After twenty-four hours in the institute, Emerald had learned a lot about prison. Too much, in fact. Anything learned about prison in prison was too much. Unfortunately, the law system had yet to realize their mistake in keeping her there, so Emerald had to live with that information freely swirling in her head has she crawled stiffly into bed.
Emerald also got to live with the knowledge that she was about to turn as insane as the other women inhabiting the prison, thanks to her being kept up every moment of the gods-forsaken night because of the damn leaky pipe that consistently dripped and whoever the hell decided to spend their night rapping their knuckles on the wall. Emerald would love to take those knuckles and smash every last one of them in with a sledgehammer—
Emerald sucked in a deep breath in attempt to steady herself. She laid like that for a few minutes, trying to breathe herself into calmness. Away from the reality she was plagued with. Her flowing mind grasped the dripping of the pipe, the patterned plop noises forming a beat and basis for a melody, which the rapping added to.
Six prison doors stood on stage. Behind each was a woman clad in differing black lingerie.
"Bull."
"Tock."
"Not me."
"Hm."
"Sister."
"And now," Xiong's voice rang from the backstage, "the six merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail in their rendition of: the Cell Block Tango."
That was it, a tango. Smooth and sultry, a dance of pure, provocative art. Every step needed to be done with precision and passion.
"Pun."
The rapping turned into a drumline.
"Bull."
"Tock."
"Not me."
"Hm."
"Sister."
Trumpets sounded. The whispering foreplay soon became violent declarations.
"Pun!"
"Bull!"
"Tock!"
"Not me!"
"Hm."
"Sister!"
"Pun!"
"Bull!"
"Tock!"
"Not me!"
"Hm."
"Sister!"
In harmony they forced out the next verse. Their heels stomped against the wooden stage to the beat.
"He had it coming. He had it coming. He only had himself to blame. If you had been there! If you had seen it!"
Sienna Khan leaned out between the bars. "I bet you you would have done the same!"
The women all continued chanting these lines as one of them stepped out of her cage to begin a partnered dance with a man who had arisen from bellow stage.
"Looks like we have some new skin." Emerald's first two wake-up calls of the morning were to be expected in her new environment: screaming guards telling her to get up and cell doors being clunkily slid open. Emerald didn't think any of the cell mates would actually speak to her. She just thought they were all insane and mute, like Neo.
This woman was definitely not mute, but the insane part was still in question. The way she presented herself made her come off numb to her location and the matters in which she got there. Despite her blazing red eyes, everything about her seemed frigid like an iceberg. "Good luck trying to learn how things work around here. You'll probably end up with a few scars, that's how you learn. Right?"
Emerald felt like she had to nod her agreeance.
"Right. Walk with me, maybe if I'm generous I might teach you something." The strange woman strut past Emerald and towards the stairs, unkept ebony hair flitting behind her.
With perfectly curled and loosened hair swaying as she danced with her blonde partner, the woman began to speak. Her voice balanced perfectly on the line between cold and sexy.
"Do you ever have these little habits that get you down? Like: Taiyang. Tai enjoyed telling these insufferable puns. So, one day I come home and I'm looking for a little bit of sympathy, and all Tai could say to that is 'look up honey, at least you're not that guy whose left side was cut off. He's all right now, but still.' So let's just say after that I gave him a little knife-changing experience."
She punctuated her sentence by pulling a long, red ribbon out of the dancer's chest. She joined in with the other women, this time their voices boomed.
"He had it coming. He had it coming. He only had himself to blame. If you had been there! If you had heard it! I bet you you would have done the same!"
As the first woman and her partner continued to dance, ribbon entwined in their hands, another stepped out, repeating the same process as the first.
After already undergoing one interaction that day, Emerald decided she wanted to figure out the proper manners, if you could call them that, for prison. So, before roles for the day were assigned, Emerald found herself sitting in plain sight and eavesdropping on a conversation between some of the prisoners. It was really just casual banter, the kind of things you would overhear in any club in downtown. Until a newcomer opened with "So how'd you guys get here?"
That didn't please any of the women.
Most scoffed, some yelled, one was on the verge of clocking the stranger. When that happened, a cigarette-wielding woman the others referred to as either 'Khan' or 'Sienna,' stepped into the middle of it. After snapping everyone out of their previous ill-natured moods, she offered up a story of her own accord.
The two new people began their dance: one a gorgeous woman with chocolatey skin, the other a man with flaming hair. The woman seemed to weave in between the man's limbs like a silken thread as she spoke.
"I met Adam Taurus in Saltlake City when I was in a tough place. He told me he was single, and we hit it off right away. He managed to make me feel like one of the most special women on the planet. Anyways, we moved in together. He started getting really adamite about this group thing he was in, and I supported him thinking everything was all right. Then I found, single he told me? Yeah, total bull. Turns out he had six other recruits like me for this little tribe he started. Anyways, he got home, and I made the sorrowful discovery the human body cannot survive for long pumped full of lead." She spun out of his reach, a red ribbon twirling along with her.
"He had it coming! He had it coming! He took a flower in its prime! And then he used it, and he abused it! It was a murder, but not a crime!"
The next two people came out, circling each other like wild beasts ready for a fight.
Emerald had started to suspect all the others in jail were like her. Misunderstood. That they needed a chance for the higher-ups to see the corners they were backed into. Then she was assigned laundry for the day alongside a small squadron of women. Settled directly across the small station was proof Emerald was wrong.
The woman's freckle-dotted, olive face remained passive as she scrubbed each piece of material as if the dirt of hell itself coated the cloth. She never joined in any of the conversations between the other station-workers. Instead the stranger would occasionally burst into a short fit of giggles when the talk around her was anything but humorous. After a long space between the maniacal sounds, Emerald was hoping the woman was finished. Instead, the inmate's face twisted into a grin that made it clear how sharp and impish her face really was. She leaned over the washing station, staring Emerald dead in the eye.
"Want to know why I'm here?"
"My husband and I owned a home-run clock making and fixing business. Constant noise would fill our home, so when my honey accused me of screwing around with a customer, he had to yell it all. Sometimes I'd ask him to repeat himself because I couldn't hear his wild threats. Wild, that's the word for him. He kept on ranting and raving like a complete madman. He finally stopped when an alarm clock somehow fell on his head. It fell on his head ten whole times."
"If you had been there! If you had seen it! I bet you you would have done the same."
At the end of the day, some of the women gathered together to play a game of poker. Emerald didn't join, but she once again observed. All of the women used actual cash. When a blonde came over and asked to join, Sienna, the dealer, curtly refused. The players explained nearly in unison they didn't want Robyn, the blonde, joining because she bet only with buttons.
The newcomer simply stated in reply: "I use these because I don't want to participate in the corruption of our system." Everyone else at the game groaned.
The music turned soft as Robyn stepped out to instead perform a ballet. The other women and their partners freeze.
"It was Jacques Schnee. For years I've been protesting and bringing light to the disgusting things him and his company do. He knows I've been bringing the general public against him, it's no surprise he'd frame me for something as drastic as murder. Even with our differing opinions, I genuinely respected Ironwood and would never imagine doing anything like that. In fact, I couldn't have murdered him because I was at a protest at the time his corpse was suspiciously found still warm by one of Jacques' own maids. It wasn't me."
The music went silent.
"Noted," Sienna drawled while whipping cards across the table. "Hey, Neo, isn't that your excuse too?"
After drawing her cards towards her, Neo cleared her throat, made a slight humming noise, and began to sign.
The music was slowly coming back to life. While a man and woman held both of her hips from behind and stood on the stage with her, Neo rapid-fire signed to the audience. When she was done, Sienna yelled from across the stage.
"Did you do it though?"
Neo shrugged, smirking, while two ribbons spilled out from each of her hands. The music rose back with a crescendo.
"They had it coming! They had it coming! The had it coming all along. We didn't do it, but if we done it, how could you tell us that we were wrong? They had it coming! They had it coming! They took a flower in its prime. And then they used it, and they abused it! How could you tell us that we were wrong?"
Emerald was standing before the beaten bathroom glass, washing down her arms, neck, and face before lights out. The bathroom was packed, so it wasn't until she received a sharp smack in the shoulder that she even noticed someone was talking to her. Emerald whipped around to be met with sharp, pale green eyes that communicated the woman in front of her could care less if her actions could be seen as hostile.
"I asked if that sink had hot water."
"Oh, yeah. It does," Emerald said it triumphantly, like the girl couldn't never hope to compete.
"Nice. I'm Melanie by the way." Melanie pushed her way in front of the sink Emerald was using. Leaving just enough room for Emerald to squeeze around her and access the running water, the newcomer washed herself. Emerald begrudgingly joined her, not wanting to leave un-rinsed soap on her dark skin. "My sister and I didn't get much hot water in our measly apartment, so when we did we shared it like this. Didn't even tell her husband about it," the sink-stealer commented, still scrubbing. "But that was all before I was sent here."
The cells were emptied as the last woman stepped out. She dragged her hands along her partner, stopping to perch over his shoulder.
"My sister Miltia loved her husband more than anyone, not even I, could ever know. They both were mad about art, and it didn't take long for her to move in with him, with me in tow. Of course, he never was happy about that. Until one day, with my sister gone from home, he tried to seduce me. I'm sure he would've claimed he thought I was Miltia, but he never got the chance. He would've called what happened a clash of artistic perspectives. He saw himself as alive," Melanie reached into the front of his shirt, "and I saw him dead."
Red ribbons flew about the stage as the six women charged forth. The entire back wall of the stage opened to reveal more cells with more women. All sang clearly.
"The dirty bum, bum, bum, bum, bum! The dirty bum, bum, bum, bum, bum! They had it coming, they had it coming! They had it coming all along! Because if they used us, then they abused us! How could you tell us that we were wrong? He had it coming, he had it coming! He only had himself to blame! If you had been there, if you had heard it! I bet you you would have done the same!"
As the climax slowed down, the seven woman were herded back into their cells.
"He's all right—"
"Total bull—"
"Ten whole times—"
"It was Jacques Schnee—"
"A clash of artistic perspectives—"
"Will you shut up over there?" Raven Branwen hollered through the concrete walls, causing Emerald to flinch. As soon as Emerald's neighbour was done yelling, the rapping on the walls grew louder. Emerald adjusted her arms so they wrapped around her head and blocked out only a little noise. She could, however, still hear the last of the cell doors shuddering shut for the night as she laid there silently.
