Songbird, Jailbird

I stared at the grimy ceiling and dreamed of a better world.

The cell door clanged open and a thin woman stumbled inside. She dropped a jumpsuit onto the opposite bunk and slumped beside it. The door slammed shut.

“Welcome to the writers’ block,” I said. “What’d you do?”

She faced me and drew a shaky finger across her throat.

“Overcrowding in the singers’ wing?” She nodded. I winced. The regime was especially brutal to her kind.

Rummaging under the jumpsuit, she extracted a tiny notepad and regarded me expectantly.

“Hide that!” I hissed.

She shook her head, eyes flicking between the pencil stub she now held and my wrist stumps.

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll tell you a story. They won’t like it.”