Panopticon

The Fine Print

“I always have to be careful heading into this next zone,” the guide explained. “The woman in here likes to play tricks on us.”

Their truck, a heavy-built safari vehicle, rumbled along carefully whilst she scanned the ground ahead.

“Tricks?”

“Nothing major, don’t worry.” Noel, the doctor, explained. “She mostly just pretended to be ill. She never was, of course. The idiot just thought she could hold me hostage and escape. This is a gift from her.”

He lifted up his shirt, revealing pink scars on the dark skin beneath.

“Now we just assume she’s faking,” Kate finished, her eyes still searching the damp enclosure.

“What is she actually is ill?”

“She’ll just have deal with it herself, or if it’s serious we’ll put her under before Noel’s examination.” The guide shrugged. “It’s overkill, but her behaviour has made it necessary. She knows what happens to girls who cry wolf.”

Emma still wasn’t completely happy with Kate’s answers, but her curiosity was averted as they moved through the woods. The trunks of thick, English oaks stood firm against the wind, and if the grass hadn’t been wet the glade would seem idyllic. To the psychiatrist’s eyes, it looked more like a picnic than a prison. She spotted a wooden shack in the distance.

“Is that hers?”

“Yes. They all have a bed, some insulation, a roof above their heads. It’s not much, but it protects them from downpours like last night. She’s probably still hidden away in there now, in fact. It’s too wet to be writhing on the ground.”

Kate whistled, and threw a paper bag onto the grass. Now this really was a picnic.

“Come on, Angler,” she called. “It’s lunchtime.”

After a minute or two, a slim woman emerged from the cabin. The guests recoiled in fear as the pale figure approached, but she stopped some distance away and picked up the food. Emma got a good look at her. She was fairly tall, with dark hair, and a face that would be pretty if it wasn’t warped into a scowl. Most importantly, she looked fairly healthy, if a little underfed.

“You’ve got a lot of attractive women here,” the father observed, to a glare from his wife.

“I don’t know about the others, but Angler here actually used to seduce men and kill them. You can see why we don’t trust her.”

“Hence the name Angler,” Emma realised.

“Correct. Her real name’s Angela Higgs, but we give them all nicknames, to avoid any personal connection.” They exchanged glances “Well, some of us do.”

“Hey!” Before the psychiatrist could question the dehumanising effect this might have, the prisoner called out to them. “That was fast. You’re here to fix this thing, right?”

“Fix what?” Kate rolled her eyes at the group. “Let me guess: something that requires me coming close?”

“I can’t exactly come to you. It’s this neck ring; it just shocked me for no reason. I hadn’t even moved from my bed, and I get a shock to the throat! That storm last night must have fucked with the electrics or something. If it’s going to go off randomly again, I want it fixed. This isn’t fair!”

“Okay, I’ll just come and stand right next to you to look at it. Just like that time you broke your leg, and couldn’t move until I leant over you, at which point you staged a miraculous recovery. Remember that?”

“This isn’t like that! You have to trust me; I don’t want to be shocked again!”

“Neither do I,” Noel replied. “That’s why I don’t trust a word you say.”

He started the truck again, and soon Angela Higgs was hidden by trees.

“Tell me more about these neck rings.” Emma was curious.

“They all have them. Electrical tags around their necks, impossible to remove. They have in-built proximity detectors, and administer a small shock if they try to move too far from the Hub. The further they go, the larger the shock. They can’t go a few metres without being knocked unconscious. It’s like an invisible electric fence, leaving an open feel to the park.”

 “So that the prisoners don’t feel caged in?”

“To keep it scary for the guests.” Kate smiled. “Don’t think I didn’t see you all flinch, back there. The lack of fences makes the experience much more intense, but it’s every bit as safe as a real electric wire. They can’t get near us.”

“But you throw food in.” Durgan stated each word quietly, but in breaking his silence he’d instantly captured the group’s attention. Kate and Noel seemed especially alert, and Emma guessed Charon had given them special orders where her investor was concerned. “Can’t they throw it back?”

“Some of them tried it at first, but their aim is terrible. As a threat, it’s no worse than monkeys in a zoo throwing their faeces.”

“Alex says if you treat people like animals, they’ll behave like animals.” The zoo comparison bugged Emma, and she’d recited her colleague’s words on instinct alone. Perhaps he’d been right about the staff. Nothing the psychiatrist had seen from Kate suggested the guide cared about the people she made her living talking about.

“That may be true.” Noel replied diplomatically, careful to avoid conflict on such an important trip. “Unfortunately, these ones always did. That’s why they’re here in the first place.”

Durgan retreated back into his shell, his worries dismissed, but he’d planted a seed of doubt in the group. As they moved into the next enclosure, more concerns began to sprout.

“The killers can’t get to us.” The father mused. “But we can get to them. Isn’t there a danger that guests could stray too close, or be tricked as you were?”

“There’s no safeguarding against human stupidity. You could jump into the lion enclosure at most zoos, but that’s not their fault.” Kate turned to Emma. “That’s what the agreement they signed was about, just to make it clear; the fine print that Henry mentioned. If I went into your house and stuck my fingers into your plug sockets, that wouldn’t be your fault. In the same way, if you walk into a murderer’s cell, we can’t be held responsible. If you act sensibly, you’ll be fine.”

They were entering the next enclosure. This prisoner, a tall, hulking man, was already out of his hut and lurking by a tree.

“Jean Gris, French murderer and cannibal. One of the most savage killers in our possession, he liked to overpower his victims and eat them alive. The French press called him l’ours gris: the grey bear. Here, we call him Grizzly.” Noel threw the packaged food towards the prisoner, and he skulked towards it.

“Sorry Grizzly, no severed limbs for you today!” Kate laughed before glancing around at her passengers, and looked disappointed to find they were still crouched down in their seats. “I told you, it’s safe! He can’t come anywhere near us. Look, if you still don’t believe me...”

With a wink at Noel, the guide jumped down from the truck, and began counting steps towards the hut.

“...eleven, twelve, thirteen.” Kate stopped a few metres away from Gris, and turned to face the group. Still smiling, she had just opened her mouth to reassure her guests when the killer crushed the breath from her lungs. Her small frame quickly crumpled in his vice-like grip. Before she could scream, let alone fight back, his incisors dripped with her blood.

Noel slammed his foot on the pedal, and the group were gone.