Ender's Creative Cloud

Prologue – The Beast’s Cage

I hope he rotted in jail.

No. Rotting was a natural process, given to leaves and dead things to return it gently, however grossly, to the minerals of things to nurture the new. Rotting was too nice a process for Al. So here’s what I really wished on him…

I hoped he got the biggest, burliest, horniest cellmate in the whole prison joint. And to that end, that he was fucked every uncomfortable wakeful moment of his prison sentence. Without lube.

I wished fisted, gaping and bleed-some sodomy on him as I was walked to my cell where I was to share his sentence of ten years for driving my fiancé to and from the bank. A bank which I was made to understand he robbed effectively in under two minutes – how reminiscent of our own lovemaking. It was like bank robbery practice in bed, ‘Can I come in under two minutes? Gee let me see….’

“Come forward,” the blue uniformed prison officer gestured with the baton and I imagined shoving it satisfying up into Al’s rear orifice.

“Assume the position.”

By which he meant, ‘’spread em”. Gosh I had thought that was only in movies. And I had thought it couldn’t have been more humiliating for my family to see me on trial, be sentenced for accessary to the crime and be sent to prison without a shred of personal belongings. It was like they wiped the memory clean and killed the ‘good society mule’ right from existence. And instead you were just ‘a prisoner’, or inmate 5427.

I extended my limbs and waited, once again for another random officer to derive his pleasure from feeling every curve of my body.

Yes. There it was. The customary linger on and between my breasts and over the rise of my ass. I marked this officer, with the low buzz cut and washed out blue eyes, as one to stay far away from until this was all over.

“Clear, you can come through.” He waved me forward to walk ahead of him, “Turn right.” He directed me through the dimly lit halls that stank of aged and rusting pipes and bars.

When we finally reached the cells the officer started counting, just beneath his breath but still audible in the close quarters. I could feel the interest of the inmates stirring, as some of them peered from their bunks or wherever they were crouched. I ignored it as best as I could while trying to size up who was the biggest bully among them all. I’d need friends for my ten years, or so I had been told.

“…Five and six. Now turn left.” The guard must’ve been new or something if he still needed to count. He counted another six cells on the left, “…Five, and… six. Now turn right.” He continued, “One, two, three, four, five … six.” He stopped in front of the sixth cell.

This one had better light, but appeared to be empty. The officer jangled the keys as he searched now for the right one, checking on me as if I could run away with my cuffed hands and feet in a secure facility. Asshole.

The key was labelled, ‘666’ and was slightly bigger than the others.

You have got to be kidding me.

Inside the cell there was a wide comfortable mattress on one side, and a thin mattress that had been made neatly with autumn coloured sheets and even had a matching pillowcase. I knew which one was mine for sure. Because if this was the cage of the beast, I’d sure as hell sleep on the floor before I messed up the fine white comforter and white pillows on her bed.

“Go on in,” the young officer opened the cell wide and nodded with a quick jerk of his head for me to get moving.

In answer I rose my hands, still in cuffs and looked him right in his eyes. He blushed. Yep, definitely new. Then he fumbled with another set of keys, clicking the chain cuffs around my feet before taking off the cuffs around my hands.

I rubbed warmth back into my palms and entered into the beast’s cage, looking around.

It was clean, and smelled of pine fresh. The walls of the cell had been painted on, creating portraits that looked like they would sell in a gallery. As the officer locked back the cell I approached the wall, examining the paintings and becoming more and more impressed with each one.

I had been a curator at the art gallery down in Brooks, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought to find fine art in a cell. Ironic that I searched my whole career for a masterpiece for the gallery and now that I was fired and in jail that I should find several.

Maybe the inmate here wasn’t so bad, if she could make art like this. How did they even allow all this stuff in the prison?

I was looking at the face of a man now. All hard lines about his mouth, hard blues rimmed his irises and a jawline that could slice cheese. He had wavy dark hair and a prominent chin. The power of this image made me look away from the center of his eyes. It was hard not to contemplate who he was, lost in the emotions conveyed by the masterful piece.

I almost did not notice a door at the far back of the cell opening and a small woman with silvered hair with streaks of black emerged. Her prison uniform was obviously altered. I realised that I was not looking at a jumper, I was looking at a navy blue skirt, then an almost tunic-like top of the same colour. Her face had makeup, and she exuded the presence of someone very much in control, like the man in the painting.

“He was my husband.” She said without greeting, as she came closer. Her voice was elegant, slightly accented perhaps from years of travelling and socializing in high society.

I didn’t know what to say. Who was this woman? What was a woman like her even doing here? But I caught on to the use of past tense for her husband. “Was?”

“Yes. Was.” She offered no explanation. “You must be Kaitlin…. I’m Miranda.” She passed me and settled onto her mattress. “I had them prepare for you. Figured you for an autumn kind of girl.” She nodded towards the bed.

A beast who could small talk. I was growing in my amazement by the second. “You knew I was coming.”

“I asked for you specifically,” she replied looking at me where I still stood.

“Why?” And the guards had given in to her request. That spoke volumes.

“We have things in common. You and I.” Miranda stood and came to stand beside me, facing the painting. “What do you think of my work?”

Art? She knew I was a curator and wanted me in her cell to talk about art? This woman was crazy, and I was beginning to sense why she was dangerous. There was a spark in her, the kind that lights homes on fire and burns things to the ground. She oozed ‘wild card’ aura.

I had to clear my throat and stand my ground, pretending not to fear her closeness. “It’s a beautiful piece, it has all the elements of a masterpiece except one.”

“Except one?” Miranda was intrigued.

This was my area of expertise, I forged ahead, “Yes. Much of what people pay for in the art is the personality of the artist. The piece may be accurate but it lacks fire. The face, it’s flawless, almost inhuman. There’s no emotion underneath.”

Miranda came as close as someone who was a proper lady could ever come to sniggering. Then she touched the very part of the painting I had been avoiding. The eyes. “That’s my husband. Flawless on the outside. No emotion underneath.”

My heart raced, I had been wrong. It was intentional to make him soulless. But still, there was something else about it… “And you still loved him?” I could tell that much. The brush strokes caressed his jawline, kissed his lips and there were miniscule, curved little lines that looked like fingerprints on his cheek. As if someone had touched there tenderly before the paint could even dry, and had never bothered to cover it up.

Miranda was surprised this time. Her smile evaporated. “Yes.” She became cold in that one word. Then when she spoke again she was professional. “That’s why we are alike.”

I rose an eyebrow. In this moment I felt anything but love for Al. He had screwed me over.

Miranda looked at me, with those same unnerving eyes, although hers was a deeper blue. “We are intelligent women, I could tell from the time I first saw you enter the courtroom, your eyes. I could see it all. You’re a smart woman, can you tell me how you didn’t know your fiancé was robbing the place?”

I gritted my teeth. The judge figured the same way. He assumed that I was in on it because of how everything added up against me. With my wedding coming up we needed cash, and a honeymoon in the Bahamas was nothing cheap. Of course that all meant it was reasonable to assume that I knew we were robbing the bank. I shook my head, angry now. “I was a fool. I thought he loved me.”

“Yes. Exactly. Intelligent woman – who was a fool. The man you were with loved you, at least that what you told yourself at night.” Miranda returned to her bed and sat yet again, primly. “It blinded you to him. I know a bit of what that is like.”

“But you still love him,” I said without even thinking.

Miranda smiled. “Yes. Yes I suppose that’s the way it has to be with me. I still love him because we’d been married for thirty years. I remember so much of what he used to be… but I’ll tell you a secret, just between us girls…” Her voice lowered, she was letting me in on the real dirt. “I always knew he was a monster. I didn’t mind as much being treated like a washcloth. That was marriage, functional, messy but functional.”

That sounded sad. As a woman that had been about to enter marriage with a dirt bag I couldn’t even disagree. She was right, I was just sad that nobody had warned me like this before.

“Do you want to know why I killed him?” Miranda had continued, and she grabbed my attention again. So that was why she was in here. Her voice coloured with pride and hardened with hatred all at once, “He hurt my children. And I would kill him a thousand times again without a second thought.”

So she had been jailed for killing a monster. I wondered if it was to be this way for all women who loved horrible men.

“I know you didn’t know about Al, and I know you’re in here because the judge was an asshole who needed to prove a point.”

“How do you know all this, and how do you have all this?” I think my wonder at it all must have seeped into my voice, gesturing all around me.

“Men think they have power because they have wealth, and position. Some women have both and never have any power at all. But look at me. I’m freer in prison that I ever was living with my husband, and it’s all because I demanded what I deserve. Respect.” Her voice curled around the word and then spat it out in the fiercest way she could manage. “What about you? You want to get out of here?”

This woman had made me into a believer in just a few minutes. I didn’t deserve this, and I wanted more out of my life. I wanted my life back, and I damn sure wanted Al to pay. When I finally nodded she smiled, and her teeth flashed pearly white. Perfect.

“Then listen to me carefully…”