Have you ever played that game where you try and find faces in the pattern of the damp plaster? I play it a lot.
I often lay awake watching the sunlight move across the ceiling, dappled by the dirty window glass. The cross of the window frame throws a long shadow on the concrete floor that distorts as the hours pass. It’s like a sundial to mark the hours, I’m lost when it’s too cloudy to see it.
You can still hear birds singing outside at sunset and sunrise. Beautiful.
I can’t make too much noise, none of us can. Some cry, muffled by gags. Some bang against the unforgiving steel racking, but they never last long. I just lie here with my arms outstretched, not wanting to dislodge the IV on the left or the spigot on the right. Not wanting to disturb the sores on my back. I can see the sores on the back of the girl above me. She doesn’t move much any more.
When the overseer passes through two or three times a day, he sprays us down with lukewarm antiseptic to wash off our waste. I don’t mind that. When I first arrived, before I lost so much weight, his eyes would linger on my curves. He’d play with my tits sometimes or finger me, sometimes he jerked off onto my feet. It hasn’t happened for a couple of weeks.
He’d talk sometimes. He was a slave, he said. A twenty first century slave. He did his best not to get noticed by his masters, to always do as he was told. I had hopes early on that he liked me. That he might unbuckle my restraints and if not let me go, then let me work here rather than die slowly. That was never on the cards.
