Blood Lines

was pretty funny. Vicki didn't, but the attacks came in from the side and she couldn't fight what she couldn't see. The meal became a painful and humiliating lesson in helplessness.
    Locked back in the cell during cleanup, she kept her back against the wall and tried to force her eyes to function.
    Unfortunately, it didn't take Lambert long to map the limits of her vision. Trying to duck away from the wet end of a towel dipped in the toilet, Vicki felt a sudden kinship with those kids in school yards whom everyone picked on just because they could.
    When they were let back out into the range, she groped her way past the row of tables and tried to talk to the guard.
    She knew where the duty desk should be even though she couldn't actually see it.
    'Hey?"
    'Hey what?" The guard's voice offered nothing.
    'Ine…"
    'No. No! NO! NOINO.' NO! NOOOOOO!"
    Natalie. Standing right behind her. Although she knew what the result would be, Vicki tried again. "You go…"
    'NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!"
    She didn't think of this on her own. Lambert put her up to it . Teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached, Vicki was willing to bet that the noise would go on indefinitely.
    'Look!" she finally screamed, as she shoved impotently at the woman bellowing a hundred and twenty decibel accompaniment to everything she said. "I don' belon' he'!"
    All at once iron rods slammed up against Vicki's face as Natalie shoved her, and for an instant the guard loomed into focus. It wasn't Dickson. It wasn't anyone Vicki knew.
    'So tell the shrink," she suggested. Her expression teetered between boredom and annoyance. "And back away from those bars."
    'Mine for two days," Lambert told her as Natalie led Vicki back to her side.
    They spent the morning watching game shows. Vicki sat in a kind of stupor, thankful, given what she could hear over the noise of forty women in an area designed for eighteen, that she couldn't see the televisions. Middle America rejoicing in the glory of frost free refrigerators would've pushed her over the edge.
    Lunch was a repeat of breakfast, although Natalie moved to her other side and therefore pinched her other thigh. A woman with a bad case of the d.t.''sthrew her plate against the bars and two others began screaming random profanity.
    Someone began to howl. Vicki kept her gaze locked firmly on her plate. Misery seasoned every mouthful.
    After lunch, things quieted down as the soap operas came on. Lambert sat enthroned by the best of the four televisions with Natalie enforcing at least a localized silence.
    'That's my husband, you know. That's my husband," an elderly woman called pointing at the screen. "We have thirteen children and a dog and two…" A squawk of pain cut off the litany.
    For the moment, Vicki appeared to have been forgotten. Moving carefully, she headed for the showers. Maybe if she scrubbed the stink of the place off she'd feel less wretched.
    The concrete barricade that separated the showers from the common area rose from the floor to waist height and dropped from the ceiling to just above her shoulders. Everything in between was exposed to inmates and guards.
    No one's going to be looking at your tits, Vicki , she told herself running one hand along the damp cement. You're just another piece of meat. No one cares .
    A number of the stalls near the entrance were already full. In one, the flesh-colored blur separated itself out into two people. Anything that happened below the level of the barricades happened in as close to privacy as was available.
    Stripping off shoes and pants and underwear wasn't so bad, but the flesh on Vicki's back crawled as she shrugged out of the shirt, and pulling the T-shirt up over her head left her feeling more exposed and vulnerable than she ever had in her life. She hurried in under the minimal protection the water offered.
    Lost in the heat and the pounding of the spray, she almost convinced herself that she was safe at home and just for that moment things didn't seem so hopeless.
    'Good idea, Nelson, but you shouldn't be by yourself. You're still unsteady on your pins and sometimes people fall in the shower. Terrible place. So easy to get hurt."
    Lambert. And, as usual, not alone.
    Vicki tried to twist her arm out of Natalie's grip. Natalie's answering twist nearly dislocated her elbow. The pain shot scarlet flames up behind her eyes and burned the fog away. Despair turned suddenly to anger.
    She didn't stand a chance. She didn't care.
    It didn't last long.
    'What the hell is