Story of Wu - Pt. 1

            The pot in the corner of the room was used for many things. It had given life to food, good tea, and at times had been used as a waste disposal unit. There was not much else in the room that was as useful as the pot. A good container was really important to any prisoner who planned on staying for a lengthy time. Danny treasured that pot. It was important to his everyday life in the facility. He probably would have named the pot by the end of his eight year stint in the prison, as it was already a treasured item.

            “Hey!”

            Now though, Danny wasn’t a big fan of his small black pot with the broken handle and metal rim, because Wu was using it to bash his head in.

            “Stop it! Let him go or I will open fire!”

            The guard yelled past the bars as they waited for the electronic gate to open up. The green light above the railing had finally come on, meaning that the guards would rush in soon. It was too late though.

            Wu knew they wouldn’t shoot. The guards cared nothing for those they watched, but, even they would have to answer for each dead body that happened on their shift. However, if they simply allowed the animals to kill each other, that caused much less paperwork in the future.

            It didn’t matter though. Danny’s eye was already hanging loosely out of its socket and his lips were parted, the top one curled upward as blood splashed down his face. Even if Wu’s next strike wasn’t about to end the young prisoner’s life, he would have lived with brain damage from that moment on.

            The other prisoners cheered as the events unfolded. Some cheered from their cells, banging their cups and similar pots against the bars. Others, members of Wu’s gang and those who had just been unfortunate enough to be caught in the main corridor, they rooted for the violence as well. All of them were preparing for the guards to rush in and beat them into submission. They crouched to the ground, arms shielding their heads, prepared.

            It was Wu though that chose to hit Danny once more, even though he was sure the runt was dead. His arm rose. The leader’s darker skin was covered in blood that almost hid the numerous tattoos he had over his arms and chest. The last hard sound, thwack, sounded off as Wu’s hand struck. The pot carried another volley of blood and small bits of skull across the concrete white wall. That noise echoed with the alarm as it sounded, letting the other group of attackers in. Those safe in their cells still yelled and cheered at the brutality of the guards, even though they would not hesitate to do the same to them, were they down in the corridor.

            The guards beat Wu the worse, as he knew they would. He smiled though. It was all worth it. Everything had gone according to plan.

           

            Solitary was a blessing in some ways. It gave you quiet time, time to heal, time to think. The food in solitary was not necessarily worse. The guards just threw it in. Eating crap food off the floor didn’t really hurt the taste that much. The absence of light wasn’t as drastic of a change from the dimness of the prison interior.

            The only thing that Wu minded was not being able to track the passing of time. He wasn’t sure how long he had been in the hole. They kept changing their answer, whenever he asked how much longer he would remain there. Wu had attempted to measure the days by the meals delivered to him, but the guards began to forego that small luxury, denying him food or saying they had delivered it when it had ended up in the trash. Wu could hear them laughing sometimes, up the stone steps and outside the door.

            Wu had been left in the hole for twenty-three days—even though he was not aware it had been that long. At some point, the door was opened and he was sprayed down with a large hose as a make-shift shower, but there were still some flakes of dried blood in his short black hair. His bruises were mostly gone. Healing didn’t pass the time though. There were only so many push-ups and crunches that he could do before Wu was almost literally climbing the walls, just for activity. Wu wasn’t sure whether it was the food itself or the lack there of that had been making his stomach turn so much these last few days. He had been drinking from the toilet until it backed up.

            Now his throat was parched. He leaned against the cool wall in his dirtied wife-beater. The cool stone braced his shoulders now. He lacked the energy to do anything else until something changed. Wu was trying not to lose his smile though.

            It was close to an hour later when he heard the footsteps. They stopped outside of his door and spoke for a moment, but it was hard for Wu to make out in his current state. He thought they were arguing, perhaps it was meal time and they would decide not to give him the food and drink again today. Perhaps he would die from this. That couldn’t be though, that was not part of the plan.

            The keys hit the lock. Wu turned his head a bit surprised. If it was just a meal run they would have thrown it through the slot, accented with an insult. The iron door opened though with two guards standing in the doorway. Wu shielded his eyes at the bright light that flooded in to the solitary cell. He couldn’t open them at first, unaccustomed to the brightness. The smell of semi-fresh air was also a little jarring.

            “Get up,” one of the guards grunted.

            Wu was trying to stand, he was just too weak. The guards came over towards him, batons drawn. One of them put the baton to Wu’s throat while the other helped to pull him up.

            “Pick up your feet!”

            The guards pulled him out into the hallway, rushing him in a truly uncaring manner, perhaps more so than usual. Wu noticed the annoyed expressions on their faces. Something had angered them, perhaps he had been granted an early release from solitary confinement. Wu smiled. If the guards were having a bad day, his life couldn’t be that bad.

            “You boys are looking a little down.” Wu remarked to the guards, having to work to keep up with their pace. “I can talk to Tommy for you guys, have him hook you up. You two need to de-stress. You look upset. You know my boys can help you with that.”

            “Shut up, Wu,” one of the guards shot back.

            “Felix, he has the hook-up on pussy here. I figure you guys aren’t having much luck on the outside, but in here, we can make things happen.”

            The other officer was not responding to Wu’s taunts like the first guard. He struck the concrete wall with his baton, causing a loud noise to echo through the hallway.

            “For someone who thinks he runs this place, you are in for a world of hurt.”

            It was at that point that Wu realized they were not heading towards his cell. C block was the other direction from where they had just turned. Wu was so rarely surprised, but this moment had his mind racing. They wouldn’t be taking him to see the warden, no sport in that. Warden Morales didn’t like to get his hands dirty with the riffraff anyway. This was something else.

            “So, where we going? Someone finally fix the pool?”

            The smugger of the two guards now began to smile.

            “Your jokes are falling flat. Where is your smile now, asshole?”

            They took another turn in the long windowed hallway that lead to one of the oldest parts of the prison. Built in the 2140’s, Talcolo Prison was constructed on the island of Boca Raton, Florida, after the great depression. The prison was comprised of five different structures, each housing four blocks of prisoners except for the administration building. Each one stood three stories tall and had an accompanying guard tower and green Spanish tile roofs. There were two docks, the only ways on and off of the island were by boats that came twice a month, and could only land on one of these two points. The rest of the island was too dangerous to try to dock a boat on, for fear of being thrust into the rocks, or eaten.

            There was a permanent gray hue to the sky. Storms came frequently, raging without warning. Vicious—with lightning and electrical interference, flying anything into that area was almost a death sentence, another side-effect of the great destruction. The island prison was on the North end of Mother Nature’s constant anger, tropical storms, hurricanes, and lightning storms were typical, especially at night. Escape was not much of an option.

            Construction of the island facility took quite some time under these conditions. The administration building was erected first and was the largest in square feet. The old windowed bridge was raised between the two buildings with explosives placed at each of the struts to cut off the administration officials from the inmates if needed. It was also the place that, if you believe the rumors, more than one prisoner had been tossed out of to a gruesome death on the rocks.

            Wu had tensed up when they went through the hallway, just in case. There were only two of them, but he wasn’t in any shape to fight. It occurred to him though that if they had wanted to kill him, the easiest course of action would have been to leave him solitary.

            He had plenty of time to think about the possibilities of why he was being moved there. It didn’t fit the plan. Wu had work to do on the inside, important work. He had a prison to run.

            The administration building looked much better on the inside than any of the others. It was Spartan, but had actual carpet in a dull shaggy red. There were mirrors, which did not exist in the holding facilities, because the glass could be used as a weapon. The light fixtures were more ornate here, an older lost style that had been imported from the mainland. There wasn’t much else in the way of decorations other than a few portraits of past wardens.

            Hallways led way to strings of offices, past the infirmary and library to the steps that led down. In the basement of the administration building was the records room, armory, several holding cells and interrogation rooms that were all under heavy guard and security. The two guards leading Wu had to take him through three checkpoints and strip search him in one of the holding cells.

            Wu’s body was toned and muscular, a canvas for the collage of scar tissue and tattoos that covered his limbs. Each scar told a story of near-death or a lesson learned. Whether it was a lesson learned from his sparring partners or a plan gone wrong, he treasured each one of them, as much as he treasured the tattoos. Each piece of ink on his body was purposefully visible, because they were all representative of victories. The two black tears signified his first kills, the dragon his promotion, the kanji were for his brothers, and the bleeding eye for his revenge on his sister’s rapist. Those were just a few of the ones that lined his limbs, some he couldn’t even tell the story for, due to potential repercussions.

            Wu was just glad there were no cavity searches this time, since he was coming from solitary confinement, there was no need. He just wasn’t in the mood to be smugly violated today. Instead, they left him naked and dripping wet after his chemical bath in the holding cell. The room was freezing cold, his leg bounced and his hands rubbed his chest from time-to-time to try and keep him warm. Time was wasting and once again he found himself unable to keep track of it, life was too short not to be in the mix.

            The door opened again finally and the same two guards approached Wu, tossing him a change of clothes. He quickly threw on the sleeveless white t-shirt and grey pants, wishing they had brought some socks as well. When he was dressed they had one more piece for Wu, the grey magnetic shackles that bound his wrists together with a gentle hum. The guards tested the cuffs before standing him up.

            It was then that Wu realized that the new clothes and cuffs meant that he was about to be paraded in front of someone. It wasn’t his time for parole there, hell; would they even offer it to him? As far as the Warden was concerned, it was just a matter of waiting until one of the other prisoners slit Wu’s throat, one set of paperwork he would gladly handle himself. It was only a matter of time—an inevitability. Wu was actually pretty sure at least one of the guards had tried once, paying one of the other prisoners to do their work.

            This was different though, it felt strange and new. Wu was about to be ripped from the world that he controlled, but he was not sure how or why.