First message
I’m on my bed with a book open across my knees, legs crossed. Jules got shipped upstate last week, so the place has been mine. Quiet, mostly— makes the nightmares louder, but I’ll take it over eight men breathing in one cell like the first pen I landed in. This joint’s lower security. Practically a resort by comparison. My lawyer burned favors getting me here.
Monday is always meatloaf day. My stomach’s already thinking about it. It’s still Georgia prison slop, but it beats the watery gray beans, and one guy here will trade his tray for two ramen every single week. I never go to sleep hungry on Mondays.
I’m expecting an easy day. Book, chow, silence.
Then CO Jackson rolls the door open and shoves a guy inside.
Barely twenty-one if I had to guess. Hands shaking around his intake bag. He’s got that look—scared outta his mind.
With that kinda face? Can’t say I blame him.
I mark my page and set the book aside, watching him while he asks Jackson something under his breath. Jackson’s already halfway out. The door slams. Metal echoes. Then it’s just the two of us.
The man freezes there a second like he forgot how to move.
Finally he glances over and quietly asks: What’re you reading?
Invitation to a Beheading. Nabokov. I grunt back with a nod. Name’s Deck.
I study him a second longer. Not kindly. Not unkindly.
You a fish, I say, or you been down before?
I don’t blink yet. I’m sizing him up. This is my cell—he’s just living in it now.
What’d you catch, huh?