>>CHAPTER FIVE::

Aruis Ex

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

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Every night after Falco had visited me, there seemed to be something waiting for me. It would be late at night and the guards would have already shut the lights off in my block, only a dim sliver of moonlight making its way in through the large windows. I would fall into bed and hear the unfamiliar crumple of paper beneath my pillow.

and remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you think they didn't go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you're doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you're not ready.

I carried them with me. Every morning I would read the one he left for me that night again and again and again until the old sergeant waddled up to the front of my cell and smacked his truncheon against the bars.

"Hey. Get up. Breakfast."

Then I would fold it up, and throughout the whole day I would feel it pressed up against my chest, underneath my coveralls. It was an escape. It kept me sane. You don't know how much just a simple letter can mean to you until that's all you have to remind yourself that there's a world outside of the cage you're locked in. I would read it several times a day, whenever the slightest part of me felt the urge to, and every time I would find something that I hadn't seen before. A new escape. A new creation. And sometimes others-the ones who normally made a note to avoid me for fear of being associated with my kind-would climb up the back of the warped old wooden benches and ask, "Hey, is that a letter?"

"Yea."

"Who'd you get it from?"

I'd pause for a moment. "A blue-winged guardian angel."

"Got any sexy stuff in it?"

"There's a hooker named Georgia who hates pantyhose."

"She get porked by the end?"

"...No."

After that they usually stop bothering me. He never sent me the juicy ones. Not that they were meant for that, but when you're stuck like we are the closest you can get to a woman is that six inches of reinforced glass, and only then for thirty (30) minutes once a day. I've seen guys jerk off to grime that looked vaguely like a clitoris because that was all they had.

But there was always a new one. Every night when I fell back into bed at the end of the routine-that "get up and do nothing" malaise that can drive you mad in a week-and that poem was faded on that crumpled, sweaty piece of paper, there was a new poem on a new crisp sheet of paper set carefully beneath my pillow. And, like the sun, it was enough to get me through the next day.

a single dog

walking alone on a hot sidewalk of

summer

appears to have the power

of ten thousand gods.

why is this?

He never told me how he did it or why. And after a few days it didn't matter to me anymore. As long as there were poems in the evening there was hope in the morning and that was all that mattered. None of the inmates seemed to notice that he had been inside the block itself that day, and no one said anything about anyone leaving. The guards never talked about security breaches or started shake-ups. They just went about their business, gathering at the ends of the halls and talking about shit-faced women they met in bars and how ridiculous their sex had been.

And then they would all hold their guts and laugh and pat each other on the backs while the sergeant just grinned and shook his head.

One morning after breakfast I went to the custodian's store room to find another inmate had taken my supplies.

"You're done here," he told me and pointed down the hall. "You're in laundry now."

It's a long, hollow room just behind the wall that separates the blocks from the main offices of the prison. Twelve industrial washing machines line one wall. Eight dryers line the other. In between them is a great basket where all of the dirty bed sheets are thrown, and next to that is a large series of grated shelves where we place the clean laundry, neatly folded and tied into bundles of eight (8) bed sheets or twelve (12) pillowcases. I enter on the far side and the noise from all of the machinery is deafening. But above the clamor another inmate, my partner, hollers to me and motions for me to meet him over by a large stack of sheets he's made up in the corner.

His name is Ethan, a frail young border collie who tells me where to stand and how to fold each sheet into a perfect rectangle like it shows on the diagrams they have drilled up on the walls.

Fold lengthwise, then along the width, and then repeat a few times. It's too simple not to get but he watches me in silence until he's certain that I can do it on my own. Once I get a pile of the correct amount I reach for the roll of twine that's attached to the shelves. The string is precut so that it's barely long enough to fit around the bundle, and still short enough to ensure that nobody can make a noose out of it.

"It means they trust ya," he tells me. "Letting you handle the string and all. Guess it's just a bit too tempting for some people."

I tug on the small strand of rope to test it's strength and it snaps almost immediately.

We work for about a half an hour without either of us saying another word. The pile that we have set up for the day is large and only gets larger when another load is brought in during the afternoon. Ethan steps aside and starts loading them into the washers as I tie off my fortieth bundle and place it on the shelves.

"I've heard about you, Powalski," he shouts over the roar. I stop what I'm doing and I watch him as he makes his way around the shelves, eyeing me between the piles of folded sheets. "Maybe you don't know, but you're pretty famous around here." He stops once he makes it to my side and leans up against the shelves, darting his finger through the twine and sheets as he talks to me. "I feel sorry for you. I really do. Because, you know, we're all in here for something. We all did something dastardly and all that. But you..." He snickers and shakes his head. "In cold blood, that was." His eyes are bright green and they pierce into me. "They didn't show you no mercy over there at the trial, did they? Well it's the same around here. Most of us have someone like that on the outside." He takes a step closer. "They come and visit us and even the best of us get all mushy inside when we see em." Another step. "That's why we can't tolerate what you did."

He's right up against me and he grabs the neck of my coveralls. He's only a bit taller than me but he manages to lift me off the ground all the same. I grab onto his hand and it's ice cold.

"You've got a sick fucking head, you know that?" He grunts and tosses me into the concrete wall. I crash into it with a thud and manage to land on one knee and keep myself from falling over, the pain piercing through my back like a hatchet but then he rushes up to me and plants his foot right in my gut. I groan and double over on the floor, gripping my stomach and I feel the bile start to creep up the back of my throat.

He kneels over me.

"Worthless piece of shit."

Rising to his feet he turns, running a hand over the top of his head and letting out a hiss of a sigh. I start to get up but then he wheels around, and with a shrill yell he kicks me across the jaw. My head reels and there's a popping sound and I cry out. My mouth clenches shut and I press my hands against it as if to suffocate the pain. My legs curl up to my chest and I feel a torrent of fresh blood begin to flow over my tongue and down my throat. I gag but that just makes my stomach hurt even worse. I'm lying like a pitiful aborted fetus on the cold concrete floor and he struggles to slow his breathing, grabbing a handful of sheets and tossing them onto me.

"Get the fuck back to work."