Epitaph

And so it happened, Ricky was in lockdown. Just him, a small, rickety metal cot held together with bent screws and duct-tape dreams, and his own soul. He was alone in the cold quiet of solitary, counting the hours by waiting on the guard to peep through the scratched, yellowing glass that made up the room’s only window to the outside world.

(2 hours more 2 hours)

He sat on the edge of his bed, another beaten convict in the system. He had been ‘in the system’ more or less since puberty grew sandy hair on his pisser and he saw his first hot book, a gift from his cousin, Drew, and My GOD, you can see her kidneys. He chuckled at the memory of feeling excited, acutely aware of the aching hard-on, the kind that was showing up at all hours of the day and night as a boy.

He remembered feeling shame.

A harsh shame, a secret that he was sure everyone could see burning behind his pants.

Behind himself.

Inside, way down, deep yearning, depth of horniness, the craving for female flesh, the hunger-

(wha-)

Ricky stopped, frowning at a crack in the worn and moldy cement floor.

There’s that word again. The one that smug assistant D.A., Crenfield, kept using over and over. The one that made that one lady juror gasp as if on cue for a bad tv game show.

Hunger.

HUNger.

But he’d never hurt a fly, he thought to himself. Never had; Never would. His crimes had all been theft-related. He’d never even used a weapon. He just took what he wanted and left. Never hurt a soul.

He was sure of it.

He stood and stretched, reaching back through his memory of the ‘incident.’ That’s all he’d allow himself to call the failing of that night. The ‘incident.’ No capital letters, no sir.

Ricky still wasn’t convinced he was even there when she-

(passed just say passed)

What was her name? He twisted his neck, spasms of hair flailing in the stale air of his cell. He felt his neck pop to his satisfaction, pacing around, feeling the space, exploring the realm in which he found himself.

A guard peered through the window, blurred against the passage of time and the sins of men that was etched into the glass.

Ricky felt him. He wheeled around, whipped out his little Betel Nut pecker, and wagged it toward the officer, tongue lolling like a newlywed whore on Wedding Night.

(fuckYOU)

The guard shook his head, tapping the door with his nightstick BONK and walked away.

Ricky’s smile faded to black, his eyes growing dark. He tucked his junk back into his red

(dangerous, oh so dangerous)

jumpsuit and laid down on the cot.

(hunger)

Her name was Jeanine…something. He couldn’t remember her name. He’d only just been introduced to her that night, a friend of Julie’s from college. She had a stark New England accent, the kind that doesn’t always pronounce its R’s unless the word ends in a W. “I sawr a great show, Geoahge.”

It made his head hurt.

Nowadays everything made his head hurt. Work, sex, tv, the fuckin’ sun.

(hunnnnnggggggeeeeerrrrr)

He’d stopped drinking two weeks before. He’d been losing whole days. Just gone. It would be Wednesday afternoon one minute and the next minute it would be Wednesday again.

He’d missed so many appointments that his therapist threatened to drop him. He couldn’t have that so he stopped drinking and bought a calendar for every room in his modest house.

Now, it seemed…excessive.

Always, he thought. Excess equals Freedom.

He shook his head, putting his feet against the wall, a triangle of relaxation. His breathing slowed to a crawl. He had to make himself breathe.

His arms draped over the edge of his cot. His fingers fidgeting with a screw holding the frame to its leg.

It was loose.

Ricky fiddled with it, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember…

He was drinking an O’Doul’s when Julie walked up with…Jeanine. Something…Ricky couldn’t remember.

Something about Julie thinking he and Jeanine would make “such a CUUUUTE COUPLLLLE!”

(feedhertothelionsfeedthemalltothelions)

Ricky held out his hand; Jeanine took it.

That was it. Nothing further. He remembered nothing about the party after that.

(nothing)

The sickness had grown from annoying to ‘let’s get the hell out of here.’ That was the last thing he remembered thinking while holding the young Jeanine’s tender hand.

He didn’t know how he got home. His car was in the yard parked backward from his usual routine of narrowly missing the mailbox at the end of his driveway, parking there, and stumbling up the gravel until he mercifully reached his front door.

No, he’d woken up on his bedroom floor. A heap of humanity being licked to death by his faithful Labrador, Seinfeld, a husky dog that needed to go outside for some potty business in the worst way. He’d already made messes in the kitchen, the bathroom, and had somehow managed to get into the pantry when his bowl finally emptied.

There was dog food strewn from the pantry to the living room.

How long did I lay there?, Ricky pondered, still fiddling with the loose screw. It troubled him that he was forgetting so much. Brain tumor?

Worse?

(much worse)

Was his brain turning into his enemy? Is that how he got here? A victim of his own biology?

Ricky didn’t know. Didn’t wanna know.

He sat up, rubbing his ever-increasing growth of whiskers on his rugged jaws.

He sat. A man convicted of three murders in 3 days. All connected to him; All the victims were last seen with him, as far as anyone knew.

Helluva coincidence.

He planned to fight it. Oh, Ricky thought, I’ll be a free man within a year.

The cases were circumstantial at best. Fabricated evidence. Innuendo.

Ricky knew it. He KNEW it.

(don’tknowit)

“He was HOME, your honor. Was not seen coming or going for the time frame listed.”

Davis, his state-appointed attorney, did his best. Ricky couldn’t deny that. It was the kindest act anyone had done for him. His own mother turned away and hadn’t she done that all his isolated life?

“The state has no case.” He could’ve kissed his Davis for that. Someone, paid or not, was taking up for him. For once.

(soalonesoalonesoalonealone)

It didn’t matter.

He was going to rot away in Creekwood Prison until the Court of Appeals decided to overturn his ‘alleged’ crimes, if they ever did.

They were going to, his attorney said. '“They’re bound to.”

Ricky pulled the screw from its hold.

The cot sagged but didn’t fall. He wriggled around, shoulders and hips causing the bed to death-rattle against the floor.

It held.

(good)

He held up the screw, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger under the blinding cell light. He ran his ring finger against the tip, scratching it hard enough to draw a thin line of blood between the creases of his knuckles.

Three murders.

Three.

Jeanine was the only one they didn’t find. Ironic, his attorney had argued, given that her interaction with Ricky was both brief and non-committal. Ricky had almost zero connection with the woman.

They gave up hope two years ago, Ricky thought.

(big mistake ooo boy)

He understood. He looked back at his window. It looked like someone had broken an egg yolk on it and then smeared it into the pane until it dried from sheer friction, the yellow turning green.

Ricky understood he wasn’t going to get out. His attorney passed away a year ago in a car accident and his new defense attorney didn’t seem too excited about filing another appeal

(last)

anytime soon. Maybe never.

Ricky understood. He knew that his life, what there had been of it, was over. He’d been in jail so much and so long that it only seemed natural to stay, forever.

Just. Stay.

He wondered if Seinfeld was still alive. A tear welled up in his eyes. That dog was his life. The only thing he ever really loved. Seinfeld came when you needed, ran when you didn’t, and all he wanted was to be loved by his master.

(masterhungermaster)

Ricky laughed too loud, scaring himself. He glanced around, wide-eyed, eyes on fire.

He stared at the window. Nothing but darkness out there.

He glanced down at the screw, twisting it over and over between his fingers.

Ricky pulled the threadbare county jail issued blanket over him, its whiteness a sharp contrast to the greenish, gray walls. He breathed in. The blanket smelled of bleach and piss.

He pulled the cover over his head. He opened his jumpsuit at the chest.

…

The next morning, Officer Taylor brought Ricky his breakfast. Taylor unlocked the cell and entered, dropping the tray of powdered eggs and hash all over the floor with a crash. He rushed out, shouting into his shouldered microphone, claps of his shoes off the hardened floor beating a rhythm down the hall to the guard’s station.

Behind him, lying on his bunk, was Ricky, jumpsuit opened to the waist, blood everywhere, a weird grin on his face.

Blood. So much blood. Coroner said it must have taken him hours of pain and misery to do what he’d done.

They missed it at the 2 am check. And the 4.

The blood hadn’t seeped all the way through the blanket.

It had now, though.

Ricky. Crazy Ricky. Since childhood he knew he didn’t stand a chance.

Ricky. Dead as a frog paw. Took the last train to Clarksville right there in his cell. A few guards got reprimanded but no real trouble.

They went around and changed all the screws in the cots to nuts and bolts soon after.

And Ricky was buried, alone, on a Tuesday in May. It rained but in the end it didn’t matter. No one was there except the preacher and the boys with the shovels and the backhoe.

He died, alone in his cell, and that was fitting for Ricky. He died like he lived.

He had carved one word into his stomach and chest and the coroner said it had to have hurt like hell. I guess Ricky was used to hurting worse than that. I’ll have to believe it to go on.

Carved.

One word into his white Irish belly:

‘FREE.’