AN: I didn't mean to do it, but I did. Oh well. Here goes nothing.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Carol stood in line, directly behind one inmate while another was directly behind her, to wait to be herded into the showers. A handful at a time, they were herded in, given a few minutes to bathe—five if the person was feeling generous, and they were herded out. Stripped entirely naked, like everyone else, she didn't even bother to cover herself any longer.
When she'd been "captured," as they liked to call it, she'd lost the last bit of modesty that she had. Ironically, when she was out there? She might have had a little less modesty than her life in the old world had seen her with, but she had far more than she had in here. None of them had anything like privacy now. Their deepest, darkest, and, sometimes, most disgusting secrets were always on display for everyone else.
"Let's get it moving, bitches!" Officer Mills' voice boomed out from just beyond Carol's line of sight where the line curved slightly to go into the bathroom door.
Mills wouldn't allow them five minutes. If they were lucky, they'd get three. He was one of the officers that seemed to truly believe that they weren't human and that, or at least that they weren't human any longer.
Three or four people ahead of her, Carol heard the two quick yips and the longer, echoing howl issued by Andrea. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at it, but the sound of a few giggles echoed through some of the other women.
"LC456F, you've got two flags," Mills warned.
"Please sir, may I have some more?" Andrea's voice responded back, the sound of her laughter following after it. She wouldn't get flagged for the joke, but she needed to be careful. Mills was known for flagging people on bogus offences, so giving him real ammunition to work with was dangerous, especially if the cards were already not in your favor.
The line finally chugged forward. The last group that had been in the showers was being taken out the other door. Just like a traffic jam at a red light, as soon as the light turned green they went from full stop to full motion. Carol followed the line into the bathroom and stood just outside the shower stall that would be hers. Mills walked down the line and each woman, as she was required to do, held her hands out to the side and did a full turn before he excused her to enter the shower and turn on the spray of water.
Soap was always in there and that's all there was. A prisoner for not knowing how to live and Carol knew that there were more luxuries to be had at bath time. Of the belongings on her at the time of her capture, Carol had even had at least one razor, a cake of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and a washrag.
Now? She had none of those, but she had the government to thank for taking her out of her savage existence and returning her, since she wasn't fit for society, at least to something resembling a domesticated life.
Mills barked the command that showers were over before Carol had fully finished rinsing off the soap residue. She dropped the bar back in the basket for the next person and quickly splashed water on the parts of her body that she knew by now would protest the left behind reside and then she emerged with the others to stand by the shower door and wait as Mills handed out the towels that were barely larger than the washcloths they weren't allowed and scratched like scrubbing pads.
It was just for drying. It offered no coverage. Carol scrubbed herself dry, just as everyone else did, and then she awaited the command to fall in line. She heard Mills bellow out an order to the women that would follow them and she walked in line out the back exit of the bathroom and down the corridor that would return them safely to their bunks for the night.
When they were in their space, Carol put on the dingy cotton shirt that she called her night-shirt and didn't bother with anything else. She got into her bed and tucked an arm under her pillow. They would have only ten or fifteen minutes until lights were out for the night. It would be just enough time to return everyone to their bunks. They were free to stay up as long as they wanted, of course, but they'd have to do it in the darkness. Nobody told them when to sleep, only when they were no longer allowed the light.
"I have to piss," someone said. Carol couldn't readily identify who because their words barely came out louder than a whisper.
"You'll have to wait now," someone else responded. Jade maybe. It was hard to say. "Learn to piss in the shower, like everybody else."
"Go after lights out," Carol said, louder than either of the two women that were speaking. "They won't care. You'll get flagged if you go to sleep and wet the bed."
Nobody responded to her. It was fine. She didn't need a response. Whoever it was, though, would do just what she suggested. They'd wait until lights out and then they'd stumble through the darkness, up the corridor, and they'd find the bathroom. It was probably Jade. She was newer to Region Thirty Three. She hadn't learned the ropes yet. Every new facility was different and every one had their own way of doing things. She'd learn it soon enough.
For animals, they all learned fairly quickly. If they didn't? They suffered the consequences.
He was new too. Daryl. That's what he'd said his name was.
Carol wasn't entirely sure, out of the dozen new inmates that came in, why she'd asked him to eat with her. Maybe it was because she felt sorry for him, sitting and eating alone. Maybe it was because she remembered what it had been like when she'd first come into captivity and she remembered each transfer after that.
She didn't like the idea of anyone being alone. Animals or not, they were social animals. They needed each other to live. Animals or not, they had feelings.
Carol had asked him to eat with her and her friends because she didn't think anyone should have to be alone. Not if they didn't want to be.
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The cots at Region Thirty Three were at least ten times more comfortable than the ones at Mobile Park where Daryl had been last. It hadn't really been called Mobile Park, of course, but that's what all the inmates called it because whenever they got in new people they had to do their early time in the mobile units that were oddly packed into the property to make more room for "storage" of warm bodies. The units were hot all the time. In theory that would be desirable in the winter, but in practice it wasn't. The heat in the units was just too damn hot. It came from too many bodies being trapped inside an oversized tin can that lacked ventilation. The things smelled like shit, too, and once one man started hurling his guts out it was a bad damn night for everyone else.
Region Thirty Three, though? It was nice. The mattress on Daryl's cot was every bit as comfortable as he remembered any bed being that he'd been left to call his own. The springs on the thing didn't squeak at all when he rolled.
That was a good thing, too. Everyone knew that a half-docile wild, squeaking their way through the system, would kill you for less than disturbing their sleep—and that was just with the weapons that God had given them. Most of them, after all, had teeth and their claws, if not chewed down regularly enough, were longer than many would find desirable.
Of course, everyone knew there was no such thing as a real docile, either. That's why they had to be watched—make sure that they didn't go wild again. Really it was just to make sure that they kept, tight under lock and key, the part of themselves that was there and that had, if they were honest, always been there.
It seemed that everybody in his bunk was a long time resident of the place. He didn't know where those who had gotten off the bus with him had gone, but they hadn't come with him. Of course, there were probably a number of bunks—it just turned out that this one was his.
It also seemed that nobody here was too quick to introduce themselves. They had, from what Daryl could tell, their own little social groups. It was a whole different ballgame than Mobile Park or even Sesame Street where, as soon as they'd been sorted, they were put in two by two cells. Your cellmate was, if not your friend, the only connection you had to anyone who might even admit having had the same kind of life that you had once had—whether it was when you were wild or before that.
Here? People seemed to have a lot more people. People seemed to know each other's names.
While he was waiting for the lights to go out, Daryl sat on his bunk and watched the others who were doing whatever they wanted to do for their last little bit of time with electricity. There were a couple of books. There was a game of what appeared to be poker taking place.
"Hey—where you coming from?"
Daryl jumped because he'd been looking in the opposite direction of the man that approached him. This was the kind of place where you had to watch your back and your front at all times. It wasn't just a case of trouble possibly breaking out in common areas. Now every area was a common area.
Still, the black man standing near him didn't seem to be seeking trouble. He looked genuinely curious. He was breaking the ice for Daryl.
Daryl cleared his throat.
"Mobile Park," Daryl said.
The man hummed and nodded his head, smiling like someone who just recognized the name of their home town.
"You come from there?" Daryl asked.
The man invited himself to sit on Daryl's bunk.
"No, man," he said. "Just—we get a lot from there. Come in bunches. Ten at the least."
"Think I counted fourteen yesterday," Daryl said.
The man smiled.
"Then I'd say you can count pretty high," he said. Daryl could tell, immediately, from his tone of voice, that the man was teasing him.
"What's your name?" Daryl asked.
"Mobile Park they deal in numbers or names?" The man asked.
"Numbers," Daryl said. "But—I don't like calling nobody by no damn number. You had a mama once. Come from somewhere. She give you a name. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather know what she give you than what they did."
"Theodore," the man said. "But—my mama was just about the only one who called me that. She's dead, so nobody calls me that now. It's T-Dog to everybody else."
"Daryl," Daryl offered. "You got people? Out there? In here?"
T-Dog furrowed his brow at Daryl.
"You mean family?" T-Dog asked.
Daryl shrugged.
"Or—a wife? Friends? Hell...I don't know. I was just trying to make conversation. I'm outta shit to talk about already," Daryl said.
T-Dog laughed at that.
"I'm sure you got more than enough to say," T-Dog said. "But your first night isn't the night for it. I had a—Jacqui out there."
"She die wild or get captured?" Daryl asked.
T-Dog hummed, but apparently the conversation was enough to make him uncomfortable because he stood up and abandoned his position on Daryl's bed.
"It's all about the same," T-Dog said. "Get ready for bed. Once the lights go out, you might get flagged if some asshole's watching the halls."
"Flagged?" Daryl asked.
But T-Dog was already walking away, back toward whichever bed he'd come from.
"Flagged," he called back. "All you need to know is you don't want to be flagged. It's like—a strike."
Daryl understood strikes. He understood strikes and stripes and tags and everything else he'd heard at the places he'd been. And now, he understood, his reality here was keeping his head down and hoping to avoid the flags.
He got into bed right away, not really needing anything else for the night anyway. He liked the routine of the prisons and he enjoyed, honestly, being told what time to go to bed because he'd always done a shitty job of figuring it out for himself before all this. At most of these places? He was in bed early enough to feel pretty good when they woke them, and tomorrow he had reason to believe he might want to be in the best kind of mood that any wild-turned-docile could muster.
