Sunlight was beginning to spill through the barred windows of cell block A as yet another day dawned on the Alderney State Correctional Facility. The uneasy sleepers of the cellblock were still giving off a chorus of quiet snores and tossing-and-turnings when a raspy voice broke over them in cell A-2.
“Walter, you asleep?”
Walter had been lying awake on the top bunk using a stray beam from the morning sun to look at a picture he had been staring at every day for the past three years he had been behind bars. Natalie’s green eyes were gazing at him from middle park a decade ago on a Spring day. His wife’s supple lips were stretched ear-to-ear as she wrapped her slender arms around their daughters’ shoulders and Abbey must have found it pretty funny as she had a half-laugh-half-smile etched on her gentle features.
The picture was of a young girl. Her chocolate brown eyes gazing out from behind brown curls and a half-laugh-half-smile etched on her gentle features. In this picture she was dressed in standard hiking gear and was struggling to lift a giant hiking pack which she must have found pretty humorous.
“Walt.” Chapman’s voice was more incessant this time.
“Go back to sleep.”
Chapman ignored the request. “I was wonderin’ ‘bout that tattoo on ya’ chest.”
Walt’s eyes turned down to his bare chest where Hebrew script was followed by the numbers 29:17 were emblazoned over his heart.
“It’s a verse from the Old Testament.”
“What’s it say?”
“I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched their victims from their teeth.” Walt’s eyes tightened as he answered.
The siren that served as the prison’s alarm began to wail and the other prisoner’s began to stir.
BANG. A club cracked against the bars of their cell as a prison guard walked past. “Wake the fuck up, you fucking degenerate bastards.”
After a few more strings of expletives and another blare of the siren the cell doors slid open and Walt slipped on his shirt. He walked into the long hall and looked into the other prisoner’s faces as Captain Joseph Belko worked his way back down the hall with a troop of guards. He stopped in front of Walter and grinned before addressing Chapman who was moving slow.
“Did you hear me you old piece of shit?”
“I can’t move any faster.” Chapman said as he gripped the bars and filed in next to Walter.
Belko stepped forward pushing Chapman up against the bars of his cell with his chest and Walt gripped his fists and ground his teeth. He was tired of Belko’s shit. “Are you talking back to me, Chapman?”
“No sir, just tryin’ to explain.”
“Listen hear you little shit.” Belko raised his fist and brought it down toward Chapman.
SMACK. That was the noise that was made as Belko’s fist smacked into Walt’s palm. He lowered the guards fist and looked him dead in the eyes, “Leave him alone”.
“Who the fuck do you think you are Day?” Belko shouted as he brought his free hand up toward Walt’s face, but he managed to block it.
Then came the club from one of Belko’s cronies that connected with the left side of his jaw that sent him staggering to the right. Then one to the back of his neck, another to the back of his leg that sent him crumbling to the ground, then a boot in the gut, then another, and another, and another. Chapman tried to intervene, but they had him pinned to the bars of the cell.
“Enough, Belko.” Warden Comstock’s voice echoed down the long corridor and left only silence in it’s wake. The bottom of his wingfeather tipped dress shoes clacked as he moved slowly toward them. He waved his hand at a few of the guards, “Get the rest of them out of here.”
When the rest of the prisoners were gone and it was just them, Comstock had two of the guards drag Walter to his feet. His face was beginning to swell from the baton and he could feel his body protesting every breath. Comstock stepped forward and grasped Walt’s chin with his fingers. He pushed up so that they were looking eye to swollen eye. The Warden’s eyes were a cold grey and the weathered wrinkles that recessed his face gave him the appearance of stone. “Walter, I don’t think you understand how severe the gravity of the situation you find yourself in. With Goldberg dead and not drawing attention to your case and with Commissioner Fitzsimmons wanting you to follow him, the noose has tightened around your neck. So, my advice to you is that you start being a good little inmate, capiche?”
Walt just stared into those cold grey eyes. This brought the back of Comstock’s hand into his already bruised face. “Do you understand me you worthless little fuck?”
Walter still didn’t speak, but this time it warranted instead a disdainful laugh as he wiped his hand on Walter’s shirt. “Go clean the bastard up and throw him out on the yard with all the others.”
The warden threw his hands around for emphasis and the guards dragged him off to the showers.