I awoke several nights later with the taste of nightmares still bittering my tongue and sat straight up on my bunk, putting warm feet to cold floor. I tried to process the images according to a psychology book I had read some time ago, and while I could remember the bulk of the dreams, the specific images were murky and no time-wasting analysis could be made. I sweat so profusely through my tunic that my sheets were soaked as well. Must’ve been some serious business, although I can’t imagine developing a new worry after being locked up for so long. Even the new jacks with bad attitudes shied away from me because I was older, so I had no fear of being attacked whatsoever. Couple that with Panzer’s ogre-ish size and I was essentially the most untouchable of the inmates. I like to think it’s not from fear, but rather that they see me as a mirror unto themselves, a kind of ghost of Prison Future to show them what a life sentence actually means. I hope for many that this place is merely the metamorphosis period of the lives they have yet to live. It’s no silky cocoon, but maybe it will suffice.

My hair grayed early during my stay here and my hands showed the early signs of gnarling as veins began to fight their way through my skin. My beard had taken on a more blinding white than my hair but I kept it trimmed while I had let my thinning hair grow of its own volition. This freedom from regular haircuts found it very near the middle place of my back between both shoulder blades. There are no mirrors here which bothered me before I birthed interest in the teachings of the Buddha. Since then, I have stopped caring about my outward appearance and have begun focusing on the inner as best as possible. So, with little sleep and a haphazard mental flow, that morning’s breakfast felt shorter than normal due to the boys giving me some good-natured grief about my appearance.

“Hey Moses, think you could part the milk left in my cereal bowl? My Cheerios need to get to the other side.”

“Need a quarter to get that next pint of vodka, hoss?”

“Holy crap, J! Someone built a nest on your head while you were asleep!”

“Y-y-y-you look like shit,” Riddle said, quieting the group. “You gonna e-e-e-eat your muffin?”

“Dammit, Ridsy,” whined a disappointed Reitman at the end of the table as the other guys continued to laugh. “We all know he looks like shit, we’re just havin’ a go at him is all. Try to keep up.”

I held up my hand to Reitman in protest and handed my muffin over to Riddle. “Don’t worry about them, Riddle. Enjoy,” I whispered with a smile. The muffins had never been great and I was rarely hungry in the morning. Most mornings, I would eat just to have something in my belly and kill an hour with the guys.

I watched Riddle break the muffin in two and stuff one half of it in his mouth entirely while covering the other half with a napkin. His eyes searched the surrounding tables as if someone were trying to catch him doing something wrong. Big James shook his head and snorted as we all watched him promptly stand up and scamper to the other side of the caf. “That guy is something else,” he said before taking a sip of his coffee. “Anyone know why he’s even in here?”

“I’ve known him the longest,” I started, “but I don’t think even he knows why he’s here. He’s given me three different answers and I’m not sure which one to believe. They’re all fairly plausible.”

“I thought he cut the brake lines on his wife’s car?” Jilette asked, pushing his tray and resting his elbows on the edge of the table.

“Uh, no. That was me,” Reitman said sheepishly, raising a lone finger into the air. “The only reason the lawyer took my case was because he knew I had money and we were going to lose.”

Panzer cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with a napkin already stained from earlier eating mishaps. “Anytime he’s talked about his past to me, it’s all been gibberish. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be his past, he’s usually doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s on Deathwatch Crew, isn’t he?” We all looked at each other and shrugged, none of us having a definitive answer for him. The NV’s who worked in the kitchen brought out the cleaning supplies and we knew breakfast was over. We grabbed our trays and walked single-file up to the dish area, dropped them off and headed back to our respective cells. Panzer caught up with me and didn’t say a word until we had almost reached my cell.

“So…you think I could meditate with you again today? I think it might’ve helped a little bit. Ya know, just to quiet my head a little bit.”

“Sure,” I said with a nod. “You wanna learn about Buddhism while we’re at it or do you just wanna meditate?”

He pursed his lips together and thought. “Well, I’m not sure. Do I have to renounce Christ? If so, I’d say let’s just do the meditation thing.”

I chuckled and patted his back. “No, Panzer. You don’t have to renounce Christ in any way in order to learn about Buddhism. In fact, there are quite a few of the same ideals in both schools of thought, the difference lies in the practice of them.”

“Well, let’s just do the meditating,” he said faintly smiling. “But just for now,” he added quickly.

We entered my cell and I cleared off the bed of some books I had delved into after my rude awakening earlier that morning. Panzer took a few moments to look over the meager decorations I’d hung up on my wall: a list of quotations that seemed apropos many days and a picture of “The Big Wave” I had torn out from a book of Asian art. I had fastened them to the wall with small pieces of gum another prisoner had given me many years ago. I saved the pieces for years and hid them beneath my mattress knowing I would want them later during my incarceration. Once chewed, the gum became sticky, but if you wanted it to harden, you had to put a bit of water on each piece while hanging anything. The papers subsequently stuck and haven’t come down since.

“Were you a surfer when you lived topside?” he asked, inspecting the picture of the wave.

“Not at all. That picture is from an old story about a village about to be destroyed by that very wave. A young boy in the village fears for the lives of his fellow villagers, but then realizes that it’s the hardships in life, or rather how we deal with those hardships, that make us who we are.” I finished smoothing out the sheet on the bunk and motioned for Panzer to join me. “What’s troubling you? Still irked by Scabs’ disappearance?”

He took two quick steps, plunked down on the mattress and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know. Maybe? Yes. No? I’m just so tense all the time, even after I pray at night. I’m not hoping for a quick fix or anything, just maybe some more definitive answers than what we get. I mean, we can’t even get a straight answer from anyone about where people disappear off to. It’s not so much that we’re serving time as we’re just waiting to be plucked out of the general populace and off to wherever.”

I grinned. “Sounds like life topside, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Speaking metaphorically, the people topside are ultimately just waiting to be plucked out and taken wherever, right? We just have a different methodology to our waiting.” I folded my legs up underneath me and watched as Panzer tried to attempt the same.

“I suppose so,” he said finally, closing his eyes. “I should just focus on nothing and everything, right?”

“Yup.”

Had Panzer not been there to shake me out of my meditative state, I believe the riot would’ve grabbed me and shaken me to death, regardless of my age or standing amongst the other prisoners.

Want to comment on this Prose? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Prose and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...