Where do writers get their ideas from?
Apart from the usual… waiting rooms where they’re running late and you have dire thoughts about what’s to come, or the notice boards that litter the walls.
…Frequent long walks in the countryside around Nottinghamshire.
…Soaking in the bath, waiting for Coro and Emmerdale to finish.
...Or in the case, of Prisoner 132, watching American TV programs and wondering how on earth some people survive in a US jail; especially after we drove past one such hugely ominous place somewhere in the Four-Corner States. Middle of the desert… scorching hot sun… over two thousand inmates, many of them violent felons… nothing to lose…
So, thinking about that, at the motel that evening, I opened the laptop and a bottle or two…
Prisoner 132 - Part 1
‘I really got to go out there? I only just got in.’ Squinting into brilliant sunlight, I could just make out moving sun-drowned figures.
‘Yip.’ A baton side-swiped across my back reinforced the idea.
You ever noticed how guards don’t pay any attention to anything you say?
That was the single most awful, frightening and sure-I-was-going-to-die thing I ever did – stepping out in the yard that first day they let me out the hospital wing. They walk you along Death Row, to make sure you get the idea. ‘Your cell’s being allocated now, 469. Your celly is 132. He’s the big guy over there. Go introduce yourself.’
‘Oh shit, I’m gonna die – after all the bother they went to, keeping me in one piece in the hospital.’
Every single eye in the place was on me – and the two-eyed ones as well. I sort of tremble-walked out the concrete door into the sun – dazzling midday sun, so hot. Arizona or Colorado or New Mexico tend to be like that. So I presume I’m in one of them. Nobody said.
Okay so maybe a couple of the guys playing basketball weren’t looking, not overtly, anyway. Same with the chess and checkers crowd – Except I could tell they were, really.
This guy isn’t just big: he’s towering over me and sees me coming – all timid and wobbly-knees. I mean, I’m five-four, so everybody looks big. But 132 is at least a foot and a half taller, and twice my weight.
‘Hi. Guard tells me I’m in with you, Mr… er 132?’
My two feet were about two feet off the dust by the time I finished speaking. I was looking down on him. That was a surprise, I admit, but not the way he grinned and tensed and lowered me a fraction. You’re going to throw me away, aren’t you?
I thought he might pulverise me first, and he’s going, ‘Arrrgghh,’ or something like that, and I sort of lashed out and kicked. And kicked and kicked. Sheer panic. Or no – it wasn’t really panic – I just had to do something. So I got in a few really good bangs in his crotch, and the look on his face!
I heard somebody yell, ‘Big Joe’s gonna kill the new dude!’
Oh shit… get on with it. But he’s lowering me, and his face’s gone grey-like and he’s dropping me, and he starts stomping at me but I’m rolling out the way and just get a few kicks from him, and somebody’s kicking me from the other side and not letting me get up.
Yeah, I took a pounding; my neck, especially, and I’m thinking, You can do better than that. I don’ wanna be paralysed. Do it right. And they’re all round and cheering and laughing. Bastards.
So I wake up in the same bed I just got out of; and the deputy warden comes calling on me. ‘You, huh, Limey? Trouble again? You gotta learn. I suppose you’re innocent of this one, too?’
‘No,’ I says, ‘I did this one, whatever it was. Just keep me in here, huh?’
Nasty little smile he had. ‘Oh, yes. You can stay in here, alright. See who’s in the next bed.’ And he went smirking off – he’s another bastard.
I looked. Red-eyed like a demon, staring straight at me. Oh shit. ‘132.’
‘You don’t call me that. Only the Guards use numbers.’
‘You didn’t introduce yourself; not politely, anyway.’
‘You call me Mr Camorra, or Sir.’
‘Screw yourself.’ I really needed to die PFQ. Before anybody else got at me, slowly. ‘Got y’ balls, did I? Hope y’ lose’em.’
‘Shut the shit up, Limey. Y’ done good out there. I needed to get in here. Coupla nights.’
I still have no idea what he got up to in there. I didn’t look. I definitely did not notice him being scurried out both nights. Nor when he came back. Couple of the guards and him were most certainly not up to anything of a dubious nature. I did not know anything about a fatal shanking in C Block that night; or the fire in the Nut Wing; or a consignment of cellphones and meth tablets. It’s not the sort of thing they talk about – not to me, anyway.
Sadistic sods, the guards: they put me back in the same cell with him. In fact, I was in there already when he came out the infirmary – his crotch all swathed up. ‘I thought you’d have had me killed by now,’ I said, hopefully.
I never heard a grunt like it. I thought he was gonna launch at me. But no – he chickened out, all six-ten of him. ‘Want a quick end, huh? Not going to happen, Limey. I’m saving you.’ I don’t think he meant it like he was saving me from anything. He was saving me for something.
I even managed to sleep that night. Lower bunk. Empty stomach. Empty everything. But he left me alone.....
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