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I was taken to a prison run by demons. We were greeted by a list of rules.
I've been in and out of prisons and jails ever since I was 17. I thought I had seen it all- Aryan Brotherhood members stabbing guards, gang wars, escapes and torture. I saw many things that still give me nightmares to this day.
"MacDonald, 402202," the guard barked out. I jumped up, the thin mattress under me exhaling a whiff of stale air. I looked through the bars, seeing Correctional Officer Shea. CO Shea was a morbidly obese man with a penchant for being loud and lazy. I had seen a member of the Bloods punch him straight in the nose before, a scene I still remembered with some humor. Shea had crumpled like wet paper on the floor, screaming and crying as more COs ran over and tackled the inmate.
"Yeah?" I asked. Shea handed me a sheet of paper. He regarded me with his gray, colorless eyes.
"Congratulations, you're being transferred. Pack your shit. This is your last day at Springfield Correctional Center."
\*\*\*
You might think I would be happy to get a transfer. SCC was, after all, a shithole. The food was terrible and always cold, the place always smelled like bleach and chemicals, and at night it got so cold with only my flimsy sheet that I regularly woke up shivering. The building was nearly a century old, and the fact that it still functioned at all was a miracle in itself.
But, to be honest, I was not thrilled about the transfer. I had made friends here and knew the lay of the land. I didn't have to worry about getting jumped or stabbed to death in the showers. As the old adage goes, it's better the devil you know than the one you don't.
I was led out of my cell the next evening with all the worldly possessions I owned, which fit neatly into a clear trash bag with room to spare. I owned some prison clothes, toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant, a Bible, a pair of sandals and a radio. I felt the unbearable lightness of my existence reflected in that bag as it smacked rhythmically against my leg.
"Good luck, friend Josh!" a rather insane acquaintance of mine named Alvin called out from his cell as I passed down the bleak, concrete hallway.
"Take care man. I hope we meet again on the outside," I said, waving, knowing I would almost certainly never see any of these people again. Hell, I hadn't even seen my family in over five years. None of them came to visit me anymore. No one wrote me letters or put money in my commissary account or sent me books to read.
"Well, we're all born alone, and we all die alone," I thought to myself as CO Shea walked by my side. He was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished running a marathon. I looked over at his face, seeing the burst capillaries on his nose from years of hard drinking and the squint of his little, piggy eyes. There was a slight gleam of intelligence and slyness behind that ugly mug, though.
"Well, amigo," Shea said in his slow, plodding way, "I got assigned to go with you. I'll be your ride along buddy. You excited or what?" I smiled faintly at him
"There are worse people than you here, Shea," I said. "Far worse."
\*\*\*
I got on the prison bus in my bright-orange jumpsuit. To my surprise, I saw the back was nearly empty. There was only one other prisoner in the back. Shea sat with us to monitor us. We were also handcuffed and anklecuffed. A chain ran down and connected the two.
I looked over at the other prisoner, a black guy with a shaved head. I think he also shaved his eyebrows. I mean, I literally didn't see a single hair on his head besides eyelashes, which he apparently hadn't found a way to shave… yet.
"Sup," he said. I nodded.
"Sup." We sat there in awkward silence as Shea plopped down hard on the bench between us. It groaned like a confused old man.
"So what do you know about this place, Shea?" I asked. He sucked down half a bottle of Coke and then heaved a deep sigh.
"I don't know much about it, to be frank," he admitted sheepishly. "It is apparently brand-new, though. They asked us to send a couple people who met... certain criteria."
"What does that mean?" the black guy asked. Shea gave him a serious look.
"Come on, Timmy, you know what I mean. Hardened criminals. People with long records who tour prisons like some people tour French beaches." I scoffed.
"There are far worse people than me in prison," I said.
"Well, they asked for no murderers or gang bangers too. I don't know why, but maybe it is some new government program. They apparently call it an 'experimental prison’.”
“What about me?” Timmy asked. Shea apparently knew what he meant.
“You’re not a murderer, Timmy,” Shea said, his lips forming the faintest twitch of a smile. “You never…”
“Well, there was that time my girlfriend got me to drop some acid with her. She went and killed her parents. Then we hit the road,” Timmy said fondly, his eyes rising as if he were looking at a hovering angel in the far-off distance.
“You were never convicted of any accessory charges, so it doesn’t count,” Shea retorted.
“Oh, it counts,” Timmy drawled in his slow, plodding way. “It counts. Everything in life counts. If I’ve learned anything in the last 36 years, it’s that you can never truly escape anything you’ve done- good or bad.”
\*\*\*
I couldn't see much from the prison van. There was a small, shatterproof window in the swinging back doors, but it only gave a fleeting view of what was behind us. I noticed the dark forests stretching out to the horizon over rolling hills.
We drove for a few hours. The three of us bullshitted, talking about everything from sports to politics to the recent spate of fatal stabbings at SCC.
I felt the van stop. I looked out the back window, seeing more endless trees. I didn’t see a single house or car on the road we had taken.
“This place is a ghost town,” I said. Shea nodded.
“Yeah, it’s dead as Frank Sinatra ‘round here,” Shea said, wheezing out a high-pitched laugh at his own joke. “This area used to be big for coal mining, but as it dried up and people lost their jobs, they moved away. You know, my grandfather was a coal miner.”
“Good place to build a prison, huh?” Timmy asked. “If there is no one around…” We were cut off by a clanging alarm up ahead. I heard something large moving, probably the gate opening. Then we were inside.
I saw the guard towers and rolls of razor wire for a brief moment as the van pulled into an open garage. The darkness immediately blanketed us. The garage door slowly rolled shut behind us. Shea jumped up.
“Let’s get you boys inside so I can take off your handcuffs and everything,” he said, motioning for us to follow. He pulled out a flashlight from his belt, guiding us through the pitch black. The dim light sent shadows racing across the room like groping tentacles. I caught glimpses of strange objects in the darkness. They looked like medieval torture devices.
“What is this place?” I whispered. My voice echoed far too loudly off the cold concrete floor and walls. “Those look like torture devices on that table, Shea. I think those bloody things are thumbscrews and that might be a pear of anguish…” I pointed to the pear-shaped object with three, wicked blades whose points came together sitting on a dusty shelf. The ornate handle had springs connected to it. The object could be forced into any human orifice and, when the springs were engaged, it would open like a flower inside the person’s body, ripping their flesh apart and enlarging that orifice to a bloody, gaping hole.
“How do you know so much about this?” Shea asked, giving me a strange look. He narrowed his little piggy eyes. He continued to fumble with the flashlight, peering around for a door to exit the garage. I looked back at the car and saw the driver just sitting there, his entire body as lifeless and still as a mannequin.
“I’ve read a few books…” I said as Timmy interrupted us.
“I see a little red light glowing under that door,” Timmy said. Shea focused his flashlight on the spot. Across the room, I noticed what Timmy was pointing at. It was an ancient-looking black door. The wood had started to crack and splinter down the middle. Engraved in silver on the front, it said, “Entrance to Northfrost Penitentiary.”
“Hello?” Shea called toward the door as the three of us moved forward, the steel chains giving my steps a clinking rhythm.
Shea reached the antique crystal doorknob. Timmy and I stood next to a dust-covered brazen bull, its bronze mouth wide open as if it were silently roaring at us. As Shea pulled open the door, crimson light flooded into the garage.
Tinted black glass covered the back wall. A speaker button sat next to the window. I looked to my right, seeing a massive sign sprawled across the wall there. It read:
RULES FOR PERSONAL CONDUCT AT NORTHFROST
1. The COs without faces don’t work here and we don’t know who they are. If you see one, press one of the buttons labeled “Emergency Dispatch” that are scattered around the complex.
2. When the red emergency lights come on, hide until they shut off.
3. Do not go into the medical ward for any reason.
4. The warden roams the prison every night at 3:33 AM looking for human meat. Don’t let him catch you.
“What is this, a goddamned joke?” Timmy asked, his dark face forming into a scowl.
“Uhh, well…” Shea rubbed the back of his neck, looking like an obese little boy who lost his parents. “I’ve never been here before, but this is all pretty unusual, I’ll admit.” A buzzing came from the back of the room, and suddenly a garish, echoing intercom turned on.
“Please remove their chains and direct them through the door on the left,” a female robotic voice said calmly in a tone as cool as lemonade on a hot day. “Your transfer will then be complete.” Shea sighed in relief.
“Good,” he grunted. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Bro, you can’t leave us here,” Timmy protested. “What the fuck is this place? Where is everyone? Why is there a room filled with bloody, ancient torture devices next to the garage?” Shea put up his hands.
“I’m sorry, son, but I have orders. I’m just a messenger here. I was told to transfer you here, and that’s what I’ve done.” He fumbled around his belt for his keyring. He came over and unlocked the handcuffs and anklecuffs from both of us. I stretched, rubbing my wrists. I was glad to be out of those suffocating restraints.
“Thanks for everything, then,” I said, picking up my extremely light garbage bag of possessions and heading for the door on the left. Timmy reluctantly followed behind. A sign on this door read: “To General Population.”
But when we got to the other side and it slammed shut behind us, I found a hallway filled with more red emergency lights streaming down. An involuntary shiver ran down through my body. I remembered those absurd rules someone had put up. What had it said about red lights? My mind raced for a few moments, then the answer popped up. It said to hide.
A man shrieked up ahead, his voice riddled with agony and terror. The hallway split to the right and left, and I couldn’t see anyone. Timmy and I stopped.
“Dude, screw this,” Timmy said, turning and running back toward the door we had come through. He tried pulling it open, but it was firmly locked.
\*\*\*
The scream came again, louder and closer, but this time it was cut off suddenly. I heard someone gurgling like a man with a slit throat trying to breathe. And then everything went deathly silent again.
The gray, concrete floor of the hallway had arrows pointing forward on it. There were no doors here. There was nowhere to hide that I could see. Timmy and I reluctantly went forward. As we got to the intersection, we saw the dead body of a man in a brown khaki uniform.
His sightless eyes remained open. They stared up at the ceiling, glassy and still filled with horror. Deep gouge marks bit deeply into the flesh on his back and arms and chest. His throat had been cut or bit open as well. A spreading puddle of blood encircled his body.
I saw a dark blur at the end of the hallway on the right. It looked like little more than a shadow. I whispered to Timmy, pointing. We decided to go left immediately. My heart was pounding at this point. I felt like a soldier walking through the no-man’s land of a warzone. I expected the attack to come at any moment.
The hallway to the left had some doors. I sprinted forward as quietly as I could with Timmy close by my side. I read the first door: To Medical Ward.
“Ugh, no,” I whispered, going to the second one. I heard light footsteps behind me. Turning, I saw a creature from a nightmare sneaking up on us in the bloody glow of the emergency lights.
Its skin was black and shiny like that of a centipede’s. In its general form, it reminded me of a hairless werewolf. It towered over us, its eyes like bone-white cataracts, its claws as long and sharp as a dagger. And yet, its face seemed almost reptilian. It had two small nose holes like a snake and a jaw that unhinged and dropped far below its head. I saw rows of blood-soaked fangs. It gave off a low, gurgling growl that emanated from its chest.
With a rush of adrenaline and a sense of mortal terror, I pushed through the second door without reading the sign on the front. Timmy was right behind me. I heard him scream as he fell into me.
I found myself in a prison dormitory, and we weren’t alone. As I hit the ground, I saw a white face peering out at me from behind the bunk bed. The man hiding there saw the abomination behind us and got up, screaming and running away.
The creature growled, giving chase. In two powerful bounds, it had rushed across the dormitory and grabbed the man by the neck. I looked back at Timmy, seeing him groaning on the ground. Blood poured from deep cuts on his back. I grabbed him, pulling him up.
“Let’s go, let’s go, no time to…” I said when I was cut off by the sound of a neck snapping. I looked back, seeing the creature had twisted the man’s head around in a circle. It raised the limp body to its massive mouth and severed the head in a single powerful bite.
“Get me out of here, man, please,” Timmy whispered as I pulled him back out into the hallway. I looked over, seeing another werewolf creature bounding down the hallway, chasing a man in a prison jumpsuit. I had no choice.
I pulled Timmy toward the door labeled “Medical Ward”. With a creak of rusted hinges, it opened. We went inside to hide.
\*\*\*
“Maybe there’s something in here we can use to bandage you up,” I said to Timmy, pulling him down the short hallway toward a room filled with single beds. I didn’t know why the rules said to avoid this place. It looked totally empty. Against the back wall, I saw a glass cabinet filled with bandages, rubbing alcohol, band-aids and other various first aid supplies. I ran toward it. Timmy limped along after me, still groaning.
“Goddamn, I think those claws went down to the bone,” he said.
“It’s gonna be OK,” I said as I pulled out some antiseptic and bandages, adding, “It could’ve been a lot worse.” The universe would immediately prove me right. I heard a slight giggling from under one of the beds. Timmy and I both froze.
Two rotted hands reached out, dragging the mutilated body of a little girl behind them. She had patches of garish, black stitches running across her face, hands and arms. Dark, clotted blood dripped from the sites. She wore a gore-smeared hospital gown and had no eyes. I looked into the empty sockets. They stared back at me like two black holes spinning in the void.
As she rose, her giggles became full-blown laughter, a hysterical gurgling like the laugh of a dying person. Then she ran at me. I saw the silver gleam of a scalpel in her little hand.
“No!” I screamed, raising my hands to protect myself. The scalpel came down, slicing across my palm. It cut deeply. A cold, burning pain ran up my arm. I repressed the urge to scream.
At that moment, the red emergency lights flicked off. Bright, fluorescent lights popped on, flickering and strobing in rapid succession. Timmy ran forward, tackling the undead girl. But I saw more small hands reaching out from under the beds, hands filled with sores and squirming larvae. I could see the bones of their hands through necrotic patches eaten into their flesh.
I ran for Timmy, grabbing him and hauling him up.
“Time to go! Now!” I screamed, pulling him forward as more undead boys and girls rose up, all with sharp knives and surgical instruments grasped in their little hands. I felt a sudden pain in my leg. Looking down, I saw a knife sticking out of my thigh. The empty eye sockets of a little boy’s face stared up at me, grinning like a skull.
I collapsed on the ground as we were surrounded. I prayed to God then, knowing we would die. I prayed that he would forgive me for all my mistakes, because I was on a fast-track to the afterlife and would be seeing him in a few seconds. With a sharp cry of pain, I yanked the knife out of my leg, turning it on my attacker.
Then a gunshot rang out. The head of the nearest girl exploded in a shower of bone fragments and dead maggots. I looked up, seeing Shea standing at the door, his pistol raised.
“Come on!” he screamed. “Come on, you idiots! Let’s go! Now!” Timmy and I didn’t need any more encouragement. As Shea continued to blow apart the nearest of the undead abominations, we limped and scrambled towards him. My leg gave a shriek of pain with every step.
We got out of the medical ward, battered and bruised but still alive.
\*\*\*
“Why’d you come back, Shea?” I asked through pained breaths. Shea gave me a frantic look.
“When I got back out to the car, the driver was dead. His throat was… ripped out or something, I don’t know. I grabbed his keys and came back for you two. I don’t know where we are, but I’m getting you out of here,” he explained. I looked at him in amazement. I had never thought in a million years Shea would risk his life to save some scumbag inmates.
“So what’s the plan?” Timmy asked, sweating heavily, his eyes wild and pained. “How are we getting out of here without dying?” Shea shrugged.
“The door locked behind us when we came in,” I said. “Unless we can break it down and get back to the car…” We passed by buttons labeled “Emergency Dispatch” under glowing red emergency signs. I wondered if we could get help somehow through them.
“Halt!” someone cried from behind us. I looked back, seeing a man in a black correctional officers uniform. He ran toward us, his hand on the radio hanging from his belt. But something immediately seemed off about the figure.
As he got closer, I realized why. He had no face. His entire head was just smooth, white skin, without hair or any signs of features. He spoke again, and the voice seemed to come from all around his body.
“You must report to the medical ward,” the strange figure said. “We do not allow injured people in the hallways.”
“No, we’re fine,” Shea said, grinning. “See, buddy? I work for the DOC too.” He pointed at the identification clipped to his breast pocket. The figure raised his radio to his lips.
“We have resistance near Dormitory One,” the fake CO said into his radio before any of us could stop him. Shea ran forward, knocking the radio from his hand. The CO instantly straightened up and whipped out his pistol, pointing it at Shea’s torso. He fired, and I saw Shea’s chest explode in a blossoming flower of blood.
“No, dammit!” Timmy said, running forward. I saw a silver gleam in his hand, and I realized he had taken one of the scalpels from the undead Shea had killed in the Medical Ward. As the fake CO spun to point the pistol at Timmy, Timmy ran into him, stabbing the scalpel deeply into the CO’s neck.
They fell together with Timmy on top of the fake CO. His body weight drove the scalpel deeper into the white, featureless skin. Blood the color of soot spurted from the wound. The gun went off, the bullet missing Timmy entirely and smashing into the ceiling. The CO’s gurgling death gasps seem to come from all around his body. I grabbed Timmy.
“Get the guns!” I said. “They’re both dead. We need the guns.” He nodded, grabbing the CO’s gun and taking an extra magazine from his belt. I did the same with Shea’s gun and magazine. I pressed the button labeled “Emergency Dispatch” as more faceless men appeared far off down the corridor. Then we fled as fast as we could from that hallway, but, seeing as we were both in pretty bad shape, it wasn’t very fast.
At that point, I was just glad to be alive, though.
\*\*\*
We wandered around the prison, avoiding the faceless COs whenever we saw them patrolling the hallways. They would radio to each other, their voices always surrounding their bodies rather than coming from their heads, which I found extremely eerie and unsettling. A couple times, I saw men in black SWAT suits with automatic rifles gunning down the fake COs. I wondered if this was the “Emergency Dispatch”. Timmy and I avoided them as well, and we gave a wide berth anytime we heard gunfire.
We passed cells with mummified corpses hanging from the ceiling. We passed dormitories where the victims of the strange, werewolf-like creatures littered the floors, rotting and stinking like roadkill. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of another survivor, a pale face peeking out from some hiding spot, but Timmy and I kept pushing forward, looking for a way out.
We were in a sprawling gymnasium, sitting down and resting for a few minutes, when we encountered the Warden.
We heard a demonic roar from the hallway, a mixing of many strange, inhuman tongues. As Timmy and I sat up quickly, a decapitated body flew into the gym, and a creature from Hell followed after it. The body smacked into the concrete wall with a soft, fleshy whack.
The Warden stood ten feet tall. He had on a black correctional officers uniform and a leather visor cap. His face looked like it had no flesh. A thick layer of bone covered it with two reptilian eyes peering out from behind slitted pupils. He hissed, a forked tongue shooting out of his gaping maw. His fingers looked like sharp daggers of bone. A smell like old leather and blood rose from his body.
“Shoot it!” I screamed, raising the pistol and firing at its head. The first shot blew off its visor cap, revealing the hairless, reptilian skull underneath. But the bullet only gouged the top of its skull. It ran at us with powerful, bounding steps, covering the distance in moments.
Timmy and I fired as fast as we could as it got within a few feet of us. It bounded into Timmy like a freight train hitting a car. Timmy’s body went flying and smashed against the back wall with the sound of bones shattering. I slammed another magazine in the pistol as the Warden turned to me.
We had hit it, I saw. One of its eyes had exploded in a shower of gore and vitreous fluid, and its head was bleeding badly. I raised the gun, aiming for the same eye and firing.
The Warden smacked his hand against his face as if he had forgotten something, falling to the floor. I ran forward, putting the pistol point-blank against his ruined eye before emptying the clip. By the end, he wasn’t moving anymore.
“Oh, God,” I said, walking over to Timmy. I saw his shattered legs, his broken spine and his snapped ribs. He coughed up blood. “I’m sorry, Timmy. I really am.” His head might have nodded slightly as he died, giving a final death gasp before falling still.
\*\*\*
I found a ring of keys on the Warden’s body. In excitement, I ran downstairs and tried the locked door. It worked.
I went to the van, pulling out the dead driver and starting it. After smashing through the garage door, I drove it through the gate. It did catastrophic damage to the prison van, but it got me far enough away before the engine gave out.
I don’t know what kind of prison that was, but I hope I never see that hellscape again.
#entertainment
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I've been in and out of prisons and jails ever since I was 17. I thought I had seen it all- Aryan Brotherhood members stabbing guards, gang wars, escapes and torture. I saw many things that still give me nightmares to this day.
"MacDonald, 402202," the guard barked out. I jumped up, the thin mattress under me exhaling a whiff of stale air. I looked through the bars, seeing Correctional Officer Shea. CO Shea was a morbidly obese man with a penchant for being loud and lazy. I had seen a member of the Bloods punch him straight in the nose before, a scene I still remembered with some humor. Shea had crumpled like wet paper on the floor, screaming and crying as more COs ran over and tackled the inmate.
"Yeah?" I asked. Shea handed me a sheet of paper. He regarded me with his gray, colorless eyes.
"Congratulations, you're being transferred. Pack your shit. This is your last day at Springfield Correctional Center."
\*\*\*
You might think I would be happy to get a transfer. SCC was, after all, a shithole. The food was terrible and always cold, the place always smelled like bleach and chemicals, and at night it got so cold with only my flimsy sheet that I regularly woke up shivering. The building was nearly a century old, and the fact that it still functioned at all was a miracle in itself.
But, to be honest, I was not thrilled about the transfer. I had made friends here and knew the lay of the land. I didn't have to worry about getting jumped or stabbed to death in the showers. As the old adage goes, it's better the devil you know than the one you don't.
I was led out of my cell the next evening with all the worldly possessions I owned, which fit neatly into a clear trash bag with room to spare. I owned some prison clothes, toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant, a Bible, a pair of sandals and a radio. I felt the unbearable lightness of my existence reflected in that bag as it smacked rhythmically against my leg.
"Good luck, friend Josh!" a rather insane acquaintance of mine named Alvin called out from his cell as I passed down the bleak, concrete hallway.
"Take care man. I hope we meet again on the outside," I said, waving, knowing I would almost certainly never see any of these people again. Hell, I hadn't even seen my family in over five years. None of them came to visit me anymore. No one wrote me letters or put money in my commissary account or sent me books to read.
"Well, we're all born alone, and we all die alone," I thought to myself as CO Shea walked by my side. He was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished running a marathon. I looked over at his face, seeing the burst capillaries on his nose from years of hard drinking and the squint of his little, piggy eyes. There was a slight gleam of intelligence and slyness behind that ugly mug, though.
"Well, amigo," Shea said in his slow, plodding way, "I got assigned to go with you. I'll be your ride along buddy. You excited or what?" I smiled faintly at him
"There are worse people than you here, Shea," I said. "Far worse."
\*\*\*
I got on the prison bus in my bright-orange jumpsuit. To my surprise, I saw the back was nearly empty. There was only one other prisoner in the back. Shea sat with us to monitor us. We were also handcuffed and anklecuffed. A chain ran down and connected the two.
I looked over at the other prisoner, a black guy with a shaved head. I think he also shaved his eyebrows. I mean, I literally didn't see a single hair on his head besides eyelashes, which he apparently hadn't found a way to shave… yet.
"Sup," he said. I nodded.
"Sup." We sat there in awkward silence as Shea plopped down hard on the bench between us. It groaned like a confused old man.
"So what do you know about this place, Shea?" I asked. He sucked down half a bottle of Coke and then heaved a deep sigh.
"I don't know much about it, to be frank," he admitted sheepishly. "It is apparently brand-new, though. They asked us to send a couple people who met... certain criteria."
"What does that mean?" the black guy asked. Shea gave him a serious look.
"Come on, Timmy, you know what I mean. Hardened criminals. People with long records who tour prisons like some people tour French beaches." I scoffed.
"There are far worse people than me in prison," I said.
"Well, they asked for no murderers or gang bangers too. I don't know why, but maybe it is some new government program. They apparently call it an 'experimental prison’.”
“What about me?” Timmy asked. Shea apparently knew what he meant.
“You’re not a murderer, Timmy,” Shea said, his lips forming the faintest twitch of a smile. “You never…”
“Well, there was that time my girlfriend got me to drop some acid with her. She went and killed her parents. Then we hit the road,” Timmy said fondly, his eyes rising as if he were looking at a hovering angel in the far-off distance.
“You were never convicted of any accessory charges, so it doesn’t count,” Shea retorted.
“Oh, it counts,” Timmy drawled in his slow, plodding way. “It counts. Everything in life counts. If I’ve learned anything in the last 36 years, it’s that you can never truly escape anything you’ve done- good or bad.”
\*\*\*
I couldn't see much from the prison van. There was a small, shatterproof window in the swinging back doors, but it only gave a fleeting view of what was behind us. I noticed the dark forests stretching out to the horizon over rolling hills.
We drove for a few hours. The three of us bullshitted, talking about everything from sports to politics to the recent spate of fatal stabbings at SCC.
I felt the van stop. I looked out the back window, seeing more endless trees. I didn’t see a single house or car on the road we had taken.
“This place is a ghost town,” I said. Shea nodded.
“Yeah, it’s dead as Frank Sinatra ‘round here,” Shea said, wheezing out a high-pitched laugh at his own joke. “This area used to be big for coal mining, but as it dried up and people lost their jobs, they moved away. You know, my grandfather was a coal miner.”
“Good place to build a prison, huh?” Timmy asked. “If there is no one around…” We were cut off by a clanging alarm up ahead. I heard something large moving, probably the gate opening. Then we were inside.
I saw the guard towers and rolls of razor wire for a brief moment as the van pulled into an open garage. The darkness immediately blanketed us. The garage door slowly rolled shut behind us. Shea jumped up.
“Let’s get you boys inside so I can take off your handcuffs and everything,” he said, motioning for us to follow. He pulled out a flashlight from his belt, guiding us through the pitch black. The dim light sent shadows racing across the room like groping tentacles. I caught glimpses of strange objects in the darkness. They looked like medieval torture devices.
“What is this place?” I whispered. My voice echoed far too loudly off the cold concrete floor and walls. “Those look like torture devices on that table, Shea. I think those bloody things are thumbscrews and that might be a pear of anguish…” I pointed to the pear-shaped object with three, wicked blades whose points came together sitting on a dusty shelf. The ornate handle had springs connected to it. The object could be forced into any human orifice and, when the springs were engaged, it would open like a flower inside the person’s body, ripping their flesh apart and enlarging that orifice to a bloody, gaping hole.
“How do you know so much about this?” Shea asked, giving me a strange look. He narrowed his little piggy eyes. He continued to fumble with the flashlight, peering around for a door to exit the garage. I looked back at the car and saw the driver just sitting there, his entire body as lifeless and still as a mannequin.
“I’ve read a few books…” I said as Timmy interrupted us.
“I see a little red light glowing under that door,” Timmy said. Shea focused his flashlight on the spot. Across the room, I noticed what Timmy was pointing at. It was an ancient-looking black door. The wood had started to crack and splinter down the middle. Engraved in silver on the front, it said, “Entrance to Northfrost Penitentiary.”
“Hello?” Shea called toward the door as the three of us moved forward, the steel chains giving my steps a clinking rhythm.
Shea reached the antique crystal doorknob. Timmy and I stood next to a dust-covered brazen bull, its bronze mouth wide open as if it were silently roaring at us. As Shea pulled open the door, crimson light flooded into the garage.
Tinted black glass covered the back wall. A speaker button sat next to the window. I looked to my right, seeing a massive sign sprawled across the wall there. It read:
RULES FOR PERSONAL CONDUCT AT NORTHFROST
1. The COs without faces don’t work here and we don’t know who they are. If you see one, press one of the buttons labeled “Emergency Dispatch” that are scattered around the complex.
2. When the red emergency lights come on, hide until they shut off.
3. Do not go into the medical ward for any reason.
4. The warden roams the prison every night at 3:33 AM looking for human meat. Don’t let him catch you.
“What is this, a goddamned joke?” Timmy asked, his dark face forming into a scowl.
“Uhh, well…” Shea rubbed the back of his neck, looking like an obese little boy who lost his parents. “I’ve never been here before, but this is all pretty unusual, I’ll admit.” A buzzing came from the back of the room, and suddenly a garish, echoing intercom turned on.
“Please remove their chains and direct them through the door on the left,” a female robotic voice said calmly in a tone as cool as lemonade on a hot day. “Your transfer will then be complete.” Shea sighed in relief.
“Good,” he grunted. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Bro, you can’t leave us here,” Timmy protested. “What the fuck is this place? Where is everyone? Why is there a room filled with bloody, ancient torture devices next to the garage?” Shea put up his hands.
“I’m sorry, son, but I have orders. I’m just a messenger here. I was told to transfer you here, and that’s what I’ve done.” He fumbled around his belt for his keyring. He came over and unlocked the handcuffs and anklecuffs from both of us. I stretched, rubbing my wrists. I was glad to be out of those suffocating restraints.
“Thanks for everything, then,” I said, picking up my extremely light garbage bag of possessions and heading for the door on the left. Timmy reluctantly followed behind. A sign on this door read: “To General Population.”
But when we got to the other side and it slammed shut behind us, I found a hallway filled with more red emergency lights streaming down. An involuntary shiver ran down through my body. I remembered those absurd rules someone had put up. What had it said about red lights? My mind raced for a few moments, then the answer popped up. It said to hide.
A man shrieked up ahead, his voice riddled with agony and terror. The hallway split to the right and left, and I couldn’t see anyone. Timmy and I stopped.
“Dude, screw this,” Timmy said, turning and running back toward the door we had come through. He tried pulling it open, but it was firmly locked.
\*\*\*
The scream came again, louder and closer, but this time it was cut off suddenly. I heard someone gurgling like a man with a slit throat trying to breathe. And then everything went deathly silent again.
The gray, concrete floor of the hallway had arrows pointing forward on it. There were no doors here. There was nowhere to hide that I could see. Timmy and I reluctantly went forward. As we got to the intersection, we saw the dead body of a man in a brown khaki uniform.
His sightless eyes remained open. They stared up at the ceiling, glassy and still filled with horror. Deep gouge marks bit deeply into the flesh on his back and arms and chest. His throat had been cut or bit open as well. A spreading puddle of blood encircled his body.
I saw a dark blur at the end of the hallway on the right. It looked like little more than a shadow. I whispered to Timmy, pointing. We decided to go left immediately. My heart was pounding at this point. I felt like a soldier walking through the no-man’s land of a warzone. I expected the attack to come at any moment.
The hallway to the left had some doors. I sprinted forward as quietly as I could with Timmy close by my side. I read the first door: To Medical Ward.
“Ugh, no,” I whispered, going to the second one. I heard light footsteps behind me. Turning, I saw a creature from a nightmare sneaking up on us in the bloody glow of the emergency lights.
Its skin was black and shiny like that of a centipede’s. In its general form, it reminded me of a hairless werewolf. It towered over us, its eyes like bone-white cataracts, its claws as long and sharp as a dagger. And yet, its face seemed almost reptilian. It had two small nose holes like a snake and a jaw that unhinged and dropped far below its head. I saw rows of blood-soaked fangs. It gave off a low, gurgling growl that emanated from its chest.
With a rush of adrenaline and a sense of mortal terror, I pushed through the second door without reading the sign on the front. Timmy was right behind me. I heard him scream as he fell into me.
I found myself in a prison dormitory, and we weren’t alone. As I hit the ground, I saw a white face peering out at me from behind the bunk bed. The man hiding there saw the abomination behind us and got up, screaming and running away.
The creature growled, giving chase. In two powerful bounds, it had rushed across the dormitory and grabbed the man by the neck. I looked back at Timmy, seeing him groaning on the ground. Blood poured from deep cuts on his back. I grabbed him, pulling him up.
“Let’s go, let’s go, no time to…” I said when I was cut off by the sound of a neck snapping. I looked back, seeing the creature had twisted the man’s head around in a circle. It raised the limp body to its massive mouth and severed the head in a single powerful bite.
“Get me out of here, man, please,” Timmy whispered as I pulled him back out into the hallway. I looked over, seeing another werewolf creature bounding down the hallway, chasing a man in a prison jumpsuit. I had no choice.
I pulled Timmy toward the door labeled “Medical Ward”. With a creak of rusted hinges, it opened. We went inside to hide.
\*\*\*
“Maybe there’s something in here we can use to bandage you up,” I said to Timmy, pulling him down the short hallway toward a room filled with single beds. I didn’t know why the rules said to avoid this place. It looked totally empty. Against the back wall, I saw a glass cabinet filled with bandages, rubbing alcohol, band-aids and other various first aid supplies. I ran toward it. Timmy limped along after me, still groaning.
“Goddamn, I think those claws went down to the bone,” he said.
“It’s gonna be OK,” I said as I pulled out some antiseptic and bandages, adding, “It could’ve been a lot worse.” The universe would immediately prove me right. I heard a slight giggling from under one of the beds. Timmy and I both froze.
Two rotted hands reached out, dragging the mutilated body of a little girl behind them. She had patches of garish, black stitches running across her face, hands and arms. Dark, clotted blood dripped from the sites. She wore a gore-smeared hospital gown and had no eyes. I looked into the empty sockets. They stared back at me like two black holes spinning in the void.
As she rose, her giggles became full-blown laughter, a hysterical gurgling like the laugh of a dying person. Then she ran at me. I saw the silver gleam of a scalpel in her little hand.
“No!” I screamed, raising my hands to protect myself. The scalpel came down, slicing across my palm. It cut deeply. A cold, burning pain ran up my arm. I repressed the urge to scream.
At that moment, the red emergency lights flicked off. Bright, fluorescent lights popped on, flickering and strobing in rapid succession. Timmy ran forward, tackling the undead girl. But I saw more small hands reaching out from under the beds, hands filled with sores and squirming larvae. I could see the bones of their hands through necrotic patches eaten into their flesh.
I ran for Timmy, grabbing him and hauling him up.
“Time to go! Now!” I screamed, pulling him forward as more undead boys and girls rose up, all with sharp knives and surgical instruments grasped in their little hands. I felt a sudden pain in my leg. Looking down, I saw a knife sticking out of my thigh. The empty eye sockets of a little boy’s face stared up at me, grinning like a skull.
I collapsed on the ground as we were surrounded. I prayed to God then, knowing we would die. I prayed that he would forgive me for all my mistakes, because I was on a fast-track to the afterlife and would be seeing him in a few seconds. With a sharp cry of pain, I yanked the knife out of my leg, turning it on my attacker.
Then a gunshot rang out. The head of the nearest girl exploded in a shower of bone fragments and dead maggots. I looked up, seeing Shea standing at the door, his pistol raised.
“Come on!” he screamed. “Come on, you idiots! Let’s go! Now!” Timmy and I didn’t need any more encouragement. As Shea continued to blow apart the nearest of the undead abominations, we limped and scrambled towards him. My leg gave a shriek of pain with every step.
We got out of the medical ward, battered and bruised but still alive.
\*\*\*
“Why’d you come back, Shea?” I asked through pained breaths. Shea gave me a frantic look.
“When I got back out to the car, the driver was dead. His throat was… ripped out or something, I don’t know. I grabbed his keys and came back for you two. I don’t know where we are, but I’m getting you out of here,” he explained. I looked at him in amazement. I had never thought in a million years Shea would risk his life to save some scumbag inmates.
“So what’s the plan?” Timmy asked, sweating heavily, his eyes wild and pained. “How are we getting out of here without dying?” Shea shrugged.
“The door locked behind us when we came in,” I said. “Unless we can break it down and get back to the car…” We passed by buttons labeled “Emergency Dispatch” under glowing red emergency signs. I wondered if we could get help somehow through them.
“Halt!” someone cried from behind us. I looked back, seeing a man in a black correctional officers uniform. He ran toward us, his hand on the radio hanging from his belt. But something immediately seemed off about the figure.
As he got closer, I realized why. He had no face. His entire head was just smooth, white skin, without hair or any signs of features. He spoke again, and the voice seemed to come from all around his body.
“You must report to the medical ward,” the strange figure said. “We do not allow injured people in the hallways.”
“No, we’re fine,” Shea said, grinning. “See, buddy? I work for the DOC too.” He pointed at the identification clipped to his breast pocket. The figure raised his radio to his lips.
“We have resistance near Dormitory One,” the fake CO said into his radio before any of us could stop him. Shea ran forward, knocking the radio from his hand. The CO instantly straightened up and whipped out his pistol, pointing it at Shea’s torso. He fired, and I saw Shea’s chest explode in a blossoming flower of blood.
“No, dammit!” Timmy said, running forward. I saw a silver gleam in his hand, and I realized he had taken one of the scalpels from the undead Shea had killed in the Medical Ward. As the fake CO spun to point the pistol at Timmy, Timmy ran into him, stabbing the scalpel deeply into the CO’s neck.
They fell together with Timmy on top of the fake CO. His body weight drove the scalpel deeper into the white, featureless skin. Blood the color of soot spurted from the wound. The gun went off, the bullet missing Timmy entirely and smashing into the ceiling. The CO’s gurgling death gasps seem to come from all around his body. I grabbed Timmy.
“Get the guns!” I said. “They’re both dead. We need the guns.” He nodded, grabbing the CO’s gun and taking an extra magazine from his belt. I did the same with Shea’s gun and magazine. I pressed the button labeled “Emergency Dispatch” as more faceless men appeared far off down the corridor. Then we fled as fast as we could from that hallway, but, seeing as we were both in pretty bad shape, it wasn’t very fast.
At that point, I was just glad to be alive, though.
\*\*\*
We wandered around the prison, avoiding the faceless COs whenever we saw them patrolling the hallways. They would radio to each other, their voices always surrounding their bodies rather than coming from their heads, which I found extremely eerie and unsettling. A couple times, I saw men in black SWAT suits with automatic rifles gunning down the fake COs. I wondered if this was the “Emergency Dispatch”. Timmy and I avoided them as well, and we gave a wide berth anytime we heard gunfire.
We passed cells with mummified corpses hanging from the ceiling. We passed dormitories where the victims of the strange, werewolf-like creatures littered the floors, rotting and stinking like roadkill. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of another survivor, a pale face peeking out from some hiding spot, but Timmy and I kept pushing forward, looking for a way out.
We were in a sprawling gymnasium, sitting down and resting for a few minutes, when we encountered the Warden.
We heard a demonic roar from the hallway, a mixing of many strange, inhuman tongues. As Timmy and I sat up quickly, a decapitated body flew into the gym, and a creature from Hell followed after it. The body smacked into the concrete wall with a soft, fleshy whack.
The Warden stood ten feet tall. He had on a black correctional officers uniform and a leather visor cap. His face looked like it had no flesh. A thick layer of bone covered it with two reptilian eyes peering out from behind slitted pupils. He hissed, a forked tongue shooting out of his gaping maw. His fingers looked like sharp daggers of bone. A smell like old leather and blood rose from his body.
“Shoot it!” I screamed, raising the pistol and firing at its head. The first shot blew off its visor cap, revealing the hairless, reptilian skull underneath. But the bullet only gouged the top of its skull. It ran at us with powerful, bounding steps, covering the distance in moments.
Timmy and I fired as fast as we could as it got within a few feet of us. It bounded into Timmy like a freight train hitting a car. Timmy’s body went flying and smashed against the back wall with the sound of bones shattering. I slammed another magazine in the pistol as the Warden turned to me.
We had hit it, I saw. One of its eyes had exploded in a shower of gore and vitreous fluid, and its head was bleeding badly. I raised the gun, aiming for the same eye and firing.
The Warden smacked his hand against his face as if he had forgotten something, falling to the floor. I ran forward, putting the pistol point-blank against his ruined eye before emptying the clip. By the end, he wasn’t moving anymore.
“Oh, God,” I said, walking over to Timmy. I saw his shattered legs, his broken spine and his snapped ribs. He coughed up blood. “I’m sorry, Timmy. I really am.” His head might have nodded slightly as he died, giving a final death gasp before falling still.
\*\*\*
I found a ring of keys on the Warden’s body. In excitement, I ran downstairs and tried the locked door. It worked.
I went to the van, pulling out the dead driver and starting it. After smashing through the garage door, I drove it through the gate. It did catastrophic damage to the prison van, but it got me far enough away before the engine gave out.
I don’t know what kind of prison that was, but I hope I never see that hellscape again.
#entertainment
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| 12,000 mlx | |
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