Reason Number Three

The massive concrete door pushed open and Stanley stepped inside. The light fixtures flickered yellow, allowing just enough light to light up the corners of the room. Scattered across the floor and hanging on the walls were tapestries. Unevenly cut cloth embodied to depict from mountain scenes to specific people. At the far end of the room, sat the prisoner. Her hands held her newest project, her unsettlingly graceful movements poking the needle through the fabric ever few moments.

She looked up. Stanley shivered. Her dark, lifeless eyes found his and she smiled.

“You’re new.” she continued sewing.

“Yes.”

“They told you about me?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re petrified.”

Stanley sat on a small wooden stool right next to the door. He watched her weave the string through the fabric, her motions deliberate and calm.

“They don’t let me use scissors. I have to bite the strings.”

When Stanley didn’t respond she stopped working and looked straight at him.

“May I have scissors?”

“I wasn't born yesterday, no, you can’t have scissors.”

She grinned, picking her needle back up. “Just testing you.”

“What are you embroidering?”

“A face.”

“Whose face?”

“Herbert Hoover.”

“What?”

“I’ve already done the first 30 presidents. He’s 31st.”

She gestured to the wall, Stanley raised his eyebrows at the images. “You remember the faces of all of the presidents well enough to embroid them?”

“Yes. You don’t?”

Steven leaned back against the cell door, surprise flooding his face. He scanned the walls and floors, finding the detailed and accurate tapestries everywhere.

“You’re very good at that.”

“Thank you.”

“How’d you convince them for the materials?”

She grinned. “It’s a life sentence. I have unique needs.”

Stanley nodded, continuing to survey the embroidery.

“You can look at it all closer, if you like. I didn’t put details in to go unnoticed.”

Stanley stood up from his stool, hesitantly making his way closer to the display. The bits of cloth were reluctantly hung with hot glue, clearly put there by an officer. Stanley’s eye caught on a depiction of a park. He moved closer to it, tracing the string with his finger. He saw where the strings disappeared and became a people sitting in lawn, where the dark blue became the night sky.

Suddenly, he felt watched. He remembered protocol—‘Don’t Stand Within Five Feet Of Prisoner’— he turned his head, expecting her to lunge. Instead, he found her staring at him, not moving, with a look of pure amusement on her face.

“Well, aren’t you bold.” For the first time, Stanley heard the chains around her wrists clink. He staggered back to the stool in a panic, thinking she’d moved to attack, but she just sat there.

“Jesus, I was just getting a new string. What did the big guys say about me? I’m rather offended.” She bit the string in half.

Stanley didn’t say anything, his heart still beating fast from his overreaction.

“I bet they told you very foggy facts about me. I bet they told you what I did, but not how I did it. That got your imagination running wild.”

Stanley stared back at her. She wasn’t smiling, or even grinning, just talking to him.

“Well, if you have any questions for me, go ahead and ask. Let me clear away some fog. Lord knows I have a lifetime to tell you.”

Stanley nibbled at his finger nails. “Why’d you do it?”

“Too vague.”

“I think you can answer why—“

“No, too vague.” Her voice echoed in the cell. Her arms now crossed, her project on the floor beside her.

“What’s your name?”

“Stanley.”

“Let me ask you something, Stanley.” She emphasized his name, mocking his apparent ignorance.

“How did you get here?”

“I took a bus.”

“No, I mean, how did you get to this point in your life?”

“Well, there’s a lot of different factors—“

“Exactly. There isn’t just one ‘why’ for anything.”

“Just hang on a second,” Stanley pointed at the prisoner on the floor in front of him. “Don’t you say that my situation is anything like yours, because it’s not.”

She glared at him for a few moments. Then she smiled. “Oh, it’s so similar, Stanley. All of the factors in your life that made you, those reasons, are the same sort of factors that made me a murderer.”

Stanley twitched.

“What, too blunt for you? You don’t want to believe that I had a life too, that I’m a person?” Her chains clanked.

“Just go back to your embroidering, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“How can I go back to that boring stuff while I’m having such an impassioned conversation with you?”

“I can get people in here within moments to take these pictures down, would you like that?”

She scowled at Stanley before picking up her cloth again, continuing to stitch. Stanley watched her, noticing the needle slip into her thumb a few times, blood dripping onto Hoover’s face. She never flinched.

After several minutes of silence, she cleared her throat. “Do you like dogs, Stanley?”

“Where did that come from?”

“Do you?”

He nodded, confused.

“Good. I would’ve had to kill you otherwise.” She burst into laughter, realizing soon after that Stanley hadn’t laughed with her.

“I won’t kill you, Stanley. I like you. I can tell you’re a good person.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, I had a dog. This massive Rottweiler. I must’ve been about three when my mom gave him to me. I called him Jerky.”

She stopped to bite her string.

“What happened to him?”

“My stepdad.”

She looked directly at Stanley. “Reason number one.”

Stanley rubbed at his neck.

“Twenty years later, I set a police dog on him. A Rottweiler named Beef.”

Stanley almost laughed, watching her place the embroidery on the floor and try to lay down. A flurry of clanking arose from her chains as she got comfortable, eventually fading back into the quiet of the cell.

“How many reasons are there?”

“Oh, if we sit here long enough, I can come up with millions.”

“So what’s reason number two?”

She glanced over to Stanley, surprised. “You want to know?”

“Sure.”

“OK, several years after the Jerky incident, I was raped.”

Stanley’s face lost color.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t say anything else. That’s usually the story that gets the guards to quit.” She shifted so she lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Must be some story.”

“Anyway, reason numero dos.” She held out two fingers. “Tell your boss that if he really wants to stop the criminals, he has to stop what drives them.”

Stanley studied the woman on the floor. Even from far away he could see the bruises that coiled her ankles and wrists, surrounded by locked iron chains.

“I would give you more ‘reasons,’ but I don’t want to.”

“OK.”

“I’ll wait to say more until tomorrow, then.”

Stanley breathed. “May I tell a reason?”

She sat up, surprised. “Sure.”

“About eight years ago, I was visiting home from college. I was an only son, and apparently while I was away my parents had a bad case of empty-nest syndrome. I came home to a baby sister.”

She chuckled. “Her name?”

“Sofia.”

“Sweet.”

“A few nights later, my dad took Sofia to a park. You bombed them.”

The two stared at each other. Her face unreadable.

“Reason number one.”

“That’s a good ‘why.’” she whispered. Then a grin rose to her face. “This is interesting. Oh, you see? We’re more alike than you think.”

“Shut up.”

“No, can’t you see? All of the things you went through to become my guard, so tedious. But why?”

She grinned wider, Stanley clenched his jaw. “You want to kill me. I don’t blame you.”

“Why them? What’s your reason for my father, your reason for my baby sister?”

“Calm down, Stanley. I did my research. I must admit, the bomb was a special touch. You see, I’m not usually an explosive kind of gal, but I needed the ‘last hurrah’ feel—“

Stanley shot out of his seat and grasped her neck in one motion. Their noses touched, their teeth bared, eyes piercing daggers into each other.

“Go on, Stanley. Squeeze and we’ll switch places. I’ll be rid of these chains and you’ll be in them.”

A rush of commotion could be heard from outside the cell. The keypad beeping as Stanley’s boss slapped in the code. Stanley dropped the girl’s neck. He turned to face the door. The cell opened to the chief officer pointing a gun.

“We’re all right, mister, I’ve got it under control.” She flashed a sweet smile.

“Stanley, to my office. Now.” Stanley followed his boss down the corridor.

“You’re fired.”

“I quit.”

“I need your badge, your holster, and the keys back, please.”

Stanley moved to remove his badge when the chief stopped him.

“Where are your keys?”

“What?”

“Keys. The keys to the chains in case she needed the restroom. Why aren’t they on your belt?”

The two of them rushed back to the cell, finding only a pile of empty chains and the embroidered park placed carefully on the stool.