Alexander Smith - Lockdown

"Actually, I wasn't given a copy of the pirate handbook when I arrived, so I don't," I replied, cursing my voice, which trembled as I spoke.

Kevin smiled, and I noticed that he didn't have any of his front teeth.

"You funny now," he hissed. "But dead men don't laugh so loud."

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. It sounded like some terrible Sunday afternoon horror film, but I knew that Kevin would skewer me with a shank without thinking twice.

"Soon as the warden lifts his warning, we'll shut you up for good, new fish. You and your little girlfriend there."

Zee spluttered in shock at the comment but didn't say anything. Kevin and Bodie barged past us and started walking up the platform. They were followed by a third inmate, who strolled from our cell still buttoning up his fly.

"Sleep well tonight," he said as he followed his friends, and I suddenly realized what the noise of running water had been. I dashed into the cell to see a dark stain spreading across my sheet.

"No way!" I blustered. "They can't. I mean, what did they do that for? Where am I going to sleep?" I went on like that for the best part of a minute before recovering my senses and pulling the wet mess off my bed. From the way it dropped to the floor with a splat I was pretty sure that all three boys had relieved themselves on my bunk. I dragged the sheet out of the cell onto the platform, then looked up at Donovan and Zee.

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"Laundry's in a couple of days," Donovan answered with a shrug. "Till then, I guess you'll just be sleeping al dente."

"Al dente?" I asked, frowning. Zee chuckled.

"I think he means al fresco," he said. "Out in the open."

"What am I, Italian?" Donovan replied, raising his arm as if to whack Zee but giving him a gentle clip on the ear. "Al dente, al fresco, Al Pacino, it's all the same to me."

The sharp tang of urine was making our eyes water, so we walked a few steps along the landing and sat down, our feet dangling over the drop and our faces pressed through the railings. The inmates looked like toy soldiers below, separated into different units that occupied various sections of the courtyard. Like oil and water, each group seemed repelled from every other, never straying into enemy territory. Some milled around like packs of dogs, looking for any sign of weakness. Others sat at the scattered tables arm wrestling and playing cards.

There was even a group of younger inmates playing tag, yelling in excitement as they chased one another around the yard, avoiding the bigger boys. I don't know why, but the sight of them running brought a lump to my throat-they were kids who should have been tearing across the school playground between lessons, or on their way home to a hot meal and a loving family. Some looked like they were ten years old, for Christ's sake-they never even had a chance to enjoy being young.

"The warden's not going to lift his warning, is he?" asked Zee, taking my mind off events below.

"He'll lift it in time," explained Donovan. "This place is like a pressure cooker and he knows it. He'll leave the threat of the hole hanging over us for a few days, but he can't keep it up forever or he'll have a riot on his hands." He idly picked some rust from the bar and flicked it out into the void. "He won't announce that he's lifted it, there will just be a skirmish one day and all that will happen will be a lockdown. Like I said, you never really know what's gonna happen in this place."

"So what's the deal with the warden anyway?" Zee went on after a chorus of sighs. "He's a pretty scary guy. Those eyes."

"You saw it too?" I asked, remembering the way that the world had dissolved when I met the warden's stare. "I felt like he was stripping away my soul or something."

"Yeah," Donovan replied, "eyes like fingers, they go right into your brain. Did you notice that you can't meet his gaze when he's standing in front of you?" We both nodded. "Nobody here can. None of us get it, but then there's plenty of things in Furnace that none of us get."

"But what about when he was on the screen?" I said. "I mean, I thought I saw, well, planets or space or something." I couldn't quite remember what I'd seen, and talking about it now, it seemed ridiculous. "I saw death, I guess. Stuff like that."

"I just saw nothing," Zee added. "It was like looking into a space that had once been full of stuff but that was now just full of emptiness. I thought I was being sucked in."

"Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged up from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when."

"I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out people's dramatic sides." Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.

"So does he own this place then?" Zee asked. Both Donovan and I shook our heads, but I let the big guy explain.

"There's a reason it's called Furnace, dumb-ass," he said. "It was built by some guy called Alfred Furnace. Businessman or something, rich enough to pay for this place anyway. Nobody really knows anything about him, he never visits. Probably just sits on a throne somewhere counting the money the government pays him to take lowlifes like us off the streets."

We sat in silence for a little while, listening to the noise filter up from below. I gazed at the distant ceiling, lost in shadow at least twenty more floors above, and wondered what the weather was like, but the thought was just too depressing.

"Well," I said eventually, "we've witnessed fights, giant mutant dogs, and a warden who may or may not be Satan himself. Surely there can't be much worse to see at Furnace?"

"Kid," said Donovan matter-of-factly, "you ain't seen nothing yet. You can't truly understand what a nightmare this place is until the wheezers come for you in the dead of night. You want horror? The sight of them outside your cell could scare you to death by itself."

I didn't believe him, of course. I mean, after what I'd seen already I couldn't imagine anything more terrifying. But I was wrong; the dogs and the warden, they were just a warm-up act for the sickest show in Furnace-a show that I would only have to wait another four days to witness.

FOUR DAYS. EACH ONE longer than the last, each dictated by the sirens that cut through the prison every other hour, each plagued by the same unending sense of terror. Every time I laid my head down at night and heard the symphony of Furnace I wondered how I had managed to get through the day, and as my heavy eyes closed and the waking world dissolved I would panic that this was the night they would come, that it would be my last night on earth.

But I was always surprised to find each new morning arriving on time and me still in it-exhausted and frightened, yes, but alive. The day after the warden's warning the trough room reopened to a cheer from the inmates gathered outside, myself included. The stampede for breakfast had been so ferocious that the kids serving up mush had run off, telling everybody to help themselves. We did, piling mountainous heaps of the anonymous dish on our trays. I can honestly say that, after a day without food, the salty gunk was the best thing I'd ever eaten.

That third full day of my incarceration Donovan and I had been chippers again, while Zee had been back on cleaning duty-although thankfully for him not the Stink. Day four was my first taste of a different job, working in the hot, steamy sweatshop that was the prison laundry. We had the same shift for the fifth day, where an accident with one of the machines left me with a painful scald all along my left arm. At least I had clean sheets again after that, though.