Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

There isn’t a lot I can do in my cell, but I do have options. I can sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall, or I can stare at the toilet, or I can sit on the toilet and stare at the bed. It’s been a painful twelve months. There’s the occasional interview from the psychiatrist, but after this morning’s performance I think those might be over. My mom has come to see me twice a week every week. Monday and Thursdays. For the most part it looks like prison is all about boredom. If I was in general population I’d be less bored, but I’d also be dead. All I have is a couple of books in the corner of my floor and people in cells next to me who can’t go three hours without masturbating loudly. Next door, Santa Suit Kenny is humming “Muff Punching the Queen.” It’s the title track of their first album and the song that made them famous. He’s tapping his foot against the floor. I pick up one of the romance paperbacks and open the covers, and the words blend into one and hold no attraction for me whatsoever. I keep thinking I ought to write my own book. Teach some people the truth about romance. But that’s a stupid idea. Nobody would read it. But maybe they would read anything written by the Christchurch Carver. Maybe I should write a book on how I would have done the things they are saying I did, if I could remember doing them. Of course, if that were true, and I really couldn’t remember any of it, it would really just make it a book full of blank pages. I remember every detail, every woman, every word spoken. I think about them a lot. It’s the memories you have that stop you wrapping a sheet around your throat and hanging from the end of the bed.

I throw the romance paperback back down in the corner. It makes no sense I’m still in here. I am better than this. Smarter. It makes no sense I couldn’t talk my way out of this when Schroder and his henchmen came for me. I can’t imagine spending twenty years in here. I’m only weeks away from becoming the same amount of crazy I’ve been pretending to be over the last few years.

Most of all, I can’t stop thinking about the stupid test.

It should have been so obvious. I missed the point completely. Is it possible I’m not as smart as Barlow told me I wasn’t?

Santa Kenny goes quiet, and I’m pretty sure I know what he’s doing. Small Dick-or Little D as he’s called around here-has struck up a conversation with the guy in the cell next to him. It’s a shit conversation because they’re talking about the weather. They have no idea what it’s like outside because there’s no view. But they talk about the weather a lot, those two. I’d have thought they’d talk more about what they had in common-the reasons they are in here-but it turns out they don’t talk about that much at all. It’s like the memories are too exciting for them. They are pure adrenaline. It’s like if they touch on those experiences they’re going to start climbing the walls.

The sound of a door opening further up the corridor makes everybody in the block go quiet. There are footsteps down the corridor and voices outside, then the footsteps stop a few cells down from mine. I peek out the slot in the door, sure others in here are doing the same. There are three people standing out there. I recognize two of them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the two guards says, a guy by the name of Adam. “Let’s have a warm round of applause for the return of one of your favorite cellmates,” Adam says. “He’s come back to us after fifteen years in jail, six weeks on the outside, and the last three weeks in suicide watch. You know him, you love him, the one, the only, Mr. Caleb Cole.”

Nobody claps. Nobody makes a sound. None of us know him personally. None of us care. Caleb Cole wasn’t in our cellblock. We’ve seen him on the news, but really, who gives a fuck?

“Come on, ladies, that’s no way to treat a friend. Caleb will be joining your group because he’s no longer fit to be placed into general population. He has. . what’s the word we keep hearing? That’s right-he has issues. So what do you say, Caleb, don’t be shy, you have a word for your new roommates? Want to share some of your issues with them?”

If Caleb does have a word for us, he keeps it to himself. I remember twelve months ago being given the same treatment. Two guards escorting me down here and introducing me to what, they said, was my new family. I remember the absolute fear as few people clapped, and I got a few wolf whistles too, which, thank God, never led anywhere, and when asked to say a word I had the same response as Caleb. I’ve seen this a few times now, and nobody ever says anything. Back when I was first brought in, I didn’t know how I was going to make it through that night, let alone the months before the trial began. I mentally committed suicide about a hundred times, my mind drifting down those paths and visualizing the outcome, every time realizing nobody would really care. Maybe Melissa.

Deciding there’s no more fun to be had at Caleb’s expense, they carry on, a cell door is opened further down from me and out of my line of sight. Thirty seconds later it’s closed, this time no doubt with Caleb on the inside. Caleb Cole is a killer. He was in jail for killing, he was released, and then he killed some more. Some people just have it in them. Some people say a serial killer can’t change their spots.

The same guards who escorted Caleb to his cell now come to my cell and the door opens up. It means they’re going to take me somewhere, and I figure somewhere has to be a lot more interesting than here. They come into my cell.

Adam looks like one of those guys who spends two hours a day in the gym and two hours in the evening in front of a mirror watching his hard work pay off. The other guard, Glen, looks like he’s probably right there alongside Adam the entire time. I bet they get together once or twice a week to fuck each other senseless and talk about how much they hate gay guys. Adam stands in front of me, muscles bulging at his uniform, the kind of muscles that a blunt screwdriver could bounce off. Some of the guys in here have found religion since being locked behind bars. They say Jesus will provide. I look around, but Jesus doesn’t provide me with a sharp screwdriver. All He’s giving me are the same two assholes who have used those muscles He provided them to push me around almost every day since being here. Into walls. Into the floor. Into doors.

“Let’s go,” Adam says.

“Where am I going?”

He shakes his head. He looks angry. Maybe the bench press is broken. “Un-fucking believable,” he says, “but you’re going home, Joe.”

My heart skips a couple of beats and I develop some kind of tunnel vision, where the walls disappear and all I can see is Adam as he’s talking to me. But that’s not all I can see-I can see myself walk through the door of my apartment and lie down on my own bed. I see women in my future. I see other dead people too-like Adam, like Barlow, like Glen. I can’t talk. My mouth hangs open and my eyes stretch wide and I can feel a goofy smile forming and I just. Can’t. Talk.

“The charges have all been dropped,” Glen says, and his face is scrunched up like he’s been sucking on a bad piece of fruit. Or on a good piece of Adam.

“Some stupid fucking technicality,” Adam adds.

I still can’t talk. All I can do is smile.

“Let’s go,” Adam says, and he almost spits the words at me and, just like that, my prison experience is over.

The days are getting shorter. Colder. Most days the forecast says tomorrow is going to snow yet it doesn’t get there, and Schroder is never sure whether to blame the weatherman or Mother Nature. Last year had a summer that felt like it wasn’t going to end, with warm days late into May. This summer was on the same track until a few weeks ago. Earlier in the year a heat wave scorched the city and took lives. In this weather it’s hard to remember those times. The good thing about the cold is that it keeps the loonies inside because it’s too miserable to be outside mugging people. Crime always has a way of being scaled back in the winter. People at work are leaving houses that feel like refrigerators and nobody really wants to break into those. So it’s a good time of the year to be a cop. Only Carl Schroder isn’t a cop anymore. Hasn’t been for over three weeks, since the night he killed that woman and his rank-along with his gun and badge and all the shitty benefits that came along with it, including the shitty pay-was taken away.