Nicky is aware that she may never hear music again, surrounded by the sound of her own silence. It is almost oppressive.
This is her second week in max, or perhaps it's her third.
She stopped counting after the third day, realising that despite her optimism, nothing could convince Caputo to see the error of his ways. He'd probably already forgotten all about her. Fucking weasel.
If only she'd been a little less of an addict and a little more of a businesswoman, this might never have happened.
Still, more miraculous things than a sudden release or a recanted sentence had occurred in prison, Nicky reasoned. There was that whole thing with the chicken, after all.
The main problem with that example was the connotation it carried: it only served as a further reminder that she too was a flightless bird, trapped in a cage along with all the other battery hens.
Fuck the chicken. It was a symbol of hope she didn't have. It probably didn't exist anyway.
Somebody further down the row yelled, and Nicky fought the urge to launch herself from her bunk to the bars of her window, seeking solace in distraction and asking for answers to kill time. Instead, she stayed where she was, content with laziness for the time being.
She'd lie still and think of Bora Bora (Bora), a smirk on her face that softened to sadness when she remembered Morello's parting misery.
Somebody else had better hold that beautiful girl now.
Several sets of feet scuffed solid creosote from the exit to her right down in the direction of the disruption, but came to a halt, level with her cell.
Curiosity overcame her, and she eased herself away from the bed, soft steps carrying her to the doorway.
She found herself eyeing the back of a guard's head, a second guard standing before him, turned towards an inmate. The door to the cell opposite Nicky's was ajar, the room beyond empty and dark, ready to be filled by the body of another reckless fool. Maybe she'd be hot.
It was easy to overlook the consequences of your own stupid actions when you had somebody good looking nearby, and Nicky was always on the lookout.
The prisoner in question was shuffled into the concrete cave mirroring her own, door clicking closed behind her as she turned to face the rectangular space that had once held the concept of escape.
"Cuffs."
The comment was so casual it almost sounded off-handed, a castaway command that was an everyday occurrence here. The guard tapped his hand on a waist-height slot in the door, and the newcomer followed instruction, slipping her wrists through the gap.
With a sigh that could've come from any of the three faceless participants, the cuffs were removed. The guards slid home the latch securing the small window and departed, leaving Nicky alone with someone new to objectify.
Silence reigned again, albeit only momentarily, broken seconds later by the strained sounds of mumbled swear words and the abuse of inanimate objects drifting from the now-occupied cell opposite her.
"Fuck." There was a dull thud and a crunch, followed by another: "fuck!"
Nicky mulled over her options: she could intervene, or she could not.
The latter was increasingly appealing, and duly she returned to the creased sheets of her earlier frustrations.
With no books to read or tape player to listen to, Nicky had taken to origami. She had never folded paper with purpose aside from schoolyard airplanes, and the leaflets left in her cell had been flown and re-folded so many times in their short life that their wings had been effectively clipped, never to grace the air-conditioned skies of Nicky's cell again.
Vause had once taught her to make an origami nun, but that knowledge was long gone.
Each attempted creation after the demise of the aircraft had simply led to paper cuts, which Nicky reasoned was actually better than origami in many ways. She recognised the irony of escaping production with destruction, and prided herself on staying consistent to her track record.
Red would've killed her for this kind of thinking, but Nicky was a bloodhound for oblivion, and hell, she'd fucking found it this time.
At least the chef would have understood the lack of merit in seeking to teach an old dog new tricks.
Nicky may have been less than half the woman's age, but she had been digging ditches to drown in long before Red had forced her to float.
She was so caught up in cuts of her own creation that at first, she dismissed the whispers drifting aimlessly on the air as involuntary internal interruptions. She almost scolded herself - intrusive thoughts in week three, really? - before hearing the words again, repeated in hushed tones.
"Hey!"
There it was.
She cocked her head to the side, listening intently.
"Hey, cell 324B21!"
Whoever it was, they obviously wanted her attention, the ID numbers read from the plaque outside her cell still hanging in her ears like an offer.
Unfolding her crossed legs like the leaflets she'd been handling, she headed to the door, hesitation etched in every step. Peering through the window, she waited, mumbling into the fluorescent-lit corridor. "Yeah? What?"
A face appeared behind the bars opposite, hipster haircut and neck tattoos dark against pale skin. "Hey."
Nicky allowed herself an erudite smile, the corners of her mouth curving as she made eye contact. "Hey. You new?"
"Yeah. What time's food?"
The accent hit Nicky hard. She'd always had a thing for accents.
Morello's had made her laugh, but when she'd say Nicky's name with desperate pleading passion in the chapel or the showers, it had made her hot, too.
An Australian though - this was new.
She contained a laugh as she replied. "Yeah, I don't know how long it took you to fly from Sydney but, uh, dinner was a few hours ago. You missed it."
An angry middle finger aimed up toward the ceiling came through the bars opposite, as the inmate bounced on the balls of her feet, bitterness biting at her words.
"Hey, fuck you, I'm from Melbourne, not fucking Sydney."
Nicky laughed incredulously, as though this information was somehow supposed to be relevant to her. She held her hands up in mock surrender.
"Jeez, I'm sorry."
Checking up and down the corridor, she turned back to the other woman. "They send you here from Litch?"
There was a pause, long enough for Nicky to contemplate returning to the pointless pastime of paper-mauling, before the voice returned, softer.
"Yeah, shit show that that was. You?"
"Yeah, me too." Nicky raised an arm to the window and slotted her hand through the bars, palm pressed again the steel. "I'm Nicky. Nichols."
The brunette mimicked the gesture, their hands meters apart, but the formalities of a handshake still intact. "Stella Carlin."
They watched one another quietly, considering the captive they each faced. "Hey, look. I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to snap. I-"
"No hard feelings." Nicky cut her off, never a fan of apologies. Fuck forgive and forget. Forget about forgiveness and just accept.
"Shit happens. It gets kind of intense. I get that."
Stella nodded as though she too understood, but reality would hit her hard in the morning. Nicky didn't know why she was here, but she knew it was unlikely to be anybody's fault but her own.
Luschek may have sealed Nicky's own fate, but she had handled the drugs herself. She had chosen to run the risk - she was at least self-aware enough to realise that, no matter how in denial she was about a dozen other things.
"Somebody once told me that you've gotta hit rock bottom before you can know which direction to go in." She paused, spreading her arms wide in a gesture that was all but eclipsed by the confines of her window. "Welcome to the floor, kid."
Stella laughed at this, a hollow sound so familiar to Nicky. She knew emptiness when she saw it - fuck, she stared it down in the mirror every day - and whatever had made Stella herself seemed to be slipping away.
"So what happened?"
"I was set up." The Australian said, jaw set tight.
"Yeah, we all were." Nicky tried to keep her tone light and even, tried to detract from the fact that if you were sent here from up the hill, they'd probably never take you back, tried to forget her own truth.
"But that's prison for you, right?"
"Yeah, I guess." Stella resigned herself to the same story as everybody else, but it was only a moment before her indignation returned. "I was set up though, for real. Some fucked-up blonde bitch took my date."
The reality of Stella's situation was sour, and Nicky couldn't help but flinch. "Holy shit man. I'm sorry. I'd like to say you're better off inside, but I'd be lying, and…" She shrugged. "Well, you seem like a nice girl."
A wry smirk accompanied a raised eyebrow on Stella's face. "And what would you know about nice girls?"
Nicky took the bait, grateful of a less serious diversion. "I know enough: I had one up the hill." She jerked her head in the direction of the exit.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, you know Morello? She was the van driver before Penn took over, the chick with the red lips and the dark hair."
A flash of recognition shone from Stella's face as she pointed through the bars. "You were fucking that Westside Story piece? Shit! She drove me to camp, first day."
Nicky's chest puffed with pride. "Yeah, she was mine. Or as much mine as fucking in the chapel when we had an hour free is. But I was hers, y'know." A hand pressed against the left side of her chest subconsciously.
No matter how many fucks had passed like water under the bridge, it was only ever Morello she thought of when she came.
Stella narrowed her eyes for a second, head tilted as she began her next line of inquiry. "You know that she's..."
"She's what?" Panic set in as a fever, washing over Nicky like nausea as she wrapped her fingers around the steel bars obscuring her vision. "Something happen? She alright?"
Stella inhaled, withholding, visions of Morello wearing a toilet paper bridal veil flickering up from the depths of her subconscious before being squashed back down.
"She… You know what? She's fine. She misses you, that's all."
"Oh. Well." Nicky's face softened and she released the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. Her shoulders slumped. "Well, who wouldn'tmiss me, right?" Stella smiled, relieved, crisis averted.
Nicky glanced up and down the corridor before continuing. "Hey, how long did you have left?"
A sigh whispered across the meters between them as the brunette's upbeat expression faded. "My date is tomorrow. Was tomorrow. Fuck!"
Nicky chuckled. "There I was thinking I was the only Icarus in here."
"Yeah, well." Stella leaned up against the door, her profile visible in the light from the corridor. "My wings were bound to melt at some point, right? What about you?"
"Eh, we can't all fuck the sun." Nicky shrugged, recognising the irony of the situation as she found herself about to echo Stella's earlier sentiment. "I guess you could say I was set up too."
Stella's laugh was sudden and unexpected, and Nicky couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up kookaburra."
Her eyes glinted in the gloom of her cell, the woman opposite holding her gaze like a challenge. Another wail sounded from further down the block, and Stella stepped back from the bars, startled.
"At least we're in this together, right?" Nicky urged, her words rushing with reassurance. "You, me, and an all-female cast of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
Stella sent a small grin of gratitude, a postage-stamp sized smile of solidarity.
"Together, yeah?" She sounded cynical, but her face was sincere.
"Yeah. That's it."
Nicky pushed a hand through her leonine hair. Her first night had been hell, and those that followed hadn't been much better. She'd appreciate someone to talk to.
"At least we're away from those traitorous motherfuckers up the hill though."
Nicky scowled to herself as she recalled the look on Luschek's face when she'd taken the fall for his incompetence, but Stella's smile was bright, white teeth flashing like a switchblade. Her reply was soft, silken, serpentine, drawing Nicky out of her emotional somnolence.
"True." She acknowledged with a subtle incline of her head. "Trust no bitch."
A switch was flicked by the exit as Nicky rolled her eyes but nodded all the same, raising a hand in goodbye while the lights shut off along the corridor, cutting short their conversation, signalling time for sleep. "Yeah, that too."
Returning to her bed, she kicked off her boots and lay back on the bunk.
Maybe she'd found a bitch she could trust after all.