Justice (Chapter Three)

Chapter Three

The Red shut the door behind me.
Huddled near the drain, hands buried beneath her blonde hair, was Shannon.
As I approached, her frame twisted in my direction and it was then that I saw the heavy marks streaking across her face.
My steps faltered. There was no way that I’d thought they’d go this far, not with all the trouble on the streets.
My mind jumped to Maggie, to her warnings and to her foresight. She had seen all of this, but she hadn’t had to feel it. Sense: devoid of fear; divorced from consequence.
I took her in. Shannon's face resembled a damaged, discoloured plum. Her lips were puffed up like a Hollywood collagen nightmare, her left eye glued down with a sticky, red paste while contusions ran in neat intervals from her wrists to her shoulders. The marks were orderly.
Hesitantly, I knelt down and patted her back. I patted and felt useless. Then, from her guts, she let out a shuddering wail, leaning her full weight against me and sliding down into my lap. Her head pressed against my stomach; she searched for warmth and comfort - probably finding only the former. I felt her body heave, vomiting sobs of hysteria gathering, her tears and spit developing a translucent patch of mucus on my overalls. Finally, a dam inside her collapsed,
“Clara. I’m sorry. She just wouldn’t stop and she told me terrible things, said she’d hurt Mum and Dad, said that you’d told them everything anyway. I tried to keep my mouth shut, I really did.”
She swallowed tentatively. Her liquid-blue eyes, deep in her skull, rolled up to meet mine.
“But she hurt me, they, God, she…And they knew about the discs and they knew what was on them – they’re not stupid, not as stupid as we thought and she…she had a knife and...”
Her breath caught in her throat, her eyes closed and she fell to soft weeping -her body a whisper against mine.
So, they’d gone for the weak one and I didn’t have a scratch on me. I tried not to feel angry at her. I wondered how much she’d actually said, whether she’d blabbed the whole lot out at the first punch or if she’d held up for a few minutes at least. Her swollen face was full of confession.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that the Oranges had probably been laughing at me during my interview. I should’ve realised that their acceptance of my story was far too easy. If they’d already beaten the hell out of Shannon, our conversation was nothing more than a formality to see how far my lies would go.
I patted Shannon’s head and lied some more,
“It doesn’t matter. I think they knew anyway – the Orange sweethearts I’ve just been with had a long file to read; if we’d had some Reds it might have been different. They only needed to go through those discs and they’d have guessed straight away. They’ll know what we wanted on there, well, what I was looking for and probably even what I was going to do. We’ll be fine. I’m sure you tried to keep…”
“I did Clara, honestly, I did. But, I have to tell you. It was awful and I didn’t know where you were, so I had to, in the end, I had to. I told them, told them all the plans. God, I’m so sorry. I know how much you wanted to clear his name. But, I don’t think Sense will hurt us anymore if we just do what they want. All I want to do is to go home. They said that if I told them everything, I could go home. I don’t want them to do anything else.”
And then the cynical, paranoid voice jumped into my head – the voice that I had taken to trusting when everything else had fallen apart. It was the voice that had kept me focused over the last few months, a voice that had made me strong when I’d needed to be, when my family had fallen apart. Before I could put a leash on it, the words were out and scratching up the walls. I snapped at her,
“Shannon, did they offer you anything in return for what you said? You didn’t get anything out of this, did you?”
She raised her head from my lap, mouth puckered in disbelief,
“What? What – are you serious?”
“Well, I just need to know if you struck a deal.”
“What? I’ve gone along with you on everything because I know what you’ve been through and because I’m your friend. Have you lost it Clara? I’ve given up everything for you and look where it’s got me – in a compound. How could you even ask me? Would you have asked Maggie? And you ask me if I got anything out of it? What – a mansion and a fast car? Well, yes, actually I did get something from them, a wonderful present, you see that Orange bitch, she didn’t just ruin my face. Why don’t you have a look?”
And Shannon ripped her hand from where it was tucked under her armpit, wincing as she unfurled her quivering fist. It was only then that I noticed a dark brown smear against the sleeve of her overalls.
It wasn’t there.
Her forefinger. It was gone. It wasn’t there. Severed. Gone.
All that remained was a bloody cigar end, a snippet of white bone poking through. I inhaled. Strangely, I wanted to touch that bone, to check if it was real. My mind reverted to the swirling patterns from the interview room, but here there was no prosthetic, just absence.
“Have a good look.” She whispered. “Yes Clara, that’s what I got out of this. Think I just told them after a quick slap? Want to show me what you got? Funny, ‘cause you look pretty O.K to me – got anything missing I can’t see?”
Mockingly, she pulled at my overalls, patting me down to see if I was unscathed. She even tapped down the cuts on my face, harder than necessary. I felt the fleshy end of her finger, soggy against my skin and knew I was unable to control the reflex reaction to shy away. It was a farce – an act of drama manipulated to drag me into feeling some sort of shame. I had never asked her to get involved in this; it had been her choice. She had known what was at stake and who we were dealing with. She had seen what they’d done to Dad.
“Yep Clara, I only told them when they held me down and she sawed off my finger. Is that good enough for you? Have I proved my friendship?”
Slowly, I lifted my eyes from hers and stood up. Walking to the other side of the pen, I hung my head between my outstretched arms, leaning my weight on those cold, visceral walls. A minute passed. This could not carry on; I could not carry her. After I was out of here, it would be me on my own from now on. She was a liability. She was broken.
The walls were pushing back against me, pushing me in her direction, towards that cylindrical wound. I turned and saw my hands were covered in a clammy film of red – dispersed stigmata from the new paint.
I called out,
“We’re finished in here.”
Tears pulsed from her eyes. She burrowed her hand back into her armpit. A dark expression I’d never seen before invaded her face –one that told me that, in her mind, our friendship was over.
The Red re-entered the pen, pulled Shannon to her feet and manoeuvred her form out of the door. She pulled her head around. Her eyes, so pretty when we used to practise our make-up, shot to black pellets. Her mouth twisted. The girl prone to spending too long playing with her hair straighteners wasn’t there anymore. Well, in a war there are always casualties; for me, this was the second.