Munmun(28)

What do you want to hear about a year of nothing? Mostly I sat around the cage and went insane.

The kidjail was a little house of cages, property of the corpo called Littlebighouse, builder of jails for littlepoors. Our house was allboy, allgirl was up the street. The design was similar to petstores, many stackable cages, eight nine ten beds each, and everything happens in the cage, you might not get outside the bars for weeks at a time.

They feed you in the cage, passing rubberbowls in.

They wash you in the cage, first taking clothes and bedsheets, then hosing you up and down through the bars, then blowdrying you, then you get clothes and bedsheets back.

Outdoor time is when they take the cage outside for a few hours, let you have some sun and maybe a ball.

Three hours a week we had libraryprivileges unless the guards took them away, and that was when they dump toobig books into the cage, the pages all scrawled in and chewed up by years and years of young psychos. But I still tried to make the most of it, forced my brain to read. In one year I got to page hunfourtyeight of a book called ADVENTURES OF CUTE RASCAL, a mouse with a rabbit friend liberating the forests and meadows from evil rats, in a world with no humans but plenty of swords, shields, bows, arrows, feasts.

Sometimes a bored canread kid would help me, trap some ants with me, get me through big words or terrible sentences. But mostly I was struggling alone, a couple pairagraphs per week.

Everyday a few hours I worked out, routines I saw the biggest toughest kids doing, pushups with a kid sitting on you, pullups from the ceiling with a kid hanging on your feet, whenever I could recruit a workout partner. Backflips, frontflips, whatever there’s room in the cage for.

Otherwise I just sat like everyone and watched whatever vids the guard had on the wallscreen, and when there wasn’t vids I daydreamed, plotted, tried to keep my brain alive, and most important, avoided other prisoners and their beatings and dumb schemes, because everyday something bad or dumb was happening somewhere in the cage, some scumbag smuggling in weeds or dusts, groups betting on random dicerolls, some argument was revving up into a brawl, or just a psycho was out to prove that he’s the worst.

But a lot of the time we just watched vids.

Every guard tried to make his shift less sad and boring by putting vids on the wallscreen. So every guard, we learned what kind of vid does he like, news or terror or ballgames, is he open to requests for different kind of vids, how sensitive is he to noise, how much noise and fighting will he ignore before he freaks out and hoses the cage, andsoonandsoforth.

Everytime a new guard starts working at Littlebighouse, he has to learn a few rules about watching vids in a room of kidprisoners. Rule numberone, no vids with women looking sexy, not just talking about pornos or girlsgonewild but even ordinary murderdramas, gameshows, realhousewives, it doesn’t matter, if it has women showing legs or titcrack, it’s a disaster. Boys will freak out, everyone needs to prove he’s the most hetro, soonerorlater someone is pulping someone’s face.

Rule numbertwo, no sexymen either, a kid will accuse another kid of loving it, again you will advance prettyquick to facepulping.

Rule numberthree, playing shootemups on the wallscreen gets everyone to shut up and watch motionlessly, but as soon as you finish, fights break out allover like magic.

I was sulky and got targeted for fights a lot, not just from faceboys but also fighty psychos. Mostly the guards hated me for this. The head guard was called Wilt and he had a special name for me.

“What’s wrong today, Grumpyrat,” he said.

“I live in kidjail, so that’s probably the first part of what’s wrong,” I said in the beginning.

But over the weeks and months I said lessandless.

Another guard named Belt, he was hunched and old. He was my favorite because he lifted you out of the cage by hand. Most guards used the net.

Also his hearing was terrible, so he put on vid captions, a little more reading practice for Warner.

Prayer visited every month. She was middlepoor now for sure, around threequarterscale, outscaling me by sevenplus. Wow, it was amazing to see her. Huge, walking funny, bobbed hair, and wearing logoed shirts and skirts like any middlepoor lady out veggieshopping.

The first time she saw me she shrieked and cried at my bashedup face and I had to tell her a bunch of times, sis, I’m not talking about me today, please, just talk about yourself, what was Scale Up like, how was the wedding, where’s Usher, how’s Mom.

Well the Scale Up Ceremony was amazing, she told me finally, they put you to strange solodream sleep, dreams with no one else in there, and you just wake up huge, feeling so thirsty and hungry, and they put you in a robe and walking feels insane, the ground is smoother and meets your feet harder, but in a good way, you suck in air and it feels so powerfull, everything is just different, it’s amazing, she said.

“Food is the most different,” she told me. “It’s just better between your teeth. It feels nicer on your tongue.”

I told her it made me really happy to see her this big, I really meant it too, I mean dang look at you all middle and happy, so I guess what was the wedding like.

The wedding was super basic, a government ritual. Paddy did not get her a dress or anything, no guests showed up, that whole part is less exciting, let’s stick to talking about being scaledup.

I asked her what happens if he wants a divorce, is she protected or would she lose everything?

“Technically for the first two years it’s a trialmarriage, after that I would get half in a divorce,” she told me.