Creighton snorted, sending a cloud of smoke from his nostrils. “You’ve never been inside before, have you?”
Skinner fidgeted.
“You don’t have t’say, kid. It might as well be tattooed on your forehead. How long they give you?”
“Ninety days.”
Creighton settled onto the lower bunk, folding his arms behind his head, peering thoughtfully at the cracks in the cell wall. “Ninety, huh? That ain’t nothin’. I could do ninety standin’ on my head blindfolded. But I remember what it was like when I was your age. Three months feels like three years when you’re young and dumb. Man can get himself in a lot of trouble in ninety days, if he don’t know the ropes. Come in for vagrancy, en up finding himself doing time for murder, if he ain’t careful. Oh, by the way: you get the top bunk.”
Skinner nodded and began putting away his few meager personal possessions. He was acutely aware of Creighton’s eyes on him the whole time.
“You got family, kid?” the con asked. “Anyone know you’re here?”
Skinner shoulders tightened without his willing it. “My mom died a couple weeks ago. My dad was killed when I was twelve. There’s no one else.”
Creighton nodded to himself, as if some unspoken question had been confirmed. “I like you, kid. I can tell you’re a regular Joe, not like most of the trash that comes through here. Me? I been in an’ outta the jug since I was fifteen. I’m fifty-seven now. Once you get yourself situated, I’ll introduce you to some of my homeys. They’re okay—they ain’t fuckin’ crack heads or gang bangers.”
A half-hour later Creighton took Skinner on a tour of the prison yard. It was late afternoon and the baked earth under their feet radiated heat like a griddle, but that didn’t seem to deter the men at the weight bench. Skinner watched in awe as a tall, muscular white man unzipped his jumpsuit and rolled it down to his waist before doing bench presses. The inmate’s skin was coated with sweat, making the jailhouse tattoos that swarmed his pecs, biceps and scapulars glisten and gleam. His body covered with skulls with daggers through their eyes, snarling panthers, eight balls, crossed knives, coiled snakes, grim reapers and other hard-luck iconography, and topping them off was a solitary India ink tear at the corner of his right eye.
Creighton followed Skinner’s gaze and visibly blanched. Without breaking stride, he grabbed the younger man’s arm and steered him away from the weight area, doing his best to position himself between Skinner and the tattooed inmate. It wasn’t until then that Skinner was aware of just how tall and brawny the old-timer really was.
“There’s a few things you need to know so’s you can make it through your stay in this country club in one piece,” he explained with a restrained urgency. “First thing is, don’t go lookin’ a man in the eye while you’re in here, unless you’re in the mood for a fight or a fuck. I seen men get their guts handed to ’em on the end of a sharpened spoon just cause some cracker didn’t like the way he was being eyeballed.
“And especially don’t go borrowin’ shit like cigs or gum, cause the first time you can’t pay back you’ll find yourself washin’ socks an’ pullin’ trains to make up your debt. But the single most important thing you got to remember, kid, is to do your own time and hold your mud. If it gets out that you’ve snitched—you’re good as dead.”
A slightly built prisoner with a state-issue upper plate sidled up alongside Creighton. “See you’re schoolin’ yourself a fish,” he grinned.
“Howdy, Top Gum,” Creighton replied. “This here’s Skinner, my new bunkie.”
The old man nodded and smiled, careful not to send his ill-fitting dentures flying out into the yard. “How long?”
“Short-termer,” Creighton said, not giving Skinner a chance to answer for himself. “Green as goose shit.”
“You better make sure Mother and Rope don’t get wind of him, then.” Top Gum’s mouth was smiling, but there was no humor in his voice.
“Who are they?” Skinner asked.
“You already saw Mother,” Creighton grunted.
“You mean the guy with the muscles and tattoos?”
“That’s him.”
“Why should I watch out for them?”
Top Gum shot Creighton a look out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the bigger man to take up the tale, but he remained silent. When he didn’t, Top Gum sighed and pressed his plate back into place with the ball of his thumb. “There ain’t a nastier set of bookends to be found in Los Lobos. Mother—that’s short for Motherfucker, mind you—is trash that don’t burn, as my sainted mama used to say. He’s got more tattoos than Carter’s got little liver pills. He’s a tough hombre outta Texas, originally. Kilt him a few, if the brag’s true, but they ain’t been able to pin him for nothin’ worse than attempted manslaughter. He likes to rape. When he’s on the outside, he rapes women. When he’s in here, he rapes boys. Don’t seem to matter what kinda hole he sticks it in, long as whoever’s attached ain’t got no say in the matter.
“He travels with his homey, a big ol’ buck called Rope. Normally the Blacks and Whites don’t have much truck with one another in here, but Rope and Mother are tighter’n ticks at a nudist colony. I figger it’s on account of nobody else bein’ willin’ to hang with ’em. Rope’s as mean as Mother, but more subtle on account of him bein’ mute.”
“You mean he’s deaf?” Skinner asked.
“Nah, he can hear as good as you or me. Better, mebbe. He just can’t talk on account of gettin’ lynched awhile back. Got hisself accused of rapin’ some white gal in Alabama. Mebbe he did, mebbe he didn’t. Who knows? Anyway, he gets caught by some crackers and carried out to the piney woods, where they beat on him some, took a buck knife to his privates, and then strung him up. I reckon they thought they’d kilt him, so they drove off in their pick-ups and left him hangin’ there. He weren’t dead, though. Somehow he managed to get himself free.
“Rope’s been in and outta jail ever since—mostly on assault charges and crimes against nature. Just because some Alabama crackers cut his pecker off don’t slow him down none. He just uses coke bottles, broom handles, and whatever else is handy to get the job done. Like I said, him and Mother is a mean machine you want to stay the hell clear of.”
That evening Skinner had his first meal behind bars. It consisted of tomato soup, refried beans, corn bread and a fried baloney sandwich. He sat opposite Creighton, who devoured his meal with the indifference of a man who had known little else but institutional food.
“Look here, Rope; there’s a new fish in the tank.”
Creighton froze, spoon halfway to his mouth, as Mother set his tray down beside Skinner with a loud clatter and a huge black man with a shaved head sat down opposite him. Although the second man did not speak, his eyes were focused on Skinner.
“I saw you trying to hide him from me, out in yard. But I can smell fresh meat a mile away,” Mother grinned, displaying teeth the color of antique ivory. “There ain’t a boy that comes into this place I don’t know about. Ain’t that right, Rope?”
The heavyset man grunted, narrowing his eyes into slits. Skinner had a good view of the scar ringing the man’s throat, and how it pulsed and twisted whenever he swallowed.
“You leave him be, Mother,” Creighton said in a low voice.
Mother pulled his lips back into something that might have passed for a smile if you weren’t looking into his eyes. “Why’s that, Creighton? He your punk?”
The older man shifted uneasily, dropping his eyes. He was no longer in any condition to square off against a hard case as young and mean as Mother, and both men knew it.
“It’s just that Skinner here ain’t done you no disservice.”
“He ain’t provided no service, either,” Mother countered, turning to leer at the topic of conversation. “Ain’t that right, fresh meat?”
Skinner’s face was dead white except for the hectic blotches of red marking each cheek. He stared down at the battered tin cafeteria tray as if he could see the future in the s
kin forming atop his soup.
“You deaf, or are you dissing me, boy?” Mother snarled. “You answer when I talk to you.”
Skinner raised his head and glared at the tattooed man, fighting to keep from spitting in his face. Mother was momentarily surprised by the color of the new inmate’s eyes, and then broke into a slow, evil smile.
“I’m gonna enjoy doin’ you, meat. You need a few lessons on how a punk like you should act towards his betters, and I’m just the man to teach ’em to you.” He motioned to his companion, and the two picked up their trays and moved on to another table.
“What am I gonna do?” Skinner whispered, trying his best to keep the fear from his voice.
“Watch your back.”
“Can’t I get the guards to do something? What if I tell them Mother threatened to rape me? Can’t they do anything to stop him?”
Creighton shook his head. “If you snitch to the warden, all he’ll do is take you out of Gen Pop and put you in Protective Custody for a week or two. Once they let you outta PC and release you back into Gen Pop, you’ll be lucky to last a day before someone puts a shiv in you.”
Skinner was still mulling what Creighton told him when the bell rang for lights out. He lay there in the dark for a long time, arms folded behind his head, and stared at the cracks in the ceiling above his bunk. He was surrounded by the sound of a hundred men whispering, snoring, praying and fucking in the dark. It was like he was in a zoo full of animals on the verge of tearing at one another apart.
Skinner wasn’t sure when he finally managed to drift off, or if he’d been asleep for minutes or hours. All he knew was that something made him start awake, his muscles rigid and every hair on his body erect. Then he saw Creighton’s silhouette looming before him. At first he was afraid the older man was going to try and rape him, but then he looked into his cell-mate’s face and realized the prisoner was asleep.
“I—I had a dream … about you.” Creighton’s voice was thick and slurred. “You … was wearing … a crown … and a robe … and you was walkin’ the yard … I asked someone why … you were tricked out … and they said … you was really a prince … You walked right up to the fence … and you parted it like it was a curtain … and walked on through … You was so beautiful … so wild … so free … freer than air … freer than water … I knew I had to follow you …” Creighton lifted a hand to his seamed face with its busted nose and droopy eyelid and began to cry. “So … free … so … beautiful …” With that he lumbered over to the toilet in the corner of the cell and noisily relieved himself before returning to his bunk. Within seconds he was snoring.
Skinner did not sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he lay in his bunk, trying to deal with the realization that his only ally in the hellhole he now found himself in was not entirely sane.
Chapter Eight
Skinner’s second day at Los Lobos began calmly enough. He and the other ninety-nine inmates of Cell Block A were awakened at six in the morning by the simultaneous sounds of the wake-up bell and the mechanism that controlled their cell doors unlocking. He then showered in the company of several dozen men, returned to his cell and put on his clothes before trooping off to the mess hall, where they were served cornbread, sausage patties and powdered eggs.
After breakfast, Skinner reported to the duty officer whose job it was to assess the new inmates’ skills and assign them to whichever sector of the prison was short of man power. Skinner was assigned to the grounds detail, where he and six other men were given the hellish task of resurfacing the basketball court.
For the remainder of the day, while under the supervision of an armed guard and those in the air-conditioned towers, he and his fellow inmates spread asphalt with shovels and rakes, coated it with an oily fixative, then pushed manual rollers over it in order to pack it down and smooth out the playing surface. All of this is ninety degree heat, with a half-hour break for lunch and two fifteen-minute water breaks. Skinner had never worked so hard in his entire life.
He returned to his cell, back and shoulders aching, stinking of asphalt, to find Creighton in his bunk, reading a dog-eared porn mag. Unlike Skinner’s previous roomie, if Creighton beat off, he kept it to himself.
“Don’t you smell like a bed of petunias!” the older man laughed.
“I hurt in places I never knew I had,” Skinner groaned as he crawling onto his bunk with the speed of a three-toed sloth.
“What are you complainin’ about? You’re a young feller! You’ll get used to work details soon enough. But you gotta learn the government lick, or the bulls will work you right into the grave.”
“Sounds obscene, whatever it is.”
“It’s simple: all you gotta do is figure out how much work you can get away with not doin’. That way you do what it takes to get by without getting the Man on your ass. Basically, you don’t do a lick of work other’n what they tell you to do, how they tell you to do it. Don’t go thinkin’ for yourself, or tryin’ to figure out a more efficient way of gettin’ the job done, cause all that does is make ’em find more work for you to do. It’s called the government lick on account of that’s how civil servants do their jobs.”
“Time to eat!” Creighton announced as the dinner bell rang. He quickly stowed his stroke mag under the mattress of his bunk.” You comin’ or what?”
“I need to clean up first. I can’t stand to smell myself any longer.”
“Don’t take too long, or you’ll end up missin’ chow. A man can get awful hungry in the middle of the night around here.”
Skinner grunted his understanding as he headed in the direction of the showers, his towel draped over one shoulder. The cell block’s shower room was identical to the one in his old high school, with a dozen individual fixtures and a poured concrete floor. Normally prisoners had to wait in line, with ablutions limited to three minutes per man, and those toward the end of the line being forced to settle for luke-warm water, but since he was the only person in the shower room, there would be plenty of hot water for a change.
He was washing the oil and asphalt residue from his hair when he was struck in the chest and knocked back against the tiled wall of the shower. As he opened his eyes to see who’d punched him, the soap from the shampoo poured into them, effectively blinding him.
“Bend over and crack yore Daddy some brown-eye, punk,” Mother snarled, flashing a predator’s grin that was all teeth and menace.
“Fuck you!” Skinner snapped, trying to keep the fear from his voice.
“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” replied Mother as he drove his fist against the side of Skinner’s head.
For a brief second the world was without light, sound or scent, and when Skinner regained his senses, he found himself lying on the floor of the shower, the sound of running water filling his ears.
“Roll him over on his back,” Mother ordered as he opened his pants. “I want him to see me while I’m doin’ it.”
Skinner tried to shout for help, but Rope was already on top of him and quickly shoved a pair of bunched-up briefs in his mouth.
Mother gave himself a few swift, angry yanks, as if his dick was made of leather instead of living flesh, until he was pumped full. Skinner could see red and black flames inked along its length, like the customizing on a hotrod engine cowling. “Hold him still, damn it! How do you expect me to plug him if he’s wiggling around?” he growled as he spat into his free hand.
Rope punched Skinner hard enough to crack the back of his head against the floor. For a second everything went gray and blurred for a few seconds—until the pain of Mother shoving between his buttocks brought him back to himself. It was like he was being torn in two, the pain increasing with each thrust of his attacker’s hips He screamed, but most of it was muffled by the gag blocking his mouth. Tears of agony and shame filled his eyes, streaming from his eyes to his ears.
This isn’t happening.
“Look at me!” Suddenly Mother’s face was looming over his, breathing hot, putrid
air down on him.
Skinner squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.
“Look at me when I’m fucking you, punk!”
This isn’t happening to me. I’m not really here. When I wake up it’ll have been nothing but a bad dream. A nightmare.
Nothing more.
“I said look at me!” Mother’s fist smashed into Skinner’s nose, breaking it. Blood flooded his sinuses and began backing up into his throat. He tried to spit it out, but the gag was in the way.
I’m going to die. He’s going to let me choke to death on my own blood. I’m just meat to them. It doesn’t matter if I’m alive or dead. I’m just something to use and throw away. Meat. Meat.
Mother laughed and pointed to Skinner’s rapidly inflating penis. “Hey, Rope! He’s gettin’ off on it! The punk’s a faggot! Ain’t that right, pretty boy?”
Skinner made a choking noise in the way of a reply. Mother’s smile abruptly disappeared, to be replaced by something resembling concern—but not for his victim.
“Hey—something’s wrong here.”
Skinner’s limbs suddenly began to jerk about so violently Rope could no longer hold him down. Mother began to curse and tried to disengage himself, but was unable to pull free.
“Sweet Jesus, help me!” he exclaimed in a panicky voice. “I’m stuck!”
Skinner wondered what was going on. First there had been unendurable pain, but now he felt like he was a thousand miles away, watching everything from the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. It was what he imagined junkies felt when they shot up. His fear and pain were gone and in their place was something he could only describe as ecstasy. And then the Change was on him.
Mother screamed like a woman as Rope wrapped his forearms under his friend’s armpits and yanked him free with a wet popping sound. Mother’s face was gray with shock as he clutched the front of his blood-smeared pants, his lips pulled into a rictus grin. The tattooed man said something under his breath—whether a curse or a call to God was moot—as the thing on the shower room floor got to its feet.
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