Chapter 10:
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TO: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com
FROM: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt
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I understand that those are the worst prisons in Mammalia. The ones that make me feel ashamed to have the ability to produce milk or give birth to live children. Ones where oversight is non-existent, and violence and subjugation is rife.
But Nick is being held in Zootopia.
Not the topmost tier for 'inclusion', obviously. But up there.
Any idea how one of their prisons would operate. Would it be nearly that bad?
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TO: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt
FROM: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com
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From my research it isn't.
But they get creative.
In a lot of cases, they focus on the petty things.
Small changes and features which are meant to spoil your day or leave you that little bit irritated or humiliated.
From encouraging bullying, to colder than normal showers, to sleep and exercise schedules designed to make the inmates tired and irritable.
You are not seen as something broken that needs fixing.
While I understand the basic reflex to punish, to seek vengeance, I despise the pettiness this manifests itself in.
Small changes.
Small attacks and wounding.
All designed to slowly chip you down and down and down.
Like a death by a thousand cuts.
I mean just look up the menu's in these places. You'll get a sense of what I mean.
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Nick and the other prisoners walked forwards into a largish room. Tables and chairs had been placed down and Nick, shaking a bit on his feet, quickly found one. He jumped up and pulled himself in, wrapping his arms and feet up against himself, still shivering slightly from the cold shower.
The prisoners who had been behind them on the bus, and had been led through other processing streams, had already been there when they arrived, and looked far less worse for wear. All of them, just like those in his group, had been clipped, tagged and suited up. Maybe they'd just had more time to recover. To talk and actually feel like a real mammal. He and the others sat down on various tables, Nick making his way to one full of fellow preds, and, as the guards stood around the edges of the room and watched, they chatted to each other.
"So… You're the Nick Wilde?"
Nick looked up to his right, his eyes looking on at the young civet that had been behind him. They'd both sat down on the one table populated by predators, and a quick look around showed that all their eyes were on him.
"Yeah," Nick said. "The one and only."
"Cool," the civet replied, smiling and softly punching Nick's elbow. "At least you're not in here for something dumb like I am."
"Which is?"
"Partial grand theft auto…"
"Partial?"
The civet shrugged. "Elephant cars have big catalytic converters. I knew a scrap man who paid a lot of money for them. Worked for a time, paid well too. But my luck ran out. Here for five years, you?"
"Twenty," Nick replied.
"Thirty," a tiger from across the table replied. "Forty," came a wolf, and soon came another barrage of sentences, more often than not the length of Nick's one or longer.
Nick smiled as they began talking about what put them in the jail. All of them confessed to all or most of what they'd been sent in for, with some complaining that they'd also been roped in for minor crimes that some other mammal in their group had done. None of them claimed that they were innocent of everything, or even alluded to the idea.
"It seems we're all happy about being guilty here," Nick commented, before feeling a hard pat on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a badly cut up cheetah, in for assault and nip dealing, who had an odd grin on his face.
"Yeh. All guilty of bad stuff except for you. You're guilty of good stuff," he said. "That's pretty neat in my book."
"Neat, yes," the young civet commented. "But it sucks to be in his shower line. The goat guard had a real can to chew with him."
"Byron Caprey?" the cheetah asked, with both Nick and the civet nodding in response. The cheetah shook his head and grumbled. "He's a clever piece of work, acts all nice in public and on camera, but then he… Urgh! That bastard gave me a few of these scars the last time I was in here. Seeing I was going to the yellow block, I was hoping that piece of filth had transferred or been fired. Still, it seems like he has a hate boner for you, so at least that'll keep him occupied."
"Oh joy," Nick replied. He folded his arms down and rested the base of his muzzle onto them, his left ear flicking with irritation now and again. The pierced skin still throbbed, and the weight of the tracker tag was doing annoying things to his sense of balance.
"Yep, for me it really will be," the cheetah joked, leaning back and smiling.
…
"So, it isn't your first time then," Nick said. "Any tips. Any spoilers for what happens next?"
"They give you some food, the warden visits, then you're led out in groups to your cells. This is probably the last time I'll see you, and you'll see all of us. So make the most of it, Slick."
Nick chuckled, rolling his eyes. "The nickname… It seems you must now be my friend then."
The cheetah's eyes widened, and he stifled a giggle as his collar went up to orange. "A friend of the great Nick Wilde! This is better than my last stay already!"
"I am so happy for you," Nick joked, before rising up as a trolley rolled passed. A tired looking rhino looked over, and reached down.
"Seven standard pred meals," he said, "try to enjoy."
Nick's stomach rumbled as a bowl was placed down in front of him, only for his small grin to fade as he saw what was in it. Eyes widening, he looked up and down at it, and the contents of the other bowls, and felt sick.
"I presume this isn't a joke," he said.
The cheetah shook his head. "As if. This is pretty much lunch every day. I suppose it makes dinner seem good by comparison, which is a plus."
"It can make anything look better," Nick commented, grabbing a plastic spork and spooning up a pile of brown nuggets from his dish. "I mean, out of all the things we can eat, what's worse than kibble?"
"I don't know," the cheetah shrugged, biting down on his own spoon full of the brown pebbles, grimacing slightly as he did so. "But I bet it would take some cud-chewer with too much time on his hooves to make that something."
"Agreed," Nick replied, wincing as he tried kibble for the first time. He grimaced, gagging slightly not so much at the taste, that of badly seasoned budget mealworms, but the texture, which was a mix between a damp sponge and a clump of dried clay.
"The trick isn't to chew," the young civet commented, picking up a glass of water and a pawful of the food. Dropping a few chunks into his mouth, he drank a swig of water and swallowed them like a pill. "At least, my mother used to say that."
Nick nodded, and stuck the next set of food into his mouth. Taking a swig of water, he swallowed it down, and agreed that it was indeed better. "Thanks."
"No worries."
Nick turned back to his food, when he noticed a small plastic wrapped bar nearby. Grabbing it and feeling it in his paws, he smiled and unwrapped it, taking a bite.
The soft cutting and warm flavour of chocolate never came.
Instead it was a hideous chew, and a flow of acrid juices onto his tongue.
"Arghhh!" Nick cursed, gagging and spitting out the mouthful of chocolate imposter that he'd bitten into. He looked up to the cheetah, who had a sick grin on his muzzle, and scowled. "You could have warned me," he muttered.
"Could have," the cheetah said, bobbing his head innocently. "But I didn't."
"Very funny," Nick grumbled, before looking back at the bar. "But that's not. Remember what you said about some prey devising something worse…? That's something worse… far worse."
The cheetah cackled slightly. "I know."
"But… who even came up with this monstrosity?" Nick pondered out loud. "This should be banned. It's evil. I mean, it's a raisin bar!"
"I can see that," the cheetah said.
"Not a chocolate bar utterly ruined by raisins," Nick carried on, "but a bar… ENTIRELY made of raisins. Compressed down… moulded… wrapped." He slowly extended his paw to it, rubbing the end exploratorily before scowling and pulling it back, looking bitterly at the blunt stubs that remained of his claws.
"I can see that," the cheetah said again.
"But… but… Why?" Nick stammered. "If this were a normal society, and I didn't have a collar, I'd be on my knees screaming that out to the world! There is no god. There is no salvation. There is no sense of right or wrong or holy… This is a universe where a raisin bar exists… Some sick and depraved mind actually thought of this and created this. Mammals have to face their children, every day, knowing that they are creating these things. Forget about scientists asking if they could so much, they forgot to ask if they should… Even if you surgically remove someone's entire sense of right and wrong, they'd still be able to know that that thing is… is… It's a rutting raisin bar!"
The civet next to Nick looked up at the exasperated fox, then down at the bar, then up at him again. "I… uh, I like raisins… Can I have your bar?"
Nick looked at him like he was the mucus thrown up by some abomination from the depths of the oceans, before silently sliding the bar over. "I know you've been nothing but nice," he said, "but I currently hate your more than anyone else on earth. Including the mammal that put me in here, the prey inmate at the ZPD jail who half fixed me with two bricks and the guard who repeatedly shocked me with a collar remote and mutilated my tail."
The civet merely shrugged. "You know, I can totally understand that. Now, anyone else not want their raisin bar?"
"I can't help but think that these five years are going to fly by for you," Nick joked, before looking back down at the table as five other bars were slid over to the civet.
"Maybe they don't put in chocolate as… you know," he said. "It can harm certain mammals…"
"Apparently, my grandparents committed suicide by chocolate," Nick slowly said. "I'd need half a dozen bars of chocolate like that one to begin to feel ill…"
"Still," the civet mused. "Better safe than sorry."
…
"You understand that raisins are more poisonous to me than chocolate?" Nick said, grabbing his bar and holding it up next to him. "You know, I'd bet that this is well over my daily safe limit. In fact, three or four of these bars would probably kill me!"
"So?" another inmate, the wolf, asked.
"There is no universe in which this wasn't given out to specifically screw with us," Nick replied, holding the bar up and sniffing it. "Maybe I should take an advantage of this opportunity? Choke down a few bars… finish myself off… the joke would be on them then, wouldn't it?"
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"No," the civet replied. "You'd be dead then. In any case, given what you mammals think of raisins, would you even be able to finish half a bar?"
Nick shook his head and held up the bar. Opening his mouth, he raised it up and prepared to bite down…
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Prepared to bite down…
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Prepared…
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He sighed and placed it back down, shaking his head. "They're right. Even the most depressed fox in the universe wouldn't be able to scoff nearly enough of these down to have a chance at killing themselves. It's fool proof."
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"And good news for me," the civet replied. "Yum!"
Nick was about to make some snide remark back only for his, and everyone else's, ears to rise as the whine of a microphone echoed out. Looking up at the cheetah, Nick turned his paws out, silently enquiring about what was going on.
The cheetah looked forward and huffed. "Welcome to your first 'welcome to hell' speech Slick. I'd wish for some popcorn, but it would likely be a raisin bucket instead…"
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TO: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com
FROM: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt
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Holy…
I thought kibble was a myth!
And a raisin bar?
I've always campaigned against capital punishment, but I think that a dishonourable exception should be made for the madman who created that.
What happened next?
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TO: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt
FROM: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com
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What comes next?
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The welcome to hell speech.
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It's not a trope.
It's real.
The warden drops down to grace you with his presence.
The speech I most remember was more a hurricane of spit and screams, rather than anything coherent.
It doesn't help that I wasn't that well versed in the language.
Then again, I got some things.
A knee in the groin is fairly universal, is it not?
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Again, the objective is to humiliate. To depress. To make you feel small and worthless and pointless. You've already been shaken down and your spirit somewhat shattered.
Many of them try to spin a thread of hope. A path to redemption. They exaggerate the difficulty and the pain. They make it seem like a road paved with razors that you must crawl along to have a hope of getting out.
Again, making you feel small.
Or, specifically, subservient.
They want you to crawl. They want to beg. They wanted to break you, and now that you are broken they want to build themselves up as this rock that you have to throw yourself at. Grip without thought. Hold on for dear life to as the storm rages around you.
The warden, and the authority, is all that matters. You are its slave. Its serf. Its servant and its worshiper.
I think they enjoy it. The power, the sight of seeing larger mammals than them, and far more dangerous ones, lay themselves out prostrate. It makes them feel big. Makes them feel strong and validated.
I think it makes them feel like predators.
Or, at least, what they think predators always feel like.
I don't think there is a warden in the whole world who truly believes in redemption. In goodness. In kindness, rehabilitation, fairness, equality…
I think that the one Nick faced was probably the worst of the worst. He wouldn't have bothered with talk about a path to salvation. He'd tell Nick straight up that he wanted him to suffer. To go mad. To feel pain and misery that would consume him years before his relief.
After all, given the length of time and dedication needed to get to that role, what kind of mammal would warden Nigel Erius truly be, other than some sadist?
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Nick and the others silently look on as a small group of guards marched out onto the stage. Rhino's, Elephants, Hippo's and a variety of other megafauna. He tilted his head somewhat, wondering where the warden actually was, until he spotted a large lectern being wheeled out. It was already confusing, and got far more so as he spotted two round grey furry ears emerge from over the edge of the moveable pulpit.
"I was no expecting that," the civet muttered, while the cheetah had another grin on his muzzle.
"The plus side of going back into this block is I get to see your reaction when you see who the warden is," he said.
The species of the warden revealed itself to the entire crowd, with even the hardened prey thugs whispering slightly at the sight. Rounded grey ears were perched on top of a rounded grey face. Two rounded and tired eyes, bloodshot with age, looked over them all and blinked. The nose that emerged from his brow was grey, and grew larger as it curled down to his mouth. It twitched and sniffed, while a semi-toothless jaw chewed imaginary leaves slowly but surely. Pulling out a small microphone with one of his small three fingered and double thumbed paws, he flicked it on with a claw and coughed, clearing his throat.
"I understand," he said slowly, his outback accent very apparent. "I understand that this is not what many of you are expecting. You expected some hardened, tough and bitter old prey mammal. Someone, in appearance, like my guards… I am quite different."
Nick nodded, unable to help himself thinking that the warden could say that again. Out of all the mammals he was expecting to own his tail, or what was left of it, for the next two decades, a Koala was not one of them.
"G'day... My name is Warden Nigel Erius," he introduced. "I moved to Zootopia's Outback Island, from a small village on the coast of Eastern Outback proper, when the Zootopia development corporation finished it over fifty years ago. I have seen and experienced a lot of things in my seventy years on this planet."
There was a pause, a hinge of pain and regret coming into his voice, though he carried on regardless. "A lot of things I will not talk about, bar the fact that they gave me a unique perspective. I know what it is like to be under the control of evil… others. To be at their mercy. To be subjected to their humiliation, and their sadism. I entered the prison services because I believed that these could be a place for change and improvement. For redemption. And not a place for needless cruelty and hatred, like that I suffered."
Nick blinked a few times, looking at the warden and then back at Caprey. He squinted harshly, scoffing slightly at the words being spoken out. The warden carried on regardless.
"If you have worries. Come to me. Speak to me. Let me help you. I make no mistake of ignoring the fact that some of you will be in here for crimes that you did not commit. If you are willing to explain yourselves, I see no issue in giving you the resources that I can to pursue the proof of your innocence. Many of you are in here for crimes you committed due to it being the best way for you to make a living. Talk to me, and I can offer you an education. A chance to improve. Some of you will be in for truly evil things, and if I have the time I am happy to talk to you about them. Sometimes… oh-so very rarely, someone is in here for a good thing they did…"
Nick bit his lip slightly as he noticed an unusual number of eyes turning, training themselves onto him. He looked up at the warden, who's eyes were trained down on his lectern. He picked up a sheet of paper with one paw and turned it over, before looking up again.
"If you are one of those, and we speak, I may just grow to call you a friend in the future."
"Let's see," Nick whispered, as a scowl appeared on the warden's muzzle.
"I will, however, not let my kindness be taken advantage on," he warned. "Many of you will beg of your terrible lives and abuse… but I will slice through any lies to the truth like a hot knife through vegemite. I have seen shit that some of you c-s can't imagine! Come to me with your tragic backstory? I'll listen to it, but if you want to use it like a crutch, rather than learning to use your legs, I'll kick it out from beneath you and let you crawl on your own path to redemption. I may be old, but I am not a fool. Treat me as such, and any help coming from me will be gone. Just remember who's holding out the eucalyptus branch here, you all got that?"
"Yes sir," the crowd murmured in agreement.
Nigel nodded, smiled, and spoke. "Good. Then, I hope the rest of this day goes smoothly for you. You'll all be rough, shaken up. Many by rules and regulations that I have objected to, but am forced to comply with. Some of you, I don't doubt, deserve said regulations but didn't receive them… such is the unfairness of this world. Regardless, I'll leave it to my chief guard, Byron Caprey, to show you to your cells. I have… paperwork, and other things, to deal with. I wish you all a good rest. You have a long road to redemption starting tomorrow, so you'll need it."
He shuffled his papers and stepped backward, his microphone catching the odd groan as he lowered himself. Nick, those at his table, the other prisoners and even the guards watched on in awkward silence as he reached the stage bottom, before turning to make his way out. Peering over, Nick saw him walk off, with slumped shoulders and a stop-start gait, and then out a waiting door.
Caprey looked left and right, trotted over to the door, and tested the handle.
He grinned slightly, as did several other guards, before marching back to the centre stage. He grabbed Warden Erius' lectern and pushed it harshly off to the side, grabbing the microphone as it rolled away. Hitting it a few times with his hoof and checking it, he chuckled his angry laugh and spoke up.
"Ther waaa'rden, folks…" he announced. "What a load of trash… I bet he has some racoon in him!"
Several of the other guards looked away, while others grinned too. Nick felt his ears droop down, knowing that he was about to get caught in the strings that were attached to the hope that the warden had given him.
"I bet he thinks he's sooo…. Sooo…. Gooood! 'Cause he spent a few years in a juvie or something! Well, he can drop the c word all he wants, he's still a yellow bellied coward! He offers you hope! He needs to be in charge to do that…"
"He's the warden though…" someone said. Nick looked over to another table, where an antelope of some kind already seemed to be regretting his mistake. Caprey turned to look at him, and waved to some of the guards behind him. A few loyal ones marched out, and grabbed the hands the inmate had raised. They dragged him forward, up to the edge of the stage, where he looked up at Caprey like a drowning mammal would at someone holding a life preserver.
"Make… No…. Mistake…" the goat growled, before delivering a sharp kick to the antelope's head. Everyone flinched back at the sound of bone snapping, as the larger mammal was knocked out cold. Caprey shook his head and waved down, watching as his victim dropped into a pile on the floor. He turned up, grabbed his microphone and bellowed out. "Tha' waaa'rden will believe it was a fall tha' did tha'! Why? 'Cause he's a senile old fool who believes in 'the goodness of the soul'," he preached, his drawling accent cutting off for the last bit as he badly imitated the warden's own outback tang. "I am the one who runs ther show and what I say goes! You filth learn this now. I AM YOUR GOD! Wha… am I?"
"Our god," Nick, and everyone else parroted back.
Caprey snorted, and scanned around, his eyes landing on the pred table. "Naaaa' good enough…" he half snarled, half bleated. "'Specially from ther chomper filth!"
He pulled out his collar remote, and Nick and the others flinched, knowing what was coming.
They were still not ready for it when it came.
A flash of lightning through their necks, they bent down and held in their screams as the shocks surged through them. Nick convulsed over, only realising that his muzzle was buried in his kibble bowl when the shock ended and he opened his eyes. Slowly sitting up, he blinked, rubbing off some of the 'food' that had stuck to his fur. He looked around at the others, all shocked, none more so than the cheetah.
Caprey laughed. He laughed so hard and long he bent over, hoofs on knees, and breathed in just so he could laugh some more. Nick gulped as he finished, and spoke out.
"Unlike ther chomper lover warden, I want you filth to know yer place! Even the biggest scum prey deserve far less than that! You'll lick my ass clean unless I tell yer not too! Tha's yer place. I'll make yer learn it scum. 'Specially tha' pelt there…"
Nick looked up at Caprey and their eyes locked for a second, before the goat turned away from him. Motioning to a guard with a clipboard, he began speaking in a far more formal tone, even going as far to mostly suppress his accent.
"We will call out yer number! You'll be escorted, in silence, to yer cellblock and cell. First batch?"
The guard called out a set of eight numbers, and eight mammals stood up. Nick, doublechecking his number, stayed down as he watched them march out the door. Another eight mammals, Nick and six of the predators stayed down, though a burly badger stood up and walked out. Now six, all prey. It carried on again and again and again. Finally, nine mammals were left.
Six prey and three preds.
Nick, the cheetah and the civet.
Nick heard their numbers being called out, and waved goodbye as they, and the other prey, were led off.
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It was just Nick and half a dozen remaining guards. Five of them were the ones who'd grinned the most as they watched Caprey shout and bully. The final one was the goat himself, who shook his head as he walked up to Nick. "Just you 'un me, pelt!" he said, grabbing his truncheon and beating it into his hoof menacingly.
Nick closed his eyes and breathed in and out.
His collar was orange.
Caprey slowly began to move around Nick. Carefully circling, eyes always fixed on him. A grin when he shot a glimpse at the ruin of Nick's tail, or other cuts from his previous work. He slowly got closer, the beating of his truncheon getting harder and faster.
Nick gulped as he stopped, extending it out to lightly touch the tip of the fox's chin.
"There are so many ways I could hurt you," he snarled. "So many, but all ways ther fool of a waaa'rden might pick up on… I have other plans fer you, though. A surprise, fer later, and something I think will really hurt yer right now…" He looked over at another guard, a burly ram, and waved him forward.
"My names Ramched," he said. "Do you know where I used to work?"
"No," Nick replied, immediately winching as Caprey whacked him hard in the gut.
Ramched didn't give him time to respond, instead walking forward and grabbing his muzzle tight. He pulled it up and looked deep into his eyes. Sheep met fox and fox met sheep, and the sheep spoke. "The ultimate security section. Do you know how many inmates are housed there?"
Nick shook his head, unable to say anything as the vice like grip on his mouth tightened.
"Just over a hundred," the ram said, "including forty or so preds, in there for collar key theft…"
Nick's ears dropped, his eyes widening as his collar went up to red. His legs kicking out, he fell down into his chair, Ramched throwing his muzzle down onto the table as he did so. His head slammed into its edge, and he shook it as he recovered, Caprey laughing.
"I think ther pelt is getting it!"
"You were clever, what with your medical license loophole," Ramched said. "Cleverer than your dumb rutting parents. Trying to steal it to go on their rampage…"
"Tell him about the faaa'ther!"
"Your dad couldn't cope you know," the ram teased.
Nick tried to turn to face him, only to feel hard hooves plant down on him and force his head back down onto the table. His teeth gritted, his collar beginning to fizzle as he barely kept himself contained, he listened on, unable not to.
"I think his faulty genes… and his savage urges… they built up. They bubbled to the surface, till he started biting! Not the guards though, we were too careful for that to happen. He was so hungry for flesh he began to eat himself! Biting and chewing, and trying to do so even when fellow guards tried to restrain him. His arms looked like the moon, bare and raw and covered in scars. He was in a muzzle for years, before he 'recovered'. A muzzle, and a straightjacket, and tied down tight to a gurney, legs, arms chest and all. Of course, he couldn't use a toilet like that or eat, so three times a day someone like me was in to change him and force some food down his gullet. I was even shaving his ass, before we just used a UV light to remove the fur around there permanently. And how he acted… Twitching and groaning and faking his tears. Trying to chomp on anything, and getting shocked and shocked and shocked for his trouble…"
Ramched paused, laughing as he pointed down at Nick. "Just like you, now! Like father, like son!"
Looking up, his neck screaming in pain and his vision clouded in tears, Nick spat out a response. "Lies…"
The ram paused.
"We wanted to run away…" Nick said, sobbing slightly. "To escape mammals like you. To live our lives alone and free… He was the kindest, greatest mammal I knew. And don't you dare try and foul his memory. And don't you dare make up lies about how he's doing to hurt me."
Nick winced as he saw Caprey raise up his truncheon, but the hit never came. Opening his eyes, he saw Ramched holding his hoof out to stop him. The ram smiled slightly, walking back up to Nick. "I heard he relapsed recently. He'd been doing so well he'd been back in a normal cell for a few years, with a bed and toilet and everything. They'd given him books, and a TV. Apparently, it wasn't long after your arrest, he started biting and chewing and gnawing… I'd transferred out of there a long while back, but I still have a few friends there. I have a present for you…"
As he said it, he brought out a small plastic bag with red and grey fur clippings inside. Opening it up, he pushed it over Nick's nose and watched as the fox sniffed it in.
His collar went red, and he shook as a shock washed over him.
"'Nuff of all tha'," Caprey slurred. "Get him up. I wanna show him his new home."
Hooves pulling him up, Nick stumbled onto his feet and began marching forward with his entourage. His feet went in front of each other mindlessly, as his mind was elsewhere. The smell of the fur kept on replaying on and on in his mind, as he tried to keep it fresh in his memory. It slipped out like sand in his paws, slowly loosing focus and definition, and he wished he could keep them. Smell them. Analyse them.
He was thinking back to the precious memories he had of his youth. Of the warm and smiling memory of his father. Trying to remember what he smelled like, and match it to the smell in the fur. His memory of his father was weak, his memory of his scent far worse. The fur had smelt of generic fox more than anything, with a stench of pain and sorrow and age and grief. It had smelt like a dead fox walking.
But there was a terrible hint, a whisper in a loud room, of something familiar. Something beautiful.
It could just be from any fox.
It could be from his father.
The possibility of the latter, and the possibility that parts of what the ram had said was true, gnawed at him painfully as they carried on down corridor and corridor.
Ever onwards, towards the cellblock.
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TO: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt
FROM: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com
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There is one more thing Melony.
The guards can be hell. The warden can be hell…
But fellow prisoners, the ones who know more about what you're going through than anyone else, can absolutely redefine what hell is.
You're in constant contact with them, and if they choose to lessen the pain of their stay by establishing dominance over you then there's little to nothing you can do about it.
I've long campaigned for strict sized based prisoner segregation because of the damage that larger prisoners can do to smaller ones. They draw a line using their size and physical imposition trapping you within.
Then they chisel away at your sanity and self-worth bit by bit by bit.
Resistance is futile. Standing up for yourself is impossible. You breaking under their will is inevitable.
You'll lose yourself to them and it'll take a miracle to put yourself back together, even after they've left.
From his letters, and what we've tracked down, Nicholas Wilde went through this. The guards, currying favour and tweaking with records, were able to find the one mammal who would cause Nick more harm and pain and suffering than any other, and place them together in a cell. This was not a mere accident. This was deliberate and cruel beyond belief.
In his letters he talks about how he was broken and force to accept the cruelty and chains of the prey oppression, for a while almost learning to love them.
I just wonder how badly he was shocked when he learned who he'd be bunking with.
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Stepping out into a cell block, Nick looked up and gulped. It was tall and thin, widest behind him and narrow at the far end, where a tall window let in light from the internal exercise yard. A large control and observation tower stood there, looking out at the tiers of cell blocks on either side. They rose up in four or so levels, one above the other, their access terraces sealed off from the central void via metal grating. Nick noted that that must be to keep the prisoners from jumping off, while letting tranquiliser darts and bullets in.
"I've got a surprise fer you…" Caprey said, chuckling cruelly.
Nick stayed silent as they reached one of the staircases. Walking up it, they began pacing the tiers of cells. Heavy steel doors remained open, but the inmates were locked in still via the transparent plastic doors. They looked out, eyes focussing on them. Green lights of collars seemed to shine out of far more doors than Nick had expected from his intakes distribution, which had been roughly in line with the general population. Carrying up another flight of stairs and turning off it, Nick guessed that, being preds, they all got longer sentences than their prey counterparts. Still, prey outnumbered preds five to one here and with men like Caprey in charge, Nick knew where the power really lay.
They halted next to a door and the goat, a sickening smile on his face, walked forward and knocked on the door. "Oh sweety," he cooed, "guess what I've brought!"
Nick tilted his head as a figure lumbered to life on the bottom bunk of the cell, slowly rising up. He turned to face it, and he felt his body turn to ice.
"No…" he whispered, before falling to the ground, screaming as his collar shocked him, "NO!"
"Yes," Caprey replied. "'E hasn't taken ther chop yet, so he's staying here… Lucky you!"
Nick's back hit the railing, though his legs still tried to scramble backwards. His bottom lip trembling, arms shaking, he spasmed to the ground as another shock hit him. "No…" he cried, tears of fear beginning to flow from his eyes.
Caprey motioned to two of his fellow guards, who picked Nick up, one arm each. He began begging and pleading, scrabbling backwards as he did so. His collar triggered again, and again, but it had no effect. "Pleeeassse…. I'll do anything! I'll…"
Shut off by another shock, the fox was dragged forward, wailing like a kit as the door to his cell was opened. He was thrown in, landing hard on his muzzle. He fought through the pain of his landing, getting up and turning, racing towards the door. He leapt into it, only to bounce off painfully.
Back up, he pounded and pounded, crying and shocking himself until he collapsed into a defeated, sobbing heap on the ground.
He didn't notice as a huge hand knelt down and grabbed his tail, before tightly pulling back. He still cried as he was lifted off the floor, only noticing what else was going on when a face that would haunt him for the rest of his life appeared, upside down in his vision. He looked on at it, feeling terrified and sick and absolutely at its mercy.
It just smiled, the movement curling its wrinkle grey skin upwards and lifting her horn, before speaking in a voice similar to a little girl being reunited with a beloved doll.
"GEORGINA!"
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AN: So, this was the point where I finished the story for NaMoWriZo. With the fanfic version fully updated, and the A03 version fully proofed and cleaned up, it's on to the new chapters.
I plan to start publishing them in a week's time, with updates every wednesday. I pulled this down from twice weekly updates as the rate of fixing up my draft new chapters have been slow (I've been working on them a fair bit, tweaking them up).
As a consolation though, I thought I'd finally get around to publishing the non-dark version of evacuated. It'll likely have tuesday updates, and the chapters are smaller and thus take less time to proof.
Anyway, thanks so much for being patient, and the patience will be rewarded very soon.