• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
 CELL MATESEven at two in the morning the cellblock in a maximum security penitentiary was never completely devoid of noise. The main lights were extinguished, the televisions and radios had been ordered to be shut off, and then the final order for silence about the cellblock has been blared over the intercom. But still it was never completely silent. You could still hear thegraveyard shift guard with his radio turned down low as he paced up and down the row, thetoilets flushing, tormented men crying out in their sleep, jacking off, coughing, sneezing, farting,sobbing.Then there was the occasional cry of pain and anguish as an inmate decided to take himself out by slashing his wrists - possibly with a homemade shank he had crafted from a melted down andsharpened toothbrush handle and disposable razor - but then couldn’t handle the pain of what hehad just done to himself or the fear of what was yet to come. Terrifying thoughts of would theafterlife be worse that what he was fleeing prematurely.Some nights, like tonight, you heard an inmate, almost always a fish, scream out “Mommy.” Thesign that a new inmate or "fish" as they were referred to in the joint, was experiencing what hefeared the worse before he came inside the penitentiary. For some reason when a fish, fresh fromthe street, got turned out for the first time, he often called out for his “Mommy.”Thad Jensen had heard grown men scream that out probably close to a thousand times heimagined since he had been locked down for his fifteen years. Fifteen years to the day since itwas past midnight already. Today was the day. His day. He be getting his walking papers inabout a dozen hours. No parole guidelines for him to follow, he had done his whole bit. He'dwalk out the doors a hard con.From an early age the locals always said that he was a bully. A bad kid. A no good punk destinedto go nowhere but jail or the cemetery.The locals had been right.He was just seventeen years old the night he committed the crime that got him sent up. Alreadysmashed one fall Friday night on a combination of a bootleg Quaalude and a bottle of the oldman‘s vodka, he had walked into a convenience store and tried to waltz out with a twelve pack of  beer. Shit beer at that, Olympia. The clerk, a pensioner in his sixties, had stupidly chased Thadinto the parking lot, where Thad who was already big for his age, had broken the clerk’s noseand jaw with a series of brutal punches and kicks. After a witness called in the crime, a highspeed chase ensued which ended with Thad face down on the pavement and his hands cuffed
 
 behind him, his parent’s car totaled against a telephone pole. Thad was a bloody mess by thetime he was transported to the county jail. Several of the cops having decided to give the oldclerk a bit of street justice revenge.He was tried as an adult and was given a sentence of fifteen years but would be eligible for  parole in four if he behaved while serving his sentence. He had no reaction to the sentence. Heshowed no remorse. And he sure as shit didn’t behave while serving his sentence.Because of his young age he was sent to the St. Cloud Reformatory where he quickly learnedthat since he was white he was now a minority . Thad had never even seen a black man in his lifeother than on televison but it didn’t take him long to realize that he didn’t like them. Any of them. And that included Asians, Indians, or Hispanics, too. Thad was an equal opportunity racist.He was quickly recruited by an Aryan prison gang, and because of his size, which would becomegreatly enhanced by hours spent on the weight pile and handfuls of steroids smuggled in byenterprising guards, he became a valuable enforcer. Young naive Thad bought the wannabe Nazi’s bullshit rhetoric hook, line, and sinker, and soon he was sporting a tattooed swastika onhis chest and carrying around a bootleg copy of Mein Kampf, even though he didn’t understand afucking word of it. Not that he could of even read most of it since he was sporting about a fourthgrade reading level at best. The combination of his appearance - shaved head, six foot four,massive pumped up tattooed guns - and his lizard like brain made for a frightening individual.It didn’t take him long before he began to build a thick disciplinary jacket with the prisonadministration. He was written up dozens of times for assault, possession of narcotics andweapons, disrespect to officers, and numerous other infractions. The day he reached his twentyfirst birthday, rather than being released on parole, he was shackled and transferred to the penitentiary at Stillwater where he was greeted with open arms by his fellow comrades.Stillwater Penitentiary was the turf of the white prison gangs. They ran the show at Stillwater. Not the niggers. Not the chinks. Not the beaners. Not the guards. White power ran Stillwater.Thad was finally at home.And that’s where twelve years later Thad Jensen found himself. Stillwater. His home. On hisfinal night in the joint he laid in his bunk and mentally reviewed his personal resume. He hadignored the order to shut off his radio instead placing it on his pillow next to his ear with thevolume turned low. The Doors were jamming on
 Roadhouse Blues
. Lighting a pin joint of ditchweed Mexican he settled back on the scratchy mattress to get some serious thinking in. He took asip of jailhouse hooch fermented from oranges.Thad had survived dozens of prison gang wars and uprisings. He had been stabbed. He had beenshot (barely grazed but still shot) by a tower guard during a riot. He had been gassed and maced.He had spent months in the hole without letting the assholes break him. He was a high rankinglieutenant with the Aryans. And now he had fulfilled the terms of his sentence without the benefit of parole. He would walk out the gates a free man. A hardened con. Not a man to fuck with.
 
 He was also thirty-three years old, had no home to go to, no family to speak of since they had alldisowned him over the years, had the education of a mentally challenged fifth grader, and noidea what life outside these walls held for him. His counselor had managed to find him a room ata shelter upon his release along with a job at a aluminum can recycling plant. The job started atminimum wage. Thad wasn’t worried though. His brothers on the outside would set him up.Thad heard his cellmate stir in the bunk underneath him.“Sounds like someone is getting it tonight.”“Yea, it’s Tuesday. Fresh meat always gets brought in on Tuesdays first thing in the morning.Fucked in the ass before midnight.” Thad coughed out a laugh.“I didn’t. They brought me in on a weekend,” replied his cellmate.“Well, you’re a whole different fucking matter all together. You’re one of those high profilecases.”His cellmate was indeed high profile and more. He possessed what inmates called a“freak” jacket. Timothy Logan had been a twenty-six year old mortuary sciences student whohad been picked up for raping and killing a sixteen year old girl who was on her way home froma high school basketball game. What the police found when they tossed his apartment broughthim semi-national attention. Timothy had been interning at a Minneapolis funeral home where heworked the night shift. All by his lonesome. Turns out he liked it like that. When the policeshook down his apartment after they picked him up for the murder, they found hundreds of nude photos of both dead females and males which had been taken at the funeral home. They alsofound several videos of him engaged in sexual intercourse with female stiffs.Timothy’s attorney tried the insanity defense. It didn’t work, and after a somewhat sensationaltrial which was seemingly covered non-stop by both local and national media, was found guiltylate on a Friday afternoon. The sheriff in charge of the county jail felt that they could not providethe security that Timothy required for his safety from his fellow inmates, so rather than waitingout the weekend he was transferred the following morning to the penitentiary.In a bit of payback for all of his years of being a pain in the ass to them, the warden thought itmight be a hoot to put a child raping murderer diagnosed with necrophilia, right into Thad’s cell,who had only six months left to serve. Thad was pissed behind belief at this show of totaldisrespect but he kept his mouth shut. He was just too goddamn short in time to bitch about it.His first night inside, Timothy who was small of stature, had been cornered in the shower andturned out by a couple of black gangsters from St. Paul. He didn’t call out for his Mommy. He just took it. And he took it for weeks until he finally broke down and asked Thad for protection.For a price of course, Thad could offer him protection against rival gangs and lone predators, but
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...