The Dangerous Widow

The Great Lizzy

Morning came and went, the afternoon swept in and blew away, the evening creeped through the prison and was dimmed by the night. The days went by so quickly but again very slow. Catherine was now a full inmate of the Brutal Army Prison. She was on a sentence of 20 years with hard labour.

With her new friend, Martha, to keep her company, she never felt scared or emotional. But whenever her friend was not there, she would be lonely and get very emotional.

They spent five whole days without stepping outside their prison cells. This was because of the incident that happened some days back – were an inmate tried to escape the facility. She was gunned down by the officers who were patrolling on the roof.

The officers spent the five days accessing the situation at the prison because it was rare for someone to try and escape. Whenever there was an attempt like that, the officers would go round the prison checking for any strange things that might help an inmate escape the facility. For example: A rope made from clothes tied together, stairs made by stacking the heavy rocks on top of each other and a tunnel that comes out from other side of the fence.

No inmate was allowed to step out of her cell until the checking operation was done and dusted.

On the fifth day, the inmates were about to be grunted permission to finally step out of their prison cells after days of watching the four corners of the cell.

General Rebecca was going round the cells passing out an announcement on a megaphone:

“Few days our friend tried something stupid. She tried to escape. How funny it is that you still have such weak and shallow ideas of escaping this facility. The moment you walked through that gate, you sold your souls to us and there is nothing that can change that, not your attempts, not your status and certainly not your strengths. Believe me when I say that none of you will succeed in your foolish attempts.

“Nevertheless, I feel that you are too many in here. Therefore I encourage you to continue with your foolish attempts. In that way we can make room for new foolish inmates with more foolish ideas. I'm kind of getting tired with these old tricks of yours.” General Rebecca chuckled.

She then commanded, “Open the cells!”

There were two groups of female officers inside the prison standing by the cells as they waited for the doors to open automatically: The first group had guns in their hands ready to fire if anything happened while the second group had vicious dogs held back by strong leashes.

The doors to the cells opened by the press of a button. The inmates made a single queue, as usual, leading to the outdoors of the prison.

Inmates were happy to see and feel the sun on their faces after a long time. How they hoped to see that day.

Nevertheless, they knew that they had very limited time outside the prison before a siren sends them back into their cells. They quickly met with other inmates and ignited a conversation; they were excited to be granted such an opportunity. Inmates who never cared about recreation sat down and watched other inmates watching other inmates; It was a weird situation: others were smiling, others had frown faces like they had tasted a sour lemon and others were looking out for something entertaining.

The officers watched the activities of the inmates carefully as they paced up and down.

Catherine and Martha sat on a big rock far from other inmates, but not too far not to see what was happening with other inmates.

“How nice to be outside the cells. We can finally breath the fresh air,” Martha said.

“Yes. I was almost getting sick.”

Martha replied, “I can only imagine.”

“By the way, who tried to escape the other night?” Catherine asked eagerly.

“I don't know her. I have never heard of her,” added Martha.

“What happens to the corpse after shooting and killing the inmates?”

Martha coughed softly and replied, “I'm not very sure. I have heard inmates say that those corpse are either buried or burnt to ashes.”

“Burning!” Catherine exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Martha, “They either throw the corpse in a deep pit or they pour gasoline on them and ignite the corpse. Either way, the corpse are gotten rid of.”

Catherine replied, “Who decides all that?”

“The general gives permission to her two captains: the day captain and the night captain, to carry on with the operation. The night captain is the one who runs this place at night whenever the general is not around while the day captain runs this place during the day whenever the general is not around.

“Like now since the general is here. The day captain has no power towards this place unless with a special permit from her. The same goes out to the night captain. But mostly, it's the night captain who enjoys the power because the general is often home during night time.”

Catherine replied, “I see.”

All of a sudden they heard women shouting in excitement. The yelling was loud and disturbing. Separately, inmates rushed towards the direction of the noise.

Catherine wondered why there was such noise and why women fled away in the same direction. She asked Martha, “What's going on?”

Martha sighed deeply, “It seems like there is a fight.” Martha stood and called, “Come with me and see the other bad side of this place.”

Catherine stood up, dusted herself and followed Martha.

The noise led them to a crowd of inmates who made a big ring. In the middle of the ring, there were two fighters: one was huge and tall while the other one was slim. The slim woman had a sharp knife and was swirling it vigorously, while the huge woman formed fists with her huge hands.

The inmates encouraged the fighters by yelling different slogans and phrases: “Kill her!” “Stab her!” “Throw a punch in her stomach!” “Strangle her to death!”

The officers watched but did nothing. The officers did not care about who was going to be killed in the fight or what instruments the inmates were using to fight the opponent.

Gladly the officers would seat comfortably and watch the women tear each other into pieces. The officers seldom interfered in a fight between inmates.

As usual, the officers watched silently while looking out for any escapees.

The fight began almost immediately between the two women in the ring; the slim woman ran towards the huge one while swirling her knife. Swiftly, the huge woman dodged the knife, she was much more quicker than the slim one despite the body weight and the height.

The slim woman continued slicing the air with her sharp knife: Holding her knife high and slicing from the top right to the bottom left and from the bottom left to the right and from the right to the left and from the left to the top left.

The huge woman continued to dodge the knife: turning left and right and taking steps backwards.

Bit by bit the slim woman was losing her strength. When the huge woman noticed that the slim woman was losing her strength, the huge woman fired a hard punch onto the nose of the slim woman. Blood began streaming out from her nose. She stopped walking and stood upright.

Another strong punch was fired into the stomach of the slim woman. She bent down holding her stomach and dropped her knife. She coughed and blood came out from her mouth.

The huge woman hit the slim woman on the forehead with her knee. She moved back and dropped on the ground with a thud. She was in pain. She could not fight any more, she was bleeding and she was losing.

Mostly, whenever there was a fight in prison, if one fighter bleeds persistently, then that means that the opponent had won. But there was another situation were the fight would end in death because of the encouragement from the inmates to kill the opponent. When that was done, the winner would grow in popularity. The more kills, the more popular one becomes in prison.

The slim woman used the last strength in her to stand up.

At that point the inmates encouraged the huge woman to kill the slim one, “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!” they yelled.

The huge woman looked around at the inmates encouraging her. She loved it. She walked over to the knife and picked it up then she ran back to the slim woman and stabbed her In the stomach. Down went the slim woman into a pool of blood.

When the inmates saw what happened; they cheered, “Hooray for The Great Lizzy! Hooray for The Great Lizzy! Hooray for The Great Lizzy!” She was impressed, she loved the fame.

The inmates gave way for her. She walked away through the crowd and some inmates followed her as they chanted her name. She walked right in front of Catherine and Martha.

“Who was that?” Catherine asked curiously.

“They call her, The Great Lizzy.”

“Why?”

“Because of the inmates she has killed in these prison fights.”

Catherine began wondering to herself, “This is not her first?”

“How many has she killed?” Catherine asked aloud.

Martha replied with a question, “How many do you think?”

“10?”

Martha laughed softly, “That was only for last week.”

Catherine gasped. She asked doubtfully, “20?”

Martha replied, “More than you can imagine. That helpless woman you are seeing right there, lying dead on the ground, just made the count to be 420.”

Catherine gasped, “But won't she get in trouble?”

Martha turned around, “Walk with me.” Catherine also turned. They began walking in the opposite direction, away from the crowd who were still celebrating.

Martha spoke, “This institute is designed for torture and death. Mostly, the inmates who end up dead is because they offended the one in charge of this institute, which is the general.

“If the general was not offended but someone is killed by Lizzy then it was a problem between Lizzy and the other inmate. The inmates will fight until death if they must. It's like a tradition here in the Brutal Army Prison.”

“But why doesn't the general, herself, execute the one's who offended her?” Catherine asked.

“You are right Catherine for asking such a question. But, the first thing you must understand is that this facility is both a private and slightly a government. The two sectors both play a part in running this place.

“The government watches the servants working here, while the private watches the inmates.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the government is concerned with the actions of the servants. The officers can do anything apart from killing prisoners without any suitable reason. Because of this, the general will instruct The Great Lizzy to do her a favour if someone offends her.

“On the other hand, the private sector cleans up the mess made by the Inmates. Those messes could be anything such as: suicide, murder and escape. The general has control to silence the private sector on matters of escape which is related to her doings. Moreover, we hardly have inmates who escape this facility. It was unfortunate for our fellow inmate who tried to escape and ended up dead few days ago.

“However, the general has little to no control over the government, if she did by any chance kill someone in this prison, the government would find out, I don't know how, but they would find out. Later, she would be removed from her post immediately.”

Catherine did not say anything. She was still thinking of how the slim woman was killed. While she was still thinking; an ambulance drove through the facility and parked beside the corpse. The inmates quickly scattered in all directions leaving only the corpse on the scene.

Two men who wore blue working suits got out of the car, wrapped the corpse in a cadaver plastic. It was gently carried and shoved into the back of the truck. They drove away immediately.

“Are they going to burn the corpse?” Catherine wondered aloud.

Martha replied, “They'll either do that or burry it.”

Just then the siren sounded.

“Our time has elapsed,” declared Martha. “Come let us get ready to form a queue. And remember don't provoke anyone while on the queue, these women take the nicest look to be a challenge in combat. I wouldn't want you to be involved in these fights.”

The queue was formed almost immediately. The inmates still wanted to be under the blue skies and under the white clouds. But, they had no say or whatsoever. Their time had elapsed and there was nothing they could do to extend it.

Slowly and carefully the inmates marched right back into their cells. With a push of a button, the doors were shut tightly.