Death lives right here
His hair was wet, just like the rest of his shivering, sweltering body even in the coldest of weathers. He didn’t know what else to do, he was running mad. He shouted loud again and hit the bars hard.
‘Prisoner Number 32. If you make any noise again! you will be taken to the hole!’, the man from the loudspeaker shouted but Barry wasn’t going to listen. Michael! Michael! He wailed in sorrow.
Barry didn’t want to imagine that it was real. It mustn’t be, it mustn’t be, his mind roared. This guy whom he had laughed with, ran to school with, shared shoes with, shared clothes with, shared a room with, suffered with. He screamed again, thunderously and he kept hitting the metal bars until his knuckles started to bleed.
His eyes had turned to a sponge dispensing water all over his face. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it out of this, ever. No! No! Not Michael! And then he yelled again, tears blowing out of his eyes, he wasn’t going to stop.
Michael had done nothing wrong his whole life! The sound of bullets sinking into his best friend’s body echoed back into memory. It had been like a hundred, they had shot him with anger and hatred and Michael had given out that last shout that summarised all the torture he had suffered, that he had tried to absorb. He rolled over the floor unable to hold himself, he might never be able to. The person who had told him – ‘We are going to walk through this together, we are going to make money, we are going to live a better life. Together’ – was gone and had left him forever, for no apparent reason, for something that they had nothing to do with.
But there was nothing he could do about it, he wasn’t sure that the next time wasn’t his turn and all this burning worries will die with him, Boorbunk might be the end of The Humour Sect, he thought. Which made him laboriously remember the words of Michael after their spectacular rendition in Reckdette and the feedback that Mr. Milikan had said.
‘The Humour Sect reigns forever’, he had said. Then he had opened a champagne and poured it into his cup until it was overflowing. ‘Like this wine, this friendship, this brotherhood would never perish’.
‘Michael was the one who had brought us all together, the binding force’, Pierson had managed to tell Peter in the waiting room, the next day.
It was the first time that the death of someone had meant so much to all the eighty-six people in the ward. Some of them were in tears too.
‘Michael was calm and he was always smiling. He made me believe that everything was okay. All of you guys are special’, Barrow spoke with dried tears all over his cheeks. ‘All of you, everything you did was a real inspiration. You were the true meaning of hope’, he continued amidst sniffles.
The room was silent and the grief that floated over the room was palpable everywhere.
This grief kept on for days. The Humour Sect had been the spice of the cellhouse; they had brought everyone together, they had made people have a reason to smile, to forget the terror that they were made to face in such a place like Boorbunk. Now, they had lost one of their own and the whole place was filling the cold and emptiness that came with it.
It brought back to the thoughts to the mind of Dale. Who exactly was to blame for everything? Was it the police who had wrongfully taken them, intentionally or unintentionally? The jury who had sentenced them to Boorbunk? The woe of their fates that made them go to the wrong place at the wrong time? The entire injustice of Dexter? The brutality with which humans were treated in the prison?
When the judge had hit the gavel following the proclamation of a life imprisonment, they had thought the worst had come but none was aware that it was really not a life sentence, it was a death sentence. Every four weeks, one dead person, one innocent person gone without having the privilege to say anything.
The desperate wickedness surrounding Michael’s death made Dale cry again.
‘Tristan Klyce!’, the man had called again and Tristan had followed him.
When Tristan reached the calling booth for the prisoners, he met Samantha looking the same way, her head resting on the parting glass and her stomach well developed. She was soon to give birth. Tristan touched the glass and grabbed the telephone.
‘I hope that everything is good’, he whispered into the telephone.
‘You don’t look okay. Your eyes’
‘Hm. I am good’, he said and tried to smile. ‘I can see that he is doing very well’
She remained silent, looking ever-distressed. ‘How is the rest of your friends?’. ‘Dale, Pierson, Michae..’
‘They are.. they are well. We’re good’. ‘Hey, Samantha, I want to tell you something’, he placed his hand on the glass wall with more impact wishing he was touching her. ‘I love you a whole lot', he said.
‘I love you too’, she replied.
‘And you have a great future ahead of you. Samantha?’
‘Yes’
‘I want you to move on’, he said and looked up to see her puzzled face.
‘What are you talking about?’
Tristan felt so downcast with what he had said that he could not bear repeating it again. He dropped the telephone back into its place and after looking at her troubled face, he turned away and left.
Two weeks after Michael’s death, some new inmates were brought in. Four men, all middle-aged all looking bitter and torn-up, they were probably innocent too or claim they were innocent but nothing was going to happen. Once they were in Boorbunk, there was no way out.
The Redemption refused to pick anyone from the fifteenth ward, leaving them to the doom of the monthly sacrifice.
All these kinds of moments were the only ones that defined the life of the prisoners down in the penitentiary. It didn’t seem like four weeks or one month, it was like every day. The effects didn’t die out completely before the next time came.
Dale could see the newly-placed skull that belonged to no other person than Michael, the thought of that made him revolted but it was right there. There were multiple holes all around the face that made it look like a dartboard. It was where some of the bullets had penetrated. Yes, the governor was there too and like the other times, he loved the sculpture on the wall and especially, the very conspicuous point dots in every corner.
The governor was there again seeming so pleased and welcome among the other officers on the podium, ready to witness another death and even before then watch them murmur in prayer for their lives.
‘Carreras Minnodrey’, the officer shouted. Before the executioners could get hold of him, he dived up to the podium and held the leg of the governor, crying profusely.
‘I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t do anything, I don’t want to die, don’t let them kill me please. I beg you, Governor. Governor, save me. I don’t want to die!’, he repeated with his mumbled voice, he had his hands held tightly at the ankle of Governor Dormas. It was then that Dale saw what kind of beast the governor really was.
Governor Dormas looked down slowly at him with contempt and irritation, he shrugged Carreras off and hit him with his goatskin loaf on the side of his head, bruising it and making blood rush out.
‘Unrepentant, unconfessing, hardened criminals like you do not have a place on Earth!’, he shouted while Carreras lay on the ground, moaning with his only useful hand placed on the side of his head trying to stop the blood. ‘And I will not take a part in such sparing. Justice must be served! For you and for the rest of you! One after the other! You stupid delinquents’, he said and stared at the small body of helpless Carreras with blood mopped over his head, streaming down his face, in satisfaction. ‘Kill him! Kill him now! Kill him right now!’, he shouted with his voice reverberating throughout the room.
The men in armour had come closer to Carreras. For the first time, the rest of them were going to witness the actual killing of a fellow inmate. They all pointed their rifles at him and then the sounds followed. The bullets flew out of the several guns spontaneously splashing blood out of the body of Carreras making it jolt endlessly. The bullets didn’t stop rushing into his body, they were about a hundred wasted on him. The shooting wasn’t only to kill, Carreras had died after the first bullet shot at him on his chest. The sound of the bullets and the splattering of blood and life from their victim gave the executioners pleasure and so they continued until they thought they had enough.
Dale shut his eyes as the gore from Carreras was flowing down across the room to his feet. Carreras had been a young lad, full of energy possibly just eighteen years of age, there was no way he could have done something dangerous enough to put him on a death row. He was just like him and he had just watched them shoot him endlessly until half his blood had emptied out from his system, painting the ground of the room. The butchering room.
Dale could not move his gaze from the governor, hatred fumed in him, anger fumed in him and he really wanted to say something but his life still felt precious to him. Any word and the governor would order him killed.
It was about seven months that they had all spent in the prison and Michael was dead. Death didn’t seem far away anymore.