Chain Gang All Stars

“Congratulations, Craft. You made it to the century mark,” Officer Lawrence says like there’s a cake in his hands. “One hundred days in paradise.”

See, are, ey, eff, tee. Craft. That’s the first thing I do. No. First thing I do is wake before the buzzer. I don’t get to hear much outside the sounds of men screaming. If it’s not Lawrence, it’s the buzzer. The sound shakes you. High and jagged.

There’s a bed and a shit tin. Dark in here most of the day. But they glow in my brain. The hole is black. I only see when the door opens. The door opens one time a day. I sit, sleep, sing, flex, breathe, stretch, shake, cough, shit here. Here is where I come apart.[*1]

One hundred days ago they started to kill me again. I’ve died so many times now I must be unkillable. I am the undying. It’s a hard, wonderful life.

One hundred and seventeen days ago a man didn’t like me. I killed a man one hundred and seventeen days ago.

There’s blood on every piece of here.[*2] Especially on the floors. Especially on the walls. That ain’t poetry. It’s an observation. Anyone can see. The rats drink the blood off the floor. Their blood exposed to the air. Makes people sick. It doesn’t make me sick. I’m the unkillable. I don’t get sick. Twenty days in the hole I licked the floor to see if I could maybe catch a little dying. Not even a fever. That’s when I knew what I was. That I was meant to be forever. I am Job. No. Job pities me. I live beneath the fist of God. I’ve had my eyes taken from me twenty-three hours a day. The one hour I’m out the hole is the worst of them all. I spend the fifty-nine minutes afraid to go back in.

—

He came at me with the sharp end of toothbrush he’d worked to a shiv. He ran but I saw him. I see things sometimes. I’ve had plenty sharp things rushed at me. He came at me out near C-showers. A bald little man from down here. He was country like most of these guys. I’m not from down here. I don’t speak slow or in roundabouts. I speak in silence. And with knuckle on bone on flesh on your muthafucking face. That’s the only way out here. That’s why he attacked. ’Cause I ain’t lost one yet. To prove he was somebody he thought he’d try the quiet Yankee who ain’t to be fucked with. Then the shank in his hand dropped when his wrist popped. Then that sharp tooth of a toothbrush was in his eye, and his eye and his neck and his neck. Then I spat on him and took a deep breath. Then I spat on him again and felt bad for it ’cause the part of him that had tried me was already sailing over my head. I sat easy so they wouldn’t beat on me too bad before they sent me to the hole. They beat me bad. The last days before I died again the only thing I could see was the swell of my own face.

Then they threw me in.

Don’t ever count. But you have to count. Nothing lasts in the hole. In the hell. But to pass the time before whatever is next I lick the floor and taste my own sweat. This body can’t be killed. This body is stronger than it was before. I press the earth down every morning. I press it down first two hundred times. Now I press it down more times than I can count. I can’t do many numbers anymore. I count to twenty-four and it’s hard for me to remember what comes next. So I start again at one. Do it again and again. Do it again and again. It’s hard for me to think of words that start with the letter J; you never know what will leave first. “Justice.” I’m still here. “Jelly.”

“Got any plans for today, Craft?” Lawrence says four times a week. He laughs and bangs his club against the iron door.

“Same old same old,” I’ll say. I’ll laugh.

“Don’t fucking laugh at me,” Lawrence’ll say.

Jungle.

This is what I do when I don’t use my legs and arms to push my body up and down. I trace letters into the wall, and I imagine they glow in the dark against the nothing I see. I trace a letter with my finger. With my finger I can feel the rippling of poor paint against hard concrete. A paint that serves nothing. It is dark in my isolation. The hole is without light. I don’t have eyes for twenty-three hours a day. That other hour, it is something I can’t understand or know or tell you about. I eat a meal outside and my body shakes. But I trace the wall and my finger can make the wall glow. I draw a letter, then I draw a picture with my finger, and I might use only things that begin with the letter I’ve branded into the wall with my light. My index finger on my right hand and my pinky finger on my left hand can make the light on the walls. I went to hell and became an artist. That’s what I do. I punch the air and the walls and push the earth down and my body up and feel the heat in my chest and breathe through my nose and out through my mouth and feel my body gathering. Gathering. Jump. Gathering the hell around me so that when they get me out of this I’ll be not only an artist but a grim, great demon. They think I don’t know what’s happening. I know better than them. Simon J. Craft. I’m still here. I won’t be later. I know that. They think I don’t.

“Ey, Craft,” Lawrence says from the other side of my door.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a disgusting motherfucker. You know that.”

“I’ve heard before.”

“You’re lucky you’re in here. You know that, right? Out there they’d tear you apart. Fucking rapist bitch.”

“I been out there. My parts on me still.”

“We’ll see,” Lawrence says.

“I guess.”

He laughs a little. This was the time I thought there was nothing to lose. There is always, always a bottom you can’t imagine. I didn’t know that then.

Then one day he asked: “You know about the Influence Rods?” And from there hell erupted and I saw its true face.

*1 Solitary confinement has been consistently found, nationally and internationally, to induce anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, depression, panic attacks, memory loss, and other cognitive defects.

*2 18 U.S. Code § 2340A—Torture

(a) Offense.—

Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

(b) Jurisdiction.—There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—

(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or

(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

(c) Conspiracy.—

A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

18 U.S. Code § 2340A—Definitions

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.