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I lay on my side facing the wall.
I couldn’t bring myself to look into the darkness.
In his direction.
I had gotten off easily, I knew.
There weren’t many Prizes who had escaped so easily their first night in this place.
Most would have been used by their Champions, who Claimed them after winning in the fighting pits.
But I hadn’t been Claimed, and the prisoner in my cell was not a Champion.
He was something entirely different…
I shut my eyes and willed pleasant memories into my consciousness.
I wanted to dream of happy times, of a time and place far from here.
But all I found was a monster in the darkness.
* * *
Two days earlier, I had been coming to the end of my night shift at the hospital where I worked as a nurse.
It’d been a particularly tiring shift as the local football team had — against all the odds — won their match, and some of the fans had decided it was a good idea to break into the local high school and perform some late-night free running on the grounds… while drinking heavily.
A short time later, ambulances were dispatched, and they were brought to my hospital, where they all needed two dozen stitches.
And who had the honor of sewing these fools back together again?
Only the nurse with the steadiest hands.
Only the nurse with the most experience of stitching people back together again.
Only yours truly.
They didn’t stop complaining as I fixed the assault they had committed upon themselves.
I had been coming toward the end of my shift too, and now with all these extra patients, I’d been forced to work more than two hours of overtime.
What was worse was that I had another shift beginning in less than six hours!
Exhausted and thankful the night was finally over, I tugged on my coat and began the walk home.
Taxis were extortionate at this time of night, and you were playing a game of Russian roulette about whether the bus would turn up on time.
The streets were still littered with broken glass from the celebrations of the successful football match — no matter whether they won or lost, damage was always done.
Still, I enjoyed the quietness of the main street before the full energy of the morning kicked in.
The shops were shut, and what few trucks I could hear in the distance were soothing.
Ordinarily, I would have taken a moment to pause and breathe in the cool night air, but tonight, I was just too exhausted.
I came to a stop at an alleyway that I always avoided due to the overpowering stink of urine and usually preferred to take the longer route, which added an extra twenty minutes to my journey.
But hey, I’m a safety girl and didn’t think the extra time I saved was worth getting my throat cut.
