Six Feet Under

chapter nine

[ 10/15/2015, Clairmont County Women Prison, 0900 ]

Madison was used to the whispers by now.

Ingrained instincts from a lifetime of trying to hide her sociopathy almost drove her to explain that she was framed and to rebuild the public perception of her innocence and naivety, but she stopped herself. Explaining herself to prison inmates wouldn't make a damned difference and she would only be wasting her time.

(Maybe it would, but she'd just see how it goes.)

So she just looked down every time somebody pointed, and pulled at the metal cuffs around her wrists to remind herself of what was important.

She was careful to show only a limited range of emotions. Sometimes, she wore a carefully constructed expression of fear, sometimes of dread. But most of her time in jail, she simply displayed a pitiful, cowering look with her eyes drawn to the ground, her shoulders hunched. She dragged her feet despairingly, moved fearfully and drew only small, nervous breaths. Her jumpiness often made her the laughingstock of the other inmates, but she needed neither their approval nor friendship to walk free. What she needed was public sympathy, and she knew exactly how to achieve that.

Perhaps it would be disturbing for a woman of 21 to be thinking of her stepmother's death and her own subsequent struggle for freedom so objectively, but to Madison this is almost second nature. She has long since accepted the fact that emotions cannot be forced and had tried to reconcile with it to the best of her ability.

Nobody in the prison tried to talk to her, but she knew they whispered about her when they passed each other in the cramped concrete hallways and the crowded cafeteria, swapping rumors and stories like a gaggle of teenage high school girls. She knew what they said about her

"- how could she-"

"-Madison Greene."

"-look at her-"

"-guilty."

"--she's crazy--"

Her eye twitched whenever her state of mind came into question, but bit her tongue and stayed silent. Let them think whatever she wanted, but she knew the truth, and their opinion will not make a difference.

--

She still thought about it sometimes, little flashes of things here and there. Glimpses of cold steel in limp fingers, blotches of red, a lax body sprawled on the expensive carpet and fair blonde hair spread like a halo. She thought about how she had earned a one-way ticket to prison just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not being born with her head screwed on quite right.

Cecile was always so nice to me, despite that.

Pity she was gone now.

--

The table clanged as a tray was slammed into it.

Madison looked up disinterestedly.

"How can I help you?" she offered, peering up at the woman through her blonde bangs.

"Did you do it?" The woman asked, blunt as a freight train. "Killed your stepmama, I heard?"

"No," she replied calmly, scraping her fork against the metal plate to get the last of the cheese out. "I didn't."

She noticed half-heartedly that the whole cafeteria had gone silent and was watching the exchange, and hunched her shoulders in further.

"Liar!" The woman laughed before dropping onto the bolted metal bench next to Madison. "But we're all liars here, ain't that right?"