Six Years

His name spread like a disease. Spat out like a bad taste, it stained every cell from here to the Beast Wing. Even the perverts didn’t want him.

Some gutters are so filthy even rats won’t shit in them.

We weren’t meant to know, yet. But the screws weren’t daft. They dropped the bomb at roll-call; the world’s loudest tongue-slip. The whole wing was on trial.

They were all failing.

Lifers got first pick, usually. The only benefit to doing the all-day; you have nothing to lose. But every cell warrior on D Wing wanted a crack at him.

The scouser and his five-foot-nothing wingman were first to piss on the post, claiming all they needed was thirty seconds and a tuna tin lid. What they lacked in height, they clawed back through sheer viciousness, and a knack for shiv-making. He wouldn’t be their first.

Tank, though, was a shock. Built—unsurprisingly—like a brick shithouse, his name had less to do with his frame, and more to do with his capacity for swallowing more crap than the monkeys on D Wing could sling. That man was never rattled.

He staked his claim in the mess hall. A few guys backed off. Not many.

The screws were deaf to it. It was the way in here. This place was the filthy hole where the lowest of the low were buried.

For some, it would never be deep enough.

The men needed that, though. Life inside was built on drawing lines; the us and them, the bad and the worse. Only the sickest wrong-uns stayed quiet, the ones that knew where they stood on the ladder. And where they’d stand once he was gone.

Someone’s got to be at the bottom.

For everyone else, there was nothing to do but kick down. Civic duty, they called it. Waste removal. Easier to shout what you would do, when you weren’t the one who was going to share a pad with him.

I knew what was coming before the governor called me in. The place had been a shitshow for days. Literally; some of the scum down in Seg had blocked the main sewage line, loading the toilets with fruit peel and socks and shoving them down with the leg of a bunk they’d uprooted. Twenty-six of the worst offenders England and Wales had to offer, with cells swimming in shit.

The whole nick reeked of it.

With nowhere to put them, every rec room, gym, chapel and sick bay was locked down; two screws apiece at the doors. It was temporary, they said. Transfers were being organised, they said. The place ran on rusted cogs and prayers—it was nothing new. But tell a man who spends nearly twenty-three hours a day in a box that he can’t lift his weights or have a smoke; see for yourself how he takes it.

Then one of the scum from Seg squealed.

Someone down there had been banking on the transfers.

Someone had plans. He’d seen them.

Whichever poor bastard got sent to search shit-block must have seen them too. Transfers were halted, pending investigations.

By the second day the men were caged beasts.

They had no choice.

Once word got out about which beast D Wing was getting, I already knew whose cell they were coming to.

I earned it, after all. Six years of good behaviour and a spotless record. No arguments, no debt, no missed shifts, no contraband. Not even a cheeky roll-up, or a kick-off with canteen. The lads called me Teflon, because shit didn’t stick to me. The screws even made me a ‘listener’; a three-day training course run by the Samaritans that taught me how to mentor my peers. If staying calm whilst someone smashes the place up can be considered mentoring.

Become a model prisoner, and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Services will reward you with one of Britain’s most hated men for a cellmate.

The governor told me after dinner. It wasn’t a request.

He trusted me.

It would be taken into account in my parole review.

They would bring him in after bang-up.

The walk back was loaded. Some of the lads glared at me like I’d just robbed their canteen and shit in their cereal. Others just stared, trying to suss out how I would react. Whether I’d do it. Whether I’d have it in me.

Even the screws were eyeing me.

Like I had done every day since I arrived at the shit-hole, I kept my head down.

***

The wing was wild with it. Shock had given way to outrage. They’d been robbed. Teflon wouldn’t do shit.

Bang-up took twice as long, and twice as many hands and batons. But it came. One by one, the clatter of latches ticked like a clock.

By the time they reached my cell, the chants had turned sinister. And turned on me. A manc lad on the level below had a shiv with my name on it, apparently. The cell search that followed did me no favours.

Screw’s pet.

Wet wipe.

Waste of oxygen.

Even the boss, hardened as he was by over two decades of dealing with the absolute dregs of society, managed a look of sympathy before he locked the door. It would stay locked until the transfer was complete, he told me. For both of our safety.

He hadn’t even arrived, and already there was an us.

The door was no match for their rage. The chanting grew louder, the threats more gruesome. The walls hummed with it. I tried to stick to my normal routine; crosswords, stale biscuits, and a lukewarm brew that tasted, as always, vaguely of plastic. Of all the things I had missed in this place, I hadn’t expected real mugs to be among them.

Time stretched thin as a sheet. The day had all but slipped behind the old brick walls beyond the yard, and I had already completed the final five crosswords in my book. I should have saved more.

They were taking their time.

I might have cracked, were it not for her face. Pride of place on the wall to the right of the bed; the way I faced when I woke up. The photo was already old when I arrived—taken in the cricket club on the night we met, seventeen years ago now. Even through the dingy window, the sun had faded her features, the hand-worn edges encroaching on her beautiful curls. Memory filled in the blanks.

I dreaded the day when it wouldn’t.

She was here, for now. She was with me.

I couldn’t let her down.

The scraping of metal on the landing brought a new wave of roars. And thuds, as several men flung themselves at cell doors. They couldn’t break them. That wasn’t the goal.

Monster.

Thud.

Filth.

Bang.

Eat my shit.

The clanks and screeches drowned beneath the racket. There was no way of knowing how close they were.

I rose from the bed, anticipation coiling in my core.

The door cracked, and the sound poured in, crashing into the cell like floodwater.

It was only his bed.

As I sank back onto mine, two screws stacked it against the wall opposite me. They bolted it down with no fuss. It was nothing.

Before they left, one of them caught my eye. He patted the mattress, his lips tight. Then he withdrew, the door closing once more.

I knew what I would find beneath the bed-roll before the cold metal touched my skin. Knew what he had given me.

Choice.

***

The wing had exhausted itself.

A quiet wait unfolded with the darkness, the men resigned to bitterness. Only the hum of pipes and distant traffic remained.

Sleep never came easy in here. It wouldn’t come at all, tonight.

An hour, or many, washed over me as I lay. The new bed loomed at my back, an empty promise.

I kept my eyes on her. Let her memory stroke my mind, as it had done every day for six years. Her in the garden, her foot bobbing along to music too loud for the morning, coffee cradled in her hands. Her face in the mirror, running futile fingers through the masses of curls that haloed her face. Her body beneath mine, the warmth of her skin bleeding into me as I loved her, again and again.

She was my everything, my reason for being.

I wouldn’t let her down.

I was half-delirious with thoughts of her by the time the spur-doors opened. The creak split the still air, pulling me back to the cell. To the night. To what awaited.

There were no shouts to mask it, this time.

Each step rattled the chains bound to his ankles, shuddering through my core. The air itself recoiled, tightening. It reeked of loathing, seeping from every cell those steps passed. Choking me.

I stayed seated, as they opened the door. As the screws beckoned to the shadows beside them. Summoning. Releasing.

They did not meet my eye.

The cuffs came off, the bindings shattering against the concrete. Heavy steps shuffled across the threshold. Deliberate. Unhurried. The door closed a final time.

The man simply stood, a clear plastic bag containing his life hanging limp at his side.

Behind him, the footsteps retreated, leaving nothing but silence in their wake. The wing held its breath.

Waiting.

Indifferent eyes swept the eight-by-twelve foot box, sliding over the walls, the furniture, over me.

When they finally landed on her, a new kind of stillness came over him.

The blade was warm against my forearm, the choice heavy in my sleeve.

It had already been made.

Six years ago.