-BEGINNING OF ACT 3-

Several Months Ago.

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector, then you can eat a bag of dog shits. 'Kay bye!"

He pushed the call button again. It rang five times.

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector, then you can eat a bag of dog shits. 'Kay bye!"

Again.

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector, then you can eat a bag of dog shits. 'Kay bye!"

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector, then you can eat a bag of dog shits. 'Kay bye!"

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector..."

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't..."

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I..."

"Heyyyy this is Ivy!"

"It's time to go, son," Seguerra commanded softly, with the lament heavy in his tone as he stood outside of the holding cell of a young man in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs encircling his narrow wrists.

The young man didn't meet his gaze. Instead, he watched the gray floor with dark unwavering pupils. "Ivy. Take me to Ivy first," he dryly asserted.

"She's gone, son, you know that."

"Show me then." His voice had elevated. His face was hot and his body was shaking. "You tell me she's gone and I don't even have her body to say goodbye to. She's gone because people like you tell me she is."

"Caleb, you're not making any sense. You were there when it happened. You saw what she did for you. I'm so sorry, but she's...g-"

"Bullzzhitt!" he exploded as he lunged for the bars. He had begun to sob, his face crumpled and pink and wet. "If I can't see it, how can I know that it's true!"

"Caleb, there's nothing to see anymore."

"Then take me to her so I can see! You won't do it because you know! You know what Ivy's capable of, don't you? There's no way she would go down like this. No way. This has to be some...some little scheme of hers. She's always doin' that, too. She fools everybody."

"Caleb." Seguerra muttered softly, pointing at the slender piece of glass and plastic gripped tightly in Caleb's hands. "Then why hasn't she called you, Caleb? Why hasn't she let you know? I convinced them to let you hold onto that thing because four officers had to hold you down just to get it away from you. You were inconsolable without it. And I thought maybe it would help you finally accept that you've been avoiding the truth. You've been deluding yourself these last few days, telling yourself that it's just some master plan of hers when it's just not."

"She-!" he lifted the phone up in front of his face, prepared to prove Seguerra wrong, but then he stopped himself at the last split second. He knew. All at once he crumbled. He pressed his palms to his face and cried.

***

Winter came in the next month. As the warm weather left, it took with it the color in the sky and the hills outside his cell window leaving only the gray clouds and the yellowish-brown dying grass without a white blanket of snow to cover it. Caleb sat against the wall on his cot on his side of the cell, still clutching to the phone, the only bauble he was allowed to bring with him. It could connect him to the outside world, but instead he chose to only use it for one purpose. Her voice, remaining only in a ten second echo, he'd let go on and on forever.

"Heyyyy this is Ivy! Sorry I couldn't make it to the phone, but don't you wanna leave a message? Unless you're a bill collector, then you can eat a bag of dog shits. 'Kay bye!"

His cellmate lay on his own cot, twisting over to face the wall and hide his annoyance, though he didn't say anything. He had given up trying to reach the boy on the other side who never spoke. His routine was to sleep, wake up, piss, not wash his hands, stare at nothing for awhile, and then call her. There was nothing much else to his cellmate's routine, so after a while he just stopped bothering.

So, he was alone, always. The walls were cold, through the concrete permeated not a sound and within his mind was a silence that whispered the end to his world, dead and buried beneath the ground where he could not follow. He was a coward.

She was gone. And he was a coward who couldn't go with her.

The emptiness amplified the somber, petering march of his heart. There was a despondence in his hollow gaze that wished for the end, but a desperate fear that he would not find her if he went. So like a frightened, shivering rabbit he clung to life in his cage. Like a penitent in the worst kind of hell, he knew he'd live forever.

Lunchtime came. The mess hall was sterile, bland, and uncomfortably cold. The prisoners sat and ate metal trays of carefully measured, mass-produced food, made without any regard for the tastebuds of its consumers, and they swallowed it up without a complaint. The two cellmates sat next to each other in silence, only because they were forced not to separate.

The two men ate without talking as the rest of the room was abuzz with clamor. Every now and then, a grumble, or a faint whisper could be isolated from the chatter, coupled with tactless attempts at covert glances. That was all it took for the man to know they were talking about his new cellmate, but others still were more blatant about it, pointing and gawking at Caleb. It was him: the spoiled son of a billionaire, now locked in a cage with the rest of them. He might not have noticed, but his cellmate did. They were glaring at him, he could see the glint of their cold pupils bouncing off the surface of the shiny steel tabletops. In the brooding, bubbling chaos of his lonely mind, the mundane clamor of the cafeteria steadily grew to uneasy growl, a deliberate murmuring. It bothered him to the point it drove his whole body to stir. Before he knew it, he had crushed his half-empty milk carton in his hand. He got up.

"Hey, Grim, where're you runnin' off to? Your cellmate hasn't finished eating," one of the other prisoner's chided. The man they were speaking to was Caleb's cellmate. "You two have a fight?"

"Hey, don't make this one mad, buddy," another prisoner warned, prodding Caleb with his elbow. "He killed his last cellmate."

"You know that's not true," Grim growled through his teeth.

"Yeah, well he ended up dead in your cell. Either way, I'd sleep with one eye open if I was this guy. And my asshole clinched."

The next instant was a blur of vibrant orange and silver, punctuated by the loud bang of a metal tray being shoved into the prisoner's face and a swift arm darting behind his neck. Before anyone realized, a pointy shank was in the prisoner's neck, and a man with long, black hair and sharp blue eyes had pressed his cheek against the side of his face as he whispered in his ear.

"How about I make you my next victim?"

He thrashed Grim off of him as he boomed, "you son of a bitch! You fucking fairy! I'll kill you!" Grim popped him in the nose with two jabs, prompting him to look for revenge with a long downward swipe of his backhand. He came up with air as Grim gracefully ducked underneath and came out on the other side of him. As he turned, he tagged him again in the face. The cafeteria began to howl, and everyone gathered around the fight.

Grim pounced again as his opponent covered his face; a reflexive action from the smarting pain he felt in his nose. Grim sent a fast one-two to his belly before whipping around and thrashing him in the head with a kick.

"That all you got?" he teased as he continued to slip his jabs with little effort and masterfully sidestep the volleys off his back foot. He fired another jab right between his eyes that sent him flailing and clutching his forehead.

"Gonna be pretty hard to 'kill the fairy' if you can't touch hi—" His last syllable was cut short by a forceful arm wrapping tightly around his neck, and another pair seizing his legs.

"Alright, break it up!" the guard restraining Grim commanded. Another guard took Caleb by the arm and prompted him to rise from his seat.

"Put 'em back in their cells! Recess is canceled!"

The guards opened their cell door and shoved both Caleb and Grim inside, abruptly shutting it behind them. Grim spun around and yanked Caleb by the collar.

"Listen, friend, I'm guessing you've been through some shit but how about having enough self-awareness to recognize how much of a danger it is to be around you." He shoved him, releasing his grip on Caleb's jumpsuit. Still, Caleb said nothing. Instead, he just sank back down on his cot and pulled out his phone from his pocket as Grim began rummaging underneath his cot as he searched for something. He soon returned to the center of the cell.

"You know what they say about me is at least partly true," he said. "I didn't kill my last cellmate. I just gave him the means to do it himself. It was mercy." He held out a closed fist in front of Caleb's nose. For just that moment, Caleb's eyes raised to meet his.

"C'mon, take it. It's my last one."

Caleb opened his hand, and in it, Grim placed a blue pill. Then, without another word, he returned to his cot and lay down, twisting away and turning his back to Caleb.

"If it's ever too much," he finally murmured. "There's a way out."