Purge of the Vampires

by Bajaña, Edgar

  Over time, Jesse excelled at his prison job that was made for him.

  In that first year, Jesse used his feelings for James to help him keep the prisoners in line. From time to time, he yelled obscenities at them. He also struck them with his baton. But there was something missing, inside the baton, something that would make his job just a little easier.

  Jesse walked into the Wardens office, carrying a new kind of baton. It was one that he ordered online from the Weapons Depot Website. Over the course of a cup of coffee, James convinced the warden that this new batons was necessary from him to carry out his job as efficiently as possible.

  "I don't know, if the state's going to go for that sort of thing. Could be deemed cruel and unusual." said the Warden.

  "And what are these prisoners, Warden."

  "I don't Jesse."

  "Let's try it out for a month, as a test run. The guide book allows us to employ new methods. That's all where doing."

  "Damn them, then."The warden nodded.

  With the new baton, Jesse felt a new sense of power in his hands. If James wanted to, he could press a latch on the handle of the baton and electrify it. With the baton, he had the ability to stun a prisoner into submission.

  The first time he used the new baton, he tried it on a prisoner that didn't do anything wrong, not really. He wanted to try the new weapon out and he wanted to send the prisoners in his cell block a message.

  After Jesse met with the warden, he walked in the commissary. He looked around and walked by the prisoners waiting in line to check out their items, like cigarette, soap and towels. He slowly walked by the prisoners, as they talked. He stood there, waiting for a prisoner to a cuss word. He had told them before that he hated cuss words. but, they never listened to him. But now was different.

  Finally, one of the inmates said the F-word.

  A second later, Jesse unholstered his baton, flipped the lever and electrified it. The spark of light had frightened the them and they all took a step away from Jesse. However, they took one step, not two.

  Jesse swung the baton and struck the prisoner over the head. Instantly, the prisoner urinated on himself and the shock went trough his head and down the spine. His body straightened like a plank and he fell over to one side.

  Jesse and the other inmates watched, as the prisoner convulsed on the floor. His eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth foamed. When Jesse was done watching, he towered over the prisoner and said two words in his ear.

  "Got you."

  Jesse walked out of the commissary and left the prisoner on the floor. It said in the magazine that the duration of incapacitation was estimated between twenty to forty-five minutes. However, the prisoner's headache would last until the following day. That time in the commissary was the first time that he used the stun baton and he kept it by his side, ever since. It was his favorite weapon.

  Jesse was good at herding the inmates at the prison like a herd of cattle. He wasn't scared to unleash his anger on them. After while, he no longer needed to think about James to send him down that dark road. It wasn't that long, before the warden and the other guards noticed his talent with the prisoners. Jesse was mean son of a bitch inside the prison. On the outside, he was a complete different man. The warden mentioned to another guard that Jesse liked treating the inmates like animals.

  To Jesse, they were only one thing. Cattle. Sometimes, they were even less. Even cattle provided human sustenance and the prisoners were only a burden to the public.

  However, there were times when the prison's treatment of prisoners were questioned by outsiders. Every once and a while, there was a prisoner who could string two words together and caused a little trouble by writing about events that occurred inside the prison. Jesse saw to nipping these sort of problems in the bud. They were rats. That's all. Rats were the easiest thing for him to deal with. One time, Jesse cornered a rat in his own cell and told him to stick his fingers through the cells bars. The inmates hardly challenged him. A second later, the inmate's fingers were broken.

  However, not all the letter could be prevented from being leaked to the public. There was letter sent to a church organization that actually followed up on the prisoner's eyewitness account. They visited the prison to make sure the prisoner was not harmed. Of course, the prisoner was not harm or injured, not until later when the coast was clear.

  It was a man and a woman deacon who came by to check and report on the condition of the prisoners. Jesse was in the warden's office, when he spotted them crossing the parking lot. It was snowing like hell. The path of their footprints remained on the white snow.

  "Here they come Warden."

  "They're here already?"

  "Yup.There go the saviors of the prison industrial complex and they come by to came by to spread their gospel, warden."

  Well, that one snowy afternoon, Jesse handled them just fine. He locked those people up in a room with the devil for a good hour. Soon after, those people came out of that room, plea white. They were scared to talk to another prisoner that day.

  They left and never came back again.

  "Who did they say they were?"

  When Jesse answered, he laughed so hard, that he held his stomach hurt.

  "They were…Liberation Theologist.."

  And everyone laughed.

  And the laughter stopped when the local newspaper carried some disturbing and revealing images from the prison.

  BACK THEN, THE VILLAGE VOICE CARRIED SOME DISTURBING IMAGES FROM THE PRISON THAT CAUSED AN UPROAR IN THE CITY. An anonymous guard had given up the photos to the newspaper to bring attention to the rise of violence that was prison was under. There were the hidden experiments. But, no one concentrated on that. There eyes were caught only on the graphic and violent photographs that leaked out during the span of a week.

  Every picture contained a profile picture of an inmate. They were white, brown and black skinned faces. They showed knife wounds, beating injuries to the faces, necks and arms. The anonymous source had wanted the world to know how much the violence at the prison has rose.

  The images were hard to sallow for any reader. Some readers even wrote to the newspaper to condemn those images and call for investigation of the prison. The pictures depicted large bloody gashes on the head of these prisoners, gashes from ear to mouth, kicked in teeth and bloodied lips.

  A couple years back, several teen inmates beat an18-year old inmate to death. After pictures came out in the public, the city launched an investigation that interviewed hundreds of inmates.

  "What happened here?"

  Every session, the investigators asked the same three question. What happened here? Who told you to do it? Every time, the inmates fielded a question, the investigators noticed the inmate looking into the one way mirror. They imagined Jesse behind the glass with his hand his electro baton. Jesse and prepped every inmate himself to give the same answer, to give up the same set of names. He couldn't let any know about the program. So, he set up a couple guards to take the fall.

  Now was, the time to let Jesse's talent shine and the warden rewarded him for that too. After the public uproar had past, they were indebted to each other and back in business.

  The investigators never found out about the most important thing that the Warden and Jesse hid away from them. Inside the walls of the prison, they were greedy Gods. Jesse had fallen so far away from the tree, since the days he was James's only friend.

  The Warden and Jesse had a thing that hey called the Program. They thought up and ran it to make as much money as they could. Under the Program, guards - often in teen jails - pitted inmates against each other. What they had was a fight club with inmates fighting each with improvised weapons. The inmates faced each other to fight for food, phones and commissary allowances. But, there was something else that had to the heat of the fight. There bets placed on the fights. And the winner would take all. Jesse made a pretty penny as he also managed the location and fights himself.

  As, Jesse watched two
inmates charge toward each other, he was already thinking about how to get out of another bad situation, if word of the program ever got out. He couldn't blame another set of guards. That was out of the question. But, he could blame a gang that had perverted the system. He could definitely do that. So, he settled on it. He would blame the gang. He smiled as he witnessed on man slicing another in half. Blood dripped on the dirty cement floor and he smiled. He didn't care if the inmates where getting hurt. As long at the notes with a handful of cash kept being deposited in his P.O. Box, he didn't.

  Anyway.

  It didn't matter now, the night would come before any of their deeds got out to the press.

  OFFICE JESSE MENDEZ HAD LET THE BUS THROUGH THE CHAIN-LINKED FENCE AND THEN SECURED THE PADLOCK. In his hand, he still had the lime green stick note that, he read only this morning.

  He wasn't the only prison guard that lived on the block, too. Sometimes, he would close down the street and let the children play in the street.

  One night, after Jesse arrived from work, there was a white envelope waiting for him at the head of his blue linen draped dinning table. It was early in morning and the white of the envelope glowed with the moonlight. The only black on it was his name.

  Too tired from drinking, Jesse didn't see it when he walked into the house. Instead, he went pass the table and up to his room where his wife slept. He rolled next to her and tried to go to sleep.

  Then, Jewel his wife, spoke.

  She told him about the white envelope with his name on it and no return address. It was just sitting in the mail box, she told him. His wife sounded concerned than curious.

  He assured her that it was probably one of the guys in the neighborhood playing a joke on him and to not be worried. But, she was. The moonlight sparkled in her eyes and she wondered about what kind of trouble her husband had gotten into. Even though the prison maintained their living, she knew that the prison was bad. She always feared that something terrible would reach her house because of it. Eventually, evil begets evil.

  In the morning, Jesse got ready for work.

  There was breakfast waiting for him on the table. It was a parfait made of greek yogurt, granola and strawberries. He hated that whole foods shit. Next to his plate was the white envelope fro the night before.

  James's arm swooped down and he grabbed the envelop. He recognized the writing. They always messaged through the PO Box, never at his own house. His eyes widened and he became concerned.

  "Jesse?"

  "It's nothing. I have go deal with this before work, Jewel.

  He left the parfait on the table an through the kitchen door of the house. his why kept asking him questions, to let her in. He kept telling his wife that there was nothing to worry about and that he was late for work.

  As he walked to the car, he looked at the blank envelope. His name was on the face of it, in red ink and that was all. There was no return a

  Jesse raised the envelope above his head to the light. He looked inside and he saw something that resembled money. He was sure that it was them.

  He shoved the envelope in his pocket and drove away.

  A moment later, he sat in his ford explore, making sure that no one watched him. Then, he took out the white envelope from his shirt pocket and looked it over. Jesse had received two of these note before. The first one had only two words.

  JAMES Night.

  He was surprised. It was his friend James's name on that first note. James was his friend from back in the day. But, he had not thought about that name in years. All that Jesse understood was that James was to be protected. No one was allowed to mess with him. Since that first note, Jesse adhered to every word on the yellow post-it. He did as it instructed, and every note after.

  The following week, Jesse was at the PO Box. He had received another note. He took it out of the metal slot and drove down the road a little further. He pulled over to the side of the road and opened his second note. It said.

  PIER DUTY. INDEFINITELY.

  There were crisp hundred dollar bills tucked inside the envelope of the note. Jesse did has the note asked and placed James on the pier duty, hauling dead bodies from a truck onto a barge.

  Now, there was a third note.

  He ripped it open. There was at least a thousand dollars in cash and a yellow post-it note attached to it. They were paper clipped together. Jesse remembered what his wife told him, that the envelope was sitting with his other mail. That it was strange and it looked like trouble coming their way.

  Jesse sat in his car with the note in his hand. He kept thing that they should have used the PO Box.

  Regardless, Jesse read the note and his jaw hanged open as he read the last note.

  It read. I WANT HIS EYES. And he wondered who the devil had sent him this.

  James was getting off the bus, shuffling with chains through the tiny space between the seats. When Jesse looked at James, he did not see an old friend. He did not see an inmate.

  All he saw was money. He saw the payoff. There was nothing else he could do. As long as Jesse kept James working on the pier and handling the dead, he got paid. Now, thing were different. They wanted his eyes and he was suppose to hand them over to somme else. There was probably some one looking at the them from a far to make sure that everything went well.

  The prison bus struck another pothole on the way to the pier and everyone inside jumped up in their seats. Jesse thought about when James first got to prison. A day before, Jesse put out the word that James was not to be touched. He spoke to his usual folks that he cut deals with in the past. but, Jesse wasn't sure that every inmate would follow down the line. Some of those cats didn't care what Jesse did to them.

  It wasn't until after the first incident that Jesse realized that sending a message wasn't the right thing to do. It had inadvertently made him the center of things. Inmates started to talk about him among themselves and they started to look out for him.

  It was a stupid move on the Jesse.

  Since then, all the inmates wondered what kind of power James had to deserve so much protection from Jesse and the warden. Who was this man?

  Jesse had wondered himself. Once, he tried to speak to the warden about. They were both back in Elmhurst Queens in the middle of a well kept street. The warden had closed down the street to give the children a wider place to run around and play. He and the warden at in his lawn, drinking better. It was only them two. jesse though this was a better time then any to talk about James.

  "What is the deal with James Night? Why protect him?"

  The warden was thin white man with a scraggily beard and blue eyes. He was in in his late fifties. He raised one eye to look at James and turned away too look at the children. Through out the street they played a game of it.

  "Why can't you do as I ask?"

  "You know that I would do anything for you. But I want to just understand it a little better. So, I know what to look out for."

  "You don't have to look out for anything. Just do as your told."

  For a moment they drink back a couple of bottles of beer. The leaves rattled with the passing wind. The children played. It was a nice Saturday afternoon. They wives were inside making lunch.

  The warden looked at Jesse and knew he could leave no doubt in jesse head. So the warden got up from the lawn chair and said to James.

  "Come on Jesse. lets go take a walk. They started walking down the sidewalk and the warden told him about James.

  "Jesse. I appreciate everything that you have done for me. But, I need you to concentrate on this for me. You can't be distracted by things such as why."

  "I'm sorry warden. But why James. Why protect him."

  The warden sighed with despair. He had to Jesse. It was him that would in the end to whatever needed to be done.

  "Jesse. Do you like this life? Look around and tell me."

  "Yes. You know that."

  "But, all this can go away."

  "How."

  "If we don't do what we are
told. It can all be taken away and some people will die more horribly than others. Look at your two daughters playing by that tree. They look so happy, so carefree. They are the most innocent. But they will die in the worse way, if we don't do what we are told. If you don't do what you're told than my family with be in jeopardy too. Do you understand Jesse?

  "Yeah."

  That was the last time, that Jesse ever brought James Night to the Warden.

  But, the warden noticed that Jesse was still not satisfied. He could feel something awful moving through Jesse's stomach.

  "James is a very violent man, who killed some one just as innocent as those children playing other there. We are not protecting. We holding him, until we hold him no more. He will lie to you more cunningly then the devil. He will kill for only the sake of killing. We can not let him go on."

  Jesse and the Warden, stared at the children playing in the street and that was it.

  However, Jesse didn't care about what the inmates thought, as long as the money kept coming his way, as long as his wife and children were taken care of.

  As Jesse rode on the bus, he thought about how James got special attention from the warden.

  Jesse looked back at James, sitting in the back of the bus. He thought about the first time he saw him in the prison.

  Back at Rikers, Jesse was filling out the paper work. He was determining which inmates to identify for Pier Duty. Jesse lifted his eyes from the desk, when he heard a ruckus outside his office. There were several guards running pass by his door with batons in hand.

  "What's going on?" He shouted at a third guard passing by.

  "It's a fight in the commissary!"

  Jesse stepped into the commissary to see what was going on. The inmates had made a defensive circle around the two men in the middle. The inmates kept the guards from stopping the fight.

  Jesse looked over the shoulders of the inmate to see two men in the middle of the circle.

  "Who the hell are you?" One of the inmates yelled at the other.

  The one who did the yelling was a big bear, of a man, with his paws on the other. The other one was on the ground and wore a swollen eye. Even though James had changed, Jesse recognized him, after so many years. Jesse felt bad for him. But he knew that this was only the beginning. It could only get worse from here.