Monster Minds [completed]

Prologue

I was nine years old when my father sent me to prison.

I didn't go because I was a criminal, a murderer, or a monster; I went because he told me to. He said it was time that I saw all that was bad in the world—who was really bad in this world. He told me that it would be ok, that he wouldn't let anybody hurt me. But, as he would've known, that was an empty promise.

When I first walked through the gates, I had imagined the great beasts that lay inside. Monsters—that's what Dad had called them. They were hideous creatures that felt no guilt and killed for the thrill of it. 

As a child, I had imagined red skinned devils and blue eyed gargoyles staring out at me from behind bars, rotted flesh hanging from behind their pointed teeth and their blood stained hands clinging to the rattling railings.

Of course, it wasn't really like that.

They didn't have horns or fangs, they didn't have wings or talons, and they didn't have blood soaked clothing. They were people... normal, living and breathing, people.

A small part of my younger self was almost in denial; I had believed everything my father had told me—that they were monsters—only to find out they were the complete opposite. In my entire nine years of living I had imagined my dad a hero, catching the monsters that haunted the streets and locking them away, only to have that small fantasy crushed under the pounding foot of reality, never to be felt again.

"They aren't monsters on the outside Emily..." He had said. "They're a monster where even you can't see them. Up here," he said, running his hand through the blonde hair that stuck to my temple, "that's where the real monster lies."

When I was ten my father got sick of my rambling and started taking me into work with him regularly. He was the Correction officer of the Northern Correctional Institution. Given his position, he had a key to almost every door in the prison. A Correction officer is responsible for the custody and supervision of inmates in the prison. He was highly trusted and regarded; there wasn't a single person living under that roof that my father didn't know. He was famous for his background research on inmates and his ability to figure things out that others couldn't fathom.

Two years later, when I was twelve, the staff could no longer satisfy my questions. I begged my father to let me talk to one of them, but it wasn't until I was thirteen years old that I was allowed near the prisoners. Surprisingly enough, the watchful eyes of an adult never accompanied me. While there were guards lining the halls, not one of them ever specifically watched me. 

Sometimes, I felt my father's eyes upon me as he stalked the hallways, but he would never enter alongside me. I didn't know if it was because he trusted me or because he knew something I did not. Maybe he just couldn't bare my endless talking.

Soon after, it had become normal for me to visit the prisoners weekly. It was hard at first, trying to get answers out of them. I think some of them were more shocked than anything to see a little girl wandering around their personal grieving grounds. Some even believed I was an undercover government employed child, and when they lashed out or got angry a guard would rush to my side and render them motionless with a gun pointed to their head.

In high school, when I was thirteen, I began to understand how people work, how I work, and how the human brain can function in so many different ways. I became infatuated with psychology and psychiatry, the most confusing parts of the human mind. Every single day I would wonder and question what it really meant to be human. Question after question I would ask myself, and my father, about these monsters. I wanted to learn and I wanted to understand.

My father finally began to understand this a few months later and gave me my first job on site. Armed with a voice recorder and a pen, I was told to record anything inside the prison that I thought was faulty or out of place. That included holes in the walls, missing knifes from the kitchens, and the occasional rat infestation. Sometimes, I thought my Dad had only given me that job as a way of distracting me from the things I really wanted to be doing; talking to and understanding the prisoners.

But even with this thought lingering in my mind, I still found an abundance of time to talk to the prisoners, whom I began to call my friends.

There was one man who always treated me with kindness, George Oles. He was an older man, in his late forties, when I first met him at the age of thirteen. He was kind, gentle and always seemed happy to answer my endless list of questions. 

I was not afraid of him, or any other of the prisoners for that matter, and I never quite understood why. Some part of me knew I should fear him—he was in prison for a reason—but my imagination of a true monster never added up with the likes of him. He was a tall man with a round belly, grey stubble sketched onto his chin, and if his sleeves rolled up a little too high you could see the scars lining his wrists. His face was cracked with ageing lines, making his forehead look like sheets of sand that had dried too quickly and been stomped on by laughing children.

I started calling him Uncle George at the age of fourteen and my father hit the roof when he found out. He screamed at me, asked me what the hell I was thinking, and took away my voice recorder, which was always carefully placed in my jacket when I talked to the prisoners. 

 For me, this was the cruelest punishment someone could ever think of, and I cried for nights on end until he gave it back and forgave me. He told me to never get too close to one of them ever again and I had vowed to keep that promise on my 'Mommy's heart and soul'.

What he didn't know was that I had never stopped calling Uncle George 'Uncle George'; I just simply never said it when I saw him lurking around in the hallways or watching me 'inconspicuously'. He also didn't know that George was like family to me and I would do anything to keep him safe.

I was eighteen when I witness a prison brawl that would change my life forever. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never gone to prison that day, and I would have never let my guard down.

-
-
-
-

Make sure you read this before beginning with the story :)

Enjoy

Charli xx