Trap

This is Fiction

They led me down the darkened corridor to see him. It was leaking from the exposed pipes and I had to duck between steps to stop the drips from hitting my head. The prisoners all watched me from behind their four layers of glass. They were each making a ruckus at my appearance in the facility but the cells were so dense, you could not hear a thing. I am no body language expert but there was an obvious aggression to the sight of a woman in these parts.

"You're lucky they're soundproofed," my escort said to me. "You should hear the shit they usually mouth off to us."

I said nothing and kept my focus on the long walk. He was located in cell eighty-four B, so they informed me in the administration centre. Declan Holland. The trapper. He eluded authorities for seven years as he propelled through the South American jungles for reptiles and other wild beasts, skinning their furs and ripping off their skins for sale to the local markets. He graduated to human flesh sometime later when the markets presented a lucrative opportunity. He wasn't psychotic, he was just blessed with a calm demeanour, a frozen stomach and the empathy of a blackboard. We looked at one another through the thickened glass as he sat on his cell room bed awaiting my arrival.

"If you wish to speak with him, you gotta use the receivers," the escort told me as he pointed to the phone mounted to the wall at the front of the cell.

I did as instructed. Holland saw I had the receiver to my ear and proceeded to speak aloud.

"I can hear you when you use the phone on the wall... It ain't like the movies, they don't allow us the same device. It's all internal," he explained. I nodded.

"Ain't you gonna say something or are you just gonna stare out into space?"

He'd caught me in a daze. I was intimidated by this murderer, and I was stupid enough to let that on. I swallowed audibly and I hated myself for this also.

"Mister Holland, I am Anne Gale, I am a private attorney who is representing Kevin and Joan Klein," I explained.

"I don't know who that is," he said.

"Sir, they are the recipients of a snakeskin stripped from an Anaconda in the Amazon. The merchant of that skin has traced a receipt of transaction to you being the manufacturer."

He started to laugh.

"Look at me, lady, do I look like someone you could bring an action against? I'm doing eight life sentences. My assets are next to zero. Good luck suing me is all I can say," he said to me as he waved me off and focused his attention to his ankles.

I hung up the phone and walked back from the glass, enough for him to take the bait and race over to regain my attention. He never lost it, but I liked to give him the illusion. He signalled for me to pick up the phone receiver once again. I did so.

"What happened to this couple?" he asked, all of a sudden desperate for information.

"Well, sir, nothing..." I said.

"Nothing?" He was deflated.

"That's right, I planted the foundations of two stories. One that I am an attorney, and two that there are two people of unknown origin that may have fallen foul of an incident involving your previous career as a trapper, and you raced up and signalled for an update. I can only conclude that it was your intention to do so because you wanted a taste of the blood rush you would experience when you hunted human flesh. You wanted to know that you inflicted death on two more unsuspecting victims. This would raise your body count total and give you the insider street cred that you and your pals behind these walls wear like a badge of honour," I said as I proceeded to hang up the phone.

I wasn't an attorney, and there wasn’t any couple. I was a doctor of human behaviour, designed to lead inmates into a false sense of security to assess their credibility for release. My job required illusion and deception. I had to look the part, and I had to sell the story.

The government paid me well for my services, and I was flown around the country to perform these operations, the nature of the ruse being that no inmate would be fooled by my presence in a centre more than once. I was assigned to no single location, allowing me to perform my little exposure at various centres whenever there was a question at play as to the credibility of an inmates suitability for liberty.

I had performed my program on Declan Holland in textbook fashion.

He believed he had a read on me the moment I arrived, making the task all the more easier. I was able to place him in a position of vulnerability, whereby he was able to reveal his true character.

The inmate began to laugh at me as my escort arrived. He laughed uncontrollably. He was having an episode in his cell. I turned to the escort.

"Does he require attention?" I asked.

"I'm sure he will be fine," he told me. He looked different. There was a pair of dark glasses wrapped around his eyes. He wasn’t wearing them earlier. There was also a faint drop of blood on the top of his ear that hadn't quite dried but was on the cusp.

"I think he has one more thing he wants to tell you if it's of any use?" the escort said.

I turned back to the glass as the inmate stopped his maniacal laugh and stood to face me in a calmer manner than he had showcased prior to our discussion. I placed the phone to my ear.

"I'm not Dexter Holland," he said. "We got you!" He began laughing again.

The four-panel glass of the cells began to revolve upwards as a switch of unknown origin had harnessed a pulley system, freeing the inmates from their cells to roam around the halls. One by one they began to step out of their once confined spaces, eager to proceed over to us. I turned to my escort, who smiled at me, a big Cheshire grin.

"I had the night watch guards killed this morning, and I was all set to walk out the front door," he said. "Until I saw the visitation charts and noticed someone I had never met coming to pay me a visit," he took a step closer to me and I matched it with a step backwards.

He wasn’t a prison officer or a manager of security. He was someone dressed up in the role. It was a ruse, a manufactured deceit. He was Declan Holland.

"I thought to myself, who could this be? Could this be one of those psych assessors who trick the inmates into giving away their true character? Surely not," he said, taking another step. His Cheshire grin grew wider. I could see the inmates behind him marching closer and closer towards us.

"I don't like being made a fool of," he said.

I ran just as he lunged for me.

I was facing an enclosed wall at the end of the corridor, but a moment of space between me and the encroaching evil was better than standing there waiting for the attack.

I knew there was no hope for me, but with what air in my lungs and desire for freedom in my heart, I was not going to let these prisoners take me apart without a fight.

I clenched my fists along with my jaw. I would be swinging wildly when they reached me. I arrived at the dead end and turned to face the threat. I began swinging.