“This should be the most boring job you ever have.”

I stared at my new supervisor. I’ll call him “Bob,” because I obviously can’t share his real name or title. I mentally turned over the irony; ADX holds the trophy case of America’s worst prisoners: El Chapo, the Unabomber, that piss-ass kid from the Boston Marathon, one of the Oklahoma City bombing planners, and the only guy ever convicted in a U. S. court for the September 11th attacks. It has to be one of the highest concentrations of human shit that our species has ever assembled.

But he was right.

It was boring.

There’s never been an escape from ADX. And after serving years in the worst parts of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I was happy to turn down the volume on the demons in my head. They didn’t stay behind when I went home for the last time.

Bob walked me through the process: several exterior security clearances, more interior clearances, paperwork in triplicate, multiple cameras on all people at all times. ADX employs several ex-military, which means that we’re prepared for the mind-numbing amount of procedural nonsense required to take a piss.

But I wasn’t prepared for Inmate 1913.

“Hey Bob, why does-”

“Don’t ask why he’s makes you feel that way,” Bob answered.

I’d love to paint a picture of the details, but I’m limited on what I can share. Several correctional officers were walking down a hallway with an inmate. That might make for a boring narrative, but I’m pushing way past the limits by telling you any of this.

Inmate 1913 had no hair anywhere on his body. His skin was creamy orange, like a plastic toy, and more reflective than human skin had any right to be. The weirdest part was that he hummed, like a TV or a fridge – silent and in the background. The harder I listened, the more I realized that the hum was inside my own head. It made me slightly nauseated, and I had to clamp my ass to keep from shitting.

We marched him through a series of rooms with no windows. Inmates aren’t allowed to know where in the prison they’re located, and we make sure they can’t find out, so the labyrinthine march is part of a mental process that weeds out any hope they’ll ever leave.

Bob and I were monitoring some video feed during the graveyard shift when it happened. Those were the worst; “going to watch paint dry,” we’d stay, then enjoy eight hours of footage in which nothing happened. That’s when the demons were loudest. I hated those shifts.

I shot out of my chair when a blur moved across the topmost screen. “Is that-”

“Yeah,” Bob answered, leaping to his feet. “It is.”

I’d seen just enough of the unnatural orange-cream shine to know who was running freely down the halls.

Correctional officers aren’t always armed to the teeth; if things go sideways, it’s better to minimize the quantity of weapons in the eye of a shitstorm. We didn’t need guns to keep the inmates in line.

At least, we hadn’t yet.

Bob darted out of the monitor room. I was three steps behind, reaching for the door when it slammed shut. My heart now racing, I grabbed the knob.

It was locked.

I probably don’t have to tell you that the locking mechanism isn’t designed to keep correctional officers inside against their will. Something was very wrong.

Then the lights went out. The lights are never supposed to go out. We have a backup power supply for our backup power supply’s backup.

We rarely experience a complete lack of light; there’s always an electronic device glowing nearby, or sunlight streaming through the edges of a window. But ADX Florence is as watertight as a duck’s asshole, and without power, I wasn’t even sure which way was up.

rrrrrrrrrriiiippp

Chills went through me like a furry tongue was playing a sonata on my vertebrae. The slow, tearing sound from the other side of the door was probably the most unnatural thing I’d ever heard. I knew, on a visceral level, that the thing outside my door was responsible for the lights and the lock. I reached for my radio, barely able to hold it with shaking hands. It didn’t crackle or whine; I could immediately tell that it was dead. No amount of adjusting its settings yielded any sort of response.

gurlge

Each heartbeat rattled every one of my 206 bones. I had no weapon, no light, and no way of communicating with the outside world. Even if I could leave through the locked and only door, I had no desire to meet whatever would be waiting for me.

tap tap tap

It knocked from the other side, soft and gentle.

tap tap tap

This time, the sound came from the top of the door, eight feet off the ground.

Not knowing is the worst part. So I pressed my ear against the door, making every effort to ensure that I didn’t cause a single sound as I leaned softly against the metal. I held my breath.

TAP TAP TAP

The sound was so loud that I jumped back. It had knocked on the part of the door directly opposite my head, reverberating the sound in my ear.

It knew exactly where my head was.

I curled into the fetal position, shaking. Warm tears rolled down my nose. I’d never felt so helpless; the thing had every advantage, and I had none. Everything I was about to experience was at the mercy of something stronger than me, and I would never understand why.

I was too despondent to breathe.

Then the lights clicked on. The monitors worked. My radio crackled to life.

My heart beat so fast that I had to choke down vomit. I knew that I had to look outside the door before I did anything else; if I was still in danger, no one could help me. And if something was going to happen, I couldn’t wait any longer to let it play out.

I grabbed the knob with a trembling hand.

The first attempt failed because my palms were too sweaty. After clutching the metal with both hands, I twisted it and pulled the door open.

Bob’s head stared back at me from the floor. His body was nowhere in sight, but the walls were covered with enough blood and skin to make a human, so my guess was that it had been pureed. The top of his skull had been cleanly removed like someone used a can opener to get the morsels inside. His skull was empty; no brain was in sight.

So I have no explanation for how he was able to roll his eyes toward me, focus on my face, and crack his lips in to a slow and deliberate smile.

There’s never been an escape from ADX. That’s the official party line. But no one can say what happened to Inmate 1913; his cell was empty after that, and there is no record of a transfer or a death. I would have seen the records if there had been any; everything is filed in triplicate, and there are multiple cameras on all people at all times.

But one way or another, he got out.

I was given a long vacation and a generous settlement after that night. Officially, it was overtime pay at twenty times my normal rate. It keeps the paperwork tidy.

I don’t know what else to say. There’s more to the story, but no more to what I know. I suppose the best insight I can offer is to be a little more paranoid next time you hear it.

tap tap tap

BD

W

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