You never liked him much, this man of bravado and false assurance. Perhaps never is too heavy a word considering how long you've known him, yet for one such as you a week can be as much an eternity as it is a fleeting second. He was trapped behind steel and concrete for what he had done to that child. You can see it in his eyes even when he does not return to his cell with bruises and scrapes, consequences of hatred. The prisons are filled with cruel men, but even cruelty has its standards. Its limits. Those who cross over into barbarism are ill received within its walls.
"He wasn't the first." Your voice cracks. You have not spoken in days. The cartilage of your throat scrapes against flesh like gravel. "The one you got caught for. You just messed up. They found him."
The man's lazy curiosity becomes more alert. He looks at you, elbow propped on his pillow. "What are you talking about?"
"Jamie Cage, Twelve years old. Went missing outside his school on December 12th 2014. Found by sniffer dogs eight days later. They found you in him. Some from where he fought back. Some from you pushing too hard." Your voice contorts with hate. He is alarmed now. You see it in his eyes, replacing that dead amorality. That sociopathy that only holds the self to any degree of importance.
"I never told you that."
"Didn't have to." Contrary to your hate, your voice becomes a perfect facade of disinterest. "You were all over the news."
His breathing becomes labored, he tries to scramble into a sitting position. You move faster than you thought you would, pressing him down into the bottom bunk. Your hand covers his mouth. His eyes look ready to pop from his skull. You should be so lucky.
"They saw your car at the scene. I remember the license plate. I remember it better than...well, I remember it better than a lot of things. Important things. Things that matter." Your voice cracks. "So I looked at your case. Turns out another kid had gone missing about ten years ago. It wasn't brought up because of the time lapse. Courts are messy like that. But I talked my way into viewing some old footage." You lean down close enough that your hair tickles the surface of his neck. His chest arches as his breathing gets heavier still.
"The day Courtney Jones went missing, guess whose car was on the scene? They never found my angel. You buried her too deep after you used her up."
He screams through his covered mouth; denial after panicked denial. You don't care. You're almost certain he's the one, and if he's not, he's as close as you'll ever get.
The guards had accepted a bribe from outside to switch cells with him. You had tried to see any redemption in him, any hint that the shadows had cleared, that your baby girl had not died to the same man that lay below you now, begging and denying in equal measure. You found none, and getting a sharp cut of metal from one of your fellow prisoners had been easy when you had told them why.
Cruelty had its standards.
You pull that shard from your pillow now and plunge it into his throat. His right carotid spews crimson over the bed as he gags, choking on his own blood. He dies in moments. You watch.
You take the bloodied shard in your hand, turning it over as you climb one handed to the top bunk. Yard training has afforded you some level of upper body strength. "I'll be along shortly," you say to empty space.
You lie on your back, stare at the ceiling, and plunge the shard into your own neck.
You'll be along shortly.