The Darker Side of Me

Madness

Three days after my beating was a shower day. I allowed a guard to pull me along, my ribs screaming in pain. But I did not make a sound.

Once I was in the shower with some other female prisoners, I did nothing. I just stood there, fighting every instinct in my body. I longed to grab a block of rough soap and scrub away the week's filth, but I didn't. Fighting back a triumphant smile, the guard stationed there handed me the soap. I took it mechanically, slowly passing it across my body. I didn't take the threadbare towel she offered until she placed it in my hand. Then I stood there naked until she pulled my gray prison smock over my head. I stared off into space as she led me back to my slab.

Earlier, I'd been constantly reaching for the hobbies below me in an effort to see just how far the guards would go before letting up. They wanted us alive, so it wasn't a surprise that I'd found they relaxed the punishment after two or three full beatings. Even after I gathered that information, I often grew so bored that even though I knew what would happen, I'd reached for the items just to relieve some of the daily monotony.

Now I realized why those items were there- they tested if the prisoner was thinking and reasoning, and therefore bored. So that afternoon, I only stretched an arm towards a book once. After the guard on duty lightly bruised me up (which, through great effort, elicited little to no reaction), I simply lay there, silent, scheming. They reclined my slab, just enough that my wrists were no longer in agony. It wasn't much, but it was something.

"We've finally broken her," I heard the shower guard say excitedly.

"Don't get cocky," her coworker warned.

That evening, I had a gentle tender for the first time. He fed me patiently and even washed my wounds after I ate.

One down.

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Over the following days, I sank deeper into myself. Soon I couldn't do anything on my own. Or so they thought. I may have looked dead on the outside, but on the inside, my brain was sparking. I had many more plans. For eight more days, I appeared completely unreceptive. Then on the ninth, I let a touch of personality emerge. But it wasn't my old idyllic self. It was a dark side. A mad side.

In the showers, I "accidentally" let a bar of soap shoot from my hand and hit another girl in the eye. As she frantically clawed at it to get the chemicals out, I let a hint of a smile show. The guard watched and nodded.

When beatings occurred, I grinned wildly. The guards exchanged wary glances. I heard them whispering at night, when they thought I was asleep, expressing their worry. Since I had been so much more active than former prisoners, they feared I would be the most active madwoman they'd ever seen.

When the cut above my eye reopened, I let the blood run down my face. I darted the tip of my tongue out and caught it, pulled it inside my mouth, and smiled. The guard shuddered as he noted the changes.

I hated every moment of it. Watching the girl, no more than fourteen, claw her eye red in the shower, I wanted to apologize. I wanted to yell for the brutality to cease, like I once had. I wanted to wipe the blood away, but even then it would have stained my hand red.

My plan was not uninformed. The symptoms I had been exhibiting were drawn from another source. I'd seen it happen on only my third day here. I watched a man be driven mad, so mad that he enjoyed pain, his own and that of others. Pain appeared to bring his only source of joy.

I watched them take him away. Even under heavy guard, he was laughing. The day before my failed singalong, three weeks later, he was back. Only this time, he was in a soldier's uniform. He appeared sane enough, but when a middle-aged man was beaten for coughing too loudly, he started to laugh.

The other soldier-guards exchanged looks of panic, and one of the women, swallowing her fear, went up to him and seized the scruff of his neck. He turned slowly, a primal joy in his dangerous smile.

"Can I kill him?" I'd heard him say.

The guard looked terrified, but her voice was firm enough as she said, "No."

A wave of anger overtook him, and he moved threateningly towards her. She made an odd rotating gesture with her right hand as she stumbled back. Fear flashed in his eyes as he fell to the ground, hands over his ears, rocking and keening. The woman collapsed into the arms of her companion, shaking in fright.

"It's not natural, using them," he muttered angrily. "Making madmen madder. One of these days, the failsafe won't stop them."

The other guards had nodded in agreement as he escorted the woman to the break room.

That's when I realized that the rebellion had fought these people before. Nearly every squad we faced had one, an enemy that took pure delight in killing. They'd start laughing and shooting faster and faster. We'd chalked it up to the government's attempt to unnerve us, and maybe it was, but it was so much worse than we'd thought. They were truly mad. And they'd been made that way.

Now I was playing the part of one. And if I wasn't careful, that's what I could become.