Claire Montgomery rested on the hard surface of the bed built into the wall with her back leaning against the cold brick and her orange clad knees hugged tightly to her slightly caved in chest. Breakfast had come and gone long ago and today being Sunday meant the next meal wouldn't be served until dinner. Mondays through Fridays they were allowed three meals a day. Micro meals the inmates jokingly dubbed them. On weekends it was two. She fought to ignore the perpetual hollow spot in her belly. The majority of the other inmates on this block had a steady commissary. Claire was not as fortunate. Recreation was three times weekly. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays inmates were allowed two to three hours on the yard for exercise and fresh air. She didn't own a television or radio like most of the other inmates did. Weekends in here passed by excruciatingly slow for Claire. The books she checked out from the prison library were her best friends but the selection was limited and she had already read through everything halfway interesting. What was the saying? Idle hands are the devils work.
Lost in her own train of thoughts she kept finding her eyes drawn to the shelving across one side of the bed which she used as a desk. The belongings she had accumulated in the two years she had been housed here were strung randomly over the top of the plain shelving. Amongst them was a photograph of her and her best friend Elena in high school, a black leather bound Holy Bible, and a smallish book covered in a dark brown suede-like material, it's pages completely blank. The year in the faded and crumpled photograph was 1994. Their junior year at Stanley High. Before everything in Claire's world had grown dark and dismal or maybe it had been the start of it all. Her memory was hazy because she had chosen to block out so many events of that former time in her life. Her and Elena had their arms wrapped around each others shoulders in the fashion that best friends usually do and their heads thrown back in the kind of carefree laughter only the unsuspecting youth of the world are capable of exhibiting. They knew hardly what their future held in store for them, especially Claire. The holy Bible was a gift from the county and well used by the appearance of the cracked leather and worn pages. The photograph and smallish book were gifts from Elena.
The book, Elena had explained when she brought it, was supposed to be a journal. A journal for Claire to commit her thoughts and memories to paper with. It was a sort of therapy and Elena's way of her immortalizing her friend. She was touched really but in the two years she had never been able to bring herself to touch pen to those horribly blank pages. Who, she wondered would even care to read the thoughts and memories of such a tortured mind? Maybe Elena but there was none else surely. Besides what happened all those years were her own private hell. Her own private thoughts and memories. How on earth could she bare her soul for absolute strangers, nameless and faceless people to share?
Most of all as much as she hated to admit it when she handled the book it felt odd. Wrong somehow. The texture of the material it was bound in felt thin and papery. Not at all like suede. It was similar to skin. Similar to the way old dead skin would feel she imagined. She could swear it throbbed and pulsated with life at her very touch.
Light of the afternoon sun slanted in through the narrow oblong windows on either side of the bed and shelving. Even with the light filtering in through the windows of the twelve by seven foot cell she now called home was dim. During the day in the Perryville Arizona Maximum Security Womens Prison the overhead florescents in the cells were turned off. Just like only three showers a week was due to water conservation and meal cutbacks were healthier for their diets along with a million other things that made no sense whatsoever in this place.
Claire was for the most part unaffected by anything that occurred in here around her. She had lived in far worse prisons than this one. Like the one she had wasted nearly nineteen years of her precious life away in. Her entire life she had been trapped in one form of prison or another. What did one matter more than the other? Of course as far as she was concerned in her mind she was far freer in this prison than she had been in the last. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually if not physically.
For two hours every week death row inmates were allowed a non-contact, two hour visit with visitors. The inmates and their visitors were only allowed to speak through a glass partition separating them with holes punched into the glass. In the beginning Elena was her only visitor and she was there without fail no matter what. Lately Elena's visits were waning considerably. It was more often than not once a month if she could even manage that. Well, Claire thought, who could blame her? She had a whole life on the outside to live. When she did come visit she was different from the Elena Claire remembered and loved. In a way she seemed darker. Claire wasn't sure she really cared whether or not this Elena visited her anymore.
Surprisingly since her father's death, Claire's mother was visiting more frequently. Death sometimes has a way of influencing people in such a manner. Her visits weren't unwelcome. Claire wasn't ungrateful for her mother's visits but somehow it wasn't the same as confiding in Elena. Her mother was more of a stranger to her than she was her mother. Of course it probably wasn't entirely her mother's fault.
Once more Claire's eye caught on the suede-like bound book. The book was drawing her in for some reason. She could feel it. Perhaps it was time to put the demons of the past to a final rest she thought distractedly. She could do whatever she pleased with the damned book when she was through with it. She rose from the bed and crossed to the stainless steel toilet and sink. Her mouth felt dry and thick almost as if there was a wad of cotton shoved into it. She turned the cold water tap on splashing her face with the semi cold water that gurgled noisily from the rusted faucet. Cupping her hands she filled them and drank greedily. It temporarily provided relief from the cotton mouth she was suffering from and helped to fill the ever growing empty pit at the bottom of her stomach.
Returning to the shelving she pulled it the small chair and settled into it as comfortably as she could, her prison issue shoes scuffling along the concrete floor of the cell nervously. She rubbed her clammy hands against the thighs of her orange jumpsuit attempting to free them of the sweat that was rapidly forming. They trailed grubby and greasy handprints in their wake. She slid the book towards herself carefully afraid to touch it. Touching it was if not more unpleasant than she remembered from her last encounter with the book. She resisted the urge to shove the book away from herself and flipped it's cover open to the first blank page. Gripping her pen in her right hand she began to tell her tale in the tiny, neat signature script that was hers and hers alone. A script that bespoke of an orderly and highly organized mind. This was the tale of Claire Montgomery.
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