The forgotten part

It all started on a cold winter night in 2011, I was driving, and there it was. The black ice that I never saw coming. The car simply slipped, I couldn’t brake, even though I tried so hard to stop it. A loud bang rang out in the silence, I had collided with a car that was driving my way. Then everything stopped. No sound, no image, no feeling. It stayed that way for at least twelve hours. Then I woke up in my bed, with no idea how I got there, and it seemed like whatever injuries I must have had somehow healed.

At around 9h30 a.m. I woke up to a call from Donnaconna prison, I answered after the second ring, wondering why a prison would call me.

“Hey Annie, it’s Daniel, we were worried when you didn’t come in this morning. We thought you had died or something” the man at the end of the line stated.

“Wait, I was supposed to come in?” I asked.

“Well, yes, I know we changed your schedule a few times in the past month but you know the only thing that never changed is your Friday morning shift.”

“Friday… Right. I’ll be right there, just give me a minute to put on some clothes and I’ll be on my way.” I said before hanging up. Friday… But I was sure that yesterday was Saturday… I couldn’t have gone for a week.

It was then that I finally noticed my appearance. I had a small band aid on my forehead, which I took off to reveal a small cut and a bruise. I had most likely hit my head recently. That explained a lot, like why I couldn’t seem to remember anything since the accident. I also found I had a new tattoo on my forearm, a snake biting its own tail, which totally seems like something I would want to get even when I am aware of what I’m doing.

I find my uniform in my wardrobe and quickly put it on, tying my hair up in a tight bun and grabbing my cell phone. No messages, no missed calls… But if I had been in a coma for a week surely somebody would’ve wondered where I was.

Then I look at the calendar app… Friday, May 13th, 2016. That simply cannot be true, it couldn’t have been five years…

I leave the house, looking up directions on how to get to the prison and enter what I believe is my car. Well, the key unlocked the door, so I assumed it was mine, and I drove off, following the voice coming from my phone’s GPS. I look up to my mirror and see a key card hanging from it. It had my name and picture on it, with the title “Prison guard” and the year 2012 written in bold font under it.

I finally arrived at the prison and saw a van parked in front of the entry, it was marked “Inmate transport.” It must be bringing in new inmates to the prison.

I entered and was greeted warmly by my coworkers, who seemed perplexed by the fact that I needed assistance to get to the break room where I could leave my stuff and get to work. I explained that I got hit over the head and I was confused, they seemed to shrug it off and gave me a list of tasks I had to do for the day. I took some time to get to know the prison a little bit more, and before I knew it, it was time for the lunch break.

“Hey Annie, we’ll be needing you to transfer to the solitary unit this afternoon, Marika had to go home suddenly, bad flu. We’ll be explaining all the new procedures with Bobby and you’ll be there for the rest of the week. Is that alright?” Daniel told me, and I nodded in agreement.

It turned out I had not been there in a while so it did not seem weird when I did not remember anything. He explained that the inmates have to remain in their cell for 23 hours every day, they get one hour of yard time. He put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the doors remain locked, he said that some inmates have been in there so long they have gone insane, and that could be dangerous. So basically, make sure that all doors lock indicators are red, as soon as a lock indicator light turns green, it means the door is unlocked. That way, you can quickly see which door is unlocked. These doors can be locked with a regular key, or electronically from the control board, where we had all of the cameras covering the unit.

I did the same thing every day, went to check on the inmates in bed to see if they were all there and well, then I passed the food out. After that, I went to eat with my colleagues and did a few rounds in the afternoon.

It was all normal until one inmate was transferred to solitary, after that, the whole plan changed.

The man was called ‘The Reaper’ by his fellow inmates. His real name was Daniel, and he had killed five people in a bank robbery gone bad. He did look quite intimidating, but as I passed by his cell at 7h30 for the morning bed check, something very special happened.

“Hey Boss!! We all thought you were dead! Could’ve kept contact, especially in times like these.” I wondered what Daniel meant by that.

“Wait, do I know you? Why do you call me ‘boss’?” I asked the man and he smirked.

“Oh, yeah I forgot. Better keep a low profile here. I guess I’ll see you on the outside!” he said before going back to bed.

I wondered about that man for the rest of the week. How would we even know each other? That can’t be, I would surely remember if I had met that man before.

And on my last day in the solitary unit, I understood what he meant.

Friday came by, and at around 2 p.m. I heard very loud conversations between the inmates, almost as if they were screaming at each other. I went to check what had happened. They seemed way more excited than usual, feces were thrown out the food slots, screams and maniacal laughs filled the corridor, and I called for backup while I went to change my pants because I had received some feces in the back of the leg.

When I came back to the unit, I went straight to the control room. I decided that I would not go back there in this situation. I looked at the cameras pointing toward Daniel’s cell, and oddly enough, he was staring right back at me, a madman’s smirk crooking his lips as he lifted his hand and waved at the camera.

I continued to watch as he disappeared out of frame, a gasp of horror escaped my lips when I saw the lock indicator light on his door turn green. I quickly flipped the switch marked “304” on the board back and forth to try and lock it back up, but it was too late because the moment I looked up again, he was gone.

“Attention all units requesting backup STAT in wing 55, inmate 951002 Daniel Beaver missing, inmate is possibly armed and dangerous.” I nervously called on my radio.

Ten officers stormed the place, looking for the escapee everywhere, but after a while, it seemed like every corridor bled together and we were going around in circles, searching the same spots time and time again like mice trying to find their way out of a maze, following the scent of cheese. In this instance, our cheese was a big, tattooed, ripe-smelling inmate with a beard so big that it may actually have some leftover cheese from last tuesday hanging in there...

We looked around and questioned a few of the inmates in the adjacent cells, but none of them would give up any information as to where The Reaper might have gone.

After around one hour of searching, an officer came back with Daniel handcuffed behind his back.

“Where was he?” The warden asked.

“Found him in a closet near the nurse’s office.”

“YOU TRAITOR! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LEAVE THE FREAKING DOOR UNLOCKED!!! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME YOU STUPID-” He lunged at me, but the officer held him back, and then turned to walk him back to a new cell, number 309.

“What does he mean by that? Were you helping him?” The warden, Mr. Michaels asked me.

“No, I wasn’t... “ I answered, not entirely sure about it.

“Then why would he say that?” He pressured me to go on.

“I don’t remember ever meeting him before this week. Maybe he thought I was someone else…” The warden, not looking convinced, walked back to his office after warning me that “there will be an investigation” and suspended me until said investigation proved that I had nothing to do with this.

It took a month and two different medical examinations to prove that I had suffered a brain injury and that I did not remember anything from the past few years, proving that I could not be held responsible for any of it.

It was explained to me by a psychiatrist that while my body was running around unattended for five years, a sort of alter-ego had taken my place, doing the stuff that my conscience would not let me do. I hired a P.I to try and track what I had done during that period, and fortunately, there was nothing too major, a few hold ups in small stores. I laundered a bit of money and somehow became a pretty prominent figure of a new drug cartel that had just established itself downtown, the one in which Daniel had worked. It explained the cash I had found hidden in my sock drawer. I donated it to charity of course... Except maybe a few thousand dollars, just enough to get myself back on track.

I was reinstated, and since then, every time I worked in Daniel's ward, he would stare at me, threatening my life at some point saying that “The next time that light turns green, he’ll be coming for me.” He also said he would kill my family and that he’d break my legs, crush my cute little face, among other things.

A few weeks later, there was a fight in the common room, and as I was trying to separate the two inmates, Daniel took a homemade shiv and tried to stab me in the stomach with it, only missing because I moved my arm and it pierced my hand. It took 5 stitches on each side of my hand to close the wound, and even after that incident, it would seem like he was always in the corner of his cell, plotting his revenge.

I tried to tell him that I did not remember ever working with him or planning for his escape, but he kept saying that I was trying to maintain “my cover” and would not listen to me. There was no way to make him see that I was genuinely confused as to what happened to him, no matter what I said or did, he had it rooted deep within his mind that someday, he’d get his revenge.

From that moment on, I decided that if anything were to happen again, a green light on cell 309 means ‘run’.