Solitary (Patreon)

The first sign that something is out of the ordinary is the crystal pendants around the necks of the guards coming to transfer you. You're probably too scared or agitated to notice. Perhaps you even miss the floral scent. No matter if you walk with them willingly or are forced into a transfer chair they will strip the shirt off you, leaving you in your striped prison pants and slip-on shoes.

They march you out of whatever block your cell was in and over to the A block, the OG prison long ago abandoned for normal use. You never get a silent minute in general population, even when there isn't a commotion of some sort. Just hundreds of people breathing and stirring, whispering and snoring, keep an ambient noise level beyond anything you've tried to sleep through before getting here. As you walk in silence with the guards, the absence of sound in A block is deafening. Only your steps as you walk past empty cell after empty cell. Not even the low hum of ventilation, as evident by the smell of mildew and confinement. You begin to realize what solitary confinement actually means. You hadn't been alone in a room since the courthouse. Always a police or correction officer or your useless lawyer or other inmates. Now you would have an entire prison wing to yourself, not that you expected to roam around in any significant portion of it.

At least a full third of all the light bulbs are out, making the silent walk past rows of cells even more eerie. All of the cells were dark, but the light from the walkway still allowed you to see the scribbles and scratches on the prison walls and the abandoned furniture through the bars. You wonder why this was all left as is. Actually, you wonder where you are headed. No one wanted to talk about solitary, like just mentioning it would get you there.

You all head down a flight of stairs. Then a second flight of stairs. This must be the basement. There are sturdy metal doors on either side of the corridor. Off-white painted metal doors with observation holes at the center and two large keyholes close to the brass handle. Chipped paint around the keyholes after years of use. One of the doors stands out though. There is a complicated symbol painted on the door in brownish paint. The guards to your sides strengthen their grips as the guard in front inserts a key and unlocks the door.

The inside looks almost medieval. The floor, ceiling, and walls are just naked concrete. A lonely light bulb shines from the center of the ceiling, illuminating a crude metal chair right below it. It looks like something an inmate would have welded together in the metal shop. What makes it stand out though are the shackles welded in place for wrists, ankles, and neck, and how the entire chair is chained to the floor in four points.

Perhaps you struggle. Most don't at this point. The prize for struggling is just more time in the room in front of you. They push you down and quickly secure you in place and leave as fast as they can, as if they want to spend as little time within the room as possible.

You don't hear the guards at all as soon as the door closes. The rattling of the keys and the lock mechanisms are the last sounds you hear from the world outside. Then it's just you strapped to a chair staring into a door. You read somewhere that when everything is silent you hear two sounds, your bloodstream as a low hum and your nervous system as a higher pitched noise. You want to look up and see if there are any air vents, but the neck shackle restricts your movement enough to prevent you from looking that high. You break the silence but shifting around a bit, as best as you can, to rattle the shackles. The chair is uncomfortable, but that doesn't really matter to you now. What really scares the shit out of you is what it will feel like in an hour. In two hours. In four hours. How long can they keep you here?

You quickly lose track of time. It's been enough that you start feeling sore from being in the same position for too long. How long until there is permanent damage? You recall from school that an old punishment was to cram thieves into barrels and have them sit there. Just shit and piss where they were, and have someone feed them occasionally so they didn't die. After long enough time they couldn't move properly and it was believed they wouldn't have the agility to steal anymore. Was this the goal here? Surely that would be illegal.

At first it's almost imperceptible under the noise of your own body. Faint voices talking in the distance. Perhaps there is an air vent after all that carries the sounds from somewhere else in the building, you think. Then you remember there is no one else in the building. Perhaps it's from the yard outside. You are pretty sure you are not just hallucinating, but then if there ever was a time for that, this would be it.

The whisper startles you. Perhaps it was even a spoken word. Wherever it was, it was near you. A shiver of terror shoots up your spine. Someone or something is with you in the room. You try to look in the direction of the sound, but your restraints don't let you. You shout "hello?" or "show yourself!" or any number of empty phrases into the empty room with no effect. You ears are ringing in the echo of your shouting. You can't hear anything anymore.

Then your body convulses as a scream tears apart your mind. You instinctively try to raise your hands to put over your ears, but your hands just rattle the steel. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. The scream is inside your mind. You can feel something is in there, clawing through your memories. Your best friend in school. Your worst teacher. The first police that ever stopped you. How your father hit you when drunk. When you cheated in math. The skate park. When you made your first ollie. Your first job at Shake Shack. When you slit the wrists of the whore over at the motel just outside of town.

You have no idea how long the attack is, but it is unrelenting throughout, preventing you from thinking any thoughts of your own, until it stops just as abruptly as it started. You're panting, your heart is racing, and you feel physically exhausted. You never killed anyone. You just stole some shit and got caught with drugs, and some of the shit. But it felt so real. Not like watching a movie or anything like that. It was like you were doing it. Seeing it. Hearing it. Smelling it. Wanting it. Just thinking about it makes you feel that rage welling up again. If that filthy whore just had kept his mouth shut you wouldn't have had to do it. It was his own fault.

Then it happens again. You lose control over everything. You vividly experience how you participate in a bank robbery, in what looks like the 60's or 70's. That fucking bitch isn't moving fast enough. You smack her fucking good in the face with the side of your revolver. Blood from her split lip splatters the table. You shout at her, what a fucking dumb cow she is, and pull her aside by her hair.  This time around you feel exhilarated when you regain control and stare into the steel door in front of you. You liked it. How pathetic she looked. You look down at your body, covered in a sheen of sweat. Something is off though. You look different. Like you've gained a tiny bit of muscle.

Once the guards return and open the door they find something very different from what they locked up in there. An endless barrage of crimes, all different, some horrific, most violent, and all perfectly rationalized by the perpetrator have burned away any empathy you once had in you. All of the encounters left a mark, some physical, like your muscular body covered in tattoos, but all left something mentally. You know how they were all done. You know how good it felt after. Under your barely contained rage you can't wait to try it yourself.

Some say recidivism of 98% is a terrible record, but our shareholders disagree.