CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 5

INITIATION

Almost three weeks later I woke up from a coma with a belly full of stiches and tubes coming out of every orifice of my body.   Apparently, the black blur I noticed just before I was about to send the front of my attackers face to the back of his skull, was a detention officer who saw it fit to smack me over the head with a baton.  I would later come to find out that six men died in the riot. In all the chaos, nobody could prove who was killed by whom, and I found myself getting off scot-free over the death of the big nigger.

All the while, I knew nothing of my other attackers’ fate.  I wasn’t sure if he had been a part of the six that died, or if he would be waiting for me to return to the yard.  I spent one more week in the hospital recovering, and then by my own two feet, returned to my cell.  That night a storm came down on the prison so hard that it could be heard through the three foot thick, reinforced walls.

Aside from the rain and thunder, the block was spooky quite that night.  No inmates yelling out or singing as they usually do.  The storm seemed to have us all in its spell.  The power had been going off and on between flashes of lightning, leaving only the emergency flood lights to guide the guards as they walked their rounds.  Every thirty minutes or so, I would be blinded by a bright flashlight in my eyes.  “Look alive inmate”.

The guards went on high alert once the power fully went out, making cell visits every fifteen minutes to be sure that no inmates were going with it.  Usually around this time, I would be reading, but it was too dark to see, and my head was still fogy from all the morphine they had me on.  I was lying on my bunk, about to doze off, when I felt something wet hit my lips.

I thought maybe there was somehow a leak letting the storm in.  I flipped myself to the other end of my bunk and tried to settle.  No sooner then I closed my eyes; another drop fell to my face.  I tried to focus my attention to the ceiling, but could only see murky darkness.  In fact, the room seemed darker then it was before I changed position.  It was then, within a silhouette back lit by a flash of lightning, I realized a man was standing over me.

With a genuine moan of terror, I rolled off the bunk, landing face down at the shadows feet.  The floor was wet.  I could then smell and taste that I was soaking in a puddle of blood.  From the back of my collar I felt a tight grip as I was pulled to my feet with ease.  I could hear the man gargle and gasp for air while droplets of blood splashed from his face to mine. 

His eyes were solid white, as if rolled back in his head. They were all I could see in my panic, until just then, the power kicked back on.  Complete terror left me paralyzed in the realization that I was now in the strong dead hands of the big nigger that I killed in the yard.  Leaving his vestigial mouth slacked wide open with his tongue hanging out, his skin was purple and his movements were stiff.  He pushed me up against the wall of my cell and brought his throat towards my face.  I could hear a hissing coming from the gash I put in it almost a month back.

Then, a bulge took form in his neck. I am certain that I heard his spine breaking, when to my complete horror; I saw fingers coming out from the gash.  A white man’s fingers, with the letters H-A-T-E tattooed across the knuckles.  The hand cracked and ripped itself further out his throat, clawing at my face as his head fell back and limp with the severing of his spine.  The hand curled into a fist and started to force its way into my mouth.

I tried to bite it, but opening my mouth only made it easier for it to jerk its way in. In a violent contortion, I could feel my jaw dislocate as the fist lodged itself deep passed my gag reflex.  I began to vomit over and over, but nothing could escape my blocked passageway.  By the time the arm was elbow deep into me, I finally succumbed to asphyxiation, or at least I think.

When I came to, I was back in my bunk.  The power was out again, and there was no sign of the black Frankenstein monster.  No puddles of blood or scratches on my face.  I figured it to be a bad dream.  I sat up to try and shake the nightmare from my thoughts when something peculiar caught my attention.  The bars to my cell gate were wide open.

The storm was raging on outside and the block was still quite. Not knowing what to do, I just sat and listened for the footsteps of a guard.  I thought, surly they must have just opened the gate and are coming in to check on me or something.  I waited. Moments passed and I heard no footsteps or any sounds other than the rain and thunder. 

I started to wonder if it was some sort set up.  Maybe the guards wanted me to try and escape so they could have the pleasure of beating the shit out of me. Maybe an inmate paid them off to leave my cell open so they could sneak in and kill me in my sleep.  Perhaps my attacker from the yard would be stepping in at any minute to finish the job. I decided to get up and try to shut the gate myself.  If it was a trick, I didn’t want to fall for it.

I pulled on the bars but they wouldn’t budge. Slightly hesitant, I poked my head outside the gate and looked down the block for a guard.  I half expected to get my skull wacked, but there was nobody.  I took one step out and my foot glided on something slick.  I caught myself on the bars of my cell and looked down to see a red arrow made in blood.  It was obvious to me then that my gate was intentionally left open.  Somebody set this up and they wanted me to know which way to go upon leaving my cell.  Not knowing what to do, I decided that if it was a trick, if somebody meant me harm, then odds are they would have just killed me in my sleep. 

I decided to follow the arrow, but not before putting a bar of soap in a sock to use as a weapon.  I stepped out of my cell and proceeded in the direction clearly marked for me.  I made sure to check each cell that I came upon, not passing until I was positive they were securely shut.  By the third cell I passed, I came upon a black inmate who was standing at the bars of his gate.  His eyes were wide open and he was shaking in a feverish sweet. He was as pale as a black man can get.

He didn’t speak out to me, nor did I to him.  He just followed me with his big white eyes as I carefully passed.  I got to the end of the block where another blood arrow was placed pointing down the stairs. I followed the steps down, with each step, losing my fear.  I started to feel almost angry.  I didn’t like the fact that somebody was fucking with me, friend or foe.

Every gate that I came to that should have been locked wasn’t. I eventually came across another blood arrow that led into the folding room. It’s a big square room with rows of tables and rolling hampers for folding laundry.  The room was almost completely black except for the beam of an emergency light casting to the center of the room.  Tied to a chair in the spot light, a black man was hunched over with a pointed white hood like that of a Klansman over his face.  It was clear to see by his clothing that he was an inmate.  The hood had spots of red and there was a large bloody swastika painted on the floor beneath him. 

I cautiously approached him to find that just a few feet from the swastika was a baseball bat, also spattered in blood.  I picked the bat up and dropped my soap mace.  Looking it over I found a note pined by a single nail to the fat end. It read “Finish the Job”.  Right then I knew who was under the white hood.  This wasn’t a trick, it was a test.

I pulled the hood off and sure enough I was right.  It was the nigger that shanked me in the yard.  His face was swollen, but I could tell it was him.  The poor boy had been beaten black on top of black and left for me.  In that moment, I no longer felt angry towards him.  I felt bad.  I wanted to run out of the room and back to my cell, but I knew that the note was not a request. It was a demand. 

This was my only chance to pay back the Nazis that helped me in the riot, and I knew that if I didn’t, they would collect on my debt.  It was me or him. The poor boy tried to mutter something, but I refused to listen.  I’m sure he was begging me not to kill him, but I didn’t want to hear it.  I didn’t want his cries to strike a chord of empathy.  I took the bat and as hard as I could, hit him across the back of his neck. The blow killed him instantly.

Lightning flashed, filling the dark corners of what I thought to be the empty folding room with men, all in white pointed hoods.  They had watched the whole thing.  One of them stepped forward into the beam of the emergency light and with what sounded like a German accent he said, “Your initiation is complete. You may go back to your cell.”

Without a word, I put the bat down and walked out of the room. Back in my cell I was overcome with guilt.  Not with the guilt of killing, but the guilt of now belonging to something, something evil. My hands were shaking and soaked in blood so I ran them under the sink in my cell. Washing the blood clean, I fell faint upon discovering something on my right hand that I am positive was not there before.  Black across my knuckles was the letters H-A-T-E.

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 4

ANIMALS

Your most important action when faced with an attack by a predator, your best chance at survival, is your first reaction.  In the survival of the fittest, we call this “Fight or Flight”.  It’s a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, priming your body with the needed blood and oxygen to face combat or flee, while systematically shutting down any bodily functions unnecessary to your immediate survival. All creatures, beast and man, and beast of men, are wired with this survival behavior. 

To me, it is proof of our place in the animal kingdom.  Humanity is not a special entity that walks on higher planes of existence, an exception to the laws of nature, or beyond the struggle of all Earths species. I don’t give a fuck what you might believe; we are not gods or righteous souls beyond the killing grounds of beast. We flinch like beast, therefore we are beast.

Our brains, politics, and religions, make us no exception to the rule.  A grizzly bear will care nothing of your moral fiber or your state of the art frontal lobes, and most likely will believe itself to be god, as it eats the salty fat from your thighs.  If you think yourself to be the center of the universe, Gods greatest creation, and then a shark eats you, is the shark then the center of the universe?

 The reaction is inevitable. Even no reaction is a reaction. It is how we react when the switch is flipped and the warning lights come on, that will determine if we live or die.  Though, my reaction wasn’t the only one that saved my life that day in the yard. Equal credit is due to my assailants for their non-reactions.  Extremely violent and without hesitation, my military training kicked in, guiding my instincts and giving me full control of my situation.

Had my reaction been to run the second I was free from that big bastards arms, the whole yard would have seen it as an act of cowardice.  It would be better to just let them kill me then run.  Had I froze like a deer in the headlights, well, at least I would have had a much shorter sentence. Thankfully, to my advantage, the blacks were so sure of their attack that they did not prepare themselves for the possibility of biting off more than they could chew. 

Once free from that python like grip that acted as a tourniquet around my upper waist, I felt a rush of internal blood come up my chest and into my mouth.  Standing to my feet, I spit the blood directly into the eyes of the punk who had shanked me.  I reached my hands to my stomach to see if my guts where hanging out. They were. What appeared to be a rope of intestine and muscle was slowly bulging from my left side.  

It wasn’t too much that I couldn’t shove it back. Never taking my eyes off the big nigger, I tucked my guts back into my belly and in the process found something hard sticking out of my right side. I knew it wasn’t a broken rib and could tell by the touch that it was foreign to my body.  With a quick jerk, I was happy to see that I was now in possession of the Styrofoam shank.

Resisting the pull of gravity on my internals with my left hand, with my right, I made quick to put the shank into the throat of the big nigger. An approach of killing that I was accustomed to and would happen as if by second nature.  He did nothing to stop me.  He froze in fear and just stood there.  A Goliath of a man, fully capable of stomping me into the fucking dirt, just stood there and let me rip his throat out.  No reaction is a reaction, in this case, the wrong reaction.

His mass shook the yard as it hit the grass with a full dead weight.  I turned to face off with the smaller bitch that stabbed me, only to find an all-out race war. Animals.  Blacks and whites, painting the yard in liquid red, altogether in a violent ballet of hate.  For reasons unknown to me at the time, the skins had come to my defense, but I couldn’t just fall back and let them fight for me. I had to earn my own.   

I knew I had to find the nigger that stabbed me and at least put some marks in him. Killing just the one who held me wasn’t going to be enough.  This place is eye for an eye, and I most likely wouldn’t have the opportunity of a later setting or situation to get him.  In the chaos, all the while losing pools of blood, I found myself disorientated, slashing at the air.  Then, my knees buckled to the ground, my consciousness coming in and out as I came to the realization that I was somehow in a death roll with my original assailant.

He pinned me with my back to the ground, which was fine by me. The shift of gravity freed my left arm from the duties of keeping my spaghetti organs from spewing out.  I lost the shank in the tackle and was now doing my best to avoid the large chunk of concrete that he was trying to put into my skull.  BANG!  A burst of bright light.   Flash grenades and tear gas canisters.  

I gouged my fingers into his eyes.  Moving with haste in our direction, I saw a black blur in my peripheral. It only had my attention for fraction of a moment, just enough of a distraction to allow for the concrete block to knock two of my front teeth through my bottom lip.  The impact sent a jolt of electric rage into my blood.  Cashing in the last of my adrenaline, I flipped the nigger to his back and used my forehead to jack hammer his nose into his brain.

Everything in me was dying. I had lost a lot of blood and my body was essentially suffocating due to lack of oxygen.  I picked up the piece of concrete and raised it high up over my head.  The black blur was now at my side.  BANG! A sharp pain in the back of my neck.  A grenade?  Not this time.  Everything went black …

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 3

SEGREGATIONS

“Mr. Blake, we will take your testimony into consideration and have made note of your excellent behavior.  Your cooperation is greatly appreciated and we will make our decision known to you within the next thirty days.  Until then, do you have any last words for the committee?”

“Yes Sir.  Dear Honorable Members of the Parole Board, your time and attention is truly appreciated.  I can assure you that if you should grant my parole, that I will dedicate the rest of my life to repaying my debts to society.  I know that I can never take back what I did, but with your decision, maybe I can contribute to something new, something good.  Thank you.”

“This concludes our Parole Hearing of Walter Blake, inmate number 0032186.  We will now take a lunch break and meet back here in one hour.”

****

What’s an hour?  By the time these goons get back from their lunch, I will have lived hours within their hour. Time is all I have now, so much time that I find time within time.  I can count seconds within a second and live days within a day.  Paradoxically, I can sleep for minutes and weeks pass just the same. With no clear direction, for all I know, thirty days from now might actually be yesterday.  For me, time is an hourglass of sand in the temper tantrum hands of a screaming toddler.

This is my third time up for parole, and I can honestly say, I would take death by electrocution over having to go into that room of dodos one more time.  They make me feel like a god damn dog getting its nose rubbed in the heaping shit it just took on their white carpet.  Every time they rub my nose in shit and then send me back to my kennel.  My freedom is in their hands now. Come to think of it, it’s always been. 

I’m not the only one. It’s all of us. They’ve got you all on leashes of various lengths and degrees of slack, and believe you me; the second one of you even thinks about shitting on their white carpet, it’s off to the dog pound.  They’ll stick you in a kennel and rub your nose in shit until you learn to do their tricks or die. The part that fucking gets me the most is that we willingly pay taxes to build our own kennels, under the delusion that they are only for the strays.  

Anyway, now that I’ve rolled around in my analogy a bit, let me get back to the dickheads that got me started on all of this; the assholes that wouldn’t last one day in this hell. The dickheads and assholes that can go get fucked!

 I imagine that right about now they are out to lunch, stuffing their stupid fat faces with pastrami, chips, and diet coke. This is sure to be followed by a circle jerk up and down the chain of command, until it’s time to clock out and go home. Upon arriving to their caves, they will slap the days bacon down on the table, strip out of their hunting attire, and slip into their vices.  After a meal of two parts meatloaf, six parts beer, they will then fuck, beat, or ignore their wives and children, all to the anthem of Monday Night Football.  Off to bed.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

 It is only my instinctive urge to survive and copulate that brings me to whimper and beg to such cowardly men.  Men with so much freedom, if it were cash, they would wipe their asses with it.  Freedom that I protected under fire and blood, flushed away in the afterthoughts of the spoiled and mundane.  Though I must beg to these bastards, my dignity remains intact under the pathetic façade, knowing at least that my freedom and incarceration were well earned. 

Obviously my freedom prior to my crime was earned during my time in the war, but my incarceration, not so easily.  It’s not what I did that put me into prison, but what I did to survive once I was behind bars, that earned my place in the house of pain.  Thinking back now, I choke on the irony of it all.  I went from being a professional killer of Nazi scum, to eventually being surrounded and under the protection of a growing neo-Nazi movement. 

Once the late 60’s rolled around, it was almost impossible to be white and not a skinhead in the federal prisons of America.  Believe me, I held out as long as I could.  There was no race or group that I hated more than Nazis, especially American Nazis.  I tried to go under the radar and avoid any affiliation with the skinheads, but it was the niggers that eventually forced me out of hiding and in search of security.  Trust me, if the blacks would have accepted me, or even just let me be, I’d probably still be killing Nazis to this day. 

**** 

If you take a Styrofoam cup and place it over burning toilet paper, it will melt into a cone.  If you keep melting more Styrofoam and adding it, it will strengthen your cone.  If you then grind and file that cone into a sharp point, you will have yourself a proficient tool for stabbing the shit out of somebody. This is how the nigger that tried to kill me made his shank.   

I was doing pull ups on the bars in the yard when from behind, my weight was lifted by two big black arms.  A big nigger had me by the waist, then another that had his pants down like a punk, rushed me from the front and proceeded to batter my guts like bread.  My blood soaked abdomen provided just enough lubrication to slip like a fish from the big niggers arms. What I did next, would be my defining moment in prison as a mean mother fucker. 

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 2

                                                

                 VICTIMS AND CASUALTIES

 “He did it in cold blood.”  As if to say that I was as mindless as a reptile, only acting on some monster like instinct.  Another example of delicate language, in this case, designed to convey that my actions were subhuman, or at least beyond the rational, warm blooded virtues of modern men.  This label only works for killers of victims, of course. Killers of casualties are to be filed under a different label, laminated with a moral acceptance, but only if the killing is done in the service of god and country.  

During my shell shock vacation in France, I was a maker of casualties.  I had a knack for turning blonde haired, blue eyed German boys into hamburger for the worms.  I once kicked open a latrine door to find a pretty Nazi taking a shit for Hitler. He put one hand out while covering his small fascist dick with the other.  “Nein, nein, ne…”  I wiped his ass with lead and thought nothing of the fact that he was armed with only a roll of toilet paper. 

Turns out he was an SS Sniper with enough kills to open a small American graveyard in Normandy.  I think about the endless hours he must have spent, perched in a bell tower, or concealed on the balcony of some French bakery.  Never moving, never giving up his position, even if it meant defecating in his uniform and lying with the mess for a week.  I don’t know how or why he left himself so exposed and defenseless that day, but the outcome would result in two makers of casualties, one dead on the shitter, the other with a medal from Uncle Sam. 

The only thing that made us any different was the symbols on our sleeves.  His just happened to be the one that meant, “Kill this mother fucker!”  Then again, mine probably meant the same to him.  It was his symbol that made killing so easy for me.  What it stood for, all that it represented.  I figured that any man that would bare a fucking swastika must be a supporter of genocide and a breeder of hate.  

It was this very symbol, the banner of all my war casualties, which would bring me to take my first victim.  It happened almost thirteen years after the war ended. Enough time to make the thought of killing a man seem hard again. Then, with the simple act of unveiling a greenish black tattoo from behind a red paisley bandanna, I saw “Kill this mother fucker!”  A fist sized swastika across his Adams apple, might as well have been a target that read “Stab here.”  

He didn’t know it at the time, but he had just made himself as assailable as an unarmed Nazi taking a shit behind allied lines.  There are days when I feel bad about the men I killed in war, but not even one second of carving new breathing holes for that jackass brings me any sorrow or guilt. I don’t know how I know this, but the bastard deserved every second of it and I don’t regret turning him into a victim.  If only I would have realized that by sentencing him to death, I would be sentencing myself to something much worse.

****

With the judgments of man, Hell is sure to follow.