The warden sat in a glossy, brown leather chair extending well past his head, hunched over, and stacking a deck of playing cards into a pyramid. The base was wide, with 16 cards serving as eight independent triangles. His office, far more extensive than needed, had a sitting area. The guards told me to wait in, sternly, I might add. A glass wall with no door separated the sitting room from his main office. It came equipped with a conference table, rolling chairs, and suede couches. I had watched him fail to stack his cards countless times over the last ten minutes. His hands would shake like a Parkinson's patient, and then the pyramid would collapse into card rubble.
It has only been a day since the package with the knife-shaped plasma cutter with an eerie message attached arrived for me in the middle of the night. The message got ripped into little pieces and flushed, but the plasma cutter was still sitting in my room. I had hidden it in a sock that I attached to the inside lining of my bed frame. It was designed like a box cutter and had a red handle. The shock of my family leaving Mars had worn off quickly as my mind contemplated the new issue. A knife, a letter, and only three days until the opportunity passed.
I’m not a murderer, yet the lingering thoughts of my blood and crunched bones at the hands of the albino man compelled me to think deeply about the message. I had no reason to believe the proposition put forth by the older man, but a part of me heard the truth in the promises made. I could not stay imprisoned. Angie and Annalise would be off to Luna, and I would be idle here with my unpaid debts. For all I knew, the albino man might have planned to kill me the second I left protected custody. I could trust my friend Mason with my money but not with my life. He didn't know Keenan as I did.
I glanced into the warden's office and thought of pounding one of the office chairs against its surface. I had been sitting here for well over 20 minutes. Exasperated wouldn’t suffice to explain the annoyance I felt bubbling up. The warden's hand shook as he prepared to stack the first two cards onto the second level of his pyramid. The second level was the point where he had repeatedly failed since I had arrived. He carefully placed the two playing cards on top of the card lying there. When he released his hands, the whole pyramid tilted, and the cards slumped down like dominoes.
He screamed. I couldn’t hear it, but it looked blood-curdling. The glass had soundproofing, so I watched as the warden marched around his room, throwing things. He was a fat and stubby man whose belly hung over his belt buckle. The tirade had a distinct comical feel, like watching a hamster running on its wheel. It made the twenty minutes worth the wait.
The warden pressed a button, and the glass encasing his office rose into the ceiling. He had the pale look of an undersider, which was rare for people in positions of power. My respect for the man grew slightly. Not that he would care either way. I approached his desk and sat in the leather chair across from him.
“Sorry for the long wait. I had important business to take care of,” the warden said through a grimace. The warden clinched his fist, and a tiny vein pulsated on his temple.
“Sure, I bet.”
He pressed a button on his desk, and a holographic image of my mugshot popped up.
“I didn’t call you here for no reason. Yesterday you made a call to an agency, and immediately following that, I got a call from my boss telling me to transfer you back to the general population.”
He swiped the screen and saw an image of my disfigured body lying in a hospital bed. I looked away. My face looked lumped up like a bag of potatoes. I could handle blood, but I wouldn't say I liked the gruesome images.
“Now, I don’t like sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, but nothing happens here that I don’t know about. I saw that tape of you being beaten within an inch of your life. That monster of a man who nearly killed you only runs unchecked because of his friends on Mars. My conscience wouldn’t let me sleep at night if I approved this transfer without at least offering you the chance to deny it. We both know what will happen to you if I transfer you back, but if you deny the referral here, then I can keep you where you are,” The warden said.
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My chest tightened like I had a snake coiled around my heart. I might die, but what would happen to my family if I refused? Mr. Greene made it seem like I had a choice, but I really did not. I felt my stomach drop, and at that moment, I felt helpless. I felt helpless because I knew what I needed to do. I needed to get out of prison and back to my family. I hadn’t realized the toll of the months of imprisonment and the near-death experience had had on me. The warden just watched me silently. I hadn’t cried in years, but the moment seemed ripe for tears. I ignored the slight tingle.
When my emotions died down, I tilted my head and said, “I’m not signing the paper. You can go ahead and transfer me back to the general population.” The feeling of fear had come and gone. A swell of warmth and determination had taken its place.
“If that is what you want, then there is nothing I can do about the matter,” the warden said with a sigh. He pressed the intercom button next to himself at the desk and called for the guards to get me. My mouth formed a slight smirk as I saw him lean down on the floor to start picking up the cards he had previously thrown all over the place in his tirade.
“You know it might help you to make a card pyramid if you work from side to side instead of making a full bottom row and then going up to the next level. That way, you can keep adding one on the bottom row and the subsequent rows that follow. It would make it much easier. Sometimes you have the right ingredients but the wrong recipe,” I said. The guards knocked on the door, and I stood up and headed toward the door. My hands were bound.
“Mr. Howard, make sure you give the contents of the package to the officer that comes to pick you up during the transfer. I will return them to you afterward.”
I turned back to look at the warden and saw a glint of wisdom in his eye. He knew what I planned to do, but he would never admit anything. Hylion Greene had much more influence than I expected. The two guards stepped open the door and moved to take me back to the cell. When I turned to look at the warden one last time, I saw him holding two cards in each hand, ready to get back to the task he had been doing before I arrived.
The guards led me back to my cell and left me to stew on my meeting with the warden. I must have walked a mile pacing back and forth, thinking about what I would do. Every few steps, my eyes would glance to where I knew I had hidden the knife before quickly looking away as if acknowledging its presence guaranteed my need. It is nearly impossible for prisoners to get ahold of anything they can turn into a weapon because the surveillance systems are too good. A missing toothbrush could send a whole cell block on lockdown, and my knife was far more dangerous. It would carve through the albino man’s perfectly sculpted muscles like clay as long as I got close enough to use it.
Fear and anticipation were the worst feelings to have, but they let me know that I was ready. I had to do it. Even if Mr. Greene can’t transfer me to another prison unless I get rid of the albino man, I will spend my nights thinking about what he might do to me. Before long, Officer Rowlins stopped in front of my door, holding my transfer notice out in front of them.
“It is time to go, Wesley. Pack up your belongings and place them in these containers to be processed for the cell change,” Officer Rowlins said. His voice sounded very official, as if he were an official envoy of an interplanetary company. I grabbed the boxes, filling them with the few items I still had from my initial transfer. I did my best not to look where I knew the knife hid as I thought about what the warden told me. I wasn’t sure If Rowlins had been the guard he had been speaking of.
When all I had left were the sheets on the bed, I turned and looked at Rowlins fiddling with a toothpick, leaning against the cell wall.
“The warden said you would directly transfer my package over.” I looked for his reaction, seeing if he understood what I implied. He put his hand out and said, “Give me the knife. There’s no need to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be.”
I handed the knife over and allowed my muscles to relax. “How did dinner with your wife go, Rowlins,” I asked.
“It was a waste of money. Clancy’s is some blast in the past type of restaurant, where they serve food that people used to eat on Earth back in the 2000s. I've had pizza before at another restaurant, but the hot dogs and mac and cheese almost made me vomit.”
Rowlins led me to the scanner and stepped into another room while the machine activated. The long hallway that did the scan looked like the inside of a metal tube and could only fit one person. I made it through with no complications. When I reached the other side and stepped into the hall leading to the cellblock, Rowlins was already waiting for me.
“If you do not mind me asking, Why are you doing this,” I asked after we had set off again.
“Sneaking things into the prison is easy money. Plus, the warden will owe me a favor for handling this business for him,” Rowlins replied. I followed quietly, but I grew tense as I thought about the knife. My hands twitched, and my stomach twisted itself into knots the closer we got to my former cell block. The hallways looked familiar to me even though they were uniform throughout the prison.
We made it to the guard station, and familiar faces looked my way but kept going about their business as usual. They did not recognize me. I had only a short memory of their time working here. The guard hovering above the control panel pressed a button, and a buzzing sound went off before the door to the cellblock opened. I kept my head looking straight ahead and focused on each step forward so I would not have any missteps. I did not want to look weak to the watchful eyes. The entire cell block had grown silent as the guard led me up the stairs and into my old cell. The silence felt familiar to the same silence from the day the albino man had attacked me.
Officer Rowlins pushed me into the empty cell and said, “Your door will slide open at midnight. Be ready and kill that lumbering idiot.” He placed an object in my hand, and when I looked down at the same red knife that I had slipped into his hand.