The Prisoner Project

ONE

"To me, this world is nothing but evil, and my own evil just happened to come out cause of the circumstances of what I was doing."

- Aileen Wuornos

ONE

IN THE MIDST OF MY FEAR, I had decided that I had to be stark raving mad.

I stood facing the old, towering building and took a deep breath to calm my nerves. The air was thick with tension and balmy heat, the skies were dull and the gloom set a pathetic fallacy to my emotions. Lifting my hand, I used the pad of my thumb to wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead. You asked for this. You picked up your pen and wrote a letter, begging for this. This was the change you had always wanted, right? - I tried to reassure myself - You did this to your own damn self, idiot.

Somewhere inside of me, I knew I had been motivated by something greater and that thing was my past. Tainted with flecks of distrust, hurt and loneliness, it had pushed me to sign up for this job. The demons of my past had me wrapped around their fingers and occasionally knocked me over the head and into dire situations like this. I had tried to keep my lifestyle as monochromatic as ever.

But standing outside the doors of the building that was branded, Stockholm Correction Centre for the Damned, didn't seem monochromatic to me. It was a fissure of explosion that lit up in vibrant red and orange flames. It was blinding, warning me off with its dangerous colours and yet here I was, smack in the middle of the inferno, asking to be burned.

I stumbled into the doors of the building, past the security team, and into the main floor like a rookie at a party.

Almost immediately, I was hit with an odd smell of damp wood, sherry and hairspray. Three very distinct and uncommon smells, especially within the walls of a High Risk Prison - as my sister, Diana, had said over and over again. The oddity of the room didn't come from the smell though, it was due to the fact that I wasn't the only one who had responded to the strange ad.

There were at least twenty other women who surrounded the large space, some perched on the edge of metal chairs, others leaned against the grim concrete walls and all were deep in conversation between themselves. I could tell that these women were probably as idiotic and reckless as I was because there was no way a sane person would be here. Hell, I had even answered the advertisement with a wry disbelieving smile on my face - 1 part because I believed the entire newspaper was bollocks, 99 parts because I was curious about the job. It offered a significant amount of money.

I had come to realise it was real, and curiosity had killed my cat. Violently.

I walked silently through the sparse room and glided into a metal chair at the end of the room. It scraped against the concrete flooring and left a white gash behind. Glancing round the room to see if anyone had seen the damage, I froze. I froze because the scene before me was almost comical. The women in pristine pastel dresses, soft features and coiffed hair seemed to severely juxtapose the grim decor of the building. I hid my laughter behind a cheeky cough.

I didn't attempt to approach the other women because I knew how socially inept I was capable of being. Also, because I felt intimidated. I was the youngest in the room and that would be a disadvantage to me in the interview. Everyone always assumed the youngest was the dumbest.

I sighed and placed an elbow on my knee, my head bobbing against it. My job interview was at 6pm and I had come slightly earlier.