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salvatore
Askanybody in the facility what they’re afraid of, and they’ll tell you a stint in the Box. Nobody wants to be housed in a cell within a cell. It’s basically double the punishment. The few freedoms you’re granted as an inmate at the county correctional facility—like a window in your cell, and time to get your legs moving on the way to the chow hall or jail yard—are stripped away from you.
In the Box, it’s all you know. It’s all you are for what feels like an indeterminate amount of time confined to a solitary space.
You’re not even a person. You’re just a thing put away and left to suffer.
An experience I know about all too well.
After the confrontation with LaTessa and his guys, I’m escorted to a part of the facility I’ve never been before. Handcuffed and shoved from behind, the guards don’t tell me where they’re taking me.
But I already know as we turn down a hall and shadows stretch longer. Silence echoes in my ears, and I take note of the steel doors on my left and right. They’re impenetrable enough for wild bears, and damn sure for men—tall and painted black, there’s a slot toward the bottom.
I can only guess what’s inside. Who is kept behind these doors.
I’m about to join them.
Sandberg gives me a shove toward the third last door in the hall.
“How long are you keeping me in here?”
“Never mind,” he answers.
“I have rights. You’ve got to tell me for solitary confine—”
“Get inside!”
The door swings open and I’m sent stumbling into the dark hole. I don’t recover in time. I crash into the ground with a hard smack. The door’s slammed shut by the time I’m getting back up onto my feet.
“See you when I see you!” cackles Officer Sandberg.
His footsteps die away.
Darkness.
It’s what I’m standing in the middle of. Since it’s already night out, they’ve decided to introduce me to my new cell in pitch blackness.
The cot’s here somewhere. I wander around and bump into it after a couple steps.
It’s the only thing in my cell. That and a toilet.
I plop down, my elbows at rest on my thighs, and let my face fall into my hands.
Captivity is nothing to me after what I’ve been through.
But I’d be lying if I said it’s not something that’s rough. That takes a surprising amount of mental energy to work through.
I’ve never been a fan of darkness. Of tight spaces.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve hated it. Lucius loved nothing more than locking me in closets for hours on end. I’d listen to his cackle and dying footsteps with anxiety poisoning my chest as I wondered how long he’d leave me locked away.
Being placed in a cell like this—dark, silent, suffocatingly small—awakens something deep and unsettling inside me.
Delphine would call it childhood trauma. The kind gone unprocessed. I’ve spent decades shoving it down as far as it’ll go so I can pretend it doesn’t exist.
I collapse the rest of the way onto the cot and squeeze my eyes shut. It should only be a few days.
* * *
