Still and solemn dark figures resembled humans when their silhouettes separated as shifting shadows do. Some made small talk, but only did so with a constant head over their shoulders. Others sat on the floor with their face in their hands or kept to the walls in statuesque blankness. Black uniforms walked around as torrential winds; tearing prisoners apart, pulling them up off the floor, and shoving them into corners and each other. The jingle of their armament with their aggressive footfalls was the loudest and often only noise. There must have been around 50 of us crammed in this otherwise empty chamber, it too dark and we too similar to distinguish one face from another. I could only determine differences between bodies by the degree of distress in their posture and the numbers on their ankles. Some were taller or had more shadows on their faces from the creases of age, but when none were familiar and all without detail, it was hard to know if I’d crossed the same person twice when traveling the crowd. Blue lighting illuminated us like we’d been abducted to an alien planet. Not a glint of that blue luster caught in any of the passing eyes that sat lifeless in their respective sockets as though formed by plastic.

Someone fell into me, an elbow jabbing into my sore shoulder. After I shoved them away,  I didn’t stop for a chance return to my aggression. I didn’t care. Reaching the opposite wall, I slapped my palm onto it, arching forward while heaving. I was fine. I couldn’t breathe, sure, but I was fine. The ceiling, however, was too low, the blue too disorienting. Too many bodies. Too tight doors.

I traced the stitches that made the ICF emblem on my chest as if it could relax me, idling my hand to reduce tension at the cost of a repetitive reminder of where I was. Better to engrain it into me, let the thread past my clothing and into my skin till I’d become tailored to it too. Then I wouldn’t show the hesitation I was now. But only on the surface would I accommodate, beneath the skin was a territory they’d never reach. A 40-year guarantee that aided the calm in claiming some ground back over me. Maybe I couldn’t win, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t let them either. 

When no one noticed or paid attention to me, a sense of invisibility was the only other thing I scrounged reassurance out of. I found a semblance of peace and stood independently of the wall. In time too, as an indent was made in the crowd. Riding the current of inmates took me from one room to another. I couldn’t see anything over the tops of heads and bodies of gray until the guards organized us all into a single file line along the far wall. They paced the perimeter to ensure we stayed put and held anyone in place who considered jumping ahead.

The long room, filled with rectangular metal tables, reminded me of some school cafeteria. For the food, I had hopes as high as the floor. I watched others gather their meals from a slot in the wall and sit down on the round attached seats. “Meal” wouldn’t be the word I’d use when I saw with horror what they’d collected. Tall plastic cups filled with a thick substance. When I took my own, it didn’t make the contents any more clear, other than that the mush inside was garnished with unground chunks. Any of the mixture's exact pigments was indiscernible with everything touched by an unrelenting blue. I doubted there was any color it could be that would make it not look like a dose of sewage. 

There didn't seem to be any arranged seating when I wasn’t fought with for where I landed myself. No one regarded me besides the person adjacent, stinting a snicker when I gagged on my food’s scent test. I looked at them, toasted my cup with a “bottom’s up”, and downed my breakfast with two fingers pinched over my nose. It went down like swallowing warm vomit. When I felt nausea come as it traveled down my throat, I didn’t think I’d know the difference between the chunky liquid coming back up or still going down. Hoping it was and would remain the later, I emptied the rest.

My hunger went unresolved by the food, in fact, it only made me realize it was there at all. How long had it even been since I’d eaten anything? Without a clock or a window to take an educated guess with, I was left with spinning disorientation behind my eyes. Rubbing my head, I forced acceptance that it didn’t matter. Listening to the hesitant and slow conversations around me kept me from my vertigo. No one spoke with enough volume for me to gleam much but passing phrases. A lot of restless mentions of being tired or ailed in some way or another. Not the most promising of small talk. I wondered if you could exhaust topics of conversation when being locked up, leaving the only thing left to spend your voice on was complaints to distract yourself. Anyone who met my gaze either glanced down at their portion or looked prepped to start a disagreement. I wasn’t ready to socialize with my new peers, so I chewed on the edges of my cup while wishing for a cigarette. I never considered myself dependent till now.

“Cut it, cue ball.” The person across from me snapped. She leaned forward and I responded accordingly. With a pointed finger pressed flat to the table, she bluntly explained, “Those are communal. You get teeth marks in that, someone’ll put teeth marks in you.”

I sat back while dragging my teeth from the cup. The snap it made sparked displeasure in my tablemate. I would check to see if I should expect visits from vampires, but I was more interested in how I was referred. “Cue ball?”

She pointed to her scalp where little hairs fell against her forehead. Around me, other prisoners’ hair was in varying stages of regrowth, none of which stretched past the ears. I felt the bristle on my scalp and realized what was an indication of fresh meat.

“Real smart.” I returned sarcastically. Past the scratchy feeling of my head was the call of a stomach yet unfilled, “Is this all we get?”

She lifted the cup and watched the insides jostle. “You’ll adjust.” A flat statement before knocking back the drink. Seeing someone else indulge reminded my taste buds of the flavor. I grimaced and shut my eyes, unwilling to experience round two.

A crash several tables away from my back shook me. I heard the slap of plastic against the table and the warble of it rolling along free against the tile, followed by the clap of skin against a solid structure. A hard, unrelenting, contact. My curiosity shifted my posture to see what was happening behind me, but my dining companion snagged my shirt’s collar and forced me back around. She pulled me so near it seemed a bid at trying to get me on her side of the table. Her gaze locked with mine, and at the slightest hint my eyes would wander from hers, she shook me violently until my undivided attention returned. This close, I saw the urgency in her tense shoulders and the straight line of her mouth. Her staccato breathing brushed my face.

“Don’t look.” She said so low it was practically mouthed.

With all conversations cut, quavering sobs rippled through every occupied chair. A pulsating rhythm filled everyone in the room’s chests from an unseen repetitive strike of meat. A collective heartbeat, even though I was sure most of ours had stopped. I flinched from the first countless impacts before I’d adjusted to the echo of a relentless smack. Eventually, the victim’s cries out-performed that of the drumming, collaborating with a plea to a crowd feigning deafness. I was paralyzed from the beginning till the abrupt silence at the end. I couldn't be sure it was over; I swore I could still feel the beating in my veins. The woman kept my wide eyes on hers, pushing a conclusive “Don't.” through her trembling mouth and taking away her white knuckles from my shirt. I almost missed my seat when falling back into it. I crossed my arms tight till I could almost crush them with each other. While collecting my senses, the lingering vision of the woman’s shivering kept my mind in the past. I started to pile my head with convincing scenarios, each one more awful than the last, until I’d rather have seen what happened. The imagination can make up a terrible array of imagery all on its own. But sometimes, reality ends up being worse than you could have ever guessed.