Bodily fluids came with the territory.
They made his stomach roll, sure, but he usually just put it out of his mind, and went about doing his job. He’d then spend a couple hours in the shower making sure he’d washed every bit of it off that he could.
But this?
Feces smeared on the wall?
In the guy’s mouth?
The gleam in his eye?
The crazy smile?
The man didn’t even say anything and he still seemed like, despite the fact he was staring right at Pav, he was actually looking past him. As though Pav were nothing more than a ghost standing there in the doorway, and he wasn’t seeing him at all.
Add in the wild look in his eye and the madness in his smile … well, sometimes, a mind just couldn’t take what happened in these chambers, day in and day out. Sometimes, a mind broke from it all.
Not that it changed anything. Pav still had a job to do. He headed farther into the cell and made quick work of washing what he could. The wall, and the parts of the floor that had also taken a few smears of the waste. The man wouldn’t let him touch him, and even hissed Zhatka at him when he tried to wash out his mouth.
Pav wished he could be surprised that even in his madness, the man remembered who he was, except he couldn’t be shocked at all. The people he shared these chambers with—while he lived his life unshackled and with less punishment than them—they were still the same in a lot of ways. Owned by people they rarely saw. Their futures determined by men whose names they rarely whispered.
These prisoners …
They respected Pav as much as they feared him. He was the man who often washed and fed them. And he was the same man who would beat them, or kill them.
They knew it.
Pav knew there wasn’t much more he could do for the man in the cell. Not to mention, the fact that he would have to wait for someone higher up to come down to the chambers so that he could explain the situation before a decision could be made about what to do. Pav left the cell and the man behind.
He moved silently down the hallway, passing two more cells as he went and peeking in to check on the people inside—nothing out of the ordinary. One was sleeping. Another was sitting up, awake, and rubbing dirty fingers through his hair. He’d bring them their ration of food for the day around noon, and then leave them be unless other orders were given for him to do something different.
That was typically how it worked, anyway.
It was the silence at the end of the row of chambers that made Pav slow in his walk. The rest of the prisoners in the cells? They kept quiet. They knew that the more noise they made, the worse the pain that would come for them later. The man at the end of the row, though? He didn’t care. At all. He was constantly causing problems, day in and day out. It was like he got off on pissing the rest of them off because he knew how this was going to end for him, one way or the fucking other.
As much as it annoyed the hell out of Pav on a regular basis, he also respected the man’s tenacity. He didn’t even know his name—the Boykovs rarely gave him that information about their prisoners. He was given orders, not details. He was to do what he was told to do, not make friends with the people in these cells.
Coming up to the cell at the end of the hall, one of the only ones with a door, Pav pushed the sliding cover over the small slot that acted as a window. He peered inside, his gaze sweeping the stained cement floor to find where the man should be huddled in a corner with his shackles and chains.
Oh, Pav found him, sure.
Dead.
He cursed under his breath and yanked the door open to get a better look at the dead body suspended away from the wall. It took him all of three seconds to figure out what the man had done. Standing straight, the prisoner had put his back to the wall, and then leaned forward. With the chain attached to a metal shackle around his throat, he hung there—still suspended, although dead now.
Pav sighed.
This wasn’t a common occurrence. Suicide, that was. Sure, the prisoners threatened it occasionally, but very few actually figured out a way to make it happen during the hours that Pav was sleeping in his own living quarters.
He felt robotic as he crossed the chamber to check the man. Just to make sure, although he already knew the guy was dead. Once he’d confirmed it, Pav stepped out of the cell again and knew what he had to do.
When there was a body, it had to be disposed of. Sometimes, if there needed to be a message sent, then he would put the body in the freezer a floor higher until it was handled by whoever was going to do the job. He’d already been forewarned on this particular prisoner, though. If he died during his stay, Pav was simply expected to dispose of the body the regular way.
Which meant the furnace on the other side of the basement of the chambers. Simple, easy, and quick. As long as the furnace was burning at a hot enough level, of course, which meant Pav would need to make a trip to the other side and check before he could start the process of
