Forty-one: Ugly

At the Compound, Priscilla and I talked and laughed together, eating in the park. I felt more relaxed than I had for a while. Come to think of it, she might be the last sort of friend I had in the Compound. She had seemed so against me at the start of the war but now, she was so chummy. What had changed? Was she really lonely? That was the vibe she was giving off.

I had a feeling that the interrogation (was it really just last night?) hadn't really cleared up any of the government's suspicions toward me. And even if it had, I had a feeling they weren't going to move me out of the toilet block or clear my name. Not while I had Boskies out to kill me for reasons yet unknown.

"Hey, mind if I see your place?" Priscilla asked, walking me back to my room.

"There's not much to see," I told her. "It's tiny. The Solitary Block isn't called the toilet block for nothing, you know."

"Well, at least you have your own space," she shrugged, "and don't have to put up with anyone's snoring."

"There is that," I agreed, unlocking my door and groaned at the mess. They'd searched my room again and completely torn the mattress apart.

"This is your room?" Priscilla leaned in and frowned. "Looks like it got hit with a whirlwind."

"I suppose you could say that," I groaned again, putting my bag down, searching for my sewing kit and gathering the foam bits of my mattress together. "Please excuse the mess. It's not normally like this."

"Does this happen a lot?"

There was a tinge of understanding and sympathy in her voice.

"Don't got a choice about it," I said, unable to meet her eyes, wishing her gone. I didn't need any witnesses to my sorry state.

Two shadows fell on us.

"Jean Wallace?" the two Compound security guards pushed past Priscilla, pushing her out of the way and out of the room.

"That's me," I stood slowly, standing aside when they swaggered their way in, closing the door behind them and leaving Priscilla outside.

My heart began to beat faster and my stomach did flips like a cornered fish looking for a way out. Every time I saw this unpleasant duo, I knew that nothing good was going to happen to me.

"You didn't come back last night," a finger jabbed me in the shoulder, making me back up until my back hit the wall. "You missed curfew."

"Didn't the government agents call you last night?" I looked at the floor and my sea of foam. I didn't want to look into their ugly faces.

"I didn't get a phone call," the female guard sneered into my face and I had a closer look of the mole on her cheek than I wanted to.

Sometimes you can run but you can't hide.

Since she wanted me to see her ugly face, I would look at exactly how ugly it was. There were two hairs growing out of the mole, looking like the antennae of an insect that had been buried in that plump black bump. Oil shone on her nose and cheeks, greasing the acne scarred pits left in her face, leftover from a battle she had lost during her adolescence. Because of the scars, it made her nose look lumpy. She had one bushy eyebrow and one thin because of a scar above an eyebrow.

Her eyes were a little wide apart, making her big, flat, lumpy nose all the more obvious. Her ears were lopsided and her hair really needed some treatment so that it didn't look so straw dry and dead. She had a pimple growing inside her left nostril that made her nose hairs sticking out of the nostril more prominent. She smelled of unwashed hair and dirty, sweaty uniform. It was quite reminiscent of the smell of a dirty dog, in fact.

"Did you get a phone call?" she asked her partner, finger still pinning my shoulder to the wall.

"Nope," said her partner, smirking all over his ugly pimple face. "I didn't get a phone call."

"So where were you all night?" the female guard demanded, spraying spit over my face and jabbing the front of my shoulder again.

Oh look. She had a chipped front tooth. Would she get mad if I started reciting the woodchuck tongue twister? "Meeting up with the Boskies, weren't you, you traitor?"

"No. No," I held up my hands trying to placate her, while I internally disparaged her choice of lipstick colour. It was too pale and did nothing for her attractiveness. "I was with those government agents after they were done questioning me. Mr Cooper and Mr Raring. They can vouch for me. I wasn't meeting any - oomf."

"Liar," the female guard said, burying two fists into my stomach in quick succession. Gasping, I slid down the wall to hunch over my middle, unable to breathe for a moment. "You're a big fat liar. You're a spy. We know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this room. Why they let you still come and go, I don't know."

"Probably so that they can track her down to her fellow conspirators and catch the whole nest of rats at once," the male guard said.

"Frankly, I think she thinks she's so smart that she can get away with anything."