Lockdown

Don't make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.

When you're locked up in here for life, you learn to welcome the little freedoms.

There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace.

I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom—one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything.

Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.

This place is full of unwritten rules.

Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.

Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.

Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job.

That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?

Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when." "I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out peoples dramatic sides." Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.

It felt like I´d been lying on that bed for a thousand years, tormented by every demon possible.

My whole body was aching, my stomach felt like it was unpeeling itself, like I was coming apart. I offered silent prayers that I hadn´t eaten dinner.

Next I was plunged into a void so profound that I thought I´d gone blind.

All for one and let’s get the hell out of here.

What if that was the fate of all of us, turned into the very basest of creatures, the very essence of evil?

But they’re bluffing. I defy even the bravest adult to spend the night in a place like Furnace in the pitch black without thinking that every noise is something right behind you with dagger teeth and eyes of silver and blood on its breath; that every whisper of air that runs over your skin is the rush of a descending blade; that every flicker of movement is a tendril of darkness wrapping itself around your throat and coiling in the pit of your belly, where it feasts on your soul.