Shadows
Faith didn't know what she was doing there, all she knew is that she had to get out. It wasn't even a slow itching to escape. Lying in bed night after night, wondering what her 'friends' were doing, getting more and more stir crazy. Or even a growing boredom with the monotony of the correctional system. Anything but. The screaming voices in her mind of guilt and pain and anger had gradually lessened to a whisper, always present but bareable, allowing her an occasional moment of peace now and then. The nightmares had decreased in their intensity and she was even capable of a laugh or two when visiting hours rolled around.
Although consumed by questions regarding her rash actions earlier, she was more concerned about the fact that none of these worries even entered her mind at the time...
* * *
It had been the first time to go out into the prison's yard in weeks, since they had built a new rooftop yard to make it harder for the convicts to escape. The running track was smaller than the one in the old yard but it was seperate from the benches and the basketball court so she was mostly left to alone there, which suited her just fine. Some of the girls had an on-going pool to see how many laps she could do this week, which no-one won because after a few hours of watching her burn up the track they usually gave up. They had soon learned after she took down 'Big Bertha' in the shower room, a woman so large she as her own gravitational pull and an attraction to the new girls, or 'fresh meat' as she liked to call them, it was safer to bet on Faith's running ability than who could floor her first. And with nothing better to do at night than shuffle against the one broken bed spring in her dirty mattress that refused to let her have a moments rest, she clocked up the laps she'd done on the track over the past week and figured she could have made it to Canada and back by now, or Mexico. Faith would like Mexico.
Or read. She could always read by the flickering flourescent bulb in the hall, whatever book Angel had brought her that week. She liked reading, it took her back to a time in her childhood when stories were a way of escaping her shitty life, before the violence and vice took over.
This week it was "The Zen Master Within", an on-going joke between them. It had a pale cover and silver embossed writing, the type of book that would have looked good on a coffee table in an upscale apartment, not a dusty floor in a prison cell. She couldn't read the book without laughing at the talk of "your inner power" and the image of Angel uncomfortably browsing through the self help section of a book shop, surrounded by badly-dressed, new-age women.
Faith lay there a few nights on her side, her arm hanging over the edge of the bed, absent-mindedly tracing the fancy lettering on the cover with a bitten finger-nail, thinking of the personal inscription inside in vivid black ink. This comforting action helped her more than any of the book's calming phrases could. Thinking back, she wished she had taken the book with her.
But it wasn't a planned break. It wasn't even a spurr of the moment decision to take advantage of the fact that, in their arrogance, the prison had only appointed two guards to watch the all new, inescapable rooftop yard, and said two guards were trying to break up a brawl between a couple of girls which quickly involved everyone standing around.
Screams and yells of the fight barely registered as she stood panting after her 100th lap. Bent over, with palms resting on tired, over-exerted knees she suddenly straightened, a sweak-soaked towel slipping from around her neck, hitting the plastic covered concrete with a wet slap. Sharply, she felt removed from her surroundings. Faith's super senses changed indiscribably, both fading away and going into over-drive. She could feel the breeze slowing down, almost hear the decreasing tempo of the sun's rays beating against the tarmac.
She couldn't think, and didn't want to, didn't realize she was staring at the shimmering perimeter fence or that her feet were moving forward, unbidden. As the noise of the scuffle to her left reached a cresendo, instinct took over and she broke into a run. The guards who should have been watching the yard's security camera reached the roof at that instant to help stop the brawl and didn't see her as she leapt upwards.
She felt her hair whip past her face in a swirl of raven and the cool brush of steel against her fingers as she sommer-saulted over the fence. Tiny slivers of white-hot pain slipped through her ankles as she landed on the impossibly far away roof below. No-one would notice she was gone until it was time to go back to the cells.
* * *