Strange Inmate

Her hand stayed for a second, Tris’s eyes intently on it, waiting eagerly to see what the clenched fist would do next.

“Then BOOM! Just like that!” Fendi screamed, punching the air sideways with the suspended hand.

Tris’s mouth gaped; I (the narrator) am still trying to find out whether it was a sarcastic expression or actual surprise coming from our protagonist.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me” She said, even though Tris knew she wasn’t.

“Oh no Tris, I’m actually a human being so technically when I reproduce it’s called birthing” She snorted, “I know right, and yet we call our offspring kids”

Tris slapped her face in face-palming disbelief.

Fendi was an idiot. She was meant to be at the local night comedy clubs, not in a wide prison cell with a devout criminal like her.

“So you did all that,” Tris gestured to all the displays she’d been putting on for her, “In their hotel room?”

“Uh-huh” Fendi lifted her chest with pride.

Tris went back to pointlessly untangling her dreadlocks. Apart from rapping that was the only creative thing she could do while spending her life sentence in that stinking, cruelly wide box with bars.

She rarely did it now though, since they’d thrown in some green eyed, light cream colored, straight-haired, blonde clown in her cherished privacy.

She wondered why they put her in with her. She could easily impale the klutz with the metallic hand of their ‘dung’ bucket at the edge of the box.

She hadn’t even asked what she was in for.

“YO TRIS!” Fendi was still standing, pacing two millimeters to Tris’s left, and then back to her right.

She looked up, expecting her black pupils to incite fear in Fendi’s green ones, just so she could know that they were not some giant jacks-in-the-box preparing for a circus stunt.

“I want you to rap” Fendi said, throwing a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ sign in her face.

“What?”

Fendi screamed, “Woo! That’s it”

The prison warden sighed unbelievably, “You know, you really need to shut up” He said.

Tris almost felt anger; she was her jack-in-the-box, only she could tell her to shut up. Get that Mr. Jailer Man.

“You know Tri, you look cute when you’re being boring” Fendi said mindlessly, still pacing.

“Okay do you not realize that we are convicts, in cells reserved for the very notorious criminals?” Tris spread her hands in a ‘why?’ position.

“Forget that crap” Fendi reached out and twisted one of Tris’s dreadlocks.

She slapped her hand, “Don’t. Touch. My. Hair” Tris eyed her with deadliness.

“Ooooooh,” Fendi raised her hands in surrender, “My bad, forgot that’s kinda a rule for the homeys. Yáll are gonna make it a slogan by next year. Big social awareness programme” She said.

Tris raised a brow.

“I said rap” Fendi clapped her hands.

“Okay so what? Ludacris or Nicki Minaj?” Tris said sarcastically, but of course Fendi wouldn’t get that hint.

“I think I prefer Cardi”

Tris rolled her eyes.

“Seriously? Why not Adele? Or Mariah?” Tris flashed her teeth.

“Wait a minute Tri, they’re not – oh! HAHA!” she laughed, “I see what you’re doing there”

“What’re you in for?” Tris asked, interrupting her laughter.

” Who, me?” Fendi looked around.

“No, your shadow.”

“BWAHAHA!” Fendi rolled, “You know Tris, you’ll break my laughing box someday.”

If it was anything like the one they were in, she would absolutely love to break it.

“Trump’s running for President” Fendi said again.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Tris didn’t even bother to argue.

“Who cares?”

It was her fifth year behind bars, and she’d already become i-don’t-care-ish and near-suicidal. She guessed she should’ve been grateful for company like Fendi, but she talked a lot of rubbish.

Like when she said,

“Can’t wait for 2020, when we’ll stop school, stay away from each other and wear face masks to go out, if we go at all! BWAHAHA!”

Or when she said,

“What’s on the news, Mr. Jailer Man? Have California’s forests been set on fire yet?”

She and Mr. Jailer Man had always thought that Fendi was a dangerous, mentally deranged person that had escaped from the asylum.

But Tris thought what she said was really strange. Like when she said something early last week about a famous rapper who shared their prison yard, ‘licking freedom’ very soon. Just the day before Mr. Jailer Man said he had been released.

“What are you in for Tris?”

“Why are you throwing the question back at me?” Tris eyed her defensively.

Mr. Jailer Man moaned.

“I’m going to need you to shut up, Fendi”

“STOP CALLING ME A PRISONERRRR!” Fendi screamed.

Tris wanted to laugh, that was a line from jazz singer Asa’s song, ‘Jailer’. Fendi sang it often.

“I killed someone important… apparently” She flared her nails as if it were some huge accomplishment.

“He was a very influential person, so I got heat. Pleaded not guilty, of course” Tris and Mr. Jailer Man snorted at the same time.

“Cool,” Fendi went over to the dung bucket.

“Why’d you kill him though?”

“Sexual assault”

“Whaaaat?” Fendi looked at her, wide-mouthed.

“Yeah effing system”

“So it was self defense then” She waved on top of the bucket

Tris smirked, “More like revenge.”

“Radical” Fendi walked back over to her.

There was a short silence, and the usualness of their setting irritated Tris. Everyday déjà vu.

“Imagine Chinese people naming an app with clock sounds. Tik…..tok, AHAHA!” Fendi said

Tris groaned. She was used to this Fendi’s senseless ranting about stupid, unimaginable and unbelievable things.

Every thirty minutes or so, she’d say something new and relatively on a higher idiot frequency than the last.

When she spent her first night in the cell she said,

“The world’s ending, yah, Best us stay in here and watch it crumble”

That made more sense than anything she’d said after.

“What are you in for?” Tris asked again, resting her back on the grey walls of the box.

Fendi went and held the bars.

“I dunno”

“Hey Mr. Jailer Man, why’s the delusional clown here?”

Tris had given up on any sense coming out of Fendi.

“My name’s Dick. Don’t know. Don’t care.”

Fendi snorted when he said his name.

“I said something in front of the press and then bam, I’m sent to the prison for most dangerous criminals.” She blurted, her orange overalls seeming fluorescent.

Not a very wise choice putting a blabber in with a murderer.

“What did you say?”

Fendi went quiet for a moment.

“I won’t wanna be Japanese come the 2018 heatwave. Oof! Imma need popsicles all day. EHAHA!”

Mr. Jailer Man pretended not to hear anything, burying his face in a newspaper that had 2015 Times written on it.

“Something about the government. I think I exposed them or something. I was a threat.” She waved her hands like it didn’t matter much, “Then they put me here, on a life sentence, of course” She smiled.

Tris didn’t blame the government for slamming Fendi in with the most dangerous for blabbing, she’d have thrown her in a shark pit.

“But they put me with you Tris, so it’s not so bad” She beamed, and then stretched her hand to touch one of Tris’s locs again.

“Don’t -“

“Touch. My. Hair.”  Fendi mimicked.

“BWAHAHA!”

Tris seethed, trying so hard to control herself because Mr. Jailer Man was still there.

“Bah! The world won’t last long enough for people to start living on Mars. They don’t realize how near the end is! Scientists are stupid.” Fendi touched her ear and blew a kiss to the bars.

Tris wondered why this ‘nonsense’ came too close to the last; it wasn’t up to forty five minutes yet.

Mr. Jailer man got up and walked out, leaving his newspaper behind.

Fendi suddenly got serious, dead serious, like all her crazy laughter and unbelievable predictions didn’t just happen, and went to the wall at the back.

“Hey Tri,”

Tris turned backward to see what crazy stunt she would pull off now. She was her only source of entertainment.

Fendi tapped the wall on the left side, and then moved to the right end.

What the hell is she doing now?

She tip toed and tapped the top of the walls and then crouched and tapped the bottom.

Tris wanted to talk when the tapped areas began to glow.

“What the - ?”

The rectangular wall left in the middle edged in and became a large hologram.

Tris got up and moved to the bars, frightened.

There was a short silence and she studied the hologram; it was the world map, every country’s capital was highlighted and there were these strange red dots everywhere, everywhere except from a large part of the northern hemisphere that Tris couldn’t make out, Asia maybe.

Fendi turned from her static position in front of the hologram and bore into Tris’s eyes , the green in her pupils a strikingly darker shade.

She heard it in her head and she knew it was her,

Tri, can you keep a secret?