Chapter 21: The Break Room
The guards’ break room smelled of burnt coffee, old microwave meals, and the faint, acrid scent of industrial cleaner that never quite masked the sweat beneath. Faded motivational posters clung to the cinderblock walls—a team of rowers with the word “SYNERGY” arched over them, a mountain summit labeled “EXCELLENCE.” The laminate table was stained with rings from a thousand mugs.
Six guards were scattered around the room, a study in variceted exhaustion.
Higgins stabbed at a plastic container of lukewarm lasagna. “My kid’s teacher called again. Says he’s ‘displaying aggressive negotiation tactics’ during recess. Tried to trade another kid’s signed cast for a pack of Pokémon cards.”
Monroe snorted, dunking a tea bag in a chipped ‘World’s Best Dad’ mug. “What’d you say?”
“I told her he comes by it honestly. His mother’s a divorce lawyer.” Higgins chewed, his expression soured beyond the food’s capabilities. “She didn’t think it was funny.”
From the sagging couch by the muted TV, where a basketball game flickered silently, Peters chuckled. He was a big man, going soft around the middle. “My wife’s on this new kick. Minimalist living. Sold my recliner on Facebook Marketplace while I was on shift last week. My recliner. I had that thing broken in perfect.”
A chorus of sympathetic groans and muttered curses went around the room.
“You get the money for it at least?” asked Chen, meticulously peeling an orange, the bright citrus scent a sudden, shocking intruder in the dank room.
“She donated it to a ‘community art space’. It’s a warehouse where people weld scrap metal into giant frogs. My ass-print is funding public amphibian art.”
The laughter was tired but real. It was the currency of the room: trading petty domestic miseries to distract from the larger, more oppressive one that waited beyond the reinforced door.
Johnson, the new guy, fresh out of training with a haircut that still looked like it hurt, sipped his water quietly. He’d been on the job three weeks. He still jumped at sudden noises.
“Paycheck ain’t worth it,” Higgins announced, pushing his lasagna away. “Not for this. We’re glorified babysitters for the violently deranged. We don’t get hazard pay for psychological wear and tear.”
“Tell me about it,” Monroe sighed. “Spent forty minutes last night listening to Inmate Gellar in Seg explain how the plumbing pipes are transmitting secret messages from the CIA. Had to nod and say ‘uh-huh’ until he wore himself out.”
“At least he’s just talking,” Higgins said. He leaned back, the legs of his chair groaning. “Had an incident in the yard today. Another one.”
Peters muted the TV completely. The room’s attention, languid before, now focused with professional interest. “Who?”
“Silas ‘Crusher’ Wooledge. Put Crook through the wringer. Neck snap. Clean. ‘Administrative issue.’” Higgins made air quotes, his fingers stiff with contempt.
Chen whistled low, placing a neat segment of orange on a napkin. “Crook was an idiot. Had a death wish. What’d he say?”
“Something about Wooledge’s mother and knitting. Doesn’t matter. The fight wasn’t the interesting part.” A slow, weary smirk spread across Higgins’ face. He glanced at Monroe, who rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming. “It was after. We’re standing there, waiting for the meat wagon, contemplating the sheer existential horror of our career choices, and the little one pipes up.”
Johnson blinked. “The little one?”
“Emberly. Angel. Reaper’s kid.”
Recognition dawned on the new guard’s face, followed by a faint, confused smile. Everyone knew Angel. You couldn’t not notice him. A splash of white-gold and softness in the concrete gray, always trailing after Dominic Ricciardi like a duckling. Johnson had seen him in the chow hall, sitting patiently while Dominic cut his meat into tiny pieces. He’d thought it was… sweet. A strange spot of humanity in the hellhole.
“What’d he do?” Peters asked, already smiling.
Higgins adopted a high, gentle voice, a disturbingly accurate mimicry of Angel’s soft tone. “‘Excuse me, Mr. Guard? If you don’t want to take all of him… I can take care of it. Or maybe just an arm? Since he’s dead anyway. It could be a snack for later.’”
The room erupted. Chen choked on an orange segment, laughing into his fist. Peters bellowed, slapping his knee. Monroe just shook his head, a wry grin on his face. Even the normally stoic Wallace, reading a newspaper in the corner, let out a sharp crack of laughter.
Johnson didn’t laugh. His confused smile froze, then melted into bewilderment. He looked from Higgins’ grinning face to Monroe’s amused shake of the head. “A… a snack?” he repeated, the word silly and grotesque in his mouth.
The laughter died down to chuckles. Higgins wiped a mirthful tear from his eye. “Yeah. A snack. For later.”
“What would he…” Johnson trailed off, his mind catching up, but refusing to land on the obvious conclusion. It was too absurd. The kid with the big blue eyes and the shy smile? “What would he do with an arm?”
The silence that followed was different. It wasn’t the silence of before. It was heavy, loaded. The veteran guards exchanged a look—a mixture of pity, dark amusement, and the shared weight of a knowledge Johnson didn’t possess.
Chen finished chewing his orange slowly, watching the new kid. Peters’ smile faded into something more neutral, more assessing.
Higgins leaned forward, his elbows on the stained table. His voice dropped, not to a whisper, but to a flat, matter-of-fact register that was worse than any dramatic tone. “You don’t know?”
Johnson felt a cold knot form in his stomach. He shook his head.
“He’s a cannibal, kid,” Higgins said, the words dropping into the room like stones.
Johnson stared. The sentence didn’t compute. It floated in the air, separate from reality. He replayed the mimicry in his head. ‘A snack for later.’ He thought of Angel’s delicate hands, his soft requests for extra sugar packets, the way he’d looked cradled in Dominic’s arms after the fight—small, innocent, protected.
“He’s… what?”
“A cannibal,” Monroe repeated, his voice quieter now. He took a sip of his tea. “Ate parts of his victim. That’s why he’s in here. Murder and cannibalism. He was fourteen.”
The facts, delivered without embellishment, were a physical blow. Johnson felt the room tilt slightly. The stale air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. “Fourteen,” he echoed.
“The system didn’t know what to do with him,” Chen said, meticulously brushing orange pith from his fingers. “Juvenile detention wasn’t equipped, psych hospitals argued, so they tried him as an adult. Got life. Ended up here. Ricciardi claimed him pretty much day one.”
“And he just… walks around?” Johnson’s voice was too loud in the sudden quiet. “He’s just… out in gen pop? He asks for arms?”
“He’s Reaper’s,” Peters said from the couch, as if that explained everything. And in a way, it did. “And he’s harmless. Unless you’re dead. Then you’re a potential meal.”
“Harmless?” Johnson’s mind was reeling, grasping for sense. “He’s a cannibal!”
“Yeah, and Gellar thinks the CIA is in the pipes, and O’Malley collects his own toenails, and Silas back there has turned human vertebrae into a hobby,” Higgins snapped, the earlier amusement gone, replaced by the gritty frustration of explaining the rules of a mad world. “You gonna lock ‘em all in a hole? This is the hole. This is where they send the ones the other holes can’t handle. Angel… he’s just got a more specific dietary preference.”
“He ate it raw,” Wallace muttered from behind his newspaper, not looking up.
A fresh wave of nausea washed over Johnson. He pictured it. The sweet-faced boy. The raw, red meat. The two images slammed together in his head, refusing to fuse.
“Ricciardi keeps him on a tight leash,” Monroe said, his tone aiming for reassuring and landing on grimly pragmatic. “Gets him regular meat from the commissary, special orders sometimes. The kid… he sees it like that. A preference. Like preferring chocolate over vanilla. He doesn’t get the… the moral horror of it. He’s like a… a weird, blood-drinking magpie. He just likes the shiny red stuff.”
“He calls it ‘loud’ meat,” Chen offered. “Says beef isn’t ‘loud’ enough.”
Johnson put his water down. He didn’t trust his hands. “And you all… you just laughed.”
Higgins’ eyes hardened. “What do you want us to do, kid? Scream? Faint? Call the newspapers? He’s a fact. Like the bad coffee and the cracked concrete. You laugh because the alternative is to go home and stare at the wall until your shift starts again. You laugh because he asked for a finger like my kid asks for a cookie, and the sheer, universe-bending absurdity of it is the only thing that makes it tolerable.”
The truth of it settled in the room, ugly and comfortable.
“Does he… has he ever… tried to get it? Since being inside?” Johnson asked, his voice hushed.
Monroe and Higgins exchanged another look. “Once,” Monroe admitted. “Early on. Before Reaper had him fully settled. Inmate named Marsh made the mistake of threatening Angel, thinking he was an easy target. A soft little Omega. Didn’t know about his… tastes.”
“What happened?”
“Marsh ended up in the infirmary with a bite taken out of his forearm. A real, proper, tearing human bite. Angel was sitting cross-legged next to him when we got there, crying. Not because he was scared. Because they pulled him off before he could finish.”
Johnson’s blood went cold.
“Reaper dealt with it,” Higgins said flatly. “Marsh didn’t press charges. Moved to a different block. The message was received. You don’t touch the kid. Not because he’s Reaper’s, but because the kid himself is… a biohazard.”
Peters heaved himself off the couch. “Look, newbie. Here’s the rule. Angel Emberly is a child. He’s eighteen, but he’s a child. You treat him like one. You speak to him gently. You never, ever leave him alone with a dead or severely bleeding body. You understand? You see a fight, you get him away from it, not just for his safety, but for… for cleanup practicality.”
“And you don’t ever, ever let him suck on a cut you have,” Chen added, dead serious. “He’ll try. He’s like a vampire toddler. He sees a scraped knuckle and his eyes get all big and hopeful. Just say no. Firmly.”
Johnson just nodded, his throat tight. The cognitive dissonance was crushing. The operational guidelines were being delivered in the same tone as advice on processing paperwork.
The door swung open and Sergeant O’Leary lumbered in, his face ruddy. “What’s the funeral for?”
“Just initiating Johnson into the Cult of Angel,” Higgins said, the smirk returning.
O’Leary grunted, heading for the coffee maker. He poured the thick, black sludge into a mug. “Ah. The cannibal kid. Cute as a button, ain’t he?” He took a sip, unfazed. “My granddaughter has the same hair. Platinum blonde curls. Of course, she doesn’t ask for human femurs to gnaw on during playtime. Different parenting challenges.”
The casualness of it, the sheer domestic comparison, was the final brick in the wall for Johnson. This was normal here. This was the water they swam in.
“Reaper’s a surprisingly good father,” Monroe mused, stirring his tea again. “Given the circumstances. Patient. Firm. You should see him reading to the kid at lights out. It’s… something else.”
“He’s got the patience of a saint,” O’Leary agreed. “I’ve got three boys. Teenagers. They drive me up the wall with their shit. I look at Reaper, dealing with a kid who literally wants to lick blood off the walls, and I think… maybe my life ain’t so hard.”
The conversation drifted, as it always did, back to the mundane. Peters complained about his wife’s new minimalist diet. Chen talked about his car’s transmission. The television was turned back on, the muted highlights of the game flickering across their tired faces.
Johnson sat in silence, his lunch forgotten. He kept seeing it. The circle in the yard. The body. And the small, gentle voice piping up with an offer to help, to snack. He thought of the careful way Dominic Ricciardi had picked Angel up afterward, the possessiveness, the tenderness. A monster, cradling a different kind of monster. A father soothing his son after a minor social indiscretion.
He finally understood the laughter. It wasn’t cruelty. It was the pressure valve on a pot that was always at a boil. If you didn’t laugh at the surreal horror of it, you’d have to actually think about it. And if you thought about it for too long, you’d never be able to walk back onto the tier.
Higgins stood, clapping a hand on Johnson’s stiff shoulder. “Come on, rookie. Shift change. Time to go babysit. Remember the rules: watch the pipes, watch the shadows, and keep the tiny vampire away from the fresh meat.”
Johnson stood on unsteady legs, following the others out. The reinforced door clanged shut behind them, sealing the break room with its stale jokes and fading echoes of laughter. The new guard took his place in the corridor, the buzz of the fluorescents suddenly seeming like the hum of a vast, indifferent machine. He looked down the walkway towards Gen Pop, his eyes wide, his previous understanding of this place shattered and rearranged into something far stranger, and far darker.
He’d signed up to guard criminals. He hadn’t known he’d also be running a day care for the damned.