Endangered Species Endangered Species (Time Served #1) - Onley James Page 0,5
was walking to the door, Linc started talking. “I’m calling in the team. In the meantime, watch your six and keep your head on a swivel. CSD is no joke.” Linc stood, calling after him, “There are a ton of gang members in there, and you look like the poster boy for the Aryan Brotherhood. They’ll try to recruit you or kill you straight out the gate. Don’t act like a target. Don’t use the word bitch. If anybody calls you a bitch, you fucking swing on them…”
Any other words of advice were lost behind the steel door as the guard shoved him back towards D-pod. “It doesn’t matter what your friend tells you, princess. They’re gonna love you in gen pop. You’re so pretty, they’ll have you wearing a dress before dinner time. Don’t worry, I hear you can still get makeup in the commissary.”
“Fuck off,” Webster snarled.
His head exploded as the guard shoved him face first into the door, his forehead connecting with the bars hard enough to make him see little cartoon stars floating around his head.
The guard yanked him back by the collar before pushing him inside with a chuckle. “Careful, inmate. Looks like you need to get used to those shackles,” he said loudly as they passed another corrections officer.
Webster was on guard until he was back in his cell. “Transport leaves at six a.m.,” the guard said with a smirk. “You might want to get some beauty sleep before your big debut.”
This time, Webster kept his thoughts to himself, sliding onto the thin pad that served as a mattress and staring at the words etched into the bottom of the top bunk.
Eyes up. Laces up.
Somebody’s always watching.
Webster had no doubt about that. Somebody would always be watching. It didn’t make him feel any safer. If anything, he felt like a fox the night before a hunt. There was no winning. If the hounds didn’t tear him apart, the men on horseback would simply shoot him between the eyes.
He was dead either way.
“Come.”
Rosebud, an all white pitbull-boxer mix with a bright pink nose and a stubby tail, stared at Cyrus with big blue eyes, her pink tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth, like she had all the time in the world.
“Rosie, come.”
The dog sat gazing at him with a level of defiance that would have made Cyrus laugh, if anything made Cyrus laugh. She was his hardest trainee yet. She knew the commands, understood his hand signals, yet she absolutely refused to do as she was told. Her stubbornness was both endearing and infuriating. Still, if he could keep any of the service dog trainees, it would be Rosie. She had spunk, despite the years of abuse and neglect she’d clearly suffered.
Being stubborn didn’t really pay off in the system, but, then again, neither did rolling over for whatever man told you to. But if a dog flunked out of the program, they went back to the shelter, and Rosie had already done her time at the shelter. Cyrus feared if she failed here, she’d get put down. The world had no use for those it couldn’t control.
“You got your work cut out for you with this one, inmate,” Rogers said.
Cyrus cut his eyes to the guard, who was leaning against a kennel two spaces over in his black pants and blue button down uniform shirt that fit too snug across his abdomen, the buttons threatening to rupture at any moment, potentially taking out an eye. Rogers had been on him all morning for no discernible reason that Cyrus could find. The other inmates pretended to like Rogers because he was a duck, always spilling dirt on the other guards in the hopes of gaining some kind of favor with the inmates.
Cyrus didn’t like Rogers, and he certainly didn’t trust him. After twenty years, Cyrus didn’t trust anybody. “Yeah, she’ll give in eventually. They always do. It just takes time and attention. She doesn’t trust me yet. But she will. Won’t you, girl?”
She stood, her nubby tail wagging her whole backside, excited to have Cyrus’s praise. He gave her attention, hoping that Rogers would retreat back to the door for a bit so he could try working with Rosie one on one. He suspected part of her stubbornness that day was due to Rogers hovering. What the fuck did he want anyway? Why was he riding Cyrus?
“Did you hear the news?” Rogers asked, almost like he’d read Cyrus’s mind.