“Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And, therefore, a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.”



- Epicurus




















It took me weeks before I could breathe in here. A hard mattress amidst walls so bright with purity, one felt baptismal and unclean at all hours of the day. Even at lights out, you could sense the walls smiling truth and justice over your slumber like night watchmen in Hades. The pillow was years’ thin from other guilty heads dreaming atop it, but I needed one plush enough to soak up the nightmares, one clean enough to give me my own second chance. The sheet was all I’d need, they said. It didn’t cover nearly enough of me, though.

The food isn’t bad. Movies over the years have made prison food out to be maggot-infested gruel with no flavor and no variety; this isn’t so. Lasagna on Fridays, coupled with one (and only one) piece of garlic bread and unseasoned asparagus. Macaroni & cheese on Tuesdays, accompanied by cornbread and mashed potatoes. Wednesdays was a kind of a la carte concoction of our choosing and Thursdays were pizza boat day. We hold Mondays in high regard as they were both the start of another week towards our ultimate end or (if you were one of the lucky ones) your ultimate release and we dine on pancakes. Saturdays and Sundays are leftover days, but sometimes we’d get lucky and the kitchen crew would make something ethnic on Sunday nights. This was rare, however.

I miss the music of the outside world. I have memories of music, but nothing I could really count on to be real. The tinny wail of a bow string on viola or the body pounding reverberation of a kick drum; these are things once imagined and turned real by fingers left idle and brains set on high, anxious for something sweet to sate their starving ears. We are monitored constantly by the guard station in the center of all the cells, so swiping tools from the cafeteria to play with was impossible. I had hoped to make a musical instrument of my cell somehow, but the slapping of fingers and thumb against the bed will have to do when I need a rhythm to drown out the boredom.

No clocks, no calendars. We tell time by the meals we’re fed and the clothing of the guards when they come to work each morning. There is no End of Day tone for me anymore, just momentary glimpses into someone else’s everyday. Some marked up open skin with hash marks while others concocted schemes with the NV’s who got to see clocks in the offices. I eventually stopped caring and after the third winter, invested my time in studious works of religious texts and philosophical meanderings. I smiled after reading Socrates’ “Euthyphro” for the first time. After thinking on it the following day, I wept into my pillow for hours.

Since I have stopped believing in time as a construct to have faith in, I simply glide along now, taking my days as they come. Time exists of course, but the only times that matter to me now are the time for eating and the time for dying. I will eat until it is my time to stop dining at the table of thieves and lesser men, but I will go obediently when my feast is over and the silverware no longer shines and the bellies of those around me distend in opposition to the normal gluttony I once knew on the outside.

There is a finite amount of library here and I have gone through much of it, taking my time with each book and scouring them for answers of a sort. The history books were interesting topically, but droll and lengthy. You’d think I shouldn’t have a right to complain, but even a prisoner should get a small bit of light sometimes. Since I had been sentenced to what the judge called a reflective death, I took that to mean I would die in my cell, white beard and gnarled hands still flipping pages of books before passing on as my tunic hung more loosely every day along my skeletal frame. I have since learned that this is not so and have moved on to reading the teachings of men wiser than I; Buddha, Aristotle; minds bigger than the generations that held them. Time, as I said, no longer holds me, but Death is waiting underneath to break my fall.

My name is Jeffrey Towalski. I am prisoner number 012199648 and I am sentenced to die by the tools my victims died by and also in the same manner. My death will not be painless. My death will not be quick. My death will be soon and I know the executioner chosen to exact this end will be thorough and as brutal as he needs to be. Until then, I sit on my bed and wait, forgetting what a minute feels like so I can prepare myself for the feeling of eternity that waits just on the other side of my cell door.

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