Mr. Edward Darson

[Edward Darson]

Prison. It’s really not as bad as they say. But Hell, sometimes you end up wishing that you were dead just so you could get out of the same old shit. Inside, nothing really ends up mattering anymore. Taxes, houses, food, the whole outside world, all of it ceases to matter. At first, you get worried about the usual shit. Prison fights, prison food, money on the inside, hell, even getting raped for the first time. But then, it all seems to slip away. You get strong enough to win the fights, and they leave you alone. You get a cousin, or another relative to get you cash inside new shoes, or inside shirt sleeves. When you break off another man’s dick, he doesn’t feel like trying it a second time. And then you get used to it, the whole deal, really. Prison just becomes another game, another hand dealt to you. You begin to see that it’s really not that bad. Three hot-ish meals a day, free bed and board, free water, free showers, and cable television. The only bad part is the spare time you get. The time you have, to think about what you have done. And for me, there is a lot of thinking to do. I’ll sit, for hours and hours, thinking about what I’ve done. Then it’s time for breakfast. A hot meal of something that resembles rasin-bran. I head back to my cell, my little cubicle. Eight feet deep, six feet wide. A working sink, a small toilet, and a double-stacked bunk-bed. No partner, sadly. My last one couldn’t stop referring to me as “El Diablo,” and he suddenly died of a heart attack one night. Don’t ask me how. I swear it was natural. Well… natural-ish. So I sit in my bed for about another five hours before lunch comes around. I head out to the cafeteria when a large man bumps into me. He tells me to watch it, and grabs my orange jumper. He must be new, the rest of the inmates edge back. I tell him gently to let me go. He shouts something in my face, his breath is absolutely atrocious. So, I grab a finger. Somehow I manage to break it into three separate pieces. He’s on the ground now, whimpering in pain. Even the guards know to keep away. I move in on him. He is screaming something about Jesus. I reach down, and grab another finger.

“Your God cannot save you now.”

I walk away from this battered, beaten man. The only part of the body that has more nerve endings than the fingers is the penis. And I’ll be dammed if I touch another man’s penis. I get my lunch, turkey and gravy, with extra gravy. Just for me, Mr. Edward Darson. I smile as I head back to my table, my own private eatery, and everyone just nods back.

See also: Intimidation.

When I head back to my cell, the air is sweet and the floor sparkles with multiple cleaning products. Cleaned, just for me, Mr. Edward Darson. I sit and I wonder what this is all about, why I should head back into the real world anyway.

So, you see, the first few months, you worry about all the usual shit. But then you realize that in the end, it doesn’t matter. Life, in and of itself, does not matter, on the whole. You realize that you are a pawn on a giant chessboard, in a game that is much larger than yourself. But the further you make it in this game, the more valuable you get. Because eventually, that pawn turns into a queen. And eventually, that pawn ends up winning the game, getting all the power, and best of all, become better than all the other pawns.