The Prisoner

The girl was crying. Fat, salty tears were streaming down her rosy pink cheeks, coloured by shame, regret, remorse. Her sandy brown hair was clumped together in matted bunches, hanging like rose bushes around her shoulders. I wondered when the last time she’d brushed it was.

‘I –I didn’t mean to,’ she was saying. Blubbering, really, chin wobbling, voice shaky and throat bobbing. ‘I didn’t think he’d –he’d get away. I’m sorry.’

I didn’t know who she was apologising to. Me? The world? The one she set free?

Anyone who would listen. Not many people these days.

I gently draped an arm around her shoulders. I pulled her closer to me, gently, tenderly. The handcuffs rattled in her shaking hands. Heavy, sturdy metal. Metal bracelets that no longer hugged thick, meaty wrists.

‘It’s okay,’ I whispered. I could feel her shaking body against mine. She was only a kid –seventeen, maybe? Still in high school. She reminded me of my little sister. Shivering and crying as our dad bundled us up and dropped us at a group home as he left to gamble away our mum’s life insurance. She needed protection. She was innocent.

This girl was not. But she softened in my grip, as if I was her mother. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘He –he’s not going to come back,’ she whimpered. ‘He’s gone. I set him loose. If he –he does anything,’ hurts anyone, ‘It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’

‘Shh, now,’ I whispered, hugging her tighter. Her body was frail and shaking, as if a slight breeze could knock her off her feet. What she hadn’t said, but I knew she was thinking: if he’s not gone, if he comes back, then what? ‘It’ll be okay.’

‘No, it won’t,’ she cried. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ She refused to meet my gaze, fiddling with the handcuffs between her fingers, fitting them around her own wrists, as if punishing herself. ‘I’m not a monster, I swear. Not like –’ not like him. ‘Not –I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Please, you have to believe me. I can’t let him hurt anyone.’

‘Look,’ I said gently, ‘he’s gone. There’s nothing we can do about that now. In less than twenty-four hours everyone will know he’s gone. And everyone will know you had set him free.’ My eyes darted to the security camera on the roof of the hospital. A red light blinking in the corner of a black box. It was new –it hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. Someone had complained that it was dangerous to let people get so close to the edge without a camera nearby, watching.

But the girl hadn’t know it had been there. Her eyes widened with panic.

‘Wh –no, no, I can’t,’ she whimpered louder. ‘I can’t go to prison. I can’t.’

I didn’t mention that she wouldn’t go to prison –not if she wasn’t an adult. Juvie was a lot less severe. She’d probably get off with a slap on the wrist, nothing more. Especially considering he was her brother.

‘You’re not going to prison,’ I said firmly, staring into her deep, chestnut eyes. They looked exactly like his in the dimming light, catching the golden rays of the setting sun. The resemblance was uncanny. ‘I’ll make sure of it. But you can’t stay here.’

The girl nodded. She knew. She knew she would have to go. After what she did. She was in danger. He’d made some enemies, setting him free made them her enemies, too.

‘There’s a shelter. You’ll be safe there. You’ll have to lie low until he’s caught again. But you’ll be safe.’ I took a breath. ‘It’s four hundred kilometres away. By the ocean.’

The girl’s eyes bulged. ‘Four –no. That’s too far. I’d have to leave everything behind.’

‘And you’d be risking everything by staying!’ I snapped. ‘It’s not safe for you here anymore. Not after what you’ve done. The world will know about it in a matter of hours. You’re running out of time.’

I clasped her clammy hands in mine. We’re on the same team here, I thought, as if she was telepathic. No need her looking into my other thoughts. ‘You’ve put the world in danger. It’s best you hide now.’

The girl chewed her lip, a raging battle between guilt and the unease surrounding the change waging within her.

‘Okay. Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go. I need to pack –pack a bag.’ She relented, her shoulders slumping. She used me like a crutch. Her voice was flat.

‘No time,’ I growled. ‘Car’s waiting for you. Driver knows where to go. There’s resources for you there. Oh, and by the way?’ The girl met my gaze, her eyes watery and glazed. ‘You know how lucky you are, right? That I’m doing all this for you? That I’m not reporting you? You need to lay low. Until this is all over. Don’t come out until you see him in cuffs again.’

The girl nodded earnestly. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, wrapping her arms around me. ‘I know I messed up. Thank you.’

I smiled. ‘Go,’ I ordered. The girl scuttled off the roof, dropping the cuffs with a metallic clang. She shot me a fleeting, sympathetically grateful glance, and I returned the smile.

She worshipped me now. She’d do as I asked.

The sound of her footsteps thudding down the staircase faded. Wind whistled beside my ears. I shivered, goosebumps rippling across my skin.

‘She’s gone,’ I called, my voice echoing on the rooftop.

A metal door creaked open. Just beside the stairwell, slightly behind the camera that was overlooking us. A burly man with forearms as big as my thighs and a neck with bulging veins dressed in a blue hospital gown stepped out. His hair was darker than hers, but just as matted, his skin like a roadmap of scars and wrinkles. Deep fleshy pits hung beneath his eyes. Sunspots dotted his skin. Prison aged the body as much as it did the mind.

‘She’s safe?’ He asked, the gentleness of a father, but his voice hard like it was a chore. I swallowed, thinking of my own father. You will be okay here. They’ll look after you.

‘She will be.’

He nodded thoughtfully, as thoughtfully as a tattooed lump-of-muscle could look.

‘You scared her.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I lied. ‘But she needed to be. I needed to make sure she wouldn’t come back. That she’d lie low. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Good point.’ The prisoner –not so much anymore, considering the cuffs that lay limp on the floor –stripped off his gown and pulled on a pair of jeans, a plain t-shirt and a plaid button-up I’d found in the lost and found bin of the hospital. They were roughly his size, but the jeans refused to button up all the way and the shirt was tight around his neck, making him look even bigger than he already was.

‘So,’ I said. ‘I got you out. Time for you to do something for me.’

The prisoner was dangerous. He’d been given three consecutive life sentences and had only been allowed to visit the hospital because he let himself get beaten up so badly in prison he needed surgery. But it was all a ruse. Someone as big as him would never get beaten up. He was the one doing the beatings –the one others feared. But not me.

‘I thought my sister got me out, not you,’ he growled. ‘That’s why you sent her away. That’s how you got her to leave.’

I scoffed. ‘Your sister’s got no spine. You really think she’d set you free on her own?’

A vein on his forehead bulged. His jaw clenched. He started towards me, like a bull drawing back to charge. He was at least double my size and three times as strong. But I wasn’t scared.

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘One more step forward and you’re in the camera. You don’t want that, do you?’ I sneered. The prisoner’s eyes widened as he noticed the black box positioned right above him. He didn’t know it would be there. It shouldn’t have been. I got it put there.

His muscles slackened. He knew I’d won.

‘What do you want?’ He snarled. But that was all he could do –threaten.

‘I’ve made some enemies,’ I said slowly, stepping towards him. Until I was out of the camera’s view. ‘I need you to take care of them.’

‘No. I’ll get sent back.’ His massive throat bobbed. He was thinking of his sister, I could tell. The fear in her eyes when she realised she’d released a monster. She’d be watching, on the small T.V at the safehouse I’d orchestrated for her. A prison, more like, in the middle of nowhere, but with good enough scenery that she’d think it was just peaceful isolation.

She’d be scared. And she’d stay hidden. She’d think she’d get caught for what she did.

For what I made her do.

‘You could get sent back right now,’ I said, patting my pocket. The outline of my phone bulged through. ‘Escaping will add some time to your sentence.’ It didn’t matter, but the threat worked.

He hesitated, then growled, ‘fine.’ He sensed the noose around his neck, the one that I held the other end. ‘What do you want me to do?’