Craft II (The Craft Saga)

3 - Ashleigh

'Hey, Princess! Wake the hell up!'

My daily wake up call came around and the rest of the week began just like that. Everyday I was woken, dragged back to the same bench where I was given drugs to weigh and bag. They were taken away when I was done and handed over to the same smartly dressed guy at the door who I couldn't help but keep my eye on everytime I saw him there. He never looked back over at me, but I wished he would. I knew if he saw me he'd see how much I stuck out from the rest here and maybe he would want to help me.

After that I was always escorted back to my cell where they'd then bring me the same breakfast of oatmeal. It was bland and sticky but I had no choice but to eat it to keep my strength up.

At some point during my stay, someone had entered my cell to stitch up my shoulder while I was sleeping. They'd clearly injected me with something to keep me out, because when I'd woken I felt like I had been hit by a truck and couldn't shake the fatigue all day, but I was glad the wound had been fixed up.

I'd spend all of my time in my cell after breakfast staring up at the ceiling trying to devise a plan and telling myself to stay positive and keep up hope. Maybe Asher would come for me. I knew it was a bad thing to start thinking about; after what had happened with Lilith, I was sure my whole family had now totally disowned me, if they hadn't already done so after my initial betrayal.

In the late afternoons, I was taken from my cell for the second time in the day to repeat the same task again, which was handed to a different guy at the door and not the usual one I'd see in the mornings. Once escorted back to my cell, I was given another meal of soup, usually a different kind everyday, but always soup and always gross tasting. Still, I forced myself to eat it and drink the bottled water they gave me. After I finished eating, I was in my cell for the night and did my best to sleep.

By the end of my first week in Newton Factory, I hadn't seen a single Cabrera since Junior that day. Nobody came to talk to me. Nobody came to threaten me. I was stuck doing the same task, still getting scowls from the other workers and spending the nights listening to the girls come and go. A lot of them were so loud and rowdy when they returned early hours of the morning and I figured they spent a lot of time getting drunk in bars during their work hours. It was difficult to sleep being surrounded by them, but I knew better than to say anything so soon.

On the second week of being a prisoner, the same routine continued, however, more product was given to me to weigh and bag. To me, this was a small sign of trust. I'd done a good job the first week so now I was being trusted with more. It was a very small step, but still a step towards getting out of here. Somebody somewhere was giving me trust and that was what I needed.

After several days of repetitiveness, I was returned to my cell one morning and brought breakfast by the same guy who always brought it. He never spoke to me; he just simply opened the cell and placed the bowl on the floor before quickly locking it again. As I walked across my cell to pick up the bowl, the woman who lived in the cell facing mine, who I had met on my first day, appeared by my bars and grinned down at me.

'You've lost weight,' she hummed, before she puffed on her cigarette.

As I grabbed the bowl and stood up again, I looked right back at her and shrugged. 'Thanks?' I had no idea if it was a compliment or not.

'I know who you are,' she said to me. A smile greeted her face and I saw that she had a beautiful set of straight, white teeth. She also had very nice skin which didn't need all the layers of makeup she wore. Her eyes were a beautiful, bright blue and her blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a bun. She was a gorgeous woman with a curvy figure. She looked like she could be a model for a high-end designer; I wondered what had led her down the path to this life.