Breakout by Paul Herron (notion reading list .txt) 📕

The Glasshouse towers above us. The driver doesn’t go straight for the main entrance, but drives to the left and around the side of the prison. We finally turn into a tunnel that slants down beneath ground level and come to a stop in a loading bay.

Evans unlocks the cage and gestures for us to get up. “Move it. I don’t have all day.”

We climb reluctantly from the bus. Once we’re clear, it immediately starts reversing back up the ramp, Gonzalez still on board.

“They leaving you alone with us, Evans?” Murphy asks.

“Don’t get smart. They’re coming back. Unless you want to clean out the cells on your own? I mean, I’m happy to let you. Might do you all some good. Learn a bit of work ethic. Just thought you’d want some company while you all bitch and complain.”

He glares at us, then turns and pulls open a rusted metal door, holding it wide as we file inside the Glasshouse.

We follow Evans into a service corridor that smells of rotten cabbages. It reminds me of being a kid and going to my grandma’s house on Sunday afternoons. That same pungent smell, like old wet socks and dampness. We move at a fast pace, kicking and crunching over the fragments of the past: broken lightbulbs, rotting magazines, smashed tiles.

At least some of the lights are working. Someone must have come across earlier and flipped the breaker to get this place powered up. They built these old places to last.

After about five minutes of walking through various corridors, Evans leads us into a laundry room. Massive antique washing machines line one wall, while industrial dryers take up the other. A metal table covered in black sheets travels down the center of the long room. It’s only as we walk past that I notice the sheets aren’t supposed to be that color. They’re black with mildew, rotting away from the humidity.

We move through the room into a narrow corridor. Terra-cotta tiles cover the floor, half of them cracked, most of them invisible beneath mud and debris. The walls are covered in rectangular white tiles that must have once been shiny, but are now smeared in grime and dull with the passing of years.

The corridor ends at a heavy metal gate. Evans pulls out a ring of keys and jams them, one after the other, into the lock, swearing and cursing until he finds the one that fits.

“That how your wife feels, Evans?” someone calls out.

He ignores the comment, turns the key with a solid clunk, and pushes the gate open. It shifts reluctantly, with a shriek of protest.

“And that’s what she sounds like when she wakes up and sees you in the morning!” shouts Perez.

This gets a few more chuckles, but Evans just pushes through the gate. We move deeper into the Glasshouse, through narrow, winding corridors, some dimly lit with old hanging bulbs, some not lit at all. Cracked tiles, flickering lights, chipped enamel paint, abandoned offices and rooms strewn with mildewed books and old rotting files.

We exit the service corridors and pass through the front area of the prison, where visitors once came to sign in. It’s similar in style to the Admin reception—I think it must have been modeled on Admin. The only real difference is that this one has a massive circular desk that looks like it’s made from solid mahogany. It could easily sit twenty people around it. The vast room is cut in half by a wall of metal bars with two locked gates—one to either side of the circular desk. There are no metal detectors. The visitors would have moved, one by one, through the gates to be patted down by guards before filing into waiting rooms to the right.

We move through reception and into the visiting area. Metal tables are bolted to the floor. An old, damaged vending machine lies on its side, tipped over and smashed. Someone has scrawled graffiti on the wall, which is weird seeing as the guards would be the only ones with access to spray paint. I try to read the writing as we pass through, but years of dust and mildew have made it illegible.

More twisting, dimly lit corridors follow, until finally we walk through a wide arch into the single prison block of the Glasshouse.

The Rotunda.

I’ve never seen anything like it. The Rotunda is a towering hollow cylinder easily a hundred feet high. The cells circle the inside, receding up into the distance and looking out over the empty central shaft. The floors all meld together the higher up I look. I try to count the levels, but give up after twenty.

Access to each floor is by metal stairs with lockable gates. There’s also an old-fashioned elevator, one of those old brass-and-wood things with the metal grate you have to slam shut.

A twenty-foot tower topped with a security pod stands in the center. The pod has 360 degrees of safety glass so the COs could see everything that was going on. It must have been a really shitty assignment. Exposed to the eyes of hundreds of inmates who want to do nothing more than slit your throat.

There are cleaning utensils sitting next to the elevator doors: brooms and plastic trash bags, mops and buckets.

“I don’t think I have to explain it to you,” says Evans. “You guys take Level 1. Get cleaning. Sooner you finish, the sooner you get back for lunch.”

“We’re not doing all the levels, are we?” asks Deacon.

“You deaf as well as stupid? I said Level 1. Other inmates are being brought in to help.”

I grab a broom and wait while Evans unlocks the gate to the first floor. Then we set to work, brushing out years of dust and debris.

About ten minutes after we start, another group arrives. They take Level 2. After another ten minutes, a third group enters the chamber and they take Level 3. This goes on until the first ten levels are filled with shouting and swearing inmates grudgingly cleaning