Story code: ST-001267
Part 2: The Price of Cotton
Elena stopped breathing. She knew the five-pointed crown. Everyone on Block D knew it. The Syndicate ran the contraband, the gambling, and the violence. She had spent three years blending into the gray cinderblock walls specifically to avoid this exact ink.
“I don’t need help,” Elena said, her voice tight, trying to pull her hand away from the console.
The woman didn’t move. She was tall, smelling faintly of stolen peppermint oil and the harsh lye soap from the laundry. “Looks like you do, kitchen mouse,” she whispered. Her fingers, calloused and quick, tapped the screen. Item 4402. Quantity: one. The machine chirped, deducting nine dollars and forty-five cents from an account that had thousands of illicitly transferred dollars moving through it weekly.
“Cancel it,” Elena demanded, keeping her voice low so the guards near the heavy steel doors wouldn’t notice.
“Too late.” The machine spat out a flimsy thermal paper receipt.
Elena stared at the curling slip of paper. It was a contract. A binding, inescapable contract. The woman stepped back, allowing Elena to turn around. It was Corra, a lieutenant who operated out of the cell block’s upper tier. Corra smiled, but the expression didn’t touch her dark, calculating eyes.
“Go get your box, Elena,” Corra said, her voice carrying just enough for the first three women in line to hear. “You look like you’re in a bad way.”
The women in line exchanged glances. The isolation Elena had carefully built over thirty-six months shattered in three seconds. To the rest of the block, she was now under the Syndicate’s umbrella. That meant protection to some, but to Elena, it meant a target on her back.
The damp wadding of toilet paper shifted uncomfortably between her thighs, a hot prickle of warning. She had minutes before the blood soaked into the rough gray fabric of her uniform pants. If she didn’t take the receipt to the distribution window right now, she would face a uniform violation at the two o’clock count. The parole board abhorred rule-breakers.
Her hand trembled as she snatched the receipt. She walked toward the heavy plexiglass window across the rec room, her posture stiff, terrified that any sudden movement would dislodge her makeshift protection.
Behind the glass, Officer Ruiz, a bored guard with a thick mustache, snatched the receipt from the slot. He scanned the barcode, walked to the metal shelving units in the back, and returned with the square cardboard box. He didn’t slide it through the slot immediately. Instead, his eyes flicked from the receipt to Elena, then over her shoulder toward the kiosk.
“Living large today, huh?” Ruiz muttered, his gaze lingering on the fact that the buyer’s ID number didn’t match Elena’s. He knew. The guards always knew the block’s economics. He shoved the box through the slot. “Don’t come crying to me when the bill comes due.”
Elena grabbed the box. The cardboard felt heavy, abrasive against her palms. The weight of it was entirely disproportionate to what it contained. It felt like holding a brick of raw uranium. She needed a bathroom immediately. She turned toward the corridor that led to the D-Block latrines, her pace quickening. The cramps in her lower abdomen twisted, sharp and relentless, matching the frantic rhythm of her heart.
She made it past the rusted weight benches and into the narrow, dimly lit hallway connecting the rec room to the cell block. The dim fluorescent tube overhead flickered, casting a sickly yellow light over the peeling gray paint. There were no cameras in this five-foot stretch of corridor. It was a well-known blind spot, deliberately ignored by the administration.
A hand clamped around her upper arm, stopping her dead.
Elena gasped, clutching the box of tampons to her chest. Corra stepped out of the shallow alcove near the mop closet, pushing Elena effortlessly against the cold cinderblock wall.
“I said don’t worry about the math,” Corra said, her voice a low purr. “I didn’t say it was free.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Elena said quickly, her breathing shallow. “Next payday. I make twelve cents an hour. I’ll transfer it all. Ten dollars. Keep the change.”
Corra laughed, a short, humorless sound that echoed off the damp walls. “I don’t want your twelve cents, kitchen mouse. I want access.”
Elena’s spine pressed painfully against the uneven mortar. “I don’t have access to anything.”
“You clean the stainless vats,” Corra said, stepping closer, boxing Elena in. The peppermint smell was overpowering now. “You have the keys to the industrial supply cage while you’re on shift. I need a bottle of the high-concentration bleach. The undiluted stuff. Just one bottle.”
Elena’s stomach plummeted. High-concentration bleach was a Class A restricted substance. Inmates used it to alter urine tests, clean up blood, or throw in someone’s eyes during a riot. Smuggling it out of the kitchen meant an automatic trip to solitary confinement. It meant a guaranteed denial at her parole hearing. It meant her twenty remaining months would turn into five more years.
“I can’t,” Elena whispered, shaking her head. “They inventory the cage every night. The civilian overseer checks the bottles.”
“Then you better figure out how to water down the remaining stock so the volume matches,” Corra said softly, her thumb brushing the collar of Elena’s uniform. “Because if I don’t have that bottle under the bleachers in the yard by tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell Miller you stole that receipt from me. And then I’m going to let my girls in the laundry room collect the debt.”
A fresh wave of pain hit Elena’s abdomen, and with it, a terrifying slickness against her thigh. The wadding had failed. The blood was moving. She had mere seconds to reach the stall before the stain reached the outer fabric of her pants, before the uniform violation became a reality anyway.
Corra’s eyes dropped to Elena’s trousers, her gaze sharp enough to catch the subtle, desperate shift of Elena’s hips. Corra knew exactly what was happening. She was intentionally running out the clock.
“Tomorrow morning,” Corra repeated, tapping the cardboard box in Elena’s arms, refusing to move out of the hallway. “Enjoy the cotton.”