23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

7.

The guards had been busy while Caxton and Stimson were out. They had put a picture of her on the door, right next to Stimson’s. Underneath, where the guards were advised not to give Stimson any stimulants of any kind, they had written in, “Caxton prone to violence. Use anti-stab and anti-bite precautions.”

It was official, then. She was a resident of the SHU for the duration.

She quickly learned what that was going to mean. How it was going to change her whole philosophy of life.

For instance: when you had nothing, you learned to appreciate the little things. When you had no freedom and no civil rights you learned to treasure any shred of dignity or hope you were permitted.

Caxton finally got her first shower a week after she arrived in the SHU. She even got a shower stall all to herself. Of course, two female COs watched her the whole time and she had to wash around the shackles on her legs, but the hot water made her feel almost human for the first time since she’d been moved to her new cell. It was over all too soon. As she was dressing she was told she was in for another treat: a one-hour therapy session. She was allowed one every six weeks and her number had come up. “You’re allowed to refuse therapy,” a CO told her, but Caxton couldn’t imagine why she would. Any human contact that wasn’t with Stimson sounded like heaven.

She quickly discovered that the therapy she was being offered wasn’t what she had expected, though. She was led to a small room near the SHU. It had padded walls and it smelled of antiseptic. There was no one in the room except for Caxton and two COs, but there was a telephone mounted on the wall. She was told she could pick it up and speak directly with one of the prison’s staff psychotherapists. When Caxton picked up the handset she saw there were no buttons on the phone. It was strictly for this purpose and there was no way to get it to call outside the prison.

“Um, hello?” she said, placing the handset to her ear.

“Yeah, hi. How are you feeling?” a bored male voice asked from the other end of the connection.

Caxton licked her lips. “I, um, I’ve been better.”

The psychotherapist said nothing.

Caxton let her head fall forward a little. “It’s tough, you know? It’s just tough adjusting to this routine. It’s kind of. Um. It’s nice talking to a friendly voice. Everybody else I talk to around here is either yelling at me or they’re crazy.”

Caxton blushed. She couldn’t believe she was opening up like this with a complete stranger, one she couldn’t even see. But the chance to unload her problems, even in such a clinical way, was affecting her in a way she couldn’t have foreseen.

“I miss my girlfriend,” she said. God. It felt good to say that out loud. She’d been afraid to say it even to Stimson. “I get pretty scared in here. I can’t sleep, and the food doesn’t taste like anything, it tastes like cardboard. I think—I think maybe I’m having a harder time of it than I even let myself believe. I think I might be going—”

“Are you depressed?” the therapist asked.

Caxton thought about it. “Um, I—”

“Depression doesn’t just mean you’re sad. Everybody’s sad in here. What about voices? Are you hearing voices? Voices that tell you to do things you don’t want to do?”

Caxton’s body tensed up again. “No,” she said.

“Let me know if you start hearing voices or having hallucinations. I can give you Thorazine for that. If you think you’re depressed I can send over some Prozac. You just have to be careful with this stuff. If you start feeling suicidal you need to alert a guard right away. Do you want the Prozac? We’ll start with a low dose and adjust as necessary.”

“No. Thank you,” Caxton said, and hung up the phone. Her therapy session was over.

On days when it didn’t rain, the SHU inmates were allowed outside for their exercise period. Sort of. They were let out of their cells in groups of six, and as before their feet were shackled and they were never allowed to be less than six feet away from each other. They were then taken out of the SHU through a short corridor to a door that led to sunlight, and open air, and a patch of blue sky.

It was the most beautiful thing Caxton had ever seen. It was also carved up into sections by a mesh of wires so close together that Caxton couldn’t have put her hand between them, even if she’d had the chance. The SHU exercise yard was a cage twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Wire mesh formed a ceiling and four walls. The concrete floor of the cage had a red rectangle painted on it, and the inmates were never allowed outside of that rectangle, which kept them always six feet from the mesh.

They were allowed to do as they pleased inside the rectangle, as long as they didn’t approach one another or talk. A row of yoga mats had even been set up along one side of the cage, and a couple inmates made use of them to do sit-ups or stretching exercises. The rest just milled around, careful not to get too close to each other. One of them, a big woman with no left ear, only a lump of twisted scar tissue, made a nasty game of it. She would start walking toward one of her fellow inmates until they would be forced to step backward. The COs weren’t timid about shouting for them to keep their space, and anyone who broke through the invisible limit was dragged off, forfeiting their exercise period for the next day. They made no attempt to stop the big woman from herding the others back and forth across the yard, however.

Back in the cell Caxton asked Stimson why the big woman would do such a thing. She was only causing trouble for the others. “She’s a convict,” Stimson said, as if that explained everything.

“So am I. So are you. We don’t pull that kind of bullshit.”

Stimson shook her head excitedly. This was another chance to initiate her celly into the ways of life inside. “No, see, I’m an inmate. There’s a difference. Inmates try to get along. We want to be model prisoners so we can get days on our good-behavior jackets. Convicts are different. They know they’re going to be in and out of prison all their lives, so they got no reason to try to be good. If they can be bad, though, like, real tough, they can get a rep for it, and that’s a good thing, how they see it.”

Caxton thought of Guilty Jen, who had been obsessed with respect and reputation to the point she was willing to kill to get it. “I think I’d rather be an inmate.”

“Yeah?” Stimson asked. “I had you pegged different. A hard case.”

Caxton climbed up onto her bunk and lay back on her mattress. She had to think about what that meant.

As usual, Stimson wouldn’t just let her be. “I’m pretty useful to you, huh?” she asked, pulling herself up onto the side of Caxton’s bunk and leaning her chin on the mattress. “I mean, I can tell you stuff you didn’t know. I can help you out.”

“I guess,” Caxton said.

“We’re connecting, right? We’re bonding. That’s good. ’Cause if I’m useful to you, maybe you can be useful to me. You can protect me. If I get in trouble, you can vouch for me. That’s how it works, right? We’re getting together?”

“Whatever,” Caxton told her.

“I am going to be so useful to you,” Stimson said. “You wait and see. I’m gonna be your road bitch. That’s what you call your best friend inside. See? Useful. I’m gonna be your best friend in the world. And then, and then, and then you can be my mama. If—if—if, you know. If you wanted to.”

Caxton couldn’t look into those trusting eyes anymore. They reminded her too much of the eyes of the dogs she used to rescue. She turned her head away. It was impossible to spend twenty-three hours a day in the cell with Stimson and not talk to the woman. To not interact with her. But the last thing she wanted to do was lead Stimson on. They weren’t friends.

Caxton couldn’t imagine ever being friends with someone like this baby-obsessed speed freak. The second she got out of SCI-Marcy she would never think about Stimson again. It wasn’t fair to pretend otherwise. “I won’t be in here that long,” she said, trying not to put too much edge in her voice. “Maybe your next celly can be your mama.”

“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Stimson said, dropping back down to the floor. “Shit. I didn’t mean I was going to suck your pussy or nothing.”

“Okay,” Caxton said. “Good to know.”