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The Sunday Paper: Inside, by Ryan Adam Murray. Part 4 of 6.

Bobby once told me that self-love and self-loathing went hand in hand. When you love yourself, he explained, you expect more from yourself. You want more for yourself. Just hating yourself comes from attachment to your own suffering, he said. The self-loathing of the narcissist was far more complex. It doesn’t come from a feeling of worthlessness, but a sense of incredible value that one can never practically live up to. The night with Tanya made me wonder if I was a narcissist. Let’s review the facts: on the outside, I sold drugs so that people would want to hang around me, invite me to parties, and fuck me. Basically, I was on an ego trip. If I wanted money, I would have taken myself a few levels up when I started to move volume. Get myself away from the street level shit. But the reputation that came with that was what I was getting off on. I suppose, if I had put in the time, I could have gone high up enough to fuck three strippers a night in the condo of my dreams, but that would have taken a hell of a lot more patience and self-discipline than I had.

Tanya was amazing. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, but we really clicked. When I was done, we lay in the trailer and talked for a long time, and when I was ready again, she was game. I thought that was what the man with the clipboard paid her for, but I was only half right. He paid her for the sex, sure, but that understanding, that compassion, that open and honest ability to make me feel like I was the only person in the world she wanted to be with? That didn’t come from the man with the clipboard.

But then, when I got dressed and headed back to the cellblock for breakfast, I was more miserable then ever. That’s why I think I’m a narcissist. I’m pretty sure that night couldn’t have possibly gone better. It wasn’t that I was going back to my cage that bothered me. I don’t know what it was. Somehow, getting everything I wanted wasn’t enough. It was frustrating. I tried to imagine what it would take to make it better, but I couldn’t come up with anything. No wonder I spent so many years chasing high after high. The best wasn’t good enough for me. Where do you go from there?

I glanced around the cafeteria for Bobby, but I didn’t see him. The man with the clipboard wasn’t there either. Asking questions would just make people suspicious, so I ate my eggs and kept my mouth shut. On the way to the gym that afternoon Officer Patrone took me aside and searched me. That wasn’t unusual; we all got the once over from time to time. He didn’t find anything, but when he was done there was a note in my pocket.  “Still alive,” was all it said.

I got to see Tanya again the very next week. It was even more amazing than the first time. There was no mistaking it; I was in love with her. The strange part was, and this I could scarcely believe, it seemed like she was in love with me. She even started to say something about when I got out, but stopped herself and apologized. She said that she didn’t want me to think she was a psycho. We really didn’t know each other that well. I told her it was okay. I didn’t say much else. I didn’t have to. We held each other for a long time and let the possibilities speak for themselves.

Bobby was still in the infirmary. It was a while before I could get the story out of anybody. The man with the clipboard finally filled me in. We had stopped hiding our little chats from the others. Everybody saw me talking to him. Everybody knew that he was behind what happened to Bobby.

Nobody knew the details. The man with the clipboard wouldn’t say much. Bobby’s job was to sweep and mop the classrooms and cafeteria when they were empty. He was usually supervised. For some reason, that day, the guard wandered off. In the meantime, Bobby managed to be doused in gasoline and set on fire. He had burns all over his arms and legs, but he survived, thanks to quick thinking on his part. The prison officials didn’t have a suspect, but when Bobby was sufficiently healed, it was likely that he would wind up in protective custody until more information came to light. The man with the clipboard was very happy about this.

“I won’t be here much longer,” he told me with a sly smile. People don’t smile on the inside. Well, Bobby does, but Bobby’s different. Seeing the man with the clipboard do it, with everyone watching, was blasphemy. “But I do keep my word.” And so, another week later, I was going to get to see Tanya again.

Meanwhile, I was losing my mind. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have Bobby to talk to, it was that asshole’s smug fucking smile. How could this be the plan? I began to believe that the man with the clipboard had pulled a fast one on Bobby. That made me very upset.

I started dreaming again. In some of my dreams, Bobby was coming to kill me. I had failed him, and he wanted revenge. In some of them, Tanya was coming to kill me. She learned that I betrayed my friend, and wanted to punish me. In most of them, I was chasing the man with the clipboard, but it always ended the same way. I’d back him up against the wall and try to punch him in the face, but I couldn’t. Looking at him was like looking at the sun. I couldn’t focus on his face, only his smile. My blows were weak and useless. My arms were like pudding. I tried to shank him, but when I reached for the blade it fell to the floor. I stooped down to grab it, but it was too heavy for me to pick up. Then I would look up and see that hideous, disgusting, smug, little smile looming over me. Mocking me. Mocking Bobby. Mocking my friend.

Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday. Return next Sunday morning for the next section of Inside. For other stories check out the Sunday Paper archive.

To submit your story for consideration for the Sunday Paper:

e-mail us at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com.

The Sunday Paper: Inside, by Ryan Adam Murray. Part 3 of 6.

“We’ve gotta play this right,” Bobby told me. “You know how to lie, don’t you baby?”

“I guess so, man,” I responded cautiously. Something told me that Bobby would have his own ideas about the correct approach to deception. My expectations were not disappointed.

“You want consistency without complexity. Don’t add unnecessary details, but know what the details are in case someone asks. Don’t volunteer any more information than they ask for. Basically, just don’t try too hard,” he giggled a little bit, but quickly pulled himself together. “So what’s the story?”

“Officer Patrone has been a friend to you, but you think that he did you dirty on some deal that I don’t know anything about,” I recited the brief narrative he had given me. “You’re pissed off and about to snap. That’s all I know.”

“Good start,” Bobby mused. “It seems like a good start. There’s not enough story for you to fuck it up.”

Of course, he didn’t tell me where it was leading. By the way he giggled when I talked about the man with the clipboard, I knew that that guy was the target. He was a prisoner as well, but he had some kind of special status. I didn’t ask anyone about him. I didn’t want to tip my hand.

I had another hint after I gave the news to the guy at the counter in the cafeteria. He nodded to me with a face that never seemed to change, and delivered the news to the man with the clipboard. He looked up at me briefly as a form of acknowledgement, and I took my seat.

As I began to eat, I saw Bobby come through the door. Officer Patrone was on duty, standing at the back of the room. Instead of picking up a tray and going to the counter, Bobby headed straight for him. The two stood close together and exchanged words. I caught the man with the clipboard’s eye, and turned my attention to Bobby. After a minute of whispering he turned away with a massive scowl on his face. As he stormed off, Bobby kicked one of the tables, knocking some trays to the floor and causing no small amount of commotion. Two guys grabbed Bobby from behind and then it started. I couldn’t really make out what was happening from my vantage point, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how a couple of cons would react to an emotional display that deprives them of their midday meal.

The guards waded in, yelling and banging their sticks on the tables. The crowd quickly dispersed. Beaten and bloody, Bobby lurched forward as officer Patrone put his hand on his shoulder. He howled like a wounded animal, turned, and punched Patrone in the stomach. I winced when I saw it. I knew the guy had a temper, but he knew the rules better than anybody.

They hit him in the legs first, and knocked him off balance. When he went down, three officers started punching Bobby while another two held him against the ground. The crowd began to cheer and jeer at the same time, and slowly melted away as people returned to their food. The excitement was over. After smacking Bobby around for a while, they dragged him to his feet and hauled him off to the hole.

When I went back to my cell that night, I was confused. Bobby had a plan. Bobby always had a plan. I didn’t know this from experience, but my gut told me it was gospel truth. I paced around after lights out, unable to sleep. After a while, something occurred to me. He must have planned what I saw in the cafeteria. He might not have told me so I didn’t give the game away, but there was no way he could have predicted how long he’d be gone. I searched my bunk and found nothing. Cautiously, oh so cautiously, I crawled up to Bobby’s bunk.

I couldn’t help myself from glancing up at the door as I searched. I knew that there was heavy, bulletproof, magnetically locked glass between me and the hallway outside, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Bobby might come in at any time and catch me. When I reached underneath his pillow, I found a carefully folded piece of paper. I drew it out slowly, climbed down to my own bunk, and opened the note. Of course, I thought, Bobby would leave me instructions. He wouldn’t just leave me hanging with my dick in the wind.

Bobby’s ‘instructions’ to me consisted of one line, presented in the form of a question. “What are you smelling my pillow for, faggot?” Bobby’s note demanded to know, in surprisingly elegant cursive script.

I paused for a moment to admire his handwriting, for another to curse his obnoxious self-satisfaction, and for a third to wonder if I should put the note back and pretend that I hadn’t searched his bunk. I decided to smoke one of Bobby’s cigarettes instead. He wasn’t the only one who could be a spiteful prick. I didn’t really smoke, so I coughed quite a bit. Within minutes, a guard was banging his stick on the door. I looked up and sheepishly put it out. I had forgotten to hide it the way Bobby did. That didn’t matter. My cellmate had one less smoke now. That was all I was trying to accomplish.

Bobby was pretty upbeat when he came back the next night. Nobody had seen him all day. It was a pretty quick turn in the hole for hitting a guard, but they had obviously made the time count. Not that you could tell. In spite of his cuts and bruises, his bloodshot eyes, and soaking clothes, Bobby was giggling as usual. I guess being hosed with icy water and pepper-sprayed off and on for several hours can have a restorative effect on some people. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Bobby informed me. “Winston Crutchall said that. Smart guy. Loved cigars. Hated Nazis. What’s not to like?”

I stared at him for a moment. “Yeah man,” I said. Mostly because I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“He was kind of weird about Jews, though,” he reflected, as he started rummaging through his things for dry clothes.

I couldn’t resist. “That was his sister,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, baby,” Bobby said. “Now you’ve got it.”

The next day, when I showed up at the counter for lunch, the man with the clipboard gestured for me to step aside. So I did.

“What have you got?” he asked me. His voice was tense. He sounded excited.

I knew my lines. I was getting better at lying. “Bobby’s still pissed off. He says that ‘the others’ are siding with Patrone, man. I don’t know what others, but I tell you this though,” I leaned in closer and dropped my voice to a whisper. “That man’s ready for something. He started working on a new shiv, man. Some heavy metal. He been wearing those mags under his clothes, too.”

The man with the clipboard gestured frantically to the guy at the counter. “They’re not protecting him,” he hissed. These two were getting sloppy. It was loud enough for me to hear.

“What about my end?” I demanded. “I’m gonna want some of that pussy before we go any further with this, man.”

I’d never been with a hooker before. Ever. I hadn’t even been inside that long. Six weeks or so. I wasn’t desperate, but I had been thinking about it. I was hungry for it. The man with the clipboard glanced at me, and reached into his pocket. He handed me a plain envelope that felt hard in my hand.

“Pick one,” he told me. “Initial the back of her picture and give it to me tomorrow. If you keep doing a good job, you get more.”

I pocketed the envelope and grabbed my tray. They had really loaded it up. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when I sat down to eat.

Bobby was pleased with me too. “They’ve gotta take a shot at me,” he explained. “This doesn’t work if they don’t.”

“What’s up with you and Patrone, anyway?” The extra food, the sense of fooling the man with the clipboard, and the promise of a good lay had given me a sense of confidence. I knew that there was more to what Bobby had planned for me, for us, but that night, I didn’t care. It had been a while since I felt like everything was starting to go my way. I was still locked in a cage at night, but things were looking up.

“What did I tell you about questions?” he sighed. “Did you get paid or what?”

“Soon, they say,” I tried to keep it out of my voice. Bobby laughed. I should have known, really. Bobby knew the man with the clipboard a hell of a lot better than I did. He knew the deal. Honestly, I think he let it go because he was impressed that I lied to him. That sounds crazy, but that’s Bobby.

“Don’t let him stiff ya,” he giggled. “If anyone’s doing the stiffing, make sure it’s on your end.”

Yeah, I really should have known.

He went to sleep after that. I lay awake and wondered what he meant. When I was absolutely sure that he wouldn’t wake up, I pulled the envelope out of my pants and started thumbing through the pictures. I was almost to the end of the stack when I found her. I had a couple set aside as possible picks, but when I found Tanya, it was all over. Big brown eyes, hair the colour of coffee and cream, and best of all, those sexy little freckles on her cheeks. I knew I had hit the jackpot. I flipped the picture over, wrote on the back, and stuffed them all back into the envelope.

That night I dreamt for the first time since being inside. In my dream, the man with the clipboard was a blackjack dealer in a strange, dark casino. Emergency lights maybe, and half darkness, as though the place had been shut down. Even so, it was filled with people, gambling, drinking, laughing, and copping feels in the dark. I saw Bobby there. At first I thought he was running the whole show, but then I noticed him playing dice. I tried to talk to him, but every time I thought I was getting close to him, elbowing my way through the crowd, I would catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye and he was across the room. The man with the clipboard glanced at me, and gestured that I should come and play at his table. I went to the roulette wheel instead, and woke up soaked in sweat.

Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday. Return next Sunday morning for the next section of Inside. For other stories check out the Sunday Paper archive.

To submit your story for consideration for the Sunday Paper:

e-mail us at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com.

The Sunday Paper: Inside, by Ryan Adam Murray. Part 2 of 6.

I didn’t eat with Bobby. Even if I had wanted to, he warned me against it. “You need possible reliability, baby,” he explained. “You don’t want to be seen with me.” I had no doubt that he was right, but I couldn’t help but wonder at his choice of words. Bobby wanted me to think that he meant “plausible deniability,” but I was going to find out that he meant exactly what he said.

So, to make it look right, we argued a lot. In the library, in the gym, in the yard, places like that. Bobby was looking out for me. He knew that if there seemed to be hostility between us it would keep people thinking that we weren’t friends, and also make people think that I must be dangerous. It was delicate. A balancing act. If one of us pushed it too far, the other would have to retaliate with violence or he would appear weak. Bobby was an incredible actor. Pretty soon, I learned to pick up on the cues he threw my way, and we turned into a regular Abbot and Costello routine. People started to stay out of my way. Some of the gangbangers even showed me a little respect, the ones that had worked with Bobby on the outside. Mostly, I kept my mouth shut. That helped me keep my mystique and kept me from pushing anyone too far. I was still working out the boundaries. Still practicing my hard face, like I was about to snap. Still working to keep my eyes dead and cold. I couldn’t maintain it for very long, so I never said more than a few words to anybody but Bobby, and even then, only after lights out when it was dark. I could relax in the dark. It was the only time there was nobody watching.

Sooner or later he was going to call in a favor. I knew it. Just thinking about it made my insides twist into angry, burning snakes of fear. My situation wasn’t so bad, but I was starting to see how tough this place really was. In just a couple of weeks I watched a few guys who came inside at the same time as me get completely torn apart. Not because they were soft, either. They said the wrong thing at the wrong time. They mouthed off too much, or just got next to the wrong people. You can be a tough guy and still wind up in the infirmary getting stitches in your asshole. One tough guy can only do so much against two, three, four, five… or whatever the situation happened to be.

I didn’t have to be afraid of that, but I was afraid of Bobby. I started to hear rumors about him. They said he muscled for some big names on the outside. They said he had serious weight behind him. All of the street guys knew him, and everyone had at least one story about him, whether it was local legend, second hand, or eyewitness. I couldn’t ask questions, of course. That would have looked suspicious. Whenever I heard people talk about Bobby I would just grunt and look disinterested. This impressed people.

After I had been inside for a while, I noticed a change in the atmosphere. My portions at mealtimes started getting bigger. Contraband like porno and candy bars (I wasn’t willing to risk getting caught with anything that would get me high) suddenly became less expensive. That was when the snakes really started doing a number on my gut. I could feel something coming. I told Bobby about it.

“Right on time!” he giggled. “Look baby, here’s what you do: when you go to the cafeteria for lunch, go back and let them know that you didn’t get what you ordered.”

“Ordered?” I was confused. “What the fuck are you talking about, man?”

“Trust me,” Bobby said, smugly. “Just do it.”

So I did.

The guy at the counter nodded, and gestured to a man holding a clipboard. The man approached me and shook my hand.

“We hear that you’re cellmate is Bobby Coucheau,” he began without introducing himself. “Is this information accurate?”

I grunted, and did not take my eyes from his. I had already learned that sounds were more effective than words in these situations.

“My friends and I have an interest in your cellmate,” he explained. “We’re not asking you to do anything extreme. We just want to be informed of what he might say. What he might do. What he might be planning, you understand? His mood, events in his life, and sickness or malady that may befall him… this is all valuable information.”

There didn’t seem to be a way of communicating my response without words that would not mark me as potentially retarded, so I spoke. “How valuable, man?” I asked.

“More valuable than an extra egg at breakfast,” he replied. “More valuable than a quarter off the price of a candy bar. More valuable than any of these things.”

“Money?” I asked.

“We could pay you in money,” he seemed nonplussed by this idea. “There are a great many other ways we can compensate you for your efforts as well. All you need to do is ask.”

“You got nothin’ I want, man.” I didn’t move my body and I didn’t move my eyes. “Just money.”

“Really?” The man with the clipboard arched an eyebrow. “Prison can be a lonely place for a young man, can it not?”

“I’m not into that,” I shook my head.

“Not what you’re thinking,” he corrected me. “I know a person, he’s sort of a matchmaker. He helps husbands meet their wives. As you know, conjugal visits are only permitted between a husband and wife. This man could see to it that the officials find a piece of paper that says you have a wife. In fact,” he leaned in conspiratorially. “This man could give you a new wife every week. I am something of a professional in the industry. You could have your pick of my girls. Just as long as what you tell us is worth hearing.”

That made me stop and think. I grunted my assent, and the man with the clipboard withdrew. The guy behind the counter loaded up my tray, nodded again, and turned away from me. I walked back to my seat as if I was in a dream. I had steeled myself against the sexual deprivation that must necessarily come with a prison sentence. This offer was not what I had been expecting.

“What did they say?” Bobby asked me that night. I had prepared for that moment. I knew that I couldn’t hesitate, or he’d know I was lying.

“They wanted to know about you,” I told him. “They were trying to bribe me.”

“I figured,” Bobby said, fumbling with his cigarettes. “What did they offer you, anyway?”

“You know,” I had to work very hard to keep my voice level and even. “Money, porno, that kind of thing.”

“Good,” he giggled as his lighter snapped and shadows appeared, just for a second, on the wall at the end of my bunk. “You’re going to get your payday, baby. We’re gonna have to drag this out a little. I’m gonna need your skills.”

“Why?” I asked, struggling not to follow with a thousand more questions that I knew he wouldn’t answer.

“So we don’t get bored,” Bobby giggled. “Don’t start asking for more than that, baby. You know the rules.”

Now I was keeping a secret from Bobby. I didn’t know who the man with the clipboard was, but I was sure he was bad news. Still, I missed pussy. I missed that sweet smell of a woman… and I don’t mean pervy shit, but just the SMELL of a woman. I would have done anything to have that again.

That was our first month together.

Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday. Return next Sunday morning for the next section of Inside. For other stories check out the Sunday Paper archive.

To submit your story for consideration for the Sunday Paper:

e-mail us at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com.