Solitary Refinement Chapter 15

Dear Joshua                                       December 10th 2017

    Hey man so I really don’t know what to do at this particular juncture. I think I’m in trouble with the one person I thought I could trust. I don’t know what I thought I was doing but I was so tired from working so much and from sleeping so badly that I spoke without thinking. I’m such an idiot sometimes, just like back at the bus stop where this all started. Trusting people I don’t know, and it gets me in trouble what else is new. Bloody dumbass I am, of course he just wants me to do stuff for him; keeping me safe isn’t too much of an inconvenience for him but if I do all his chores that frees his time up.

    We were mopping the floors in one of the other cell blocks while those inmates got yard time. He asked me if I could mop his half so he could go chill out in the rec room.

“Man I’m tired of doing all of your work, can’t you do your own mopping for once?” That’s what I said! Can you believe it? The way he looked at me, eyeing me up and down as if for the first time all over again.

He just kind of chuckled a bit and then said, “Oh yeah sure thing.” Then he didn’t say another word and kept mopping.

Later that same day we were all eating supper in the cafeteria and Mark was on guard just standing over in the corner where he can see everybody. The last thing I remember seeing was him turn his back on everybody and then I felt somebody grab me by the hair and slam my head into the table so hard I passed out. When I woke up a while later everybody I had been sitting with was sitting somewhere else and engaged with small talk as if nothing had happened. A small pool of blood in my mashed potatoes reflecting my image back at me showing I had a split lip and I was bruised around my nose and brow. My appetite gone I headed back to my bunk and found a note on my pillow in such haphazard and erratic handwriting it looked as though it had been written while falling down a flight of stairs.

“Don’t say no to him again.”

No name signed, no saying what might happen to me if I disobeyed, never seen this writing before.

Well shit, I’m in deep now Josh. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Kal freaks me out so damn much, did I tell you he started giggling in his sleep? Creepiest thing ever, I can’t deal with him I just can’t. I need the protection I get from Trevor I just hope I don’t have to do anything too awful for it, I really don’t like being in this position of worrying about both of them.

Funny I never broke the rules until I was in prison. I never even skipped gym in high school. Remember you would skip and tell me to go to the movies with you and I said I don’t want to get in trouble. Now here I am in prison, doing somebody else’s shit against the rules. Wonderful just wonderful.

Still haven’t heard anything from Liz, no calls, no visits no letters. I don’t know how much more of that I can handle. I love her I really do, but I have had nothing but silence for nearly six months now. I can’t begin to tell you how that makes me feel but I’ll try. It makes me feel mad that she would keep the kids from me, but then I feel terrible for being mad at her when this is all completely my fault that we’re in this situation at all. That feeling gets worse before it gets better, imagining her trying to balance everything all by herself. Getting Alister to school on time is no simple task all by itself I’m sure. I just know that every morning she’ll have to drag him out of bed cranky because he wants to sleep longer or watch cartoons but she’ll need him to eat breakfast quickly and he was always a slow eater. Not slow like a turtle but slow like a glacier. Every little thing must become so much harder when you have to do it all by yourself. I put her in that position so I don’t have the right to be mad at her. That’s when I start to beat myself up. It eats at me more and more each day that I believed that treacherous man at the bus stop, just waiting to prey upon some poor trusting fool. Man did I swallow that bait whole and even thank him for the hook in my mouth too.

What is wrong with me, I try to just be a decent hard working man doing an honest job diligently. Still I end up here, bars, concrete walls, fluorescent lighting that’s way too bright until it’s way too dark. Even on the outside I always worked so hard at my jobs but still got laid off every few months. Bosses always complimenting me on my great work ethic and workmanship but still letting me go. Like is there a sign on my forehead that just says, “disposable?” I certainly feel disposable. Between Kal and Trevor I’m afraid that at any given moment I might get torn open and thrown away like one of the tuna cans I use in my cooking class.

This brand of fear is different though. It’s not like the fear I had before of worrying I’d lose a job as soon as I’d started it, or the fear that the kids might fall off the playground and break an arm. This fear makes me hyper, makes me blink twice as much, and makes me eat more. I’m still losing weight even though I’m eating as much as I can stomach at every meal time. It’s so exhausting looking over your shoulder all the time, flinching at every sound. I wake up with my sheets and pillow soaked in sweat at least once a night. What should I do? I wish I could go back in time and just skip class and go to the movies with you instead of deal with all this.