Jailbroken

[Mukraken]

"Come on, Madeleine, keep up!"

"Easy for you to say! Why don't you carry the damn weight, then?"

"You know I can hardly even lift the thing!"

"Well then, shut up about me keeping up with you!"

The two women argued back and forth as they ran. They were both dressed in orange prison jumpsuits, and chained together at the ankle, by a chain that was about eight feet long. One girl, Emily, was blond, petite in build, and looked a few years younger than the other. The older girl, Emily's sister, Madeleine, was slim but muscular, with dark hair and strikingly angular features. Madeleine was carrying a heavy iron ball, about the size of a beach ball but made of solid iron, which was chained to Emily's other ankle by a second chain.

They were escaping from Victoria County Women's Prison, an extremely old-fashioned jail that still used the ball-and-chain method of preventing escapes, where a heavy weight would be attached to a prisoner or small group of prisoners to impede their getaway. The other factor adding security to the jail, of course, was the location. A treacherous river delta known for its muddy bogs, and there were even rumors of quicksand. But neither Madeleine nor Emily believed that part, they were sure it was just a rumor started to keep prisoners from thinking of escape.

And Madeleine and Emily weren't about to just sit and rot in their jail cell. They were free spirits, unable to tolerate captivity of any kind. They'd always survived on the streets, without any help from anybody, ever since their parents had died. But they'd gotten caught robbing a bank, and that robbery connected them to dozens of other unsolved cases, and they both got locked away for what should have been a very long time.

Madeleine looked over her shoulder for what felt like the hundreth time, checking to see if they were being followed. She didn't see anybody, but she could hear the sirens and the dogs barking, and she knew it was only a matter of time before they were found if they didn't keep running. So she kept running.

Ahead of them lay an empty streambed, still wet from the river that was normally there. The two women turned to run alongside the river, but the heavy iron ball suddenly slipped from Madeleine's hands, and rolled down the long sloping muddy streambank and disappeared into a pool of muck at the bottom. As the chain sprung taught, Emily was yanked off her feet, and let out a yelp as she slipped down the bank. Madeleine reflexively shouted, "Emily!" and slid down the slope after her.

The chain connected to Emily's ankle continued to disappear into the mud as the ball sank. Emily pulled back on her chain, but there was nothing for her feet to gain purchase on in the slick mud, and all she did was start to pull herself closer to the pool, so she let go of the chain and stepped back as far as she could. Madeleine rushed to her, and tried to pull on the chain, but she had the same problem that Emily did, that there was just nothing to grab onto to keep from slipping forward as she pulled.

More and more of the chain disappeared, and Emily was pulled closer and closer. The mud was a lot deeper than either of them had realized, and Emily was starting to look afraid as she struggled to keep her chained ankle as far away from the muck as she could, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground. Madeleine grabbed ahold of Emily and pulled, too.

With one foot in the muck, and one foot still desperately clinging to solid ground, Emily was dragged down to her calf in mud. She kicked wildly with her free foot, trying and trying to step forward onto the ground again, and soon the distance between her feet became too great and her other foot slipped under the muck as well. Emily was soon wrested from Madeleine's grasp as Madeleine stepped back from the muck, unable to do anything but watch.

"No, no, no," Madeleine was moaning in horror. "Help! Somebody help us! HELP!" she cried, no longer caring about getting caught, just so long as she didn't have to stand there and watch her sister be pulled down into the mud.

Emily was up to her knees now, her weighted leg up to the bottom of her thigh. She looked at her sister with sadness in her eyes and said, "It's going to be okay."

Madeleine let out a sharp sob, and nodded, unable to speak. That was Emily. Madeleine may have been the stronger one physically, but Emily had always had that astounding strength of spirit that Madeleine lacked. She was the one about to die, and yet she still had courage to spare for her sister.

Not that Emily wasn't scared, of course. She could still feel that weight on her ankle, still dragging her downward through the mud. And she was shaking, and she couldn't stop looking down and wondering how deep this mud was and how long she might have to live. It was just below her waist now.

Madeleine forgot that she was still chained to her sister, and tried to run to get help. She quickly found she could no longer even make it back to the top of the bank, which was still a good ten feet away when she reached the end of her chain. She looked back down at Emily, suddenly realizing that Emily's fate would serve as a preview of her own.

Emily was up to her breasts, and still being pulled down. She instinctively pushed her arms down into the mud to keep trying to struggle her way free, but her arms immediately became entrapped in the thick ooze. When she tried to free them, she only pushed her torso deeper into the mud.

Madeleine had her head in her hands and was sobbing. She couldn't bear to look at her sister anymore. But then she heard singing.

"Freedom is our anthem, joy our battle-cry. We share one emblem, two birds in the sky."

It was their song. A song the two of them had made up a long time ago, when they were kids, and still sang to each other now and then. Emily was singing it. Despite everything, she was singing! Her voice was shaky, though, and Madeleine could hear her fear through the false bravado.

Madeleine lifted her hands off of her face and looked to see that Emily was up to her neck, and tilting her head back in a desperate attempt to keep breathing. Through tears, Madeleine sang, "Freedom is our anthem, joy our battle-cry." Emily sang along, too. "We share one emblem-" but Emily's voice was suddenly cut off by the mud rising over her face.

Empowered by their sibling bond, Madeleine suddenly rushed to her, no longer caring about the muck. She knelt in the mud next to Emily and worked to try to clear the ooze off of her sister's face. It was thick enough to shovel to the side with her hands, and Emily was just barely able to draw another shaky panicked breath before the muck piled back into the hole it had left. Madeleine kept at it, but as Emily sank deeper and deeper Madeleine had to dig faster and faster just to give her sister even a few precious seconds of air, and her hard-won breaths soon started to bubble up through the mud after every desperate gasp.

Emily shook her ankle as she continued to sink beneath the surface, still helplessly trying to free herself from that horrible weight, struggling for every tiny breath her sister could still give her. Within moments, she was too deep for even that last-ditch effort to work, although Emily could still feel her sister's desperate hands helplessly clawing against the mud on her face. She held onto her last breath as long as she could, as the weight of the iron pulled her ever deeper into the depths. Finally, she could hold it no more, and she sucked in the heavy mud into her burning lungs.

Madeleine watched helplessly as she watched Emily's last bubbles rise to the surface, knowing then that she was truly gone. She sobbed, taking her only comfort in the fact that she wouldn't have to live without her sister for long.

Somehow, Madeleine managed to pull herself back onto the bank, the muck making a loud shlucking sound as it reluctantly let her go. It was only a temporary reprieve, Madeleine knew, as she pulled taut the chain that connected herself to Emily, and watched as it continued to disappear into the muck. She counted how many links of chain she had left before she was pulled in. Four, then three, then two, then one, and then her ankle was pulled back into the mud. Still sitting on the bank, she was pulled forward as her trapped leg was buried up to her calf, then her knee.

She suddenly noticed that the sound of barking dogs and sirens had gotten closer, and she looked up to see two police officers searching the forest near the river bank. They hadn't seen her yet. Covered in mud as she was, she blended into the riverbed. But what did it matter, they weren't going to do anything to help her, and besides, nothing at all mattered anymore. She didn't bother calling out for help.

Madeleine pushed reflexively against the mud with her free leg, as her trapped leg was pulled in up to her thigh, and before long she was pulled away from the bank completely as the weight on her leg pulled her in to her waist. One officer spotted the movement, and saw her. He laughed at her predicament, and leaned against a tree to watch her. No point in sending her back to jail now, the quicksand would soon take care of her.

"Where's your sister?" he mocked, and in response Madeleine hocked a glob of spit that managed to hit the officer's leg. "Oh, I see, she's already gone isn't she? Well, you'll be joining her soon."

Madeleine, her arms held up out of the mud, was pulled down until the mud enveloped her breasts. Then it engulfed her armpits, and began to climb up her outstretched forearms. She raged incoherently as she shook her fists at the officer, fighting back tears and determined not to be seen crying in front of him. She screamed in fear and frustration as the mud climbed up her neck, and she tilted her head back to keep her face free. And still that terrible weight on her ankle pulled her down and down into the depths. She took one final deep breath as her face slid below the surface.

The officer watched and waited, as Madeleine's arms still waved about in helpless panic above the surface. Soon the mud had claimed her elbows, and by the time only her hands were still visible, they had slackened. Finally her unmoving hands simply fell into the gooey earth. Moments later, a series of bubbles rose to the surface, and popped slowly, making thick, wet sounds.

Satisfied, the officer left the scene, to tell the others that their search was over.

[mudmanic2011]

very nicely written story,one of the better ones I've read anywhere.

[PM2K]

Excellent!

[Mukraken]

Thanks! *blushes* I'm glad you guys liked it.

[pete1672]

Excellent writing, thanks for posting

[water_bug_62208]

That's an interesting concept for a Quicksand Story... being attached to something that drags a damsel in distress to her doom in the deep mire. Thanks for sharing!