The Killing of Miguel

by Christopher Mcafee

  I sat quietly, reflecting on how I had gotten here and regretting every step of the way.

  “It’s time,” Jake said.

  I removed all three rings and my father’s shoes, took a huge sigh, and wondered if I would ever be able to wear them again.

  As we walked, I glanced outside only to see a motorcade with the engines running, waiting to take me to my next―and maybe my final―destination. We entered the courtroom just like all the times before. But this time, I knew it would be my last. I scanned the crowd for friendly faces but found none.

  “All rise.”

  We did as instructed, and I steadied myself against the table. The judge spoke, and he seemed sympathetic to my predicament. He seemed to ramble, but he got to the point in due time.

  “Steven,” he said softly, “do you have anything to say to the court before I commence sentencing?”

  I swallowed hard. “No, sir.”

  He paused. “Steven, I sentence you to 20 years in the State Institution for the Criminally Insane. God be with you.”

  I was stunned. I stood and yelled, “But I’m not crazy!”

  Jake grabbed me and settled me.

  I relinquished my belongings as Jake apologized to me, all the while never making eye contact.

  And just like that, it was over. The judge left, and I was hurried out a side door into an unmarked sheriff’s car with flashing lights and sirens. News cars followed. News helicopters hovered overhead.

  Chapter 16

  It was a nearly four-hour trip upstate to the insane asylum. As we distanced ourselves from the courtroom, more and more news vehicles stopped following. Jake wasn’t allowed to ride with me, but he followed in his car. After exiting a main highway, we followed with several turns and ended up on a dirt road that took us to our destination. On the outside, the place looked very inviting. It was a large, white three-story building that housed six hundred inmates along with three hundred guards and administration. There was lots of fencing and barbed wire. I was taken to the supply room where I was issued my prison uniform and some toiletries. From there, I was escorted to the warden’s office.

  Warden Walter Johnson was a tall southern man with a taut face, a Mormon with a military background and aspirations for public office. He viewed the prison as a stepping stone to greater things. He kept us waiting at least a half an hour.

  He gave me a scripted speech that every new inmate got and a paper with all the rules. But at the end, he called me by name.

  “Steven, enjoy your stay.” He smiled and motioned the officers to take me away. I could tell that his welcome was not sincere. From there, I was taken through an inside common area in which the inmates spent their free time. It was kind of an indoctrination, an orientation of what to expect.

  Word had spread, and they all knew who I was and how I had gotten there.

  As the guards escorted me to my cell, several yelled vulgarities, but most stared off into the distance like they were oblivious to their surroundings. My cell was not really a cell but more of a dorm room with locks. This was a welcome surprise after being locked in a traditional cell at the county jail.

  As I entered my room, I asked the guard, “When can I see my attorney?” I knew that Jake had followed the motorcade. He ignored me and locked the door.

  “Hey,” I heard a voice say.

  I turned to find a skinny, bald-headed kid looking my way.

  “I’m Danny,” he said and extended his hand. “I’m your roommate.”

  “Hi, Danny,” I said. I was shaking his hand, but I was looking at all the graffiti and hash marks on the walls. Danny noticed.

  “Those are from my other roommates. Some of them even made it out of here―either walking or in a hearse.” He smiled.

  I struggled to make conversation. “So, Danny, what are you in for?”

  He quickly answered as though he couldn’t wait to tell me. “Manslaughter! Just like you! Some guys were picking on me cuz I’m kind of short, so I set their house on fire. Killed ‘em all. Guess they won’t be pickin’ on anyone now, haha.” He continued: “I got a twenty-year sentence. I been here five. Don’t look to ever get out.”

  “What about parole?”

  “That’s a dirty word around here. The prison gets money by how many inmates are here. If someone leaves, they lose money. Nope, no chance of parole here! In fact, if they can find a reason to keep you longer, they will. I had a friend who was getting close to getting out. Guards gave him such a hard time that he finally took a swing at them. They beat him to a pulp, and it cost him another five years. He couldn’t take it, so he hung himself.” His smile never stopped the whole time.

  The story disturbed me. I got up from my cot and started looking out the door for Jake.

  “Expecting someone?” Danny asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, they won’t let him in. No visitors for the first two weeks. It’s right there on the paper they gave you.”

  Two weeks? I thought. That sounded like an eternity.

  A loud buzzer rang.

  “Time for bed, Stevie!” he said. Danny laid down and was almost immediately asleep.

  I sat on the edge of my cot rehashing what had just happened and thought to myself, Quite a day.

  ***

  My first night was sleepless. Not to mention that in the early morning hours, while everyone else was asleep, I was taken to the infirmary for a blood test. No one present seemed to know why.

  “Standard procedure,” the hulking male nurse said.

  All night, inmates were yelling and screaming.

  “Night terrors, bad dreams,” Danny said the next morning. “Sometimes the drugs are hard to get used to.”

  “Drugs? What drugs?” I asked.

  “Oh, everyone gets one,” he said, giggling. “I get a red one.” He pulled out a handful. “But there are other colors.”

  “Do they give you all of them at one time?” I asked.

  “No, sometimes I fool the guards and don’t take them. Then I trade them for other stuff. I got a book with naked ladies in it. Wanna see it?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You get them with your supper,” Danny added.

  Sure enough, at supper, I got enough food to keep a bird alive and a big white pill.

  I ate my food, wrapped the pill in a napkin, and tossed it in the garbage.

  ***

  The next five days repeated the first one. I was awakened in the early hours for a blood test each day and then

  escorted back to my dorm room.

  I cornered Danny as he was playing dominos on the floor of our room. “Do they take your blood every day?”

  “Only when someone new comes in do they take your blood every day. That’s the way they can tell which color pill you get.”

  The wheels in my head started turning.

  Danny seemed to enjoy being my roommate. He was a child trapped in a man’s body―probably because of the drugs. He showed me around, introducing me to the nurses (all male and quite big). Most of the inmates were slow witted and dull. I would scour the common area looking for something current to read, but all I could find were old magazines that were fit for school-age kids maybe twelve or thirteen years old.

  I found it odd that there were no clocks or calendars visible to the inmates. Only by the windows could you tell if it was day or night. I would try and glance at one of the nurses’ watches to get some kind of perspective of the time of day.

  If my calculations were correct, I had been there a week.

  The nurse woke me to draw blood. This time, there were several of them present.

  One of them spoke. “You haven’t been taking your pill. Why not?”

  “I don’t like the taste,” I replied.

  “Smartass,” one of them said, giving me a nudge from behind.

  He gave me another pill. I felt intimidated by the presence of the other male nurses, so I took it, and I was escorted back to my dorm.

  Having t
hose large male nurses intimidate me made me think of when Miguel and his henchmen had held me captive. That seemed like ages ago.

  Jake was finally allowed to visit. I bit his head off.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this was where I was going?” I asked.

  “Steven, I made a deal with the judge. I did it for your own good. You’ll be safe here. If you had gone to state prison, you would have been raped and killed. Look at you. You’re barely 130 pounds soaking wet. I did it for your own good!”

  “Well, thanks a lot. This place is a zoo,” I said. Then I tried to whisper. “They’ve got everyone drugged up in here. Jake, I can’t spend twenty years in here. If I do, I will be crazy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said. “You’re going to have to be tough. Nobody said this was going to be easy. Let’s just try and work on your appeal.”

  The next hour I spent totally pissed off at Jake as he talked about my future, none of which I paid attention to. I kept running Danny’s voice through my head. “Nope, no chance of parole here.”

  “See you next month,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, if I’m still alive!” I yelled.

  From then on, I felt defiant, and I felt that Jake had done me wrong. He should have talked it over with me instead of going behind my back.

  For the next few nights at supper, I ate my food and flushed my pill down the toilet. It was a small victory, but I felt vindicated.

  ***

  I was awakened earlier than expected, only to find that I was being escorted by not one male nurse, but four.

  “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, “Take it easy!”

  They stayed quiet until we reached the infirmary.

  “Still not taking your meds, huh?”

  I’m not sure how they knew, but they were right.

  They physically restrained me, and I felt a prick in my arm. I immediately felt woozy and was taken back to my dorm.

  I felt like I had slept for days and couldn’t wake up. When my meal came, instead of a pill, I was administered another shot. I struggled to fight back, and all the time I could see Danny laughing as he ate my food. I couldn’t blame him. The portions were barely enough for one man to survive on.

  My days were spent watching Danny play dominos. The blocks seemed to change shape as a pool of saliva formed on my pillow.

  The drugs gave me horrendous dreams as my body tried to adapt. It was just as Danny said. I could see myself chasing Alexa, then chasing Miguel as he laughed at me. I would awaken, screaming, in a pool of sweat with everyone else sound asleep. I was running on anywhere from one to three hours of sleep, and the daily shots led to even more psychotic behavior.

  My days were spent in a daze while the nights were spent sleepless, shaking from the aftereffects of whatever they were giving me. I had all but given up.

  It was the middle of the night when I heard a voice. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

  I got up to find a giant black man with a patch over one eye speaking to me through the opening in the door.

  “Huh?”

  “The drugs. Man, you’ve got to take the drugs they give you.”

  “Go away,” I muttered.

  “Your blood. When they take your blood, they can see how much you need. If you don’t take the pills, they just keep upping your dosage. Trust me, I know.”

  “Who the Hell are you?” I asked.

  “My name’s Albert, and I must say, I’m a big fan.”

  I was confused, but Albert continued.

  “I followed your case from the beginning, and when I found out you were being sent here, I asked to take this shift. You know, midnight to eight in the morning.”

  I didn’t know whether to give him an autograph or have my picture taken with him.

  “Do you mind? I’m trying to get some sleep,” I said, although sleep was the furthest thing my body had in mind.

  “I just wanted to let you know that I believe you. I know it don’t matter now with you in prison and everything.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He managed to check in with me on a daily basis.

  His catchphrase was always: “Hey, Steven…you up?”

  His persistence paid off, as I was desperate for someone on the outside to talk to.

  As it turned out, he had been a prison guard for nearly 29 years when he took a sharp object to the eye that disabled him. They had assigned him to this prison to finish out his employment, figuring it would be safer for him. He had a different opinion.

  “Man, this place is crazy. In the big house, you knew who the dangerous ones were. In here, anyone can snap. They hand out drugs like they was candy.”

  In a matter of a week, I started looking forward to our nightly chats. I confided in him that I was desperate to get something current to read. He would smuggle me in the daily newspaper and a flashlight to read by. He would also bring me a sandwich. I dubbed him: “The Gentle Giant.”

  Every night when he would give me my goodies, he would say the same thing. “Don’t tell anyone, or I’ll lose my pension.” And he would wink at me with his only good eye. At least, I thought he was winking, as he only had the one eye. I always winked back.

  One night he unlocked my door. “C’mon, I want to show you something.”

  Armed with flashlights, we headed to the east wing, which I was told had been shut down years ago.

  Albert went to a huge fuse box and lifted a long lever to the up position. The lights came on and revealed what looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.

  “This is where they used to take the criminally insane. All of this is outlawed now.”

  I wandered about, looking at what seemed to be restraints with electrical attachments on them.

  “Are you sure they don’t use this stuff anymore?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  It scared the Hell out of me.

  Chapter 17

  Outside of sitting around the common area in a stupor, there wasn’t much to do. Once a week, I would see the counselor in charge of trying to rehabilitate me. Sometimes I would talk too much about my past, which led me to believe that some of the drugs they were giving me were some type of truth serum.

  “How did it feel to kill a man?” he would ask.

  I would get flustered and angry. “I didn’t kill him; it was an accident.”

  “That’s not what the courts said.”

  “The courts were wrong.”

  I would find myself ready to scream my lungs out at this guy. But there was always a male nurse standing by to get physical if needed.

  ***

  They finally switched back to the pills because my arm was black and blue from being a human pin cushion. I followed Albert’s advice and started taking my pills.

  The nurses would watch me take it and then inspect my mouth.

  “That’s a good soldier,” they would say. I smiled, then sneered at them as they left the room.

  I hated every one of them with a passion.

  ***

  I was beginning to see a few things that the inmates possessed that were not allowed, according to the paper I had received when I checked in. There was only one explanation.

  “How many of the guards are on the take?” I asked Albert.

  “It’s hard to say. Half? They can get you just about anything. Transistor radios, magazines are hot items right now. You need something?”

  “The only thing I want now is my freedom.”

  ***

  I found that Albert was right about taking my pills. I was still lethargic as Hell and had trouble getting awake and concentrating on tasks. Or I would take a walk and forget where I was headed. Sometimes my hands shook as I tried to read the papers that he gave me.

  Then one day it happened. I snapped.

  It was mealtime, and Danny was helping himself to my carrot sticks. Any other time, he would have been welcome to have them, but that day I was extremely agitated. I grabbed him in a choke hold, and I was screaming bloody murder.
>
  “Stevie! Stevie! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he yelled.

  Almost immediately, my room was full of nurses pulling me off of Danny. I remember threatening to kill them all. I was held motionless, and I was given a shot, which knocked me out.

  I awoke in what I could only imagine was solitary confinement. It then occurred to me that I was in the east wing. My hands and feet were strapped to the bed, and outside of a light coming from the cracks in the seam of the door, it was pitch black. Every thirty seconds or so I would feel an electric shock so severe that my muscles would spasm, and I would lose control of my bodily functions. I yelled for someone to come to the door. I was apologizing to whomever could hear my screams. I finally exhausted myself and fell unconscious.

  Sometime later, the door opened, and bright light shone in.

  “Get him up.”

  It was Warden Johnson.

  As the guards unshackled me, he read me the riot act. “Boy, you’re becoming a real thorn in my side. First, you won’t take your meds. Now you threaten to kill my nurses. What am I supposed to do with you? I didn’t want you here in the first place. My God, you killed a holy man! In my eyes, you should be dead!”

  I started to cry and apologize. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I said, and I fell to my knees.

  “What should we do with him, Warden?” one of the nurse asked.

  “Clean him up and take him back to his room.” He started to leave, then turned and said, “Then tell the nurses to up his medication.” He looked at me and smiled.

  I felt defeated.

  From that point on, I was a vegetable. My speech was slurred. My appetite was nonexistent. Albert would give me words of encouragement along with my nightly sandwich that I struggled to consume.

  “Man, Steven, you’ve got to eat! They don’t care if you live or die. They just took a guy out of here this morning. He starved to death!”

  ***

  I was six months into my sentence, and I had all but concluded that I would die a pauper in this hellhole. Even my monthly visits from Jake were a blur. He would talk to me about my appeal as I would struggle to comprehend the words exiting his mouth.