Monster Minds [completed]

Chapter 1

Dedicated to my sister jazza82 who without I would sound like a blabbering idiot.

Make sure you have read the prologue before beginning.

Monster

ˈmɒnstə/

1.

A large, ugly, and frightening imaginary creature.

"A monster with the head of a hyena and hindquarters of a wolf"

synonyms: fabulous creature, mythical creature

Chapter 1

My heels clinked against the hard stone floor as I made my way through the hallways of Connecticut's Northern Correctional Institution. A distant scream echoed through the halls somewhere in the west wing. The sound ricocheted off my heart, sharing no empathy for his tortured soul. A home of monsters is after-all a  home of death, horror and guilt. I straightened my blouse and turned a sharp corner but my feet slipped on a slippery substance and I almost lost my balance. My ankle buckled beneath me, making a sharp pain shoot up my leg. It felt like fire and ice were having a dance party in my calf, kicking and spinning slowly towards my ankle. I gasped and clutched my foot, cursing for wearing heels on my already worn out feet. I wouldn't be able to dance tonight, mother was going to kill me.

I reached into my skirt pocket and clicked down on the record button for the first time this afternoon. I looked down at my watch.

"4:45pm, Tuesday, March 24th. There is another blood pool on the floor. From the looks of it, no one has even bothered to try clean it up yet. The blood is probably a few hours old." I sighed and looked down the hallways. "The second hallway in the east wing is currently unoccupied by both inmates or guards. Security is lacking, I believe more guards are in need of accurate placing..." I looked down at my blood coated heel and grunted. "And a few more cleaners." I ended the recording with another click of my fingers and continued on my way.

At least twice a day, everyday, I would record the events or strange happenings that went on in the prison. I got paid, handsomely, to report back to my father about the things that go unnoticed or disappear. Sometimes I would find the strangest things, like a cat in a prison cell or fingernail clippings hidden in a hole in the wall. It was quite sad, seeing the security fail so miserably around the prison, and I couldn't imagine what trouble I get some of the guards into.
On the rare occasion I would get assigned something more difficult, like to help find a missing object or, sometimes, even a missing staff member. I knew the prison like the back of  my hand but still I found passages and hidden hallways that I never knew existed on these strange missions.

Two months before today, an inmate went missing and since then the staff had been in a panic. My father said that they knew he hadn't left the  building as there was no facial recognition of him, or any inmate, leaving the prison in the past few months. He was hiding somewhere within the prison, and it was amazing that no one had found him yet, they usually get caught within a week. The media didn't know yet and we were trying to keep it that way unless we knew for certain he had escaped. The state would go into panic seeing as our prison only harboured the most notorious criminals. Each and every inmate in the prison was on the execution list or awaiting trail to get off it.

I sighed and straightened myself, continuing down the hall. As I hurried through the building I couldn't help but notice the lack of vibrancy, the walls were a dull grey colour, there were absolutely no paintings, and to top it off all the windows were barred with five inch steel poles and the glass was so thick that the sun light barely escaped through the rims. I understood the security necessities but there was no place in the ratchet building that spotted one source of true natural light. No part of the building was really catered to the visitors or even humans for that matter.