Subject 375. Nikki Owen

inscribing, shutting myself off from the world, from prison. It is my way of attempting to cope, adjust, to hide. My notebook is already dense with scratches and scrawls of numbers, of pictures, diagrams, outlines of floor plans I have recalled, phrases, messages that have floated like disembodied skulls in my head. My hand aches, my brain buzzes. None of it, when I look at it, when I read it back, makes sense, but I do not care. It is now all there, pressed into the page. The recording of it seems to spurt out in stages—codes, patterns, cryptic information, unusual encoded configurations. It all exists. Counted, documented. Yet, when I review it, when I scan all the detail, one thought scares me above everything else: I don’t ever recall having learnt any of it.

      I set down the notepad, glance up and see her: the inmate with the studs on her tongue and the tattoo on her stomach. My body goes rigid, an alarm shrilling in my head, the urge to flee coursing through me.

      ‘This is Michaela Croft,’ the guard says, stepping inside. Michaela grins; I do not. Instead, I swallow, try to keep my hands from flapping.

      The guard raises an eyebrow. ‘Well,’ she says before backing out, ‘I’ll leave you two to get …acquainted.’

      I glance to my bed, panic. My notebook. Where did I place my notebook?

      Michaela pushes past me. ‘I’m taking a leak.’

      My pillow. There. My notebook peeks from under it. I allow myself to exhale then slip it out of sight, fast, silent.

      A flush sounds. ‘Well,’ says Michaela, zipping her fly with one hand and wiping her nose with the other, ‘ain’t this nice?’

      She flops to her bed. ‘You do him then, the priest?’

      The trouble is, while she asks me this, while I am a little frightened of her, all I can think is that she hasn’t washed her hands. ‘There is soap,’ I say. I can’t help it.

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘After using the toilet,’ I continue, ‘a hand can contain over two hundred million bacteria per square inch. You did not wash your hands. There is soap.’

      She stares at me, blinking, fists clenched, and I know I am in trouble. I sit, a coiled spring, waiting for her to hit me, claw me, but then, just like that, she shakes her head, says, ‘Jesus fuck,’ and lies down on her bed.

      I watch her. The piercings on her ears have gone. Six puncture marks remain.

      She yawns, wide, cavernous, the mouth of a lion. ‘All over the papers you was,’ she says. ‘Doctor Death, they called you, that right? You killed a priest! Ha! You hard fucker.’ She slips her palms behind her head. ‘I don’t bloody know why. I mean look at you…You’d hardly scare a kitten, never mind a sodding priest. You’re like some little pixie.’

      The ceiling light flickers, making me jump. ‘I have never scared a kitten.’

      ‘You what?’

      I stand, pace, lift my palms to my skull and knead my forehead. She is too noisy. Too noisy. ‘I do not belong here,’ I say, because I do not. I do not know where I belong any more.

      ‘What? You’re innocent?’ She laughs, a cackle, a lash of a whip. ‘That’s what they all say. Everyone’s innocent, la, la, la.’ She swings her legs over her bed, stands and prowls over to me. ‘Sit.’

      I do not move.

      ‘I said sit.’ She pushes me to the bed and slides beside me. Anxious now, I flap my hand. The edge of my fingers hit her thigh.

      ‘Hey! What the fuck?’ She grabs my fingers, squeezing them. I feel a sudden, confusing urge to whip my hand out, jab her clean in the neck.

      ‘You have to understand something,’ she says to my face, her spit and hot breath on my skin, ‘they all say they’re innocent, and they’re all shooting for another taste of freedom; but what they don’t realise is this—is—it. Here. This place. No one gets out.’ She releases my fingers; I rub them. ‘And while you’re in here, something to remember.’ She whispers to my ear. ‘I’m in charge. Got it?’

      She stands and jumps onto her bed. ‘Now,’ she says, resting her palms behind her head, ‘be a dear and turn off the chat. I need my beauty sleep.’

      I find that I am too weary to respond.

      Over an hour has passed.

      I have been sitting on my bed with my notepad. Snoring, Michaela opens her mouth and groans. When she rolls to the wall, I return to my notes. I have been writing, furiously, urgently. Trial details, evidence, memories, schedules, anything and everything I think will help in an appeal, help to secure new counsel. It is my attempt at routine, at making something happen, at making my appeal become a reality. I have written about the priest, about what he discovered when I was volunteering at the convent, the paper trail that led nowhere, figuring that if I transcribe it, if I put it in black and white, I won’t forget. I won’t forget what he did for me—and what information I need to find out is where Father Reznik really went. Who he really was.

      I carry on writing, absorbed in it, so waist deep in its waters that when she awakes, when she growls back to life, I do not, at first, realise.

      ‘What fucking time is it?’

      My head shoots up, my hand instantly flinging the pad behind me.

      ‘I said what time is it? Were you writing?’

      She rubs her eyes. I slip the notebook into my underwear. ‘I was…sitting on the bed.’

      She blinks, focuses back on me. ‘You’re just fucking weird.’

      For some reason, over the next ten minutes, Michaela talks. I don’t know what I am supposed to do. Listen? Answer back? Laugh? Smile? I am paralysed by the choices. The more she awakens, the more she reveals: a lover, life, parents. And all the while the corner of the notebook digs into my skin; I want to move it, but cannot. Her eyes are on me the entire time.

      ‘So, you Spanish, huh?’

      ‘Yes. I told you when we met.’ She should already know this. Normal people seem to recall very little information.

      ‘All right, smart fucking arse.’ She sighs. ‘I like Spain. We nearly moved out there, you know, me and my man. Then I got mixed up in some drugs bollocks and he met that cow and well…’

      I move the notebook. A millimetre, that is all, but it is like pulling a thorn out of my flesh.

      ‘…And so I killed her, I killed his bit on the side. Ha, Jesus. That’ll serve him right for messing with me.’

      When she pauses, I take it as a cue to speak. So I say, ‘Killed his bit on the side,’ because I have learnt that repeating what people say can make them believe I am conversing with them. Talking with them. Not at them. Either way, it’s all pretend.

      She narrows her eyes at me. I go still again. ‘What is it with you, hey? Why do you always sound like a fucking robot? You don’t say much. And then when you do…’ She throws up a hand. ‘You just sit there, still as a bloody wall.’ She stands. Her face is suddenly flushed, contorted, and she stalks towards me, rolls her thick, tattooed shoulders. ‘Who are you, hey?’

      I cannot help it. The words tumble out. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. Have you already forgotten?’ I try to smile, maybe that will help. It doesn’t.

      Her eyes go wide like two marbles in her head, two perfect storms.

      I try something else. ‘You asked me my name. I wondered if perhaps you had temporary memory loss. Prison could do that.’ I try a laugh, that’s what people sometimes do. A bit of teeth.

      ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

      I scan my brain. Is she cross? So, I drop the laugh, recall what a concerned face may look like and attempt to replicate that. ‘Women in prison are five times more likely to have mental health issues compared to the general population. In the