No Apologies

Big Devil's dream bellowed through the whole cell like a runaway train and Jon found that he could not sleep. The snoring came in waves, flowing to and fro like a tide of some city wrecking storm. Hooting and howling from the inmates had died down for the night. The whole tier had gone to rest. Everyone at Rikers had valued the time sleep could cut off from their incarceration period. It was a happy coma. He wanted that. Jon laid there on his bed staring up at the same olive dab ceiling he had since the afternoon. A ray of light pierced through the small barred window hung close to the ceiling. Silently Jon stared at them next: the searchlights belonging to the jail's watch towers. "Almost a year." Jon said watching has they the ray came and left, again and again, bright enough to led up the whole cell with every pass. Gray cement walls surrounded him, staring down like ugly towering giants. Industrial style luminescent lamps cast long dark shadows from the cold steel bars that blocked salvation.

Freedom.

Freedom was just another word, Jon thought. Just another seven letter word like snoring, or robbery, or promise. What was a prison? A jail? A gulag? They were just a heavy box to keep the animals separate from human beings. To keep the monsters away from the good things, the wolves away from the sheep. Laying there Jon wondered what a monster would look like. He had seen monsters in his life, monsters with golden hair and icy gray eyes, monsters with white skin, black skin, monsters short and tall. Was he a monster? Jon wished he had a mirror to look at himself but in here, even that was impossible.

The light came and went, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. Even the simple "freedom" of a mirror was not to be found within here. If inmates could melt down toothbrushes and shampoo bottles into knives, there was nothing they couldn't do. "How do I look like?" Jon imagined himself an old man but he couldn't. The image would not form in his mind; a fog covered his face, a fog so deep and dense a chainsaw could not get through. He could not see the wise facial hair he would grow, or the wrinkles that would form on his forehead. He tried but he couldn't. A smirk cracked on his lips, "You won't live that long." Jon knew he wouldn't. He wasn't made to live that long. "22 years ago." he thought, "You were born."

"There wont be a 22 years later."

In prison they played with space. They had grand fields of dirt and gravel; so wide and vast you could build two, or three football fields on them. Yet you were only allowed to run around in small pockets they fenced off with barbwire. Food trays would be platters the size fit for Kings, yet they only gave you such meager amounts of food, as if reminding you the emptiness that was there. The emptiness inside. The opposite was true also, sometimes the trays would be so small yet they crammed it full with the most repulsive food you ever had; where taste and favor didn't exist, and the only qualification for it being food was that it was edible. It was the constant reminder of all the shit they can make you take in here. The shit they knew you would take. Angry violent men, unfit to function in the presences of others were jammed together in cages; society then wonders why prison is so bad. Why such evil could come out of here.

The light came and went, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. Jon felt his stomach twist like someone was making rope out of his gut. "Ignore it." And so he did. Jon had refused eating anything the whole day, much to B.D's delight. "You don't want that? Give that over here." the man said reaching over for Jon's dinner. Jon gave him it. To someone like Big Devil, life in prison was something that he could accept. Something that was better then life free in the outside. You will have people like that here; people content to give their freedom away for security, stability; a hard foundation that would not crumble or wither to stand upon, a sense of something constant to save them from the chaos and uncertainty of their very existence. "I can breath in here." Big Devil said to Jon randomly one day, staring beyond to a far way section of the yard through a fence. Jon did not know why B.D. told him that. Maybe it was some vain attempt at friendship, Jon thought then. He kicked his feet back and crossed his arms. It didn't matter now. Big Devil was going to spend his life in prison while he was getting out. That was all that mattered.

But to where? That was an easy question to ask, harder one to answer.

Day after day Jon and others would get up and go through the mundane routine of daily prison life: rising up to blurring alarms and the shouting of orders, the shackling of metal doors sliding open, the same twisting of heads side to side noting who was to your left and to your right. That was the problem with prison, there was no soul. A man can't live without a soul. Out in the yards you tossed the same ball to the same inmates. You had to cause others might kill you for some unknown trivial beef you had no knowledge of. The showers were automated, with one setting for temperature and no on or off switch. You left through the same entrance and exit, had the same crappy food again and again. Simple freedoms like waking up at night and walking ten twenty feet to your bathroom were taken from you. Rikers had removed the whole bathroom system of C.P.R.U. after inmates had used it to pass messages back and forth for some prison break a couple of years ago. Taking a piss in prison became a luxury. Going from place to place without some door closed, some lock locked, some man staring, some camera recording, was also a luxury. His finger's twitched.

The light came and went, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. Jon kicked his bed sheets aside and stood up. He bounced on the heels of his shoes several times, trying to get the familiar feeling of standing up back into him. The tier was fairly dark, the lamps illuminating the area hung far too high to light up everything. They won't see me. He looked at the wall, and the window that hung above it at the top. Backing off far has he could Jon stared at it. The thing had hung about thirteen feet off the ground, taller then any basketball player on earth. Jon's legs rushed at it. He jumped. His hands reached out and clawed for the bars. His finger tips felt the smooth surface, printless, and untouched.

The wall slammed him back down.

Jon landed, his back taking most of the impact on cement. He pulled himself up, dirt clinging to his puke green prison suit. More force on the jump. He went back to his the spot again and loosen his muscles. The watch lights rotated the room in light and left it in darkness. Jon rushed. He felt a sudden explosion of speed leave his legs and propelled him forward. He kicked at the wall, hard. Reaching. Reaching. Reaching.

And the wall slammed him back down again. The fall was heavy, the floor hard, sharp and cold, ripping off the skin of his elbows has he landed. Jon vaulted back up. And did it again. Once, twice, thrice, four, five, six, seven. The wall slammed him down. Again. Again. Again. His eyes stared at his bed sheets, and he shook his head. He got up, backed up and ran. The view came to him. The watch lights were blinding has it rotated, the moon white and ghastly. His body sank, gravity yanking him down. The back of Jon's head slammed down on the floor. The world spun, his brain crashed into the back of his skull. Jon pulled himself up, his head pummeling, wailing wildly at the floor. Blood marked the places were his knuckles at contacted the other times he had jumped, looking like some prison form of finger paint.

The light came and went, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. Jon got back to the starting place, his back hunched over in pain. His prison suit had changed to the same color has dirt and dust. Flexing his fingers became hard has the numbness grew too strong. His elbows burned; the skin ripped and strung horribly even from the mere touch of a cold breeze. Jon straighten up his back. He shook his hands trying to shake the numbness from them. Ignoring the stringing he pumped his legs forward. Sprinting, the wall rush towards him. Jump! He kicked and kicked, his legs pumping the heels of his shoes scrapping the wall ferociously. Arms lunging they felt the cool surface of the bars; the thin layer of rust that grew upon it, the small bit of moss growing where the bar connected to the window. Acid ate at his muscles has he struggled to lift his weight up half his height. A sharp grunt left Jon's lips has he pulled. His hands felt like they were squeezing into barbwire razors, the numbness deforming into pain, pain which tore down the length of his arms into his shoulders and chest. Blood made them slippery and his fingers struggled to grasp shut. The clearing was no more the size of a medium shoe box. When Jon lifted his face to it he felt something hit him.

Air.

Air flushed into his lungs, surging through his entire being. Jon's eyes widen and he sucked in the fresh breeze. City lights gleamed like stars in the distance, fires of yellow, red and blue on the tops of steel candles; the sky painted in a velvet dark purple with a dome of orange and red hanging over the city skyline. Jon gritted his teeth, kicking his feet to get better leverage. His arms hooked on to the bars and he smiled like an idiot. This is outside air. he said to himself drawing in deep breathes. In truth Jon didn't remember what outside air anymore. What free air was. Jon reached out and grabbed. He grabbed at air. It slipped through the gaps in his fingers. Angrily Jon swiped at it again, and the same it escaped him. That flew him into fury. Jon didn't know why but it did.

The light came and went, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. It hit his face blinding and pure, as if his eyes were staring at the presences of God. Jon shot his hand out and gestured what he thought about it. With one hand, then two. He gestured what he thought about the walls and the food, the guards and this box they forced him in, the concrete dividers and the fenced windows, the locked doors and the tear-proof bedsheets, the cold steel bars and the lost sense of everything. But most of all to the son of a bitch swinging that light across the yard. This is what I think of you. Jon gestured. You. Your prison. Your rules. Your society. And your shit for shit piece of shit flashlight. In his mind he imagined what he must have looked like. It was something like this: the bright beam of light cast dark shadows on his face's features turning him into grotesque, his eyes bulged wanting to burst out of his skull, his teeth grasped in rage more wolfish then human, his gestures loud and bold trusting his arms at the light as if they held pistols aiming to shoot at God.

An hour passed until Jon's muscles finally gave to acid and he came crashing to the ground. The breath in his lungs left him and he sucked in the dense suffocating exhales of four walls. Rikers olive dab ceiling hung above him and so many times Jon wish it just came crashing down on him. Tomorrow. Jon thought, the numbness making his hands unable to clenched into fists. I'll be out of this box.

This box. Two words which brought back to Jon his first few days in Rikers. The infirmary had cleared him to be placed with the regular population after a week treating Jon's injuries. A stab wound from a shank caused Jon to limp for the first month. The long stay in the infirmary was due from a grueling fever he had caught from his wound. Thinking of the fever made Jon dizzy for a moment. Memories returned, of the heat, the dizziness, the puking, the cold chills that twisted in his gut like some living creature swimming inside. Jon shook his head, he knew laying down would be necessary. He crawled himself back, his eyes sneaking a glance at Big Devil. No matter how many times it happened, Jon could never get used to it. The big man was sound asleep, drooling turning his baby blue pillow sheet into botches of dark yellow and brown. Somehow he had gain the gift of easily slipping into that precious coma of sleep. Had he been asleep those first couple of nights?

This box. Jon remembered himself saying. The box they put him in, these four walls that talked to him, I can't breathe in this box. Jon told himself. Every inmate who ever got locked up (whether they deserved it or not) remembers how they spent their first night behind bars. They won't break me. His words came back to him like the lyrics of an old song. Someway I'll get the Hell out of here and see you. And kill you. Jon chuckled imagining his face a year ago. He was still fresh back then, a trout fishing in a sea full of sharks. Jon wanted so bad to go back and spit at himself. But he got the joke now. It took him a year but he did. You were meant to break in here. Your soul, your spirit, whatever you had inside of you was meant to crack and break in here. It was so simple yet it still took him months to get it. A prison, a jail, tons upon tons of rock, and stone, steel and concrete, iron and rubber, plastic and glass, tarmac and hate; an intricate mausoleum devoted to demeaning your existence.

Jon smirked, the first thing he should do is tell them the prison joke. He would begin: A young man walks into prison and yells and rants and screams about how they won't break him. He fights and kicks and wails that they wont break him. They force the man into his box, a box that had his numbers. He stays in it silently like a man. "This is how its supposed to be." he tells himself. The box is hard and cold, has cement and concrete were poor conductors of heat. In his box he only had a bed, which served has his reading table, his work desk, his lunch bench, and his coffin. When he slept on it he felt the weight and frame of a hundreds inmates before him, as well has every single bit they left behind biologically. Either he stood or laid down. The door slams shut, and doesn't open the whole day expect for just two minutes. During those two minutes he rushes at them like a vicious animal, fighting and fighting getting beaten down again and again. He is thrown back in his box. His door locks. It does not open.

The man tells himself he would not break.

He tries to make himself at home, vowing he doesn't need television, music, or human contact. Those were luxuries, and he realized there were other things people outside took for granted. So much for granted they saw them just has much has someone could see air. Things like the chirping of birds, the shape of clouds, the ticking of a clock, the heat of a stove, the smell of grass, the sound of thunder. It then dawns on him that he is here to stay. Not one day or two, but 365 mornings and nights; perhaps maybe even more. But still,

The man tells himself he would not break.

Four solid walls surround him. They are thick and tall, senseless and speechless. He sees them on the first day and they are far away. But everyday they move closer. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. The man feels the air get thicker each moment they do. He tries to ignore them but when he sleeps and wakes: they are there. And they move closer and closer. The man is fed food; food so lifeless and devoid of humanity he rather eat himself. Day to day he was feed this: meat that falls apart like clumps of dirt, vegetables dead before they were gathered, pastry that was so stale they might as well fed him bricks. "A corpse eats better." his cellmate jokes, but yet still eats them. The man stares at his cellmate's eyes and he sees no fire, no spark in them. He saw no other world passed those four walls. He accepted his fate. The man vows not to be like him.

And still he tells himself he would not break.

At night the man is cold and lonely. Winter pours through the bars of his opened window; one he could never shut or cover. His cellmate does not speak, or joke. Instead he huddles himself into a heap and hibernates. The man wills himself not to follow. He could see his breath every waking moment. A fever soon arrives and he collapses. When he wakes his vision is hazy, a bright sphere shines above his face, a featureless shape stares down at him wearing white and green. His ears hear words but they come to them like a subway screeching its brakes. His eyes linger. Was it all over now? His eyes closed and opened. Those four walls stare at him again. The man curses them and his cellmates pretends not to hear. The walls do not respond. They are simply there.

The man feels himself starting to buckle. He tries to make conversation, telling his cellmate he would not break. His cellmate yarns and replies, "Who breaks in prison, man or prison?" Stubbornly the man refuses to answer. But slowly loneliness gets to him. At nights his pillow becomes the frame of his lover, the body of an unattainable offspring, the compassion of a childhood stuff toy. Tears well up in his eyes but he refuses to let even one drop fall.

Still he tells himself he would not break.

They chained his hands; hands meant by nature for caressing a woman, rocking a baby, for raking up leaves, and moving mountains, for waxing a car, and building cathedrals. His playground was a grave, the vast emptiness of it covered in dirt like the death mound of some prehistoric colossus, the prison being the tombstone. The only life was the far away outlines of skeletal trees. Walls were replaced by fences, and the prison turned men into sheep herding them off into groups. Angry sheep in pens turned into savage snarling beasts. Watch towers gazed down at him, a cross hair pointed at him, shaded eyes staring at him. The man could feel their thoughts and emotions from a distance like the a gun pointed to the back of his neck. He wishes to be alone. He returns to his cage. His eyes grew sharp with attention to detail. He notes the wrinkles he made on his sheet waking up. He notices the circle of footprints running in place. He sees the shadow of steel bars. He spots his pillow ripped to shreds. Things do not change. They do not move. His door slams shut. Darkness settles in. The light comes and goes, moving like the blades of a ceiling fan. He stares up at them motionless. A drop falls.

He tells himself he will not break.

The man tries to shift away, look away, turn away, what ever he could do to get away from those walls. His head twists to the left but there is a wall, the right: a wall, straight: a wall, and when he turns behind: dozen of steel bars blocks his path to escape. Steel bars which he saw in the outside world as nothing more then metal sticks piled up in a construction site. They weld those same sticks together and seared them to his door. He is an animal. A monster. A freak of nature. A lion in a circus. A rabid dog readied to be put to sleep. The man found out this was the cruelest door of all. It was not complete, not closed in. Prison would not seal him. "This isn't a tomb!" his cellmate ranted one night. "When I die they will drag me out and put another bastard right in. The moment I hit the floor they get a new guy in here like I never existed." This box wasn't his coffin the man realized. It was meant to be a place he rots in. A place were he watches himself wither away. There will be no memories of him remembered. All the emotions will dissolve away into nothingness. Just another number available again. Then that door will open for more then two minutes. Someone else would be thrown in. It shuts and it begins again. The prisoner dies, but the prison remains.

Through that door the man saw all you ever lost, and all he could ever gain. On the other side he saw free men walking so close to him he could spit at them. They pretend you weren't there; ignoring the anger that boils you over and makes you want to explode. Sometimes they could not be seen but rather heard like their footsteps. Tapping and tapping, they whispered at the walls to pass it on to you. Sounds of steps turned to measurements of freedom: ten paces carried them down three cells, twenty down the whole tier. Thirty paces down the length of a stair case; sixty out a door. The man's ears hunger for music: the jiggling of keys became the chiming of bells, the whistling of guards became the singing of choirs, the slamming of doors turn to the beating of drums.

His only rescue is the happy, all saving, all welcoming coma that people outside called sleep. Her face appears then without fail. Her eyes look like how they always been; big and glossy, the color of cinnamon just like her hair. A smile stretches on her wide lips going from the corners of puffy cheeks across her walnut shaped face. Her skin glows like moonlight, smooth and soft has fine cream. The man shoots up from his coma hoping with all hope to reach her- but her image shatters like glass. The features he loves fall to his feet in shard fragments. She was gone, gone forever, forever lost to him. It is summer. Frigid beads of sweat run down his face and back.

The man begins to break.

One day the man clutches the steels bars and screams so loud his head threatens to split away from his jaw. He bargains with God, with the Devil, with anyone to grant him strength. The man wanted to be a superhero, to break out and fly free. The bars begin to give away. His cellmate's eyes sparkle. The bars bend. Everyone howls. For the first time the man smiles. His world fades to black. When he awakes the bars are there again; stronger, thicker. The man panics and looks to his cellmate for solace but he offers none. The spark is snuffed from his cellmate's eyes. The man howls in pain but they pretend he never did. Their ears hear silence. No one told him that superheroes don't go to prison.

The man begins to suffocate. His lungs suck in the thinning air. The walls close in. Slowly the man grows to hate them. He hammers his fists into them harder every day until finally his knuckles split and paints the walls in blood. His mind is so wild, so desperate, it tells him his flesh can be stone. He claws at cracks with his finger nails wanting to rip it down piece by piece. All he needed was to make a hole. It didn't matter what size, he would force his way through, even if it meant tearing off a limb. Or maybe two. No matter how times he punches, the wall does not bleed. It does not moan or weep, curse or scream. The man destroys his hands for nothing. He begins to feel old, worn out and tired. So tired. He lays on the icy concrete and curls himself to keep warm. Tears rain down his face. The man slips into the happy coma. He sees her again and reaches out. She shatters. The man wakes up. Frigid beads of sweat run down his face and back. It is winter. His cellmates pretends to see nothing. The man pulls himself into a heap and hibernates. He tries to survive off of scraps and garbage and happily calls it food. He grows docile and passive. He does not fight or resist. He just simply accepts. The man breaks. The joke?

He's innocent.

And that's the punchline.