Solitary Refinement Chapter 13

Dear Joshua                                       November 19th 2017

    Still nothing from Liz. I stopped getting excited when they went around handing out the mail different inmates received. My cooking is coming along, that’s good. I stopped paying for that favour with desserts, so that’s good too. The weather has turned lousy so we haven’t been outside in the yard as much, as a result I see Kal has been in the gym more. That’s bad, that’s one guy that doesn’t need to get any more intimidating than he already is. Now me I could stand to work out a bit, okay a lot but I spend all my free time still doing jobs and chores to earn credit. I’ve already started to save for Christmas gifts, I’ve got to try. I don’t know what I’ll get them or how I’ll get it to them but I’ve got to try.

    I had an interesting interaction with Ziggy recently. He’s also one of the guys that hangs around Trevor. He asked me if I was still having trouble with Kal. I told him that he still worries me and he still stares at me and seems frustrated that people are always around me.

“Would you like me to make sure he stops?” He asked me punctuating the word ‘stops’ by stabbing a grape on his plate with a fork. I said I didn’t want him to get in trouble on my behalf and that I think I’m safe as long as I don’t get caught alone.

Later when I was talking to Trevor he told me that Ziggy made a similar offer to him before when he had a not very nice cellmate. Seems that with his wife cheating on him he feels particularly passionate about dishing out justice to those prisoners who are here for some kind of sexual misconduct. I asked Trevor what he did when Ziggy made him that offer, he told me that the guy who used to be his cellmate is now in hospital with one fewer eye and his new cellie is much more amiable.

So that’s… terrifying. Am I the only one that gets scared by stuff here? Trevor doesn’t seem scared even though he’s tiny. Ziggy isn’t scared, seems he defines security by his own terms. Kal, no there is no way he’s scared, he’s so huge and weird and doesn’t care what anybody else wants. What would it be like to be in a place like this and have no fear? Maybe it wouldn’t seem that bad, maybe it would just seem like going to work everyday. A place that you don’t want to be at but you’re there because you have to be, controlled schedule, lots of authority figures, like some people don’t like others. I guess that’s how some of them got here though, they didn’t care about the rules and authorities on the outside, why would they care about them here.

I just don’t know how to get there, I jump at every sound. Every time I hear a set of footsteps coming around the corner I wince and hope it’s not Kal. Every meal time I worry somebody is going to stick me with a butter knife when I’m not looking. I haven’t even done anything to make anybody dislike me, not even Kal. His interest in me appears to be more appetite than anger.

For the meantime people don’t really bother me too much because I’m always with Trevor and the others. I just still can’t shake this anxiousness that follows me around like a spectre. I also worry that people don’t respect me for me but rather the people I’m with, and certainly nobody fears me. If anything happens to Trevor to make him go away, if he gets released or hurt there’s nobody looking out for me. Maybe I need to do something to make sure people know not to mess with me, or maybe even just taking Ziggy up on his offer to help me out. I’m just so not okay yet with hurting someone or even having it done on my behalf, I’m not there yet and I hope it doesn’t come to that.

What I do know is that I feel like I’m in a scene from a horror movie. You know where the creepy music goes away and nothing looks out of place at all. Your hero is just walking along normally and it starts to look like everything just might be alright after all. Then, right then is when the worst thing imaginable happens, once hope has begun to entertain its own curiosity.

It’s felt that way for a while now.