THUGLIT Issue Six

by Kieran Shea

  Attention refocused from me to Jimmy and Zhuo as they carried on a conversation with the other men. I caught a quick silent look from Zhuo. It was encouraging. I knew that I'd followed the script well. Everything was going according to our plan.

  After some talking we were ushered into an elevator and taken to the top floor, where the boss was awaiting us in his office. It looked like it had been planned as quickly as the rest of the building, except that this room had been hastily put together with the intention of expressing wealth. The result was a haphazard collection of expensive items and decorative flourishes spread along the room. In the center at a big antique desk and modern chair was a middle-aged, chubby, pockmarked man in a pricey suit.

  He said something to the gangsters and Jimmy said something back quietly. He then said something to the man in glasses, who turned to me.

  "Mr. Hong wants a beautiful blonde ghost wife for his son, but he is not happy about a drug addict. And he thinks she looks odd."

  I looked around. This wasn't planned for. I stopped for a second before I answered. I realized he was bargaining. First he'd offered a flat reward for a white ghost wife, now he was trying to back his way out of the price. I made sure to collect my words and speak slowly as if I were addressing one of my ESL classes.

  "She does not look odd. She has slightly Asian features, but you can see on the passport her ethnicity is Caucasian. The passport is a little old, which is why the picture looks different. Also, my girlfriend was not a drug addict. We only did drugs very occasionally. We are from America, and in America it is kind of normal for young people to experiment with drugs, just to try them. We thought we could do that in China, too. But drugs are very dangerous, and I think they are even more dangerous here than in America. We did not know, and she died because of that. But my girlfriend was a good girl. She graduated from a very good school. I have her diploma here if you want to see it. She just made one mistake."

  There was more talking in Chinese, but I saw Jimmy looking at me with a smile and it seemed that I'd done well. After some negotiations, everybody made some formal and final sounding noises and the boss got up from his chair to walk over and shake my hand without saying anything. The man in glasses told me that would be all and they would give us the money after everything was finished, in two days. I told him to make sure to give half to me and half to the gangsters. I had a suspicion they would keep most of the money if they could.

  When we left Jimmy and Zhuo were all big smiles and claps on the back. I suggested we have a drink (some of the only Chinese I could say), but they declined. I got in another taxi and rode back to my apartment. I looked up flight information at home, spending the next couple of days checking for good travel locations around Asia. I thought I might get over this whole thing by backpacking around for a couple months. I never bothered to go back to work or tell my boss what had happened. He would call and I wouldn't answer the phone. Cloud was the only one there with any idea why I'd disappeared.

  After two days, I didn't hear from the boss' representatives, I didn't hear from Jimmy or Zhuo, and I didn't hear from Cloud. No one was answering any phones. I was hesitant to go straight back to the offices, so first I tried to find Jimmy and Zhuo, to no avail. Then I tried to track down Cloud. I finally found his address by bothering one of the other Chinese tutors at the school.

  He lived in a low, spread out apartment block consisting of dozens of small rooms with a dirty shared bathroom. I found his number and knocked on the door. I could hear movement for quite a while before he opened the door.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "I haven't heard from anyone. I want my money from our scheme."

  "No, it is not my scheme! If they find out I had to do with it, I am dead, even just translating. I cannot be with you. People cannot see me and you."

  "Why not? What are you talking about? What happened?"

  "It fell apart. They know. They know it is not her."

  "How? Everything went fine."

  "Her hair. It kept growing after she died. It grew and they saw that it is really black, not blonde. They saw that, they know it is not really her."

  "But it can't be that bad."

  "Yes, it can. The boss is very angry."

  "But he's just a businessman. I mean, the gangsters are on my side, not his."

  "No. Those gangsters are small. Not important men. He can buy bigger gangsters to find you, and he will buy the police, too. He owns many things and has many connections. He will look for you."

  "Okay, so I really gotta get out of here."

  "Yes. You should to leave."

  "You gotta help me, Cloud."

  "I cannot. They do not even know I am involved. If they do know, then I can maybe even die. You must to leave."

  "For God's sake, you have to be able to do something."

  "I can say to you do not take the bus, I know he will watch the bus station. Maybe a taxi, but maybe he has told the taxi drivers to look for you and call him."

  "C'mon man, you gotta do something else. At least call me the taxi."

  "So then the taxi driver will see I am connected to you? No, I cannot do that."

  "You can't do this to me, man. Remember that time I told you about? When I was coming to work and saw some guy start beating a woman in the middle of the street? And how everyone there just formed a crowd and watched them, not doing anything to help her? When I told you about it before, you said that it was a bad characteristic of Chinese people, not doing anything. Just standing by. You really want to be like that?"

  "But there is one thing I did not say before. I did not say that you were also stand-by. You also didn't do anything. So this is all I can help you now, we are not different."

  "That's not the same, man. It was between Chinese people. I'm a total foreigner, I couldn't do anything."

  "No! No, it is not different. You think you are special because you are a foreigner, but you are not. You get paid so much more to do so much less work. We cannot afford your luxuries and your good English and your polite manners and you act like it is our fault. You want all of the cheap things China makes and then you complain when you come here and things are dirty and poor. I helped you as much as I could. You never help me this much. You cannot to angry with me because I do not do more."

  And with that he shut the door.

  "Don't—," I said too late, "don't shut that fucking door, Cloud. Don't you, fuck. Fuck."

  I walked out, too frightened to go back to my apartment, endlessly grateful that I'd decided to bring my passport with me. It was late afternoon, with the sun slowly going down behind a light sheer haze of shimmering smog. The streets were busy with people shopping or sitting at small street tables drinking beer and eating snacks. Children were shouting and running off from school, men were strolling with their shirts up over their bellies, hocking gobs of spit up onto the street. As I came out of the apartment, they all turned to stare at me, new pairs of eyes focusing upon my worried form. For the first time, these stares weren't just alienating, they were intimidating. I didn't know who might be watching.

  I saw a cab down the street and ran for it too late, watching with a gasp as it pulled away. I followed to the nearest street and tried to hail another cab. I had no idea how much it would cost to get to Zhengzhou or even just the next town, but I had a bank card, I'd work it out.

  I saw a taxi coming down the street and stepped out by it, waving my hand. It drove by. Were the cabdrivers purposefully avoiding me or were they just being fickle? The people around me kept staring. I waited and waited some more, but saw no other taxis. Finally I noticed one down the road and tried to hail it, but it also drove by. As it passed I saw there was another one coming in the opposite direction and tried turning towards it only to trip and land in a puddle of what I hoped was mud. I heard laughter and looked up to see half the street watching me, bystanders openly guffawing.

  "What the fuck are you looking at?" I yelled at them, "What the fuck do yo
u even want from me? You shitty people in your shitty little town in your shitty country! This isn't right! This isn't how it's supposed to work! All I want to do is leave!"

  They kept on watching, uncomprehending and uncaring. My outburst had garnered even more attention, and now every cold pair of eyes on the street was fixed upon me as I knelt in the middle of the road—scooters, bikes, and three-wheelers coming to halt in front of me so their drivers could see what all the commotion was about.

  I looked around and dozens of faces looked back. I knew then that I'd never be able to make it out of there. I sat down on the dusty pavement and waited for the boss's men to come and take me away from the surrounding wall of eyes that had grown higher than I could ever climb. They just kept staring at me. I began to speak bitter words to myself that no one around me could understand, as if performing some strange lonely show for the impenetrable crowd, a show that was due to end any minute now.

  Rogues Gallery

  By BH Shepherd

  Legend has it the first man ever incarcerated in Sanchez Penitentiary was a preacher named Drake Church, prisoner number 00000-000.

  Since the first day the prison opened there has always been a Cell Zero, under a reinforced steel trapdoor in a sub-basement. Grainy black-and-whites show an iron cross mounted on the door, but no sign of a handle. The original writ of arrest was still on file in the warden's office, dated over a hundred years ago. What records still exist state only that Church had been convicted of crimes against God and Humanity and was sentenced to prison for the duration of his life. The presiding judge had felt compelled to further stipulate that Prisoner Church only be released on the condition of his demise.

  Now, even a century later, the guards still superstitiously fear the boogeyman of Cell Zero. They avoid it on their rounds and deny it is there, as if they were surrounded by anything but monsters.

  Let me tell you something—the natural state of the world is madness. Our delusions of order are merely the briefest interludes within the greater symphonies of chaos. Once you understand that, anything is possible. That's why they locked me in here. I know the sick, maddening truth. I know it and they're afraid if they let me out it will burn off society's face like napalm. They think they can stop it, fix it or hide it. But it's still there. It's always there.

  My father understood. Even if he didn't know it, he understood all too well. He was head of the psychiatric staff at the prison, and conversed on a daily basis with the most twisted minds the penal system had to offer.

  I grew up in the shadow of Sanchez Penitentiary, a giant cinderblock fortress perched on the El Paso horizon like a gargoyle standing watch over the desert. When I was young and God-fearing I would gaze out my window at dusk and watch as the cross atop the chapel steeple impaled the heart of the sun.

  Sometimes late at night I would sneak out of bed and down the hall to find Father in his study, surrounded by open books and scattered papers, working on a bottle of scotch. Shrouded in a fog of blue cigar smoke, safe from my shushing mother, I dared to ask my father about his work. Usually he would regale me with the more whimsical chunks of madmen's ramblings, and send me back to bed with one of the prison's many ghost stories. I always asked if he talked to Drake Church and he always said of course not, Cell Zero was nothing more than a tradition.

  Church himself was just a folktale, a scary story parents told to naughty children. No, he assured me as he sank into his leather chair, there were plenty enough real monsters within the walls of Sanchez. He would confess frustration at his continual failure to cure or even treat the criminally psychotic, to doubts that he had ever done any good, to worries that he alone stood sentry at the gates of insanity. My father denied every rumor and did his best to discourage my interest in his world. So on the nights I didn't find my father ensconced in his study, I read about it myself. Did he ever guess, I wonder?

  The curiosity of Drake Church had only sparked my interest. The more I read, the more my morbid fascination grew into an obsession with the penitentiary and its lore, so old and dusty that fact and legend had become tantalizingly entwined. I studied it all compulsively, poring over my father's patient files by flashlight and collecting every scrap of ink ever printed about Sanchez. In secret coded notebooks beneath my floorboards I charted the lives and careers of its most notorious inmates, endlessly diagramming and analyzing in an effort to discover the true nature of evil. What that was, I couldn't tell you. I don't even think evil exists, not anymore. But I was singularly fascinated with the big gray box where we locked up all our worst nightmares.

  Sanchez Penitentiary regularly housed around 3,000 felons, men who had drowned themselves in desperation and violence. Among their ranks were unlucky kingpins, armies of loyal thugs, ambitious assassins, a handful of hustlers, pimps, bank robbers, and even a small community of psychopaths. Sex freaks were rare; they had a short shelf-life in Sanchez. Most were violent offenders, murderers of various degrees, career criminals beyond the possibility of reform.

  Over the decades of its operation, Sanchez acquired an accurate reputation as a tough place to do time, so the courts kept sending them tough men to break. Sanchez had been built to contain "all conceivable evils," Warden Gunn, one of the founders of the penitentiary, explained. But since Man was so often confronted with the inconceivable, sometimes maximum security would not be enough.

  You can't put too many big fish in a tiny bowl and shake it; you end up with a lot of dead fish.

  After a long and brutal summer of riots and jailbreaks Warden Gunn introduced his vision of "Supermax" security to much fanfare and praise from lawmakers and law enforcement. Cellblock Thirteen was built to cage the monsters, the worst of the worst, and the public slept soundly knowing that their nightmares were locked safely away.

  "But what if they got out?" I would always ask my father.

  And always he would shake his head and say, "No one gets out of Cellblock Thirteen."

  Cellblock was a rather generous title for this place, stark by even prison standards. Just a hole in the bedrock beneath the sub-basement. They poured in concrete around Cell Zero, then carved out a block with nine eight-by-six cells. It's an oven in the summers and a meat-locker every winter. Each cell has two doors—one five inch steel slab on the outside with a latched view/feed slot, and a layer of more traditional bars inside that could only be opened remotely by a series of switches in the checkpoint station outside the main block. Usually those switches didn't do much but gather dust.

  All of us were in permanent solitary, under twenty-three hour lockdown. No human rights allowed. We got eight hours of fluorescent twilight each day, just enough to stare at the walls, or read if you still had your library privileges. "Privileges" didn't mean you actually got to visit the library, but if you behaved yourself the guards would take requests and bring you state-approved literature once a month. Of course, my book wasn't on the list. I was forbidden even a pencil to do the sudoku and crossword puzzles in the newspapers I read courtesy of the taxpaying masses. Not that I ever needed one; I solved them at a glance, able to see the answers as clearly as the imaginary chessboard upon which I occasionally matched wits with the prisoner next door, Luther "Buck" Grady, prisoner number 00078-991, an old Grand Wizard of the KKK serving seven consecutive life sentences for bombing black churches. He claimed to have killed more people than the Great Depression, and was credited with inventing "bucking," a favorite neo-Nazi pastime that involved kicking in minority skulls.

  Grady may have been an old and ornery racist white trash redneck, but he was a cunning bastard, a brilliant tactician who often challenged me as we hollered our moves down the hallway.

  Officer Daniels, the regular nightshifter in the checkpoint station, was kind enough to keep track on a real board and act as referee when Buck would inevitably forget where the pieces were and accuse me of being a no good rotten cheater. When he wasn't moving chess pieces for us, I could hear the squawk of daytime television from the checkpoint station, and I
wished I could watch, if only to dull my mind. One night when the set was receiving nothing but static, I offered to take a look at it. He reluctantly agreed and I was happy to fix it for him, if only for something to do.

  I read War and Peace and Moby Dick and the entirety of Ray Bradbury; I wallpapered my cell with every clipping on Sanchez I could find and folded an entire army of origami birds from the scraps, all to combat the boredom, but it was not a battle that could be won. At least, not until the day Officer Daniels made his fatal mistake.

  Every now and then the COs tossed a rookie down here to toughen him up. The old guards, the ones with the thousand-yard stare who never seemed to rotate out, were there for the same reason we were: punishment. If you fucked up in Sanchez above, say you get caught running cigarettes or beat a prisoner to death, you got sent down to the dungeon to watch the bad men.

  New guards always think Cellblock Thirteen is going to be a cake watch. Policy down here is fairly basic: lock 'em up and throw away the key. We're kept in reinforced cages all day and night so they think we can't possibly hurt them. They feel safe knowing another set of iron bars separates our block from the rest of the prison, and if any inmate crossed the threshold unchained and without escort, orders were to shoot to kill. They tend to forget that although Sanchez has no shortage of killers in its population, only ten merited life sentences down here. But I guess it's hard to fear someone you feed through a slot in the door like an animal. To be honest, "animal" might be too generous a term. We are often called monsters when we are spoken of at all, and it's hard to argue.