Sugar, Spice and Anything But Nice

Bonus: Escape

Hope

Once again I watched Tommy change into Thomas. That's what always happened in my dreams. My little brother turned into my estranged father. As if sharing a name made them into the same person. I didn't believe dream analysis shit but if someone would try to dissect it, they'd probably figure out how fucked up I am.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked at the now familiar environment.

Prison.

I was stuck in a cell with two other people who were still snoring away, enjoying the only freedom they still had; their dreams. Because in your dreams you can be whoever you want to be. You can travel the world, see your beloved ones again, hell, you could even turn into a fucking dragon.

Not me, though. I usually dreamt about home. And Tommy turning into my dad.

No escapes for me. I didn't mind, prison wasn't that bad.

I had a roof over my head and food in my belly. I didn't even have to spread my legs for it. You realise how messed up your life is when prison is an upgrade.

In the beginning, it was harder. I hadn't realised I'd gotten attached to those girls. I missed Alex's spunk and Madd's reckless but courageous behavior. I refused to think about Sage, though. Her memory was sealed in a safe deep inside my head. It was locked and I'd thrown away the key forever.

I wasn't gonna think about her lying in my arms as I watched her take her last breath. I wasn't gonna think about the bullet that had penetrated her body. A bullet that was meant for me.

I wasn't.

I wouldn't.

So I didn't.

It was no use to dwell about the past and technically I was paying for it by being in prison.

The noise of my cell door opening tore my apart from my thoughts. A cop was pushing another woman into our cell. She quickly recovered herself before she could lose her balance and while the cop was closing the cell again, she spit in his direction.

The cop, George, ignored it. It wasn't the first time he got spat at and my wild guess is that it wasn't the last time either.

By now, the other women in my cell had woken up too. We all quietly assessed the new, strange woman in our little home. She looked like a junkie whore. I wondered what her crime was.

Her hair was a faded orange but her natural dark hair was showing at the top as if she hadn't dyed her hair in months. She had dark circles underneath her eyes but I wasn't sure whether that was from being tired or from her make-up. I didn't care either.

"Christy, robbed my ex-husband," she said dryly.

"It's what you were all wondering, right?" She asked when nobody responded.

"Whatever, we just want to sleep," Eve replied. I'd liked Eve from the beginning. She didn't care about anything and quietly waited for her sentence to be over.

She only had a few more months left before her release so she spent her time filled with boring and legal activities.

The other woman living in our cell was Whitney. A voluptuous black woman who looked like she could snap you like a twig if you blinked at her in the wrong way. Until I found out she was deadly afraid of spiders and refused to sleep on the top bunk because she had a night terror in which she fell on the ground and broke her wrist.

Christy didn't say much after that and neither did we.

A few hours later, I was eating breakfast with Eve in silence. We weren't morning people and we weren't people people either.