Bell Curves

So what’s this? This is my confessional. I’m not gonna tell you any lies… this is me writing cus… frankly? I’ve got nothing else left.

I’m gonna be in here for longer than I think… If I do what I’m thinking about doing. That goop falling turned my life into a toilet.

Nothing else that happens from here could be any worse than what already has. And what already is.

Every time you kill or seriously injure somebody it resets your time.

So… That’s part one of how I flushed my life down the toilet. This is part two… And why I’m very likely gonna have a part three. Part two’s a little long so… buckle up, Buttercup.

I’m Cabbie. Cabbie Spencer. Not Gabby, not Gabriella.

Cabriella. Actually. I hate it… so Cabbie. Fucker.

23. Pretty as a picture. Mouth like a sailor. Hair like… short orange crap. Prison-cut short and wavy, actually.

And locked up for life. In the maximum security women’s prison, The Irish.

Named after ground zero. Notre Dame.

Ish. I mean.

Really it was Niles, but whose counting 18 minutes of driving?

My brain is your brain.

So… shit started right about the time…

The bus pulled up to it… but we saw it for miles.

The walls of the quarantined zone. Splashed green paint on the outside. Graffiti four leaf clovers sarcastically proclaiming it to be what it was.

The Irish.

Home sweet home.

“Prisoners! Each and every one of you will stand the fuck up. If you give me shit, I give you shit. If you speak out of turn, I will hammer your ass to the ground. Are we clear?” She shouted in a commanding voice from the front of the bus. Dressed down military business.

She was a big woman.

Easily nearing six feet.

I thought I was fit… This bitch’s biceps made my little arms look even punier by comparison. I mean I only weighted 110lbs with rocks in my pockets but still. This chick was a lean piece of lady beef.

I’d spent my life doing calisthenics.

I don’t know why. Maybe because my head was always scrambled like an egg.

It soothed me. I could turn off the thoughts while my muscles hurt.

By the time I was twenty-one butch dykes kept saying they wanted to eat eggs off my abs. God knows how many offers I got to… Let me see if I can get this right:

“Tongue punch my fart box” I would get when I went online.

Who the fuck talks like that? The internet barely worked and people are still out here trying to be bold.

Whatever the fuck that meant. I didn’t even want to imagine.

It made my skin crawl to think my effort to fix my fucked up head made people want to violate my body in vile ways. The world was ending. I wanted to survive.

Maybe that’s why I never got as big as this chick. Feared I’d find weirder fetishists or be too big to run.

This chick was… impressively built, to say the least. I mean, she wasn’t that big… she was kinda like what I imagine Wonder Woman cosplays as on the weekends.

And her titties were bigger than mine.

Like way bigger than mine.

I really hated her for that…

Am I really that petty?

Yeah. I am.

Was I justified in my anger? Look… I got a B-cup if I wear a push up.

I had beef, alright?

Not only that though, she had a small middle. Thighs like tree trunks. Wide shoulders. Strong back.

Oh! I know! Like one of those chicks that plays a superhero’s stunt double. Yeah.

How?

Probably a natural athlete… Made sense. Place like this probably hired nothing but retired athletes to keep a pack of heathens in a bio wasteland.

I don’t know what I like. I just know I like that. Or envy that. Both?

They told me this would be like the military. Looking at that uniform she was wearing… I got it.

“Are we clear?” She repeated…

Nobody said anything.

“Oh. I see,” she nodded. Clearly insulted. But there was a sly malice in her eyes…

I guess we forgot after a world-wide disaster multi-trillion dollar sludge industry boomed, our rights as humans were the last thing on their mind. The sludge was more important than our worth as criminals.

We were now the harvesters of a product. And with laws getting broken every day, we were the most replaceable part of the operation.

So our silence cost us.

Three female officers in riot gear stepped onto the bus with batons.

“Oh shit…” I whispered.

Eleven minutes later they had us off the bus on our knees. Some of the other girls were crying.

So was I honestly.

God damn that hurt.

They really went to work on us with those foam batons.

Firm. Foam batons.

Those rods felt like getting my ass whipped with a bull whip. I didn’t have to look in a mirror. I knew they left welts all across me.

I sniffed, feeling my skin throb in slashing lines all across my back and thighs.

“Let me try this again,” The officer who screamed at us from the front of the bus said, marching back and forth along the line of us kneeling.

Brand new prisoners. Twelve of us.

They already told me in my dossier meeting my odds of survival were about nineteen percent.

Most girls went nuts and killed themselves. Or got themselves ended one way or another.

“Do I have your attention?!” She roared and we all answered.

“Yes ma’am!”

I didn’t want any more of that shit.

She walked up the row, snatching a handful of each of our hair, making our head lean back to look her in the eyes.

Those riot guards stood at the ready nearby, smirking and leering at us, holding those whipping sticks.

“You got challenge?”

Every girl said no.

Then she got to me.

“How about you, Red… you got challenge?”

“I- don’t know wh— no?”

SMACK.

She lit my fucking face up. Hard.

I never been slapped so hard in my life.

I screamed, my voice cracked hard.

I had one of those raspy ‘probably screamed too much as a girl’ voices that broke all the time like a phone sex operator. And she mocked me for it.

“Was that a voice crack? We got ourselves a little Sugar Baby, huh?” Her voice was anything but fond of me.

She snatched my head back upright. My voice broke apart in another pathetic cry.

“Figures… We harden cookie dough in here, Sweetheart.” Throwing my head aside.

She barked the rules at us next.

“Rule number one. You don’t kill. You kill. We kill. Your stupid ass.” Ugh… she did that tough-girl gesturing thing with her hands. Fuck I hated tall bitches. “All murder ends in the death penalty. Under rare circumstances if it’s self-defense, you just get your sentence reset. My advice to you..?”

She let it linger for dramatic effect. I rolled my eyes while my face throbbed.

“Play nice, Ladies.” She concluded.

I swallowed tears. Sniffing.

I couldn’t help but think about my life before…

It wasn’t that great but I’d have given anything to go back to that hell over this one.

“Rule number two. You seriously injure someone, you get your sentence reset. And rule number three. You behave yourself in my barracks. You listen to your officers and you never… disengage… your Warden A.I. Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am!” We all said in unison.

“I can’t hear you…”

“Yes ma’am!”

“That’s right bitches.” She said, snarled, marching off as armed guards got us to our feet.

Up close those walls were massive. Imposing.

Something about them told me this was the last time I’d see the world outside of them. Least for a real long time.

So I looked around. Almost lamenting my life until I realized it’d been shit from beginning to end.

See that’s the thing…

Life.

As fucked up as it is. The thing we all have to realize is it’s dispassionate. It’s not about fair or unfair.

It doesn’t care. It can’t.

God’s plan is expressed in bell curves.

For every person who had a wonderful, beautiful, radiant life full of light and joy and love.

Somebody like me was born.

An absolute loser.

We have to exist. To fill all the spaces you never want to fill. To be in all the places you never want to be.

To feel all the things no one should ever have to feel…

So the people who don’t have to be us can have days that shine.

This was the day I found out which one of those people I was.

You’re welcome.

I’m in hell for you.