The Rat Who Got Away

I got up from my bed. My back was sore from the sensation I'd get from rising from lying on rocks.

Then I walked up to the dingy and tiny sink some inches from the toilet bowl. Maybe the sink was a greater distance away than I thought. Solitary confinement is enough to mess with your impression of spatial measurements.

I tried again, like Sysiphus, to knock out the space where it looked like there was an exit. The hole stayed there. I typically moved my bunk, my clothes, or my books towards the hole so they couldn't see that I was trying to break out.

Besides, if they do catch me anyway, my sentence for murder will be extended- and they know that if they punish me they'll tempt me to find another way out. I regularly knocked out the space with a gigantic rock that had been a suppository of mine in order to bring it into the cell. (Only a desperate man could ever take some measures like that.)

Sometimes, I tried to carve further into the hole with a sharp blade like it was a pick.

I kept a switchblade in my shoe and occasionally in an innocent cut-out holder that I made from a hardcover of "Huckleberry Finn".

Normally getting by in other ways (for lack of a better word) I would cut my arms to compensate for the isolation, especially the isolation from a mate. I learned how to tattoo myself without cutting a vein after once cutting myself too swiftly and passionately.

When I cut a vein and a guard caught it and I was pulled out to the medical area they were overly nice. Nice to the point of being completely full of shit. (Think about it. How many prison guards have you met that walk and talk like Mr. Rogers? Especially a prison guard that is that overly nice after several instances when he was notoriously a complete jerk!)

They didn't search me because they liked how I was a great addition to the population. I was in juvenile hall since I was 10 and now, at the age of 35, I've been at this prison for 7 years. They wouldn't want to keep me from producing here. Anyway, I pretended that I was refusing to snitch after saying,

"Nothing, they just got me. They just cut me."

My heavy asthmatic style of breathing was a good bluff that made my accusation the more dramatic and believable. They couldn't get anything out of me and they knew that I'd start trouble if they'd interrogate me or do anything similar to interrogation.

The good news was that there was someone who was always causing problems for me, but much more during this particular week.

Tony was a 27-year-old skinhead with ripped muscles from the cocktail of crystal meth and prison life. He beat me normally because he didn't have much better to do (and because I'm black, as if that's any qualifying reason at all).

He's also been stealing and while he's been importing and exporting schwag from the prison, nobody's been able to provide evidence that he's moving cell-phones, meth, and other merchandise in and out. He's recently been kind of a celebrity here because he killed a pedophile but that guy was getting near the end of a life sentence.

But now Tony was the one taking the blame for me being cut. It was a good day. He talked about how happy he was that I was cut and exhibited a psychotic sort of pride, partially because he had his crew and I have always had no crew.

Another reason was because of his racist diatribes. For once I felt so happy that that nuisance could get rid of me by actually believing in his lunatic fringe nonsense.

I was walked back to my cell. I moved the books away from the wall. My little friend stuck his whiskered nose out of the crack in the wall.

Mickey was the rat who crept out and gave me the idea that there was a way out of this place. I picked up my books. I picked up the rat and cuddled it as my only companion.

There was a piece of blue cheese I smuggled into my "Huckleberry Finn" book inside of the outline to hold my switchblade in place.

I fed it to Mickey and then put the book down. I picked up my Bible from under my bunk for my leisurely reading and my own individual and internal form of therapy that I was performing to help me cope with being inside.

Mickey nibbled on my nose. He scurried back down to his hole to feed himself some more.

When I went out for daily lunch I got eyeballed from across the cafeteria by a couple of guys on Tony's crew. I remember walking on the way there that they seemed to be following me and paying more attention to me than I'd expect.

Earl asked me if I'd go with him to play chess when we were eating together. He walked with me and on the way there I was ganged up on by Derek and Danny, two prime members of the crew that was giving me the most problems as of late.

But how? That's right! They must have offered Earl something in order to get him onto me.

I was kicked heavily in the teeth and stomach.

When I got up for a moment, weak-legged and in shock, I felt a blunt sting at the nape of my neck. I then remembered nothing.

I came to and I felt like I had when I had once came to from a heart-attack that I experienced the first time I tried sniffing coke. It was like being intensively rescusitated in an E. R. probably feels like. Like the electricity in your brain and body gets rebooted and is bringing you back to life.

When I came to three prison guards were above me, "Do you know where you are? Can you tell me your name?"

A light was being shown into my eyes by a medic. I muttered something that I can't

remember. "He's in shock," they said.

I felt like I was dreaming for a fraction of a minute, especially since I was up and there were several moments from my memory that were omitted simply because I wasn't conscious.

A cat-scan was performed on me. The medic said, "Did you KNOW they were kicking your head?!" Since the cat-scan came up negative and I still had all my teeth, I was about as surprised as him.

A prison guard came in to interview me. "What's been going on today?"

"Got into a fight."

"You did? Who started it?"

I was still mostly incoherent. My thoughts were about as muddy as if I'd just taken six vicodin at once. (I don't like painkillers. The physical and psychological impact of what just happened made me feel that way.) All I could muster up was, "Look at me and tell me who do you think started it." I didn't even know what I looked like by now.

I was transferred after bed-rest for twenty-four hours. Now I know that I cannot die.

When I was transferred a little hairy, whiskered fellow had crawled from a crack underneath my cell. So far, this is the latest of the collection of rodent companions who I've had for the course of 25 years. And now I know that I will always have my companions forever, since I can live forever.