The Darker Side of Me

Songs

 For the first months, I'd refused to be broken. I smiled and talked and laughed, heedless of the beatings I received.

Once, I tried to start a singalong, reasoning that no one could resist it, and it would be a great way to boost morale. The other prisoners just watched me with deadened eyes. All except for one young man, a year or two older than me. He'd opened his mouth hesitantly, but then the guard rushed in from the break room, beer spilling from the bottle clenched in his hand as he ran wildly, weaving from side to side. I realized my mistake too late. This was the drunkard. He hit hard, hard enough that I'd watched him kill a woman by accident with a blow to the head.

"Wassis?" he slurred. "Who wassit?!" No one spoke.

"You tell me, you get double portion. Hour o' shower time. Whoowasit?"

The teenager that had been about to sing mouthed, "Sorry," and lifted a trembling finger to point at me. As the guard slammed his bottle down on the button to release my cuffs, I barely had time to fix the boy with an injured glare, watching him turn away. Then I was yanked down before the cuffs had fully opened, and subjected to the worst beating of my life.

That hit me hard. I was already covered in bruises, but now my wrists bled at the slightest touch, my left eye couldn't even open, and I was certain several of my ribs were broken. It hurt too much to talk or sing or laugh. It hurt even to breathe. The following day, Commander Teague came to look me over, as I hung angrily from the punishing vertical slab.

"I knew you were strong," he'd said, shaking his head, "but I had no idea you could survive a beating like that."

I blew a dirty, tangled red strand of hair out of my face and stared him down. He stared back, a smile tugging at one corner of his lips as if he were amused.

"You aren't broken, are you, pet?" he said, reaching out to finger a fist-sized bruise on my cheek. Rage flared within me at his insolence. I snapped at his finger, and he drew it back, chuckling.

"No, I suppose not." He paused. "You still have a choice, you know. You could join us. Renounce your doomed rebellion."

I was dumbstruck for a second at the sheer absurdity of that statement.

"Why. The hell. Would I join the people that just beat me half to death?!"

I gasped as pain flared from my ribs at the outburst.

"More than half, I'd say," he'd murmured, taking in my scrapes and bruises, the black eye, a small cut on my forehead dribbling blood. His eyes narrowed as they fell to my midriff. A finger shot out, experimentally prodding my ribcage. It exploded in fire, and I couldn't hold back a wounded yelp.

"Broken rib. Likely more than one. We could fix that. I know it hurts," he sympathized. He was right. It did hurt. A lot.

"They'll mend," I said, desperately clinging on to what little dignity I had, clothed in a tunic that was little more than a rag, at the mercy of anyone.

"Really." His eyes found mine, and I glared. We stayed like that, staring each other down for almost fifteen minutes. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. It felt as though his eyes were pinning me where I hung, almost as if their iciness was the mechanism that locked my cuffs. I averted my eyes and broke the spell. When I looked back, one side of his mouth crooked upward. But his eyes looked disappointed even as they appeared triumphant.

"No, you're not broken. But you are breaking."

__________________________________________

After that lovely encounter, I resolved not to break. Early on, I'd thought that if everyone dared to hope, we could all escape together. Now I realized that not even the most passionate leader could inspire these poor souls. Yet by their silence when the drunkard looked for someone to beat, I wondered if perhaps, somewhere deep down, they yearned to see someone defy the system and succeed.

Unfortunately, I couldn't be that someone.

I started to formulate a plan.

The purpose of this facility was to break down its occupants, to steal away their humanity until they were left with nothing. Then, and only then, were they released, consecrated by the government to be a good, soulless citizen. I began to consider the inner workings of the warehouse prison.

We had a fifteen-minute shower once a week, once a day to be led to the toilet, and items strewn across the floor. The place was lit by weak fluorescent lights and had no technological advances but for the locking mechanism; oldways were harder to escape.

When we had meals twice a day, our wrists were still cuffed to the stone. We were handfed bread, cheese, and water. Some of the tenders were careful and considerate. Others liked to shove food into someone's mouth so fast they barely had time to chew, or give only a pinch every minute or so, leaving their subject hungrier than before. The tender you got depended on how "good" you'd been. Read, how incompetent and willless you had been that day. I'd begun to notice that if a prisoner had gotten a gentle tender ten or more meals in a row, they were about to leave. The rough ones, I gathered, set the prisoner back. Using the data I'd collected, I was able to predict when someone would be released. Of course, the guards didn't know I knew.

Suddenly, inspiration struck. They didn't know. They assumed all broken prisoners were truly broken. I allowed a smile to creep across my lips.

I could fool them. I could fool them all.