VENGEANCE
“Did you do it, man?”
“Yeah, I did it.” He said softly into his beans. Poorly cooked, disgusting, congealed beans and “mystery meat”. It was as if they f’d up the cafeteria on purpose as extra punishment. Hell, they probably did.
It always came back to “it”. He was guilty. He’d never tried to cover for it. He knocked the guy of his bike, shot him twice in the back, and chopped his head off with a rusty swiss army knife, just to take his wallet. He knew he had no redeeming qualities, no chance at salvation. The chaplain didn’t even like him.
“Did you here about Snarky?”
“Maurice, ya’ mean?”
“Yeah. Somebody killed ‘im.”
“Must ‘ve been one of the guards. Weird that he didn’t scream.”
“I don’t think you have much of a chance to scream if somebody jams a crowbar down your throat.”
A crowbar. He shuddered. The guy on the bike had a crowbar in his saddle bags, probably to fight off muggers. Fat lot of good it did him.
“Maury wasn’t such a bad guy, really.”
“He’s in here just the same as all of us.”
The bell rang. Dinner was over. He was escorted back to his cell and locked in.
It wasn’t just bars. There was a thick, heavy metal door and a tiny window with bars in it, thick and bound into the wall so they couldn’t be gotten out. The whole place was tiny. He could barely stand up straight. He was tall, but still. The sun walked slowly across the floor. He sat double up on his bunk, the pillow under his butt. He heard a guard walk by outside, occasionally. The sun was up on the door, eventually. It was almost to the ceiling when it disappeared.
He screamed.
Someone yelled at him to shut up.
A guard banged on his door.
He heard another, scream, long and high pitched like a cat in pain, broken by coughs and gasps. Probably someone who ate the mystery meat.
“Get away! Get away!”
That was weird. There were no people with cellmates.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it! Stop! Stop!”
He got up and went to his door and joined the rising chorus of Shut up! Then there was a loud, wet slap, and it got quiet.
Real quiet.
Shaken, he crawled onto his bunk.
Sleep.
Loud banging on his door.
“Breakfast!”
He got up.
He went to the window. He could see over the wall to the street; his block was on the uppermost level of the prison. There was a man standing there in filthy, muddy leather and a scuffed, scratched white motorcycle helmet, its face shield opaque with a spider web of cracks- and dried blood.
And he was holding a crowbar.
He rubbed his eyes, and the guy was gone.
“Seeing things.” He said.
“Get dressed!” the guard outside roared.
He did. They led him to breakfast. He ate it. Overcooked eggs, congealed and brown on the bottom, crappy bacon, and disgusting pancakes on a dirty plate. A spork, no knives. Such was life. They dragged him back to his cell and locked him in. He tried to sleep. He couldn’t.
He ate lunch then dinner. Boredom. Hellish, unending boredom. A guard cracked him across the small of his back with a nightstick when he said that the little square hotdogs were cold. He thought he probably deserved it all, too.
There was more screaming that night, more begging.
It was midnight. The moon cast a feverish light across the floor, spliced by bars of black shadow, like monster’s teeth. There was no sound, just the faint click of boots on metal. Another guard.
A blood soaked crowbar rammed through the tiny window in his cell door and stood there frozen for a minute, pointing like the finger of the grim reaper, naming him. He wailed and drew up in a ball. It drew out just as quickly, leaving a faint bit of blood on one of the bars.
He heard the boot steps again.
He heard over lunch that the guy in the cell two down from him was dead. Beaten with a blunt object. His face was caved in. He didn’t talk much himself.
They brought him back to his cell. He could have sworn he someone outside his window whispered, Getting’ closer. He jumped up and looked, and there was a ruined, battered motorcycle sitting in the middle of the street.
Then it was gone.
The next night it was his neighbor.
He ate lunch in his cell that day. Everyone did. Lockdown.
The sun went slowly. It was fall. It got pretty cold inside the cell, and the night came a little quicker than the night before. He sat in the corner on the floor, watching the door. The back of his neck itched, like there was a spider crawling across it. Nothing there but hair. It got darker. The lights didn’t come on. The light crept through the little window, divided and striped.
About seven the guards started walking by. Once every five minutes. There was an army of them. A roach crawled across his untouched food. The little plastic spork smiled its tiny, blunt grin at him, mockingly. A faint breeze blew in the window, amplified by the tiny space. He half swore he could hear the coarse woolen blanket on the bed scraping against the floor as it swung back and forth gently. The roach crawled underneath it.
The floor was cold. Another faint gust blew in, and the blanket swished on the floor, like something rough being dragged over a metal floor. The roach walked back out towards the door. It was quiet. So quiet he could hear tiny clicks as the tiny roach feet hit the cement floor in the tiny, cell.
His breath fogged in front of his face. He shivered.
The door flew open and slammed against the wall. It struck it so hard it cracked the concrete and seemed to wiggle as though it were made out of thin wood, and the hulking shape walked in slowly, dragging its left foot across the floor, scraping.
It held a crowbar.
It had a helmet. It fell off. There was nothing underneath. It made no sound. It moved slowly, deliberately. It knew this one wouldn’t run, wouldn’t beg.
An iron grip grabbed his hair and tugged upwards. Some pulled out, the rest merely burned as if oil had been poured on his head and set on fire. The crowbar drew back, ready to swing horizontally.
“I’m not sorry.”
***
The cockroach twitched its little antennae as if in curiosity. There was no blood. Only an open door, a dented, scuffed helmet, and a head.
Nothing else.
Crime doesn’t pay.