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Part II: Submission
'Do you have any idea how much this cost?'' Dad asks in his calm voice, the one he uses when he's everything but. They're crowded in front of the broken vase, scattered in pieces across the grey carpet. They had been playing tag. It had been an accident. ''Which one of you did it?'' He continues, tightening his grip around the cane.
''I did,'' Martyn lies before Phil even gets the chance to open his mouth, taking the blame and the punishment. Phil looks to his older brother, tries to catch his gaze but to no avail. He had barely brushed it. Dad doesn't care for accidents.
''She should have taken you bastards with her.'' Mom had left a few weeks ago. She hadn't even said goodbye. ''Hands on the wall.'' Martyn obeys, placing his palms flat against the wall, looking down. Dad lifts the cane. There's no one to shelter Phil's eyes this time.
-x-x-x-
Dan doesn't know how long he spends at the prison's infirmary, slipping in and out of conciousness; hours, days, maybe even weeks. The morphine makes the pain feel like velvet, makes his hazy mind question if the assault ever even happened. During brief moments of clarity he's made aware that it did, the gauze and stitches proving so. He has three broken ribs, two black eyes, one split lip and zero pride.
Another thing that proves the assault did in fact happen is the day Dan awakes from his morphine slumber to find Kendall in the bed next to him. He almost doesn't recognize the man at first, his face beaten to a bloody pulp, swollen in a mixture of blue and purple. He's awake, Dan can see that, yet he looks anything but alive.
''What happened to you?'' Dan asks, leaning a bit forward in his bed, trying to get a closer look at Kendall's injuries. He feels the satisfaction bloom inside of him, either the excitement or the opiates making his skin tingle and his cells burn. Kendall slowly turns his face, one eye socket incredibly swollen but the other nearly inflated. The eyeball is missing.
''Retaliation,'' The man barely manages to croak out, revealing a set of toothless, bloody gums. Dan can't help but let out a deep snort at the irony of it all, thinking of the old saying; 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'. He doesn't feel guilty about his joyful emotions. Kendall took his pride. Kendall took everything.
''Who did this?'' He asks, leaning back in his bed again, burrowing his teeth in his lower lip as he waits for the name to leave Kendall's mouth, for the shivers to run down his own spine. He knows it already. He just needs to hear it.
''Lester.''
-x-x-x-
Dan is released back into general population during lunch the following week, walks from the infirmary to the dining hall with his chin lowered and eyes fixated on the concrete floor. The inmates he passes on the way all stare at him, but no longer with calculating and cautious eyes; he's accepted his defeat, is now part of the hierarchy he doesn't yet know his rank in. Lester sits alone at his usual table, but instead of a single food tray in front of him there's two. He's been awaiting him.
''I thought you'd rather die?'' Lester asks as Dan takes place beside him, the tight, amused smile reappearing on his lips as Dan furrows his eyebrows in pain, a small wince escaping him. He's not healed yet. Lester slides one of the food trays to him, long fingers twitching, desperate to reach out and touch. Dan doesn't pull away when he does, rough fingertips tracing the dark bruises on his face; not because he doesn't want to, but because he's no longer in position to.
''I almost did,'' He responds, studying Lester's hand as the man places it firmly on Dan's thigh instead. The lunatic's knuckles are all bruised, the purple skin teared a few places, still soiled with Dan's retaliation, bloody. He can feel the warmth of the hand through the fabric of his pants, his skin burning underneath it.
