The Unseen(123)

The squeal of trolley wheels. Multiple footsteps, moving with purpose. The rattle of keys, of metal equipment of some kind. Cat raised her head from her rancid mattress at the unfamiliar noises. She thought about getting up, and pressing her face sideways to the tiny grille in the door, to see if she could see what was coming. Needles of unease pricked at her skin, and she couldn’t say why. Then more sounds started, and she knew her instincts were right. Shrieks, scuffles. The thump of furniture, knocked against the wall, the clank of metal again, the wardresses swearing, and male voices too. Two of them, muttering in low tones, as though through gritted teeth. The shrieks became screams, rose higher in panic, and then were stifled, choked off; replaced by coughing, retching. Hideous animal sounds like none Cat had ever heard a person make before. And when the source of the noises exited that cell, they left silence behind within it. A terrible, stunned, weighty silence. As the trolley wheels came towards her door, Cat’s heart pounded hard enough to break through her ribs.

She was next. Three wardresses, their hair in disarray, scratches on their arms and cheeks. Their faces grim as death. The Crow was one of them. The two men she had heard were wearing white coats like doctors, splattered and smeared with some substance. Beige smears, with flecks of red. The five of them brought with them a stink of sweat and fear. Slowly, Cat sat up. Her head spun wildly, a shock of dizziness that made it hard to think, hard to act. ‘Now, you give us any trouble and you’ll only make it harder on yourself. You hear?’ The Crow told her. The woman who, several days ago, had smiled as she split Cat’s lip with a sharp, back-handed slap. ‘Get away from me,’ Cat said. She tried to stand, but her legs felt boneless. She grasped the mattress for support, tried to push herself up once more. ‘It’s for your own good, young lady,’ one of the men said. ‘Let’s keep her on the bed, then,’ a wardress said. Cat shouted out, shouted: ‘No!’ But they were on her in an instant, two of the women holding her down by her arms, one of the men coming to hold her head. She bucked her body as hard as she could – which was not very hard – tried to twist out of their grasp. Her joints popped, skin bruised where they held her. The second man filled a tin cup from the trolley and passed it to The Crow. She put her knee on Cat’s chest, and the man lifted her head up, and the cup was pushed into her mouth. She smelt the sickly, milky smell of gruel and clamped her teeth together as hard as she could, wouldn’t yield. The wardress pushed the cup ever harder, scraping it along Cat’s teeth until the metal rim cut her gums, and she felt blood wetting her lips. But she did not yield. A tiny bit of gruel found its way into her mouth, and as soon as the woman was off her chest she spat it violently at her. Bright red swirls in the milky mess. ‘Christ! You’re a bloody idiot,’ The Crow told her.

Cat panted, gasped for breath. She strained every muscle, cursed them with every foul word she had ever heard coming from the mouth of a street hawker. The man at her head glanced at the man by the trolley. They nodded to one another. Her head was let go momentarily, but then The Crow took over, gripping her skull hard, pressing her thumbs cruelly into the pressure points at Cat’s temples. She screamed. When she opened her eyes, the men were upon her: one held a thin rubber tube, the other attached a funnel to the far end of it. Cat didn’t understand. She squeezed her teeth together again, thought that in this way she would beat them. But the tube was pushed into her nose. Into one nostril, uncomfortable at first, alien, and then excruciating. Like a knife stabbing behind her eye. She screamed, her mouth wide open at last, surrendering, but they stuck to their course. The tube was pushed in ever deeper. She felt it at the back of her throat and she gagged, her mouth filling with acid. She couldn’t breathe, her eyes bulged with panic as she choked, coughed, gasped little snatches of precious air. ‘That’s it. Ready,’ the man manoeuvring the tube announced curtly. His colleague poured the gruel into the funnel. For five minutes, which felt like a lifetime to Cat, he poured, watched the stuff trickle down the tube, poured again. When the tube came out at last it left a sticky wet dribble of milky slime in her throat, which trickled into her lungs. Her nose bled profusely as the tube slithered out, and her mouth tasted of blood and bile. They left her on her side, filthy and coughing. Deep, ragged coughs to clear the muck from her lungs. The pain in her head and chest was astonishing. She coughed for hours. She coughed for weeks and weeks. ‘Same again at teatime then, petal?’ The Crow said, sweetly. ‘That’s enough,’ one of the men snapped sternly. ‘There’s an anti-emetic in the mixture, but check on her in half an hour. If she has vomited at all, let me know and we will repeat the procedure.’ Cat lay in misery, in outrage and pain; every bit as violated as if she’d been raped. Same again at teatime.