A Prison Tale
by Scott Gibbs
Published by Scott Gibbs at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Scott Gibbs
So there you were.
Twisting the knife deeper, feeling the hot blood rush over your hand and forearm. Your free hand clamped tight over Carla's mouth, stifling her agonized moan as the blade scraped her ribs, nicked her organs. She tried to bite your palm so you pushed the knife deeper until all that remained was handle.
You whispered, over and over, “You brought this on yourself, baby. You made me do it.”
Once Carla was dead you kissed her cheek.
“Cheating whore,” you said. “You miserable fucking whore.”
Then you went looking for Eddie. The cops got you first. You still held the dripping knife in your hand.
#
So there you were.
Not your first time in the system, not even close, but this was the big one: life, they got you. The charges stuck, your court appointed attorney stunk up the joint, and the jury, in just under an hour, sent you away for the rest of your natural life. Parole after twenty years? Parole, what's that? That doesn't exist anymore, not around these parts anyway.
The judge enjoyed sentencing you. He didn't even pretend otherwise. The jury glared across the room at you, some of the women sobbing into their crusty hankies. The victim's family, out of sight behind you, did nothing except listen to the judge speak. They didn't look at you or your bloated attorney, David Carlyle. He'd just turned twenty-five. This was his third case. When the judge uttered the words, “...for the rest of your natural life,” young Mr. Carlyle farted. No one heard but you.
You said nothing when the judge offered up a chance to apologize. You just shook your head and stared down at your hands, damp but steady lumps of flesh, numb from the handcuffs.
The gavel fell and they took you away in chains. Everyone watched you shuffle between the two bailiffs who ushered you out of the room, each with a hand gripped to your elbow. Then the somber crowd all filed orderly out the front entrance of the court house, where they were met by no fanfare, no media. Nobody cared about you or your downfall.
Murderer, that's what you are now. Officially. On the books. And quickly and efficiently filed away, to be forgotten. Forever.
#
So here you are.
Tired and hungry from the long ride. Thirsty, too, the air dry and hot. They process you quickly and quietly, nobody saying much, yet there's noise all around. A constant buzz of commotion that you can't really ever see drones on from everywhere, from nowhere, bouncing off the cement walls. From somewhere a disembodied voice barks like a dog, then growls, then another voice laughs. And so on.
Your new home is H Block, third tier, cell forty-nine. As the bars slam you in the guard tells you to take off your coat and stay awhile. He chuckles as he strolls off, jingling his key ring. You appreciate the fact he can still maintain a sense of humor in a place like this. You shake your head and begin to cry.
The first night you lie on your bed listening to the barking man. He goes on all night, not that you'd have gotten any sleep anyway. Your thoughts stay locked on Carla; her hair, her body, that way she had of making you wish you could just melt into her and hide there forever. But then your thoughts darken, as the rabid dog on another tier keeps barking, on and on, making your head throb and your eyes water. You think of Carla and Eddie, fucking, him probably making her feel things you had only dreamed about with that giant cock of his. His disgusting lips kissing her face, her tits, her cunt. Then you feel that knife work its way into her all over again, and you feel like a man. You feel justified.
#
You're institutionalized now, and one day just blends into the other, no one different or better or worse than the others. So you adjust. It's all you can do. The routine of prison proves maddening to some, but you adapt as best you can. You start to look forward to little things, like the daily trip to the yard for fresh air and exercise and a smoke, or the old buzzard who brings the cart of books and magazines around for your enjoyment. You never take any reading material, the movies in your head enough to keep you entertained, but the old man has a pleasant smile, and he likes to make chit-chat from time to time. Your stomach, too, makes the jarring leap to prison life. It stops growling at odd times throughout the day and resigns itself to the strict meal schedule carefully planned out by the prison staff. You know it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner because your stomach gives one powerful snarl exactly ten minutes before it's served. You find a certain comfort in that.
The fellow prisoners are of no comfort, they're barbarians living out their time in a perpetual state of near-violence, they're dead eyes always on the lookout for something to destroy, someone to kill, just to pass the time, but you take care of that early on in your stay. The blacks target you quickly, your first week inside. They know you're a lifer, and they want to establish their dominance on your early, make the white boy squeal, maybe make you one of those prison bitches, tossing salads and fondling huge dark meat when the guards become preoccupied with ignoring rape. But you need to let them know it ain't happening, not while you're still alive anyway, and you stick one of those random fucks in the groin with the homemade shiv you made on your second night, out of your toothbrush and a hard piece of plastic from your now non-functioning clock. He bled a great deal. He went down and screamed like a woman. Who's the bitch now?
#
So here you are.
Six months in. Meaningless. Six months in to a life sentence at the tender age of twenty-six is enough to make you cry. But you hold on to it, use that sorrow to fuel you through the endless spiral of days.
#
You've made a friend. His name is Wally Knox and he's your new cell mate, and he's a rapist pedophile. You don't really like him, he makes your skin crawl actually, but Wally is the proverbial shunned one. Nobody wants to go near him, except maybe to murder him, and so you become shunned by association. Which is fine by you. It may force you to watch your back extra careful, but you'll take the mild rise in paranoia in order for the diseased-ridden population to give you some breathing room, some peace and quiet. Besides, Wally's actually a bit of a comedian. He likes to tell jokes about little boys' anuses. He'll tear off a particularly nasty one and then roll around on the floor and laugh until he's crying. They're not really your cup of tea but once in awhile he lets loose with something unintentionally clever.
He also likes to beat off. A lot. His cock is very short and very fat. But he's usually discreet about it, waits for lights out or hangs a sheet over his bottom bunk. You can still hear him though, he likes to finger his butt and moans extra loud when he's about to cover his fat gut with spunk, but you understand the nature of prison, and loneliness. Sometimes you even allow him to watch when the urges strikes you. But only sometimes, you're no fag.
#
Six months and three days in you accept a newspaper from the old man. You're finally ready to hear some information from the forgotten outside world. It proves lucky, for printed right on the front page is a story about the prison, home. It seems the warden, along with the approval of the newly elected governor, is set to try a radical new rehabilitation program. The story doesn't go into many details about the procedure but you catch vague references to shock therapy and empathy reconstruction, whatever the fuck that means. Wally reads along side you as you spread the paper out on the floor and flip to page ten to read the rest of the story.
“What do you suppose it means?”
You shrug. “I have no idea. But I bet it doesn't concern us much.” You fold the paper closed and jump up on your top bunk to think about things. Wally takes over and reads the comics. His giggles reach you, even high on your perch.
The next day they finally get Wally. Turns out a couple of skinhead murderers with an inflated sense of false morals had been planning the attack for weeks. They corner the poor fat fuck naked in the showers and stab him one hundred and thirty times with their own makeshift knives before any guards can be bothered to step in. You smell a set-up, but you could never prove it. And why would you? Wally's jokes and masturbation had become old, and just recently he'd finally worked up the nerve to ask you if he could touch it, just a little. You were thinking about doing him yourself.
But you can't help feel a sense of loss anyway. The cell feels empty without the company. Once in awhile you poke your head over the side of your top bunk and expect to see him laying there, maybe reading comic books or working his hand around his short little shaft. But there's always just an empty bed.
You also hear through the grapevine that the skinheads have taken the target off your back. They know all you did was murder some bitch in a white hot rage. They realize you can't pick your cell mates. You pretend to be grateful for their unexpected show of mercy, just so they don't sense any disrespect, but you can't seem to give a fuck one way or the other. You also expect another cell mate to replace the one the skinheads took from you, but days pass and no one shows.
You're still alone when the new rehab program begins.
#
The first day of the program comes and you know it's begun because someone on the first tier wakes you up early that morning with horrifying screams. You jump from your bed and run to the bars of your cell. There are dozens of faces just like yours straining against the bars to get a better look. But you can't see shit, only hear the screams, high-pitched and hysterical, piercing the air and echoing off the miles and miles of concrete. Eventually, after it becomes clear you're not going to see anything worthwhile, you and your fellow inmates retreat back into the cozy confines of your cells and try to take your minds off things.
But the screams go on all day and night. And when you wake up from a fitful couple of hours of sweaty, restless sleep, horrified by your first dream of Carla in nearly four months, the screams are just as strong. But at least they help you stop thinking about your dream, in which Carla had the knife this time, and she was plunging it deep down your throat. She said, “Almost as big as Eddie's dick,” as she shoved it deeper and deeper into you until you could barely see the handle sticking out of your own mouth.
The screams finally stop sometime during the third day. Not all at once, but they begin to taper around lunchtime, and by the time your stomach snarls its one growl before dinner, the screams have been reduced to a soft whimper. You'd taken a book from old man library delivery service but can't actually read it, can't concentrate long enough to string more than two words together, as the sobs and moans of the man's whimpering is somehow worse than the screams. It's as if his brain finally broke. You begin to question this rehabilitation program.
#
The next morning another man is screaming his fucking head off. You, as well as some nearby neighbors, groan in your bunks. The process is very similar to the first, the screams lasting a solid two days before the soft, gurgling moans begin. And this time, just as the last, your skin crawls when you hear this. It doesn't quite sound human.
#
That night you wake up in a dark cell, but people are standing outside the bars looking up at you in your bunk. You can't see their faces because they are back lit by the tier lights. They're whispering to each other. There are four of them. You think you recognize Warden Martin as the tallest one, his perfect block of hair a recognizable silhouette against the light. But the other three you're not sure of. You think one of the two women might be Governor Small, even though all you have to go on is a grainy photo from the newspaper article about the radical new therapy. The other two are familiar as well, but their identities allude you. That is, until the man speaks.
“And you promise no harm will come to my baby girl?”
Your blood freezes. It's Carla's dad, and the woman next to him must be the mom, although the only time you'd seen her was at your trial when she'd yelled something inappropriate about you from the gallery. “Evil devil,” or some shit. The judge had ordered her out of the court room for the rest of that day. You'd smiled as you stole that once glance behind you to see the bitch who couldn't control herself.
You've been chosen for the program, you realize this now. And you have to pinch your cock to keep from pissing yourself. As the four turn and march away from your cell you wonder how badly you're going to scream when you wake up. If you can even fall back asleep, that is.
Somehow you do. And when you wake up the first thing you do is roll onto your side so that you're facing the tiny compartment of your cell and you scan every inch of the place. You check and double-check everything: from the toilet to the sink to the small desk on the other side of the rectangle. You lean over and check the bottom bunk but there's no ghost of Wally or new cell mate or anything. You look around blinking until you convince yourself you'd just had a terrible dream, that's all. Nothing to get your panties in a twist.
But you can't seem to shake the realism of it, the dream. The entire day you walk through the motions in a kind of daze, while looking over your shoulder to make sure no one is watching you, no shadowy figures peering around the walls or watching you lather your balls in the shower.
#
In the chow line at lunch you hear a couple of skinheads behind you. They talk low, conspiratorial, and your ears perk up at the mention of the warden.
“I hear he's putting something in the food, making those bastards hallucinate or some shit. That's why they can't stop screaming. It's like a bad trip, man.”
“Bull and shit. We all eat together. We'd all be seeing visions and shit. What, they dipping the bread in LSD?”
The first skinhead laughs a raspy, guttural dry heave from a lifetime's worth of smoking, probably the unfiltered kind. He calls the second skinhead a dumb-shit faggot-lover and you quickly lose interest.
But there are more rumors churning besides the one offered by the skinhead think tank. You hear everything from forced anal sex to guards slowly peeling the skin off of inmates. None of it is really sane or plausible, but the entire prison buzzes with possibilities. You wish Wally were around. At least you'd have someone to talk to, someone to bounce ideas off of. And by the time you're tucked into your bunk for lights out you're exhausted. The excitement of the day and the unusual electricity among the population are a rare enough event that once the tiers go dark the entire cell block is deathly quiet. It's almost like you are all really away at summer camp, and after a day chock full of sailing, swimming, kayaking, and raping the girl counselors, you've all dragged ass back to the cabins, barely able to keep our eyes open. But you find the stillness disconcerting. Even the dog man has crawled into his kennel and gone to sleep. Despite the feeling of dread pressing down on your chest, you close your eyes and are almost immediately out cold.
#
You dream of Carla, your first in weeks. She straddles you, naked and smiling. You run your hands up her flat stomach and cup her breasts, perfect handfuls of soft flesh, and feel the nipples harden beneath your palms. She grabs your erection and sits down on it, slowly, the smooth tight wetness enveloping. When you're all the way in Carla leans forward so that her face is pressed against your own. God, you can feel her lips brush against yours, her breath sweet and warm on your face. Her hair tickles your cheeks. And as her hips begin to buck, her thighs pressed tight around you, Carla moans and whispers in your ear, “I love you so much.”
You slide your hands behind her back and pull her in even closer. You tell Carla how much you love her and miss her and why did she fuck Eddie behind your back? Why did she make you do such a terrible thing? She squeezes you deeper inside, her grinding quickens. But the soft, wet pleasure is gone, replaced by a dry friction that begins to burn. You beg Carla to stop, it hurts, just stop, please. But she only burrows deeper, and your orgasm is like fire. You scream. And when Carla sits up her face has rotted away, the skin gray and peeling down her cheeks. Her eyes bulge from deep sockets, her nose two holes in the middle of her face, and her mouth, once full and sensuous lips now gone, grins through black and rotting teeth. Her nipples drip blood down her stomach.
“I love you so much,” she says again. “I love you so much.”
Carla grinds her decayed pelvis into you even though you've long since softened inside her. You beg her to stop, but she won't. You can't look at her face anymore, the skin peeling and flaking from her cheeks, her forehead. Carla continues to fuck you, she continues to profess her love. She grabs your hands and places them on her breasts. “I love you so much,” she says. “I love you so much.”
The first thing you realize in your first dizzying waking moments is that you're not in your top bunk but the bottom, because when you lean over the side of your bed and vomit some of the vile substance splashes back into your face. You roll over onto your back and notice that there is no top bunk anymore, just a gleaming white ceiling free of any visible cracks or blemishes of any kind. It is so bright you're forced to squint.
#
So here you are.
You sit up, still groggy from your nightmare and weak from your eruption onto the floor. The room is not yours, and it is impossibly white. There are no bars, only a single door with a small window in it's exact center. Looking around you see there are no other pieces of furniture in the room besides the bed. Just empty, white walls, broken only by a large mirror built into the wall opposite your bed. You recognize it as one-way glass, even in your fog. So this must be it, you think, your head slowly clearing. This is the treatment. I've been picked.
Your throat feels full of razor blades when you try to swallow, dry and chaffed from your wake-up sick call. You clear it as best you can then decide to test out your vocal chords, see if they still work.
“Hello?” you ask the air. You're pleased to find your voice still works remarkably well despite the pain. “Anyone?”
You're answered by the loud, booming echo of a lock being dismantled on the other side of the door. Soon it swings in and Warden Martin enters, followed by a burly guard who looks as if he's gone his entire life without ever learning to smile. The guard slams the door shut behind him, and it's just the three of you. You wish you could offer them something cold to drink. But, glancing around the room again, there isn't even a toilet. You have to stifle a grin with the back of your hand.
The warden stares down at you. His eyes sparkle with obvious excitement.
“Mr. Wayne Phillips,” the warden says to you, and you easily recognize it as your name. “So pleased you could join us.”
“Any chance of getting a glass of water? My throat feels like it's been pissed in and dragged across the desert.”
“No, I'm afraid not. Welcome to your rehabilitation, Mr. Phillips. I can't promise you it will be pleasant, but I can promise you it will be effective.”
Then Warden Martin steps aside as burly guard steps forward. He has a syringe in his hand, the needle glistening with some mystery liquid. As you shrink into your bed, knowing it would be useless to fight but pondering the option anyway, you hear the warden tell you to just relax. That you're just being sedated so they can begin the therapy. You resign, as the guard hovers over you spreading coffee breath all over your face, that the best thing to do would be to just relax, like the warden said. Besides, you're far too weak to put up even a token protest.
Seconds later your asleep. This time there is no dream.
#
You wake up sometime later. You're not alone. You feel the weight of someone else next to you, the extra weight pressing the springs ofthe mattress. The room is still excruciatingly bright. For some reason you don't want to look over.
Because you know, even before you look, that once you do you may never stop screaming.
The face staring back at you, Carla's face, is already locked in a scream, although no sound escapes her rotted mouth.
The gleaming whiteness that surrounds you starts to spin as consciousness becomes an abstract thing, a luxury enjoyed by the fortunate few. You roll away from the mummified body and fall hard to the floor. The blast of pain as your knees reach the cement keeps you focused long enough to be grateful that someone had cleaned up your vomit, but it's not enough comfort and you scramble as far away from the bed as possible, until you're a curled ball in the far corner of the room. You're not screaming, although a low sound, much like a threatened cat, streams from your throat in a long, unbroken mew. You can still see the top of Carla's head from your corner. Clumps of her once lustrous black hair are missing, exposing an ashy gray skin beneath.
You don't notice the pool of urine collecting beneath you. You don't notice anything except the top of your Carla's head. You wait in that corner for what could be minutes, hours, days. At one point the door opens and a metal tray of food is set on the floor just inside. The guard avoids looking at the bed, but you see him grin at you before he slips back through the door crack and shuts it, leaving you alone with a corpse once again.
You have no idea how long you remain balled into that corner. But at a certain point your hunger and the agonizing stiffness in your joints forces you to crawl away from its safety. This is madness, you're able to think; this one rational thought mixed into a tapestry of insanity. How can this be legal? How can a self-respecting society allow such depravity to exist right under its nose?
After a quick meal on the floor of cold macaroni and cheese and a crusty dinner roll you force yourself into a standing position. The entire world drifts for a moment as the blood rushes from your head, not accustomed to this sudden elevation. After things begin to refocus you stare at the large window, you mean mirror, before you. You can only see your reflection, a haggard mess of a man who once regarded himself as the best looking cat in town, but you know there are people on the other side watching you. Of course the warden, probably the governor, but you can't imagine Carla's parents back there. If you can't bring yourself to turn and look at her six months dead body what hope would they have?
And you promise no harm will come to my baby girl?
“Hey,” you manage, trying to stare through your reflection. “Hey in there. I want out.” It's feeble, but, hey, feeble is all you got. “I get it, okay? Nice one, I've learned my lesson. Just let me out of here and we can laugh about it, whadaya say?”
Of course there is no response. Of course Warden Martin doesn't walk through the door, slide a playful arm across your shoulders and laugh and say, “Gotcha! Can't believe you fell for it!” Of course no one's coming except to bring you food. Of course your going to stay in here forever. Or until you're cured, whatever that means.
Later you discover a hole in the floor at the foot of the bed, covered by a loose sheet of plywood. This is your toilet. Fantastic. You squat and shit and grimace as you're pulling your pants back up over your stinking ass. There is no toilet paper.
Although you have no concept of time in the small white room you figure hours, and not days, have probably passed. Only once have you received food and you doubt part of this rehab is some form of starvation treatment. You sit with your back to the bed and try to decide how you're going to live the rest of your life in this room. While sharing your bed with a dead body.
That's when you realize you have no choice but to face your fears. It comes over you in a surprising wave of calm. You have to turn around and look at her. These insane psychos aren't letting you out, so you'd better make the best of a worst-case situation. Take in a deep breath before you stand, that's it, let out the bad air, bring in some good. There, you're feeling stronger already.
Standing, staring down at the corpse of Carla, you see they've left her as naked as the day she was born. Probably because it would look more shocking, which would fit in with the theme of this highly illegal (and probably unconstitutional) therapy. The knife wound is still visible, almost perfectly centered between her breasts. Now it's just a clean black slice in the skin, about an inch long. You have a hard time believing that little wound could have taken her life, but then you remember the savagery with which you stuck it, while visions of Eddie's cock shoved deep inside her dance through your pulsing, enraged head. Besides that wound, though, you see that whoever was in charge of preserving Carla for this grand experiment had done a truly outstanding job. Her skin, while not soft and olive and flawless anymore, is the soothing color of charcoal ash. Her eyes, peering up at the ceiling, have long since glazed over, the white gone leaving a solid dark green in its place. And while her mouth has been frozen in what first appeared to be a frozen scream, you start to see it now as a beckoning, asking you to lean in and give it a big kiss. Her pussy is covered in a mound of black pubic hair, the only truly shocking thing about her, for as long as you knew her Carla had been fastidious about keeping her area smooth and sleek, always inviting you in with a flip of the folds with her delicate fingers. Then you remember the urban legend about a corpse's hair and nails continuing to grow, even after death. Then you remember the truth; that it's really just the skin dehydrating and shrinking back toward the roots, giving the viewer the illusion of growth. Either way you're not impressed by the new bush.
You sit down on the bed next to her. You study her body, recalling certain acts performed on certain parts of her anatomy. How you loved to tickle her feet until she was crying and begging you to stop; and her legs, how you would run your tongue all the way from her ankle to the promised land in one continuous line, feeling her body tense more and more the closer you got to the top. You look at her breasts and can feel the softness of their curves even now. The nipples are erect, as if she can sense your thoughts.
And she likes them.
God, how you've missed her.
There is a bang on the door as someone hastily unlatches the lock and a dozen guards lunge into the room just as you enter her. You manage to feel a moment of rough friction, unsparing joy, before you're jerked from Carla and thrown to the floor.
Even during the savage beating that rains down upon you by balled fists and black batons, the vision of Carla staring up at you, her mouth locked in that forever kiss, remains.
*****
About the author - Scott Gibbs is a part-time writer trying break into the grueling world of publishing. He is currently working on his first novel, Felix Colt Know Pain: A Zombie Noir, and hopes to complete it by the end of 2010. He lives with his future wife in New Hampshire.