Swamp Murder

Swamp Murder. 59

Zhan's Pov.

The months slipped through my fingers like dust. Days lost their names. Only the yard time marked the weeks. One hour. Then two.

Ezra stopped coming.

No warning, no goodbye. Just gone.

At first, I thought he was sick. Then reassigned. Then maybe—maybe—he'd gotten caught. But that hope faded quickly. This place doesn't care enough to remove you for breaking the rules. You have to break.

The new night guard, Officer Ji, was the opposite of Ezra. Cold. Impatient. He moved like he was angry at the floor for existing, and when he made eye contact, it was like staring into the barrel of a rusted gun—one that wouldn't miss.

He didn't answer questions. Not even simple ones like, "Is it Tuesday?" or "Can I have water?" He would just stare, chew his gum louder, and move on.

Dre took it harder than I thought he would.

He didn't talk. Didn't crack jokes. Didn't even do his half-hearted stretches anymore. The light in his eyes—the one I clung to when mine flickered—dimmed.

I didn't push him.

How could I?

Ezra had been his escape, in the smallest, most human way. The few minutes of warmth in a world built out of concrete and silence. I saw what they shared—softness, an understanding. Something carved from nothing. I never judged it. I respected it.

Now that Ezra was gone, it was like someone pulled the last thread keeping Dre together.

Sometimes, I watched him from my bunk. His face was blank, his eyes unfocused. But once or twice, I caught him mouthing something. Words I couldn't hear. A prayer, maybe. Or a name.

I didn't ask.

We all mourn differently in this place. Even the living.

And so, we survived the quiet together. Alone.

The snow came without warning.

Thick, white silence blanketed the mountain, and suddenly, everything was cold in a new way—inside your bones, inside your breath. The kind of cold that made metal bite your skin and your lungs ache with every inhale. The yard was a slab of frozen ground, and our breath rose like ghosts in the air.

We walked slower. Talked less. Even Dre barely muttered.

But during those yard hours—our two hours of light and pretending we were still people—something new stirred.

Rumors.

Soft, hopeful ones that didn't belong here.

"They brought doctors," someone whispered, huddled in a small group near the fence. "Real ones. With medicine."

"No one's been in that infirmary in four years," another voice replied, half-skeptical, half-hungry. "You know why. Guards said Max inmates killed the last ones."

I stood near the wall, not speaking. Just listening.

They were right. We hadn't had a real doctor in years. If you were bleeding, they'd wrap a shirt around you and tell you to sleep it off. If your ribs cracked, well, lucky you for having another twenty-three. But this—doctors? Actual checkups?

It felt like fiction.

Still, I found myself thinking about it all night. The way you think about food when you're starving.