Page 9 of Dark Possession

“Perhaps, but doubtful. I have not told anyone.”

“Why not?”

“I see no reason for them to further benefit off of our labor. And, it gives me something to do.”

“You collect diamonds?” Jesse said with bemusement. The irony was inescapable. It was hilarious actually, the idea of an inmate being in possession of something worth a fortune outside the wall that was utterly worthless inside it.

“I do. You may start your own collection if you like.”

“I think I’ll do that,” Jesse said, slipping the rock inside his own pocket. It really was rather funny. He had a diamond in his pocket, yet he couldn’t even use it to buy bread to eat. Hilarious.

They worked in silence for the rest of the afternoon. By the end of it, Jesse had never been more tired or more hungry in his life. It was not that he was unaccustomed to going long periods without food, it was that he was unused to hard manual labor being layered on top of that. He stumbled and swayed several times on the long walk back into the sunlight. He was ashamed of his weakness and glad that Toran could not see behind him in the shadows.

Jesse had mined perhaps two hundred pounds of coal. Before today, if he had been asked if that was a lot, he would have said yes. But it was barely enough for five credits and some warm soup. By contrast, Toran had pulled nearly two thousand pounds of coal during the same amount of time.

He seemed larger than life, stronger than any man Jesse had ever known or imagined. He thought to himself that if he had to submit to any man...it wouldn’t be so shameful to submit to one like Toran. Perhaps.

When they pushed the cart into the loading zone, Toran again declared thirty-five bins for himself and another five for Jesse. Jesse was so grateful he could have wept. He lowered his eyes to hide the wetness in them, but his voice betrayed him with a tremble.

“T-Thank you.”

“Let’s get you something to eat. You earned it.”

He didn’t. Not really, not according to the standards of this new world he found himself thrust into. According to them, he was a charity case. He was not a man. If one could not feed himself, he was not a man, but a woman. Jesse felt the hot shame of it keenly even as the smell of meat cooking drew him like a dumb animal.

Toran’s hand was on his back when they entered a long industrial-looking warehouse that served as the mess hall. It cost five credits to get in the first door. There was a soup station and some long tables and benches, past that, another set of gates. They scanned their shackles once more and Jesse’s heart dropped as he saw his shackle display the number zero. Once past the second gate, he quickly forgot his dismay because his saliva glands began actively trying to drown him.

The food was worth the wait, worth the effort. He was allowed as much of it as he wanted- steaming hot potatoes, sizzling steak and pot roast, salted vegetables. It was smart of them. Had the prisoners slaved away all day to spend their whole 10 credits on thin gruel, there would have been a revolt. But this did, in some small way, make it all worth it. The food was plentiful and delicious and hot.

There was a relaxed, almost jovial mood to the mess hall that Jesse could identify with. Even he felt almost delirious with relief. He was drunk off the food itself and the way it felt between his teeth, slid across his tongue and landed, hot and filling, in his belly.

“I think I’ll just stay in here. Forever.”

Toran smiled as he dug into the mountain of food on his plate. He wasn’t a picky eater. It was all piled together like a messy shepherd’s pie.

“I think someone tried that once. Rumor said he tried to hide in one of the ovens. They served him to us as sausage for breakfast.”

Jesse’s mouth fell open and a piece of carrot plopped out onto the plate. Toran laughed at him. The expression transformed his bullish, overly-masculine face into one that was almost attractive.

“It is just a story people tell. Nobody knows if it's true or not.”

Jesse looked down at his steak. “The night I arrived, the two men that fought over me that were killed...the others butchered their bodies for meat. I saw them do it.”

Toran leveled him with a glance, “Why let the bodies be burnt when they can be put to good use? That would be foolish and wasteful. You see how hard it is to carve a living out of those rocks. Each meal is hard won and many of the men go hungry far more often than they would like. The guards’ only role here is to keep us inside the walls. There are no rules here. We are left utterly to our own devices. Can you really judge them? Those men were already dead and hunger is a terrible thing.”

It was, but also the fear and the desperation and the hopelessness that came with it. That was more than enough to turn anyone into a savage.

It was enough to make anyone do things they thought they were otherwise incapable of.

Love was that way too.

He thought of his mother.

He thought of her spreading her legs and hating herself while loving another who didn’t love her back. He thought of his long-absent father who had abandoned them both when her stomach swelled fat. He thought of a woman’s life formed and molded by the men around her, but not herself. He thought about what it was to not own oneself. In this world, that was what it meant to be a woman.

Here, if one could not take care of himself, could not feed or protect himself, he was forced to belong to another. He was forced to become...a woman, regardless of genitalia. It all came back to strength. Independence, autonomy or lack thereof, that was the defining hallmark of gender and that was true both inside and outside of the prison walls.

“I-I want to thank you. For helping me today. For your generosity. I know that it wasn’t entirely altruistic on your part, but I want to thank you just the same.”