I sat on the edge of my bunk in silence. If I strained my ears I could hear the faint buzz of fluorescent light bulbs. Nothing else. I thought about standing up to look out into the pod, but I’d done it so many times already that I could probably paint the entire picture from memory. Two stainless steel tables, a phone, and a bunch of closed doors is all I would see. No people. No television. No artwork. Not one piece of visual stimulus.
I thought I felt a vibration in my pocket and my hand instinctively went down to check my phone. But there was no vibration. There was no phone. There wasn’t even a pocket.
I scanned the walls of my cell in search of something interesting. My eyes naturally followed the random patterns in the latex paint that covered the cinderblock walls and by connecting the dots I noticed that I could make shapes. Sometimes a face would appear in the dots if they were spaced just right. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Maybe even some hair up there and on the sides. Is that an ear? I continued scanning the wall for more faces, but couldn’t find anything as good as the first one. I turned my gaze back to the face. Wait. Where’d it go? I knew I had seen the face, but I had completely lost it. At least I had a goal now. A mission. Find the face!
Is it on that block?... No. Maybe I can do it procedurally. I’ll check all the blocks one by one until I find it, and once I find it I’ll remember which block it is so I won’t lose it again. Aha, There it is! Exactly where it was before. Fifth block from the floor, four blocks from the wall.
Aren’t these blocks exactly one foot long and half a foot high? I should be able to count them to see exactly how big this cell is. Eight by ten, no? One, two, three... wait but what about the mortar. That’s a half-inch gap between each foot. So if there are ten blocks then there are nine mortar gaps between them. That’s ten feet plus four and a half inches. Wait. What was I doing? Shouldn’t I stand up to look out the window now? Will the scene be any different now. Maybe!
I stood up to look out the window. Two stainless steel tables, a phone, and a bunch of closed doors. Maybe next time.
I wish I could sleep. Sleep is nice because my dreams take me places and the time passes faster. I had a dream about my dog earlier. It was a nice dream. We were happy. But thinking about it now just makes me sad. Well now I don’t want to dream about my dog. I’ve been sleeping all day anyway, I should do something else. But what? This is crazy! There’s literally nothing to do. Even when I was a kid and I was sent to my room in punishment I had things to do. Toys. Books. A goldfish. I thought I was bored then, but it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. I wish other people I knew could experience this. In some ways it holds a certain interest. What’s it like to have no stimulus and to be truly bored? The next time I call Celia I’ll tell her to move all of her shit out of her bedroom except for a bucket and a gallon of water and to shut herself in all day. She can drink the water and pee in the bucket. That’s what this is like. But it goes even deeper. She obviously isn’t going to pee in a bucket. And when she gets hungry she’s going to leave to get food. I can’t even do that! If I’m hungry all I can do is wait for food to come to me through a slot in the door. I don’t know what time it is, but I know that I’m hungry and I’ve already had three trays of food today. I can’t wait for breakfast.
There is one thing I could do. I have a book with me. The bible. I’ve heard tales of people who have read the whole thing, but I’m not sure I believe them. I mean, it’s a huge book! Ok, let’s try to read this thing, start to finish. If I can’t do it here, I won’t ever do it.
So I picked up the bible and started reading the book of Genesis. Ok, it’s not so bad. There’s a little bit of plot. Even some conflict! Is she gonna eat the forbidden fruit? Let’s find out! It’s certainly not like a modern book though. There’s lots of names, like Cain, and Abel, and Enoch, and Mehujael, and Methushael, and Lamech, and holy shit why are there so many names? But there’s no character development. I mean, sure, Cain murdered Abel, but we didn’t even get a description of it! Just like BAM, he’s dead. No blood, no gore. In the span of four paragraphs Cain was born and then he killed his brother. Missed opportunity here for a good story I think.
Hours passed and the book of Genesis had been consumed. Exodus too. Then there was Leviticus. Ok there are a LOT of rules in here. And most of them have to do with killing goats and spreading blood on things. Could’ve used some of this detail in Genesis.
I never made it through the book of Leviticus, though not for a lack of trying.
After a while my body started to complain about being so confined. I had been an active person for most of my life and I wasn’t used to sitting around all day. I stood up. Ok, time for a workout. Should I do some squats? Pushups? Hmm... let’s start with squats. I did ten squats. Man, I’m hungry though, and orking out makes me even hungrier. I have no idea what time it is, but I know that breakfast is many hours from now. Also I don’t want to get sweaty before going to bed. I can’t shower until tomorrow. I sat back down.
For the first time in my life I felt something new. Something that I didn’t know I could feel. I had lost so much and I’m literally at the bottom right now, in the worst possible location I could be as a healthy person in society. Not just in jail, but in the jail of the jail. If I listed everything I love in life, none of those things would be in the room with me. I had nothing. I had no things, no people, no goals, no motivation, and there was no end in sight. Despair. I felt despair.
Maybe I’ll let myself cry. I’ve been through a lot of trauma in the last few weeks and a good cry might be warranted. I couldn’t cry before because people would see me, but now I’m all alone. Yea! I’ll cry. Now’s a good time for a cry.
I scrunched up my nose and my cheeks to make my best ugly-cry face, but the tears wouldn’t come. I just don’t feel like crying right now. Truly rock bottom. Not even enough motivation to cry. The fluorescent lights buzzed while the unblinking eyes of the face on the wall watched me lay down until morning.
Become a Bunkmate
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