"So what's the deal with the warden anyway?" Zee went on after a chorus of sighs. "He's a pretty scary guy. Those eyes."
"You saw it too?" I asked, remembering the way that the world had dissolved when I met the warden's stare. "I felt like he was stripping away my soul or something."
"Yeah," Donovan replied, "eyes like fingers, they go right into your brain. Did you notice that you can't meet his gaze when he's standing in front of you?" We both nodded. "Nobody here can. None of us get it, but then there's plenty of things in Furnace that none of us get."
"But what about when he was on the screen?" I said. "I mean, I thought I saw, well, planets or space or something." I couldn't quite remember what I'd seen, and talking about it now, it seemed ridiculous. "I saw death, I guess. Stuff like that."
"I just saw nothing," Zee added. "It was like looking into a space that had once been full of stuff but that was now just full of emptiness. I thought I was being sucked in."
"Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged up from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when."
"I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out people's dramatic sides." Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.
"So does he own this place then?" Zee asked. Both Donovan and I shook our heads, but I let the big guy explain.
"There's a reason it's called Furnace, dumb-ass," he said. "It was built by some guy called Alfred Furnace. Businessman or something, rich enough to pay for this place anyway. Nobody really knows anything about him, he never visits. Probably just sits on a throne somewhere counting the money the government pays him to take lowlifes like us off the streets."
We sat in silence for a little while, listening to the noise filter up from below. I gazed at the distant ceiling, lost in shadow at least twenty more floors above, and wondered what the weather was like, but the thought was just too depressing.
"Well," I said eventually, "we've witnessed fights, giant mutant dogs, and a warden who may or may not be Satan himself. Surely there can't be much worse to see at Furnace?"
"Kid," said Donovan matter-of-factly, "you ain't seen nothing yet. You can't truly understand what a nightmare this place is until the wheezers come for you in the dead of night. You want horror? The sight of them outside your cell could scare you to death by itself."
I didn't believe him, of course. I mean, after what I'd seen already I couldn't imagine anything more terrifying. But I was wrong; the dogs and the warden, they were just a warm-up act for the sickest show in Furnace-a show that I would only have to wait another four days to witness.
SLOP
FOUR DAYS. EACH ONE longer than the last, each dictated by the sirens that cut through the prison every other hour, each plagued by the same unending sense of terror. Every time I laid my head down at night and heard the symphony of Furnace I wondered how I had managed to get through the day, and as my heavy eyes closed and the waking world dissolved I would panic that this was the night they would come, that it would be my last night on earth.
But I was always surprised to find each new morning arriving on time and me still in it-exhausted and frightened, yes, but alive. The day after the warden's warning the trough room reopened to a cheer from the inmates gathered outside, myself included. The stampede for breakfast had been so ferocious that the kids serving up mush had run off, telling everybody to help themselves. We did, piling mountainous heaps of the anonymous dish on our trays. I can honestly say that, after a day without food, the salty gunk was the best thing I'd ever eaten.
That third full day of my incarceration Donovan and I had been chippers again, while Zee had been back on cleaning duty-although thankfully for him not the Stink. Day four was my first taste of a different job, working in the hot, steamy sweatshop that was the prison laundry. We had the same shift for the fifth day, where an accident with one of the machines left me with a painful scald all along my left arm. At least I had clean sheets again after that, though.
After hard labor Donovan, Zee, and I would hang out in the yard. Most of the time we just sat and chatted, but occasionally we'd nab a pack of cards and play pontoon or cheat or even snap. It was difficult to relax knowing you might feel a cold blade in your back at any moment, but we kept our eyes out for each other and just moved on if we saw the Skulls coming.
I learned that downtime in Furnace was like a strange dance where each group maneuvered around the others with surprising grace and timing. I also learned not to mention this insight to anybody in case they thought I was calling them a ballet dancer.
There wasn't too much violence in those few days. Every now and again tempers would fray and a skirmish would be on the verge of breaking out, but fear of the hole meant that it was always kept under control. There were a couple of punches thrown, a shank or two waved in somebody's face, and Monty and a few of the other kids suffered kicks and shoves and numerous humiliations, but I didn't see much blood. Occasionally somebody would stagger from the gym with various cuts and bruises, but they'd be grinning through their wounds. I guess organized fights didn't count as a breach of the warden's rules.
On day six Donovan and I traipsed down the stairs after the wake-up siren to see that we were on slopwork duty, along with Zee. I was actually a little excited to finally be able to see the inside of the kitchen, and when we pushed through the double doors at the back of the canteen I wasn't disappointed.
Unlike the rest of Furnace-which was all red rock and bruised shadows-the kitchen was a haven of brushed aluminum drenched in white light. The walls here had been plastered and painted, presumably for health and safety reasons. Not that Furnace was too concerned about the health and safety of its inmates, of course, but I guess even this hellhole must have had to pass a few inspections before being allowed to open. Walking through those doors into the illuminated interior was like walking from a garbage heap into a church, and I felt oddly uplifted.
It didn't last. As soon as I saw what we'd be doing, I realized that the kitchen was just a different sort of garbage heap. In one corner lay crates full of what I could only describe as leftovers-onion peels, chicken bones with scraps of meat clinging to them, bread with unmistakable green spores, cheese that was dripping from the bottom of the crates onto the floor, fruit that had already started to liquefy and rot, even a bag that looked like it was full of hair.
Worst of all were five or six boxes stuffed full of wet flesh. I swear I saw some things in those boxes that put me off meat for life-intestines, hooves, and even a bloody cow's eyeball staring up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. The glistening mess reminded me of the warden's dogs and I almost added my own guts to the mixture.
"Now you know why they call it slopwork," said Donovan, pulling on a paper apron and some sturdy rubber gloves from a box under the counter. "This is stuff from above that they wouldn't even give to pigs."
"Yeah but these are going out, aren't they?" Zee asked, picking an apron for himself and throwing one to me. "They're rubbish?"
"In a manner of speaking," was Donovan's reply. "If by 'out' you mean 'in' and by 'rubbish' you mean 'ingredients.' What do you think is in that gunk they feed us? Salmon souffle?"
The best thing about slopwork was that you only needed a few people to work a shift. Ten inmates were posted to the kitchen at a time-four went to serve the sty outside, and the rest mopped up the mess and prepared the next batch of gunk. That morning Donovan, Zee, and I gave ourselves the job of cooking up slop, and we retreated to the massive industrial stove at the far end of the kitchen. I noticed that Monty had been posted on slopwork duty too. He picked up a mop and kept his distance, but repeatedly glanced up at the stove as if it contained some hidden secret.