“Courage, daughter! Do not end your life—there is yet hope.”
The warm, comforting, feminine voice seemed to come from all around her. But when Selena gasped and looked at the other inmates, it was clear none of them had heard it. What was it? Who was speaking to her? Was her mind playing tricks on her because of the extreme stress she was under?
“Your sanity is not in question, daughter,” the voice murmured in her ear. “But you must not end your life. I have a plan for you—a plan to prosper you and not to harm you. You must trust and have faith that this is so.”
“I…I don’t understand,” Selena whispered, shaking her head as though the disembodied voice could see her. “Who…who are you?”
“One who cares for you,” the voice assured her. And suddenly, it felt as though a warm quilt was being wrapped around Selena’s shoulders and someone was giving her a comforting hug.
“So…you don’t want me to kill myself? But what else can I do?” Selena whispered.
“You must speak to the next person who comes through the door,” the voice told her. “Do as I say, daughter, and help will be given to you.”
“It…it will?” Selena asked.
“Have faith,” the voice murmured, growing fainter now. “I have a plan for you.”
And then the voice was gone—but the feeling of being wrapped in a warm comforting quilt lingered. Selena looked around once more, but it seemed no one but her had heard the mysterious voice. She wondered who it could have been? Maybe the Kindred Goddess? Selena had never been very religious, but Kat had spoken of the Goddess like she was a real person—not just an imaginary deity.
Whoever it was, they had given Selena a fresh injection of courage. She shoved the silver kill-pill into her pocket and watched the doorway, wondering who was going to come through it. Maybe it would be one of the guards who was more sympathetic, or at least less corrupt than the others? Or maybe someone in authority who realized that what was being done to her was wrong…
But when the heavy metal door swung open again, her heart sank. There was no benign prison guard and no person who was obviously in authority, coming to set right a terrible injustice. There was only an old, hunchbacked Ma’shorkan woman, pushing a rickety metal cart filled with stacks of metal trays. Her breasts hung down like empty sacks and when she looked up for a moment, Selena saw that she had only one eye—the other was an empty, sunken socket and her eyelid had been stitched closed in a row of crude, black Xs.
“Look there, it’s one-eyed, unfuckable Moll!” one of the males chortled from the other cell.
“Why’s she called that?” another one asked.
“Cause—would you fuck her?” the first prisoner answered. “They use her to bring in the food, cause none of the males will bother attacking her—ugly old slut!”
The male cell erupted in trollish laughter at his words but the old woman seemed not to hear it at all. She simply hobbled over to the cell, pushing her rickety cart. Then she crouched down on her skinny haunches and began sliding metal trays—all of which were filled with some kind of grayish-green mush—through the grate at the base of the cell.
But first, she spat in each one.
“Hey!” the male who had called her “Unfuckable Moll” protested. “What are you doing that for? Stop it!”
Moll didn’t answer. She just kept spitting in every tray, leaving a shining splatter of saliva on top of every gooey mound of mush before sliding the tray under the grate into the male’s cell.
“Look what you did, you fucker!” growled Big Horn. Standing up from the bench in one swift motion, he strode over to the male who had started everything. Raising a ham-sized fist over his head, he brought it down squarely on top of the much-shorter male’s head.
The other prisoner fell like a stone, collapsing on the floor, face-first with a sickening crunch that must have been the sound of his nose breaking. Sure enough, a puddle of blood began to spread from under his unconscious face, the crimson creeping across the dirty floor in shining tendrils.
Moll paid no more attention to the violence than she had to the insults. She finished passing the men’s trays through the floor grate—spitting in every single one—and then rose slowly and rolled her cart over to the female holding cell.
The floor grate was right beside where Selena was sitting, still curled up in the corner. She pulled herself into a tighter package as the women came forward to get the metal trays full of mush the old woman was passing into the cell.
Luckily, she didn’t spit in the women’s food—though that hardly made it less unappetizing, at least in Selena’s view. The gray-green mush looked like moldy oatmeal and smelled like seafood that had gone bad in the sun. She had no interest in putting it in her mouth, though the other women were shoveling it in hungrily, with their bare hands.