The Warden of Blackwater – Part 1: Intake

Blackwater had been a working prison for a hundred and forty years, and the hotel that now occupied it had kept everything: the iron galleries, the numbered doors, the long echoing stairwells. The cell-block rooms still had barred windows and heavy doors, though the bars were decorative and the locks, thankfully, were hotel keycards.

Ingrid had booked Cell Fourteen. She was forty, an operations director with a gift for command that she was not allowed to use at home. Rob was thirty-eight, a paramedic who spent his shifts being decisive, and who had admitted, after a bottle of wine, that his most private wish was to be told exactly what to do.

At the old intake desk they sat across from each other under a flickering lamp. She laid out a sheet of ruled paper. Rules of Conduct. His limits: no marks, no real fear, nothing that carried outside the night. Hers: she would never lock him in alone, and the cell door's latch worked from the inside. The word was Visiting.

"Say it."

"Visiting."

"If you say it, the Warden walks out. Ingrid walks in. Tea, blankets, no questions."

"Yes, Warden."

"Not yet." She put on a long grey coat with a brass-buttoned collar and a peaked cap, and the room changed. Her voice dropped, slow and cold and absolutely level. "Inmate. Remove your belt and your watch. Place them on the desk. Face the wall."

He did. Her heels sounded on the iron stair behind him. A set of keys jangled. The cell door swung open, and the cell beyond was a small bare room with a bunk, a bucket-shaped lamp and a card-reader lock that he could open from inside with a green button on the wall.

"Inmate. Do you understand the regime?"

"Yes, Warden."

"Then tell me you are content."

"Content, Warden."

"Good," said the Warden. "You will not be, for long."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Lights Out at Blackwater.