Yum. :P
Chapter 5
Yulia was never attended by the medics of the prisoner's hospital, on the chief guard's command, so she was knocked out for a day. After the daily activity, Mara, Alena, and Lena came back to the cell and Yulia was still moaning in pain, unconscious. They considered it better not to try and wake her up.
Granted, she didn't have any internal hemorrage because the guard had only hit her on the back of the ribs, but the whole murderers block, as weird as it may sound, was worried about Yulia having a broken rib. Lena had been taking permissions off today's workshop to go see her.
The brunette woke up an hour before the curfew was rang. Alena, Mara, and Lena were sitting in the next bunker, staring intently at her. The three of them gasped as they saw Yulia turning her blue eyes on them, and jumped to their knees in the floor, staring at her. The brunette blinked, and opened her mouth. Mara jumped, placing her arms in front of her cellmates, as if to hold them on their places.
"You guys, I think she's trying to tell us something!"
Yulia blinked once again, closed her eyes tightly and screwed up her face.
"Ow."
Month 2
A generalized clamor was heard around the inner patio. It was August, and every August the directress allowed one person into the prison, the only person ever to go into the prison for the enjoyment of the inmates.
Yulia walked out of the cell and stared down at the patio where at least fifty inmates were around a male guy she had never seen. Lena was smiling at the mass of requesting women around the poor guy, trying to get them to sit in a line in front of him so he could start attending.
"Who is he?" The brunette asked, carefully leaning down into the rail of the corridor so she wouldn't bend her back to quickly and hit one of the bruises that still hadn't faded. To sleep on her back was still an impossible task.
Lena grinned, nodding in her own direction. Yulia stared at her, face tilted, extended her hand and let the redhead take her into hand into her own. As they walked down the stairs, Lena started explaining. "He's Molsha. He's got a tattoo business in the city, but once a year he visits us. He gets a lot of money here."
Yulia raised an eyebrow. Did the inmates, who earned their money working hard in the workshops, spend the fruituition of their work in tattoos? She shrugged.
Lena sniggered. "Mara and I decided to get you tattooed when he came."
Yulia gaped and mock hit Lena's arm. "You did not."
"Hey, it's not like it's extremely expensive, it's fun and makes you unique."
"You are conscious that you're gonna have to keep me from crying if you indeed did that."
The redhead flipped back her braids and rolled her eyes. "For someone who stood sixty club blows in the back and only fainted when they were done, you are *such* a crybaby."
***************
Molsha was Lena's friend. In the past, he had done her tattoo and became a good friend of hers while doing it, because it had been a long, complicated job to finish. He agreed to finish off with his clients and bring his equipment up to their cell.
Lena introduced Molsha to Yulia and sat on the stool to wait while Molsha explained to the quite afraid brunette what would they do. As soon as they finished talking, Yulia gave Molsha her back and took off her shirt. The man must've never seen so many bruises in just one human back but he agreed to still do the tattoo, since Yulia's back now only hurt on the ribs, where Molsha was not working on.
Yulia sat on her own stool, brought by Molsha to the cell. Lena sighed and decided to keep her distracted, because Yulia's face of "preliminar pain" was ridiculous.
"Remember what I told you about Evgeni?"
Yulia nodded softly. "Yes, that you were pregnant but he didn't mind."
Lena sighed, a bit downcast. "I married Evgeni six months into my pregnancy. I told you, I thought I was living my own fairy tail. I was going to have a baby, I was married, my brother and sisters were happy with my godmother. It was all perfect." She waved her hand on enphasis. "It was all perfect for five years. Sasha was growing up alright, she would start school soon. I was the perfect wife, the perfect mother."
Yulia gasped as she felt the first needle going into her skin. "Ow!"
"Sorry, I'll try to make it less painful." Mosha apologized.
Yulia frowned and looked at Lena, who was looking back at her, amused. "Don't sneer at me, lady, keep on telling me your story."
The redhead nodded, clearing her throat. "Sasha was such a beautiful little girl. I wanted to spoil her, to give her everything. Evgeni, on the other hand, had another opinion. He was so distant since Sasha was born." She sighed, her shoulders slumping as if her memories were weighing her down. "One day, I came back from the market, but Sasha was not playing at the entrance like she was always doing when I came back from the market. Evgeni was nowhere to be seen. I decided to go see if Sasha was napping or something."
Lena bit her lip. Yulia sighed. "Bishal'chik, if you really don't want to tell me, don't tell me."
"No, I need you to. You'll understand me so much better when you know this about me." She said, giving the brunette a faint trace of a smile, a rather wore one. "When I arrived to Sasha's room… Evgeni was… he was hitting her. With all of his might. He was yelling at her, screaming about how she stole my love from him, about how I was supposed to be only his. Sasha was not crying anymore, she was just protecting herself from him, or so I thought. I don't know why didn't I react. I just fell to my knees, staring at how he hit her. I suppose I was in too much shock."
Good God. "Bishal'… that's awful…"
The diminute braids swayed back and forth as Lena nodded. "Evgeni saw me. I suppose he wanted no witnesses to his crime, so he just came after me. I was afraid for my life, I started crawling away from him, but he pinned me against the studio's door." She cleared her throat for a second. To Yulia it was clear: Lena was struggling against tears. "He threw himself at me, pinned me against the floor. He tried to strangle me. That was when I reacted. I saw in his eyes that he wanted me dead. My hand stumbled across a door-holder Sasha had done that summer with her friends. It was a rock picked up from the forest behind the village, painted with fingerpaint. I hit Evgeni with it, knocked him off me. But I was still dead scared, thought he would walk up and knock me off my feet, kill me. I hit him with that rock so many times, Yulia. So many times."
Mara peeked from her upper bunker. "As told by the forensic specialist in the newspaper, 'his face looked more like a pizza than like a face', by the time Bishal'chik was done."
For the first time since her tale had started, Lena smirked, and threw Mara Yulia's pillow. The smaller woman caught it and laughed, sitting back to hear.
"I never knew he was dead until I was arrested. I don't know, I think I was maybe blind for some time. I stumbled back into Sasha's room to take her with me, see that she was okay and crying for me. But I shook her once, shook her twice, and I got no reaction from her. Evgeni had killed her."
Very deep inside herself, Yulia was boiling with fury. How could someone subject such a good, generous, loving woman, to such suffering? Evgeni was lucky to be dead because if he wasn't, Yulia would have broken out of prison only to kill him. Lena must've read her thoughts because she was tiredly smiling at her.
"You probably know my trial history. It's a shame my own version was only dismissed as a wild woman's imagination."
"And… and there was never proof?"
"No. The rock with which I killed Evgeni was infested with my fingerprints, and I made the mistake of starting to cry over Sasha when I found out he had killed her. I was given no deterrents, no charge of manslaughter. All they could do was point at me and say 'murder one'."
"What happened to your family?"
Lena shrugged. "The older one doesn't let the other three write me letters. But my godmother thinks I'm innocent. Poor woman, she was in such shock when I was sentenced to the chair. She says she's had to wash my younger's sister mouth with soap more than once because the girl keeps trying to make the rest of my brothers and sisters understand that I am nothing but a murderer."
"With family like that…" Yulia murmured, her back unconsciously tensing up. Molsha sighed.
"Yulia, please calm down. I can't finish it up with you all tense like that."
*************
"Oh, c'mon, girl, show us your stuff!" A woman in the mess hall yelled at Yulia. Lena gave her a half grin and nudged her on the ribs, also stealing a potato off Mara's stew while the woman was not looking.
"Take off your shirt. They want to see your new name." The redhead smiled.
Yulia sighed. People had been nudging her around about her new tattoo for a week now. In a matter of days, her new name had gotten her to be one of the most respected women in the murderer's block. Not only had she not died at 60 blows in the back, but she had also been proclaimed by almost all the inmates as a "corridor chief": one of the woman that responded to Lena's command, and took care of the cell corridors to avoid abuse by the guards.
The prison had been nothing but joy around her ever since she was publicly beaten, thing so very strange because it had always been such a dark, sad place. She had been called by her name, patted on the back by inmates she had never seen or met.
She slowly took off her shirt and gave her back to the rest of the cheering inmates. Being back to them, she nearly tumbled over when she felt several inmates charging at her and taking her from the hip.
"Bravo for krylya krovn*!" They cheered. Lena smiled from her place, stealing another potato, now from Yulia's plate.
Beshenyoangel had also had a similar welcome.
"Bravo for her! The angel of bloody wings!"
**********
*Wings of blood. If someone wants to know why that's her new name, just ask so in a post.
I just want everyone's imagination to start ticking.