The Girl Who Was Buried in Her Ball Gown

We walked through the corridor into the dining areas. There were four different rooms in fact, each one coming off the central junction. It wasn’t one big room as I had expected. Each room seated between fifteen, to twenty prisoners. We turned into the one on the right, from where we entered the junction. You couldn’t see into the other dining areas once you were inside your one; they were very separate and each dining area had electronically operated heavy metal and glass doors. The junction was constantly monitored, from the guard windows above us and in behind the reinforced glass panels, were two guards. Within each dining area were two more guards. It was well monitored and prepared for any confrontation that may happen.

Once we entered inside our own dining cubical, to our right were three prisoners handing out the already prepared melamine–plastic trays, holding the dinner and cutlery. The drill went like this: as the queue of prisoners filed in, they would go to the water fountain and fill up their prison issued thermos flask with either hot or cold water, they would then go over to the three prisoners at the dinner trolley and be handed a plastic knife and fork and their tray of food. Tonight’s meal was a chicken dish with peas, mashed potatoes, a single bread bun and some steamed silver beet. It actually looked quite yummy and I salivated a bit, even though I wouldn’t be eating any of it. Hey, no one even knew I was there, except Dad and even he may not have realised I was still with him.

The prisoners then went over to their tables. There were six plastic tables with plastic chairs around them. Each table had tea bags, coffee, a small box of milk. Some sugar, salt and pepper satchels were tossed into a paper tray. The prisoners would sit down and eat their meal around these little tables. Once finished, they would dump all of their dishes and left overs, into some bins. The guards would be watching them, to make sure everything went into the bins. Every chicken bone, plastic knife, fork and melamine plate; everything.

Afterwards, the prisoners could go back to their tables and talk for a while. A couple of prisoners asked the guard for a pack of playing cards to have a few hands of ‘500’ or ‘last–card’, or whatever. Eventually, a bored–sounding guard made the call over the loud–speakers, telling the prisoners how much time was left before the final lock up. The packs of cards then had to be handed back to the guard.

As we entered, I glanced around and was relieved to see that Doug, the gorilla, wasn’t in this room. Some of the dangerous prisoners remained locked up, and dinner was brought right to their cells, rather than having them dine with others; perhaps Doug was already locked up. I noticed that a few – maybe two or three prisoners – did not fill up their thermos. I wondered about that. Dad got his water (hot, he usually had a cup of tea with dinner) and his meal and sat with some prisoners he seemed to be chummy with. Patrick sat with them too.

The conversations flowed between mouthfuls, mostly manly things like cars, or rugby, or other boring stuff that a girl simply wasn’t interested in. Dad did say grace first though, and out loud, before he ate, which was bold of him, amongst such others. He did always have a strength of character, which was another thing I loved about Dad. He was not one to succumb to peer pressure; rather, he was the peer that would put on the pressure and his morals were exceptional.

I saw a few of Pohane’s entourage about, here and there posing as men I had not seen before. They were whispering all kinds of filth into some of the prisoner’s ears. It would dribble into their ear from these spirit–beings, then dribble right out of the filthy mouths of the people who tuned in to it; filth like porn, drugs and all kinds of lewd stuff, so the conversation topics within the room varied extremely. Some of the men’s eyes would light up after a dirty joke, while other men (like Dad) would try their best not to listen and shun the filth.

I began to feel a kind of subliminal buzz passing through the air. A sort of pressure and crispness, vibrating. It was like I was within a great big glass bell, that was about to be struck and the glass particles were humming in anticipation. The silence of the birds before the storm.

One of the demons took a quick glance over at me, from behind the ear of its host, I caught the look before it turned away from me. It was savage and dripping with pure hatred. Another demon, over the ear of its host glanced at Dad, I saw him because the demon was within my peripheral vision. The hammer was about to strike!

The demons’ wicked lips were trembling whispers into ears, too fast to make out what it was they were saying. I heard a metallic tinkling of something, but I didn’t quite know what. It was in the direction of the two prisoners who had not filled their flasks, I knew it! The invisible guests of the prisoners prompted their moves. There was something hidden within those flasks and here they came!

It happened with intensity, so quick, choreographed; almost like the dance of the ghosts within the mirror portal. The eruption of revenge, the lust for blood and a sworn (or forced) duty to perform. One man stood and tossed his hot thermos into the face of the prisoner, who he had just told a joke to. He screamed a guttural cry of agony and the guards began moving toward these two men. He was up on his feet, wiping furiously at his face with his shirt, drying himself off. He was blindly reaching out for the neck of the man who had emptied his thermos all over him, but that was not the worst. Another prisoner who was on a different table, had slowly risen from his chair and out from his thermos dropped a crude, homemade knife; made from a ballpoint pen, with a blade from a disposable razor. It was a small weapon; a ‘shiv’ is what they called them around here and it was like a scalpel and just as deadly. He hadn’t made his move yet; all eyes were on the other two.

The man who had been temporarily blinded, grabbed his dinner plate and tossed the leftover dinner into the face of the man who had emptied his thermos over him. He smashed his melamine–dinner plate over the table and took the largest piece in his hand and was clambering around the plastic table, trying to slash at the other guy’s face with it. I just knew something was not right about the first two. I clicked that they were only a distraction, it was probably not hot water at all. The guards were moving away from us and toward them!

The man with the crude ’shiv’, looked at Dad, who was watching the other two. The demon over the armed man’s shoulder, was still mouthing something into his ear and the other guy next to him, got up as well, holding his own fashioned ’shiv’. Suddenly, other prisoners tried to trip the guards up as they walked passed them. The guards realised that they were in trouble; so, spun around on their heels and made a beeline for the doors, which were already opening for them, only to close again, once they had made their safe exit. Once out of the doors, the guards who operated them from above, within their glass–protective nest, crunched them closed and everyone heard an electronic ‘click’ as the doors locked. It was nearly a full–on riot after that.

The two men with the ‘shiv’s’ made a rush at Dad, demons hollering into their ears edging them on to do the deed.

The demons looked at me and were laughing, “Ah ha! Emma, welcome to your father’s funeral!” they screamed.

“Doug was not too pleased about how your Dad stopped him from taking his liberties, so we gave him some ideas!” said a scrawny, black demon and another one cut him off, to spit out his hate-laced words.

“Ah ha! Revenge is so sweet.” The two men were very close to Dad by then and so I ran and shoved myself into one of them. He went flying backward with a stunned look on his face. He didn’t know what to make of this; he couldn’t see me and yet there he was, crumpled in a heap on the floor.

His demon screamed at me, “You bitch! You’re going to pay for that!” It rose up, away from the man and dived for me, but I dodged him and turned to look to Dad. The other attacker was nearly on top of Dad, so I jumped through the air, launching myself at the makeshift ‘shiv’ nearing Dad’s jugular. I grabbed the weapon–wielding man by the hand that he was raising the ‘shiv’ with, and about to strike dad with, then I crushed his thumb onto the ‘shiv’ handle. He howled in pain as I forced him to drop the blade. The demon was on top of me, pulling me away from Dad. I could feel his gnarly nails biting into me, as they scraped down my legs. I twisted and brought my knee into his face, which caused his head to twist right around, three hundred and sixty degrees until he was facing me again. It freaked me out and I felt fear gripping my soul. His wicked eyeballs were full of rage and his sharpened teeth gnashed at me, trying to bite me. I forced the heel of my hand into his eyes and pushed him off me. He fell off me and leapt forward for another grab. I was spinning back now, towards Dad and kicked out at the demon as he flew at me, knocking him over.

Everything happened so quickly in the spirit realm, but the physical world rolled out the events before me, in a leisurely and weirdly slow pace. It was surreal as I watched the first man reaching with his blade towards Patrick’s jugular, I could see the small incision, beginning to pool blood from the blade as it slid slowly against Patrick’s flesh; yet the demons and myself were in fast forward. I bullied past the demon near Patrick and simply plucked the blade out of the man’s hand, like I was picking flowers. I forced my fear of the demon creatures out of my mind, I had to. I suddenly realised that this was the real battle, the battle of the mind. They were coming at me again, so quickly but I was just as quick, maybe even quicker.

In my peripheral vision, I saw that the second man had just lifted his blade up off the floor and was reaching for Dad again.

The demons, for some reason which surprised me, could not actually touch me and they suddenly looked as though they were being held in some kind of invisible treacle. Their movements were slowing; something was happening around them. A kind of darkness descending around their eyes and they could not see me anymore. They were floundering around, trying to lash out at someone they couldn’t see. I plucked the blade from out the second man’s hand; like taking an ice-cream from a baby. It was so easy that it was comical.

The demons were in a rage, swaggering around and groping for me; their unseen foe, before they retreated back into the concrete floor. It reminded me of the story in The Wizard of Oz, when the green witch was melting because of the water that had been thrown over her. The demons seemed defeated. I noticed that the atmosphere had changed from a tense wave, into a becalmed state; it confused me. What could cause such a shift? However, I was very grateful, as my enemies must have felt the change too; hence their retreat. What might it have been?

I didn’t have a chance to think more about it at that moment, because I saw a man coming up behind Patrick, with a plastic chair and he was about to take an incredibly slow (to me) strike to Patrick’s head. I slid toward the man and took the chair from him, now I had control of the chair.

I moved toward Dad, with the chair still in hand and stood ready to strike anyone who came near him. With this move, some of the Maori prisoners began shouting, and their eyes were filled with terror, “Kehua! Kehua!” and “Tapu! Tapu!” Ghost! Sacred! Of course! They couldn’t see me, but they could see this freaky chair flying about the room all on its own!

I heard another say “Max’s daughter! She’s a ghost. She’s haunting us, protecting him! Leave him alone! He’s tapu!”

Amongst all the chaos and confusion, I saw the big heavy doors fly open and fifteen guards came running in, to control the crowd. Most of the chaos had already subsided though, I already had them under control, lil’ ol’ me, a fifteen–year–old dead girl, hilarious! I felt powerful with my plastic chair. The guards found the blades and the men who had used them and lead them away in handcuffs. They were still in a daze, confused about their brush with the supernatural and the bizarre removal of their ‘shiv’s’ during the fight. I’m sure they would remain confused for quite a while, I thought. Good for them!

At last, lock–up, which was when the prisoners were secured in their own cell until morning, I came back into Dad’s cell and he was giggling about it all. Did he even know that these guys were trying to carve him up, into oblivion? “Dad, did you get hurt?”

“Oh Emma, that was so funny. You with the chair and them crying out tapu and kehua!”

“It was not funny Dad! You could have been killed!”

“I know, I know, but I wasn’t. Neither was Patrick.”

“Yeah, but he’s been cut! He’s in the medical wing, getting patched up. Oh, you’re bleeding too.” Dad had a gash across his head, which looked like it had been bleeding pretty badly.

“It’s just a scratch honey; head wounds always bleed worse than they really are. I’ll be fine.

“You showed them honey. I’m so proud of you.” I blushed and felt good. My Dad was proud of me. “I don’t think they will be bothering me anymore. Not with my wild ghost–daughter looking after me.” I had hoped so, but I wasn’t so sure.

The gorilla wanted to kill Dad. He obviously had some favours owing to him. I wondered how many more of these favours he had tucked away, it worried me. However, I couldn’t stay here for the next eight months looking out for my Dad. I’m sure the demons would be back again and I still didn’t know what it was that had blinded them. I would have to find out, somehow.