Hot Dog Day

Lucky Star

For a couple of weeks now it had been officially summer, and the worst of it had just begun on the day the accident happened.

Life was going on as usual in Florida.

"...connected to Sirius, which is a star, which is also called the 'Dog Star' and is part of the constellation of Canis Major..."

"That is Latin for 'greater dog'," Lolly chimed in, nodding by Suzanne's side and making her frown.

"...yes. And soon Sirius will rise very early, we could see it on the horizon before the sun -"

"Ah. I wish I could see the sun rise sometimes," Lorna sighed dreamily.

"...the sun... right. But anyway," Suzanne restarted, irritated by the interruptions and anxious to finish the story for her friends' benefit, "they also thought the heat caused lots of weird things to people and plants and dogs went rabid."

("You heard it?" there on a round of the blocks with PolyCon's rep, Warden Hellman smirked and elbowed his subordinate as they were walking by and caught part of the conversation. "Loon bitches talking 'bout mad dogs."

"Oh. Er... yeah! Dogs and... bitches. Pfft, crazy, right?" Blake faked a grin, with little success.

Hellman eyed him disgusted. "Fuckin' Mormon pussy..." he muttered under his breath. "You gotta toughen up if you want to be treated as a real man, Blake. Look at your boss for a lesson," he patted his shoulder heavily and strutted to Linda by the lunch cart, cockiness all over his face.)

"Aand that's why we call them 'dog days'," Suzanne managed to conclude. Fiuu, finally.

"Well, but I don't call them that," said Lorna.

"We say каникулы, kaníkuly, like 'small dog'," Red contributed. "But every day we live as dogs in Russia. Kicked and on a leash."

"Aah, poor things," Lorna rubbed Red's arm in consolation.

"Of course," Lolly nodded knowingly. "It's the same system everywhere. KGB, SVR, FSB, CIA, NSA, FBI," she listed on her fingers: "different names, and they may look different, but it's all a strategy."

"But..." Suzanne looked at the three of them and then met the shrewd understanding eyes of Taslitz, also at her table. The old woman shrugged. "Ookay."

She stood up to go ask for another yoghurt.

_________________________

So it happened on the next day, at night, actually. Or very early morning if one wanted to be precise. It was 4 a.m. when the air conditioning in B-Block stopped working.

All of the Florida ladies were asleep then, and half the guards - aka one - were, too.

Blake was snoring, head on the desk, in the well-conditioned wannabe panopticon-style glass box from where he could keep watch on a good portion of the cells - or he could have done it, had he been awake.

McCullough, less comfy out on a chair which gave her a view of the remaining inmates (but used to worse from her army days), was on her way there as well. When suddenly, something clicked in her subconscious and dragged her mind out of dreamland. It was a sound or, rather, the absence of a sound.

It took a little but, yawning and looking around, stretching her arms, her skin registered something else: the heat. It was hot. It was really, fucking hot. What the...

Ah! That was the anomaly. The background noise of their not exactly state-of-the-art air conditioning was no more.

During the day, with the normal buzz from the women, it was almost impossible to hear it, but it became a constant companion at night.

Damn.

She stood up, took a turn; confirmed the AC was off, Blake was still sleeping and so were the women, thank god. The last thing she needed was for one to notice the issue and wake up the rest.

Then she remembered some of them had high blood pressure and started fretting, and sweating even more. Fuck. And she even had a double shift today.