Today, I'm patching holes in the sewer system. I'm given a bucket of some horrible smelling industrial gunk that acts as a sealant, a pair of cover-alls, and a pair of yellow stained rubber gloves to handle the sealant. The acidic content of the sealant has corroded the gloves and the sealant touching the skin feels like a thousand knives stabbing you in rapid fire succession.
I'm alone on this particular mission. I certainly don't prefer it this way, being by myself in this rank lead coffin; up to my ankles in the collected waste of a hundred thousand inmates and few thousand employees. I can normally deal with the smell and the solitude, but the day’s move so much faster when you can look into the eyes of another person and remind yourself that it will be okay and someday this will all be over. The comfort that we were all in this together made us strong. It made me feel human, when our keepers do everything they can to make us feel like livestock. Those fleeting glances are the only good feeling they'll allow us and today they've taken it from me. As I patch up my first dozen cracks, my mind attempts to wander, but finds itself as chained to this dank place as I am. I squat against one of the walls and grab the tracking device that they've bonded to my bone; making its removal impossible.
When we were allowed to socialize, I was a member of a small group of people who would gather as a think tank; to find a way out of our dilemma. We theorized as to how it could be removed without breaking our legs. We weren't even sure how they would even go about doing something like that, so anything we came up with was hear-say. The old timer, the one who finished his sentence last year, was thinking it could just be twisted off. "Might hurt like a dozen Hells, but you'd have it gone" I remember him saying.
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