Russia Threatens “Real War” If Sanctions Are Imposed
Did I mention that we get newspapers in here? I think it must be some kind of constitutional right. I rarely get a glimpse of it, though. The papers are supposed to stay in the dayroom, but whoever gets breakfast first usually steals it and takes it back to their cell. Sometimes they share pieces of it with other inmates, but I’m not on the good little boys list.
Isn’t that strange? Killers, rapists, pedophiles, monsters whose evil is so great that they must be kept locked away from all that is human and living have a constitutional right to know what is happening in that world to which they no longer belong.
And they want it. They hoard up every reminder of what they have lost and who they will never be. I wonder if the newspapers are like the windows: pretended luxuries whose real purpose is to increase the torment of the punishment.
Anyway, on the rare occasion that I am the first to the paper, I eat it.
I tear the pages into long, slender strips, roll them into balls, and eat them. I don’t read the stories first. The cellblock erupts with howls and banging and furious obscenities as the inmates listen to the tearing sounds, but their impotent rage only improves the taste.
Two Officers Assaulted, Third Taken Hostage At Tennessee Prison
Killing time. That’s what my attorney told me. That I need to kill a little time. She’s confident that I’ll be exonerated and out in a few months. Which could easily stretch to two years. Absolutely no physical evidence ties me to any of the crimes. Just a handful of odd coincidences that aren’t even that odd in a town as small as Brisby. And of course, Ada’s continued disappearance.
The problem is that time is impossible to kill. The best you can do is wound it, and then it limps along even more slowly than before. Sometimes I think that I can’t survive long enough to reach freedom, but dying in a cage is not an option either.
At night I lie in bed and watch the seconds crawl across the ceiling like beetles. I get frustrated when they grow distracted and scuttle this way and that, even turning in circles, before, one by one, they reach the opposite wall and disappear. If only they would drop onto me. I would fling them to the floor and smash them under my feet. But they never do.
Virgo (August 23 – September 22): If this secret thing goes on much longer, it’s going to drive you crazy.
The journal they used to convict me was merely an exercise, an experiment that succeeded far better than I had hoped. However, since paper and pencils are the only things easily obtained in here, I’ve continued the exercise.
There’s no expectation of privacy in prison, so keeping a journal in earnest would be unwise. Now that I’ve already instructed them so well on how to perceive me, virtually anything I might write could be twisted and used against me. Given that my body is contained by walls, I am unwilling to similarly restrict my thoughts. They are the only freedom remaining to me. So parsing out my words is unacceptable to me, too.
I could disguise my writings as legal mail and ask my attorney to keep them for me. That would require more trust than I possess. She is completely convinced of my innocence. It would be just like her to read my writings against my instructions, thinking to find something further to exonerate me, and so render herself incapable of defending me. Or if she still could, certainly her passion on my behalf would suffer. That would be an intolerable risk. Nothing is more important than getting out of here.
So every night I write, and every morning I crumple up my pages in the remains of my breakfast and toss them in the dayroom trash can. Inmate workers collect the trash every night, dumping the contents into an enormous rolling bin. I tested my process first, filling the pages with meaningless doodles just to make sure the guards wouldn’t be retrieving them from the trash can before they could be discarded. I needn’t have worried. They paid no attention at all.
Doctor Dragged Forcibly From Overbooked Flight
I guess I shouldn’t describe my writing as journaling. Journals record time, and I am burrowing out of time, hollowing out a place where I can turn my back on the night as it passes by. I don’t regret the loss of the pages. There is nothing in my existence here that I would want to immortalize, no events I want to recall. I can’t imagine walking in the sunlight and dreaming of lockdowns and slamming doors and the cold, flat revulsion in every gaze that I meet. When I walk out of that court a free man, I will empty my mind of every day I spent in here. I will jettison these hours without a second thought.
So, instead, I write letters to Ada.
Of all the people who have called my name, who have imagined themselves my friends or my enemies, Ada is the only one who knew me at all. What passed between us was the most liberating thing you can imagine. No subterfuge, no pretense, is necessary with us. No careful choosing of words or wearing of masks. She alone knows everything. Our long, nightly conversations are the hidden liberty that allows me to survive this place.
Conversation does imply more than one speaker, of course.
“Unregarded loneliness is one of life’s greatest cruelties, isn’t it?”
Unfortunately, my madness has been greatly exaggerated. I do not hear her voice. My words are imprisoned on the page, as securely as I am imprisoned in these walls.
Multiple People Down In Elementary School Shooting In San Bernardino
Dear Ada,
I expect I’ll be getting out of here tomorrow. Part of me was beginning to believe that this day would never come. You know how many times I have contemplated ending this nightmare on my own terms. The options were always so grim. How can it be on my own terms if the noose around my neck is the filthy sheet they have given me? I’ve heard the most effective method involves a noose and the toilet. What a wretched end that would be – your final moments drowning in a prison toilet? No, I could never have submitted to this unreality by giving them that ultimate power over me. But likewise I could never have persisted so long without you beside me during these awful, endless nights.
Even so, I am surprised to find that something in me fears to leave this place. Not that I have become institutionalized, like the mindless brutes that fill these walls. No, I am overtaken with dread that I will be leaving you here. This quiet companionship we have shared during these months has been so dear, so familiar to me. I have been able to sustain the fiction that you are here beside me because nothing in prison is more or less real than that conviction. Out there, in the sunlight and the starlight, where I can taste the earth and drink the air, you cannot maintain the corporeal form you have adopted here. I know that.
It’s the little things I miss most. Fighting with you over the crossword puzzles. Taunting you with the most ridiculous horoscopes I could find. The way you would lean over my shoulder and pass me down my coffee cup, your breath tickling my ear. The scent that lingered in the air after we made love. Your studio door … that magical aperture that kept all its secrets, all its promises.
I won’t even have your canvases to keep me company. My attorney tells me your stepdad got all that. I should probably move, I guess. I don’t imagine too many people in Brisby will be happy to see me, innocent or not.
I won’t go too far, though. You’ve stayed with me all this time. I won’t leave you alone either. I can’t believe they considered the possibility, even for a moment, that that transient kid’s body might have been yours. As if I would have left you lying out there, unprotected, to be ravaged by the animals and the elements. How could they believe I ever loved you at all and think that I would do that to you, my beautiful girl?
My attorney cautioned me that I probably wouldn’t sleep at all tonight. She had the nurse dose me with Benadryl. Actually, though, I don’t think I would have had any trouble falling asleep regardless. I feel quite at peace. As if I have been straining and struggling all these months, and now at least I can rest. The long nightmare has ended, and I can close my eyes without fear.
I hope I dream of you tonight, Ada. Lately you have been visiting my dreams less and less often. I worry that one day, you will walk out of those dreams and not return. Then how will I know what is and isn’t real?
I will see you soon, my darling. Wait for me in the cathedral light.
The End
About the Author
Cassondra Windwalker graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA of Letters, a highly marketable degree that she eventually parlayed into careers in bookselling and law enforcement. She has lived in Oklahoma, Indiana, and Colorado, and currently writes full time from the Alaskan coast. Her helpful writers’ group consists of a zombie cat and a cowardly dog.
Cassondra’s poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and art books. Her first novel, Parable of Pronouns, was published in January 2018.
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