Nathan "Fishsticks" Williams was new to block C-14. Previously, he had been working at Hyde-Smith Penitentiary, but due to budget cutbacks, they had 'transferred' him. Fishsticks himself felt that 'fired' more accurately described the transition, but you'd never hear him say it in front of any other C-14 employee.
How the nickname from his old job had followed him to this new block, he truly didn't know. When he had originally received the nickname, it had been because of a food fight he broke up on the first day on the job. The prisoners had begun rioting, the cafeteria food flying, and he had been pelted with fish sticks while getting them back in order. After that, the name stuck.
Today, Fishsticks was going down to meet Benson, the main gate guard for the internal block itself. Benson was a tall, ex-con (and why they employed felons at a prison was of great befuddlement to Fishsticks), with thin, shiny, pale scars crisscrossing his face. There was always a toothpick poking from his mouth, and his eyes generally remained half-lidded. When Fishsticks had first met Benson, he believed the man to be falling asleep, but quickly discovered that Benson simply preferred the look. He'd spouted some nonsense about how it kept the prisoners on their toes when they tried to cause trouble and he was fully alert. Or something.
"Benson!" Fishsticks jogged the couple yards left to the internal gate, and pulled up in front of him.
"Fishsticks," the greeting was somewhat familiar, but lacked the general warmth expected. "Boss says you're gonna patrol the insides." Benson chewed thoughtfully on his toothpick and eyed Fishsticks in a way that had him feeling uncomfortable. It was the look of a man sizing up a choice cut of meat, deciding if it was worth the $14.99 price tag, or if he should move on to a different cut.
"Uh, y-yeah." Fishsticks hated his stammer. It had been a problem since his childhood, and speech classes had remedied it only up to the point when he got anxious. And Fishsticks got anxious a lot. "So, uh, whatcha want me to do? Just a sweep?"
A rough kind of hum, one of contemplation, left Benson as he mulled it over. "Yeah. Just watch out for the cats."
"W-what?" Was it some kind of prank? It couldn't be. Could it? After all, Benson looked entirely serious as he relayed this information.
"Watch out for the cats."
"Uh..."
"They're more dangerous than any inmate." Benson hit the electronic lock, the numbers ringing out their personal tones of compliance. "Go on." The gate swung open, the gentle creak of it only increasing the rising sense of dread and anger Fishsticks felt.
It had to be a prank, it was simply too ridiculous. As he slipped through the gate, he silently fumed. He hated the other guards for this! It was just like them to make him legitimately nervous about something that had no basis in reality. Cats? Pah! They were being the idiots they normally were. Fishsticks shook himself, letting it run through him to cleanse the fear, and squared his shoulders.
"Cats..." He muttered to himself as he began his patrol down the corridor. The lights here were caged, the bulbs a tell tale inferior brand with every flicker. Even the wall clock was caged, but it seemed to be stuck on 3:14, despite the fact Fishsticks had been walking the corridor for ten minutes already. He let out some mumbled curses as he continued his walk, and shoved down the fear that was rising once more. The inmates all seemed to be pushed back into the corners of their cells, deep in the shadows. Most muttered incoherently to themselves, their voices occasionally rising in pitch and volume as they reacted to invisible stimuli. As he progressed, one of the lights went out. Fishsticks could see it was the one over him, but the other lights continued to function. Time for a new bulb then. He began moving once more, but heard a soft, low moan, and stopped dead in his tracks.
"The cats, man. The cats! You've gotta get me outta here, yeah? Can't you see the-no...no, please...I... I... I didn't mean it. Please. Please! NO!" A scream followed that abruptly gurgled to a stop. The light above him flickered back on. Fishsticks stared in horror, bile rising in his esophagus. The cell he had heard the voice from was now coated in gore.
Blood pooled on the floor, splashes of it hitting the cell bars like those works of art by men who flick their paintbrushes at the canvas. He could see half of the man's ribs sticking out, only bits of gristle hanging onto the bones. The other side of his torso was obscured by shredded ribbons of muscle and flesh that had once been a man's arm. While it was clear his throat had been ripped out, only a single drop of blood marred his face, frozen in a mask of terror. The legs were nowhere to be seen, completely torn away, gone. Fishsticks looked around, desperately trying to find where they were, but there was no obvious or clear answer. He could hear heavy breathing behind him, and rapidly turned with his night stick raised. It was just another inmate, leaning against his own cell bars. Fishsticks had unknowingly been stepping backwards, away from the other cell, putting him right against the one across from it.
"It's the cats," The other inmate grinned. His teeth appeared abnormally sharp, and he was covered in a strange brown grime, but it was his green eyes that captivated Fishsticks's attention. His eyes were jade, sparkling and unnaturally bright. Golden flecks surrounded his pupil which was contracted in a way that made it look like mere pinpricks of black were present within the green.
"W-wh-what?"
"The cats!" The man said with strange cheer and a smile, as if the sight of all that blood was an every day occurrence. "You should go. Once they get a taste for the day..." A light farther down the hall went out, and a crazed scream followed. Fishsticks turned toward the sound, the disturbance, ready to follow protocol, training, procedure, but... Stopped.
"Cats?" The earlier conversation with Benson replayed in his mind. Hyde-Smith had never been like this. The worst thing he ever saw was a man who had gotten a shiv to the kidney.
"I warned ya," The man said, skulking back into the shadows of his cell, those freaky green eyes the last thing to disappear. Fishsticks looked up with worry, more lights going out, more screaming.
He ran.
He ran so fast, faster than he ever had before, and harder than ever before. His lungs felt like they might burst out of his chest, and still he ran. His feet pounded out the rhythm of his heart, and a flash-flicker of a glance told him the clock had yet to move. His heart beat so quickly, he thought it might stop. The darkness of the dead lights was catching up. He pushed himself to go faster, but the internal gate still seemed as far as it had been at the start.
The darkness caught up.
"Holy sh--" Fishsticks screamed. No amount of running would have gotten him away, despite his speed. A flash of those crazy green eyes and his scream heightened. He was still alive, could feel himself being flayed alive, his skin being ripped apart, his body shredded and mauled. He couldn't stop screaming, and each time his heart beat, he was distinctly aware his heart was pumping out his own life blood. His heartbeat was bound to kill him if the attack didn't soon. Sounds like meowing began to come closer, and he continued to scream. Meows turned to hisses turned to yowls. Fishsticks stopped screaming.
Every light came back on. The wall clock ticked one minute to 3:15. Silence smothered the hall. Spatters of blood covered the floor along the hall, and the only other thing remaining on the floor of organic material was a toothpick.
Down the hall, a jade eyed inmate leaned back into a corner of his cell, laughter bubbling from his chest, feet dabbed here and there with drying blood, a Cheshire cat grin painted across his lips.
At the internal gate, Benson pulled the toothpick out of his mouth, smiling, to reveal pointed, sharp, blood-drenched teeth.
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