AncilI was led through the white corridors of the Red House handcuffed and poked from behind with pitchforks. The pricks from the pointy pitchforks had its toll on my back but my face remained as stern as ever despite the sudden jerks of pain. The world was going to hell and the physical pain was nothing in comparison to the emotional turmoil now and about to come.
The blue devils led me through a wall then down a wooden staircase that was a big change in environment from the previous white futuristic room. The lights flickered with an annoying buzzing sound. They seemed barely able to stay on. The deathly smell of the place was more than just horrid, but also somehow intoxicating. The smell alone caused my head to spin and my eyes to water, probably bleed. It was hard to imagine that there were actually people in the room. I heard constant coughs coming out of the jail cells that lined the room. The cells weren’t locked with metal gates but instead with a green force field. The only furnishings inside was a toilet, a stool, a makeshift gallow and a hang rope. The hang rope didn’t seem forced on the prisoners but just hung there in the middle of the room right above the stool. It was a passive form of the death penalty that allowed the prisoner to choose their own faith. This was a common thing in prisons nowadays around the world. It gave every criminal, mostly murderers and rapists, the ability to either face life in prison or to kill themselves. Some of the prisoners seemed to have chosen to end their own lives because some cells had corpses hanging from the ceilings which explained the intoxicating smell and some of the buzzing sounds. There were a whole lot of flies busily eating away at the flesh of the corpses that hung. I was holding on to hope that Sara hadn’t chosen to hang herself. She didn’t seem like the type to commit suicide though. She struck me as the strong type but it also just seemed like a front.
We arrived at cell 334 and what I saw was somewhat surprising but it definitely seemed like something that Sara would do. The stool that was allotted to her was hanging from the ceiling tied up to the hang rope and below the dangling stool Sara sat on the floor with her head down. All I saw of her was the yellow jail jumpsuit she wore which seemed way too big for her and her long black hair. Her hair seemed to have gotten much longer from the last time I saw her. She was using the long nail on her index finger to scratch random lines on the floor. There were a lot of tally lines.
“Three three four!!” One of the blue devils shouted.
“I’m not hungry,” Sara said without any change in movements. She kept on scratching the floor with her head down.
“You have a visitor,” the same blue devil said.
She abruptly stopped and slowly raised her head. How long was she in the cell? She looked like she hadn’t seen light in years. Around her eyes were black and swollen with bags from lack of sleep. She couldn’t have been in there for more than a couple of days maybe hours. I still wasn’t sure how many days had passed since we met the Midnight Robber in Caura but it wasn’t too long ago unless I had gone into a coma or something.
Sara’s eyes widened as she saw me. She was more shocked to see me than happy.
“Hey,” I said.
“Jed?” She said, confused.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
She looked at the two blue devils behind me then said, “Like shit.” She then stared at the floor again.
“A hug might make you feel better,” I said.
She looked at me with the most confused expression on her face. “A hug?”
“A hug,” I repeated. I then looked at the two blue devils signaling them to remove the handcuffs from my hand.
“You could hug without arms. We not removing them handcuffs,” one blue devil said.
“You feel we stupid or what?” The other said before lowering the green force field holding Sara in the cell. “You have two minutes.”
