Clack, Clack, Clack: Murder in Confinement

“Hurry the fuck up,” an officer barked.

I was desperately trying to wash the last remnants of the soap off my balls. You see, in confinement at Suwannee CI the officers didn’t readily supply you with soap. The piece I was using was a chip from a bar of soap I found in my confinement cell when I was moved yet again to another level within this hell I lived. The water was cold, but I welcomed the chance to wash off the filth I was surrounded by. As much as I was cleaning my body, I was also attempting to let all the fear, the anger, the violence, the old chemical spray, the torture, the torment go down the drain as well. I could feel the weight lift, if only for a second.

“Motherfucker, I said kill that shower now, motherfucker.”

The officers didn’t allow us towels to use, and it seemed they didn’t want to waste any more water on what they considered subhuman. Allowing us soap in Suwannee’s confinement was a sick joke. This tiny sliver was precious to me, like the ring of power was for Bilbo, Frodo Baggins, and Gollum.

So, when the soap got caught on my pubic hairs while the officer was banging the gate, calling me a motherfucker, my hands rushed to untangle the pubey soap. Because I’d been slashed with a razor previously in my wrist and my tendon partly severed, my hand, you see, never healed properly due to muscle atrophy. And with this barking motherfucker ready to unleash Black Jesus down upon me once again, the fucking soap fell… right down the motherfucking drain.

It was slow motion, watching my last tiny sliver snag on the brass drain catch and then fall out of sight to another layer of hell beneath my bare, wet feet.

Sighing, I turn and grab the ripped, torn, worn, dirty inmate blues shirt the officers made us dry off with. It’s hung in a certain particular way, by me, on the thick metal bars to protect my private parts from an inmate across the way in another cell the officers allowed to jack off and pleasure himself. I could see that fucker across from us in the shower going to town. This fucking guy always had toilet paper. One more way the officers wanted to humiliate us. They wouldn’t hand it out to us but would supply this fuckhead with enough to ejaculate onto all those precious squares that could wipe all the asses in this fucking confinement.

The screaming officer’s still screaming at me to put my hands behind my back so he can cuff me and take me to my confinement cell, but his friend’s cracking a joke to him.

“Sarge, check him out!” he laughs, motioning with his head to the inmate gunning the shit out of me and my bunky G in the next confinement shower. “He’s really taking their fucking heads off today, ain’t he, Sarge?” and he laughs his stupid face off.

Sarge looks back. “Oh yeah,” he says, and he chuckles between his onslaught of expletives directed at yours truly. He tells me, “I think he wants you to bend over for him. He looks like he’s about ready to cum.”

“Take me to my cell,” I tell him through clenched teeth.

“Motherfucker, you want to talk to Jesus again?” He’s referring to the chemical agent he used earlier. Black Jesus, the officers love to call it. They say it makes Black men holler for Jesus. They think that’s a real riot, really makes them laugh their heads right off.

He opens the gate when he gets the cuffs on me and yanks my arm in the direction of my cell. The two officers are still laughing and making dumbass comments. Immediately to my right, from the shower straight down the iron gangway, is my cell. If I’m looking out my cell’s tiny window I can see the showers. It’s a corner cell. I like it. It’s on the second story, and from it I can see all the other confinement cells too.

Walking toward my cell, I look slightly to my right at the other confinements. There were no faces looking out the windows. At other confinements, at other prisons, you’d see many faces. Here, no. You look out those confinement cell door windows,........

© CounterPunch