Torture Row
Torture Row
By Karim Q.
By morning the florescent fortress is on lockdown. In the uneasy quiet of empty block-halls, fear floats like some miasmic gas. Through bars of steel the prisoners peer, their ears heal sharp for any unusual sounds, unable to see at any useful angel. A few distant crackles of walkie-talkies down the hall make several inmates perk up but the noise suggest nothing irregular. Hours pass in eerie lockdown silence.
Suddenly a low siren sounds, reverberating around D-block and into the cells making the men start. The inmates turn to those they can. Scattered shouts of disbelief, applause and claging of bars erupt among the cells, and for the first time in days, the men have grins on their collective faces. Some inmates shout “jailbreak, jailbreak!!” (for what else could the siren signify?), and listen over the clamor for the subsequent township-wide alarm.
It never comes. The siren fades off like a foghorn, blast again, then fades, continually blaring on-and-off. The prisoners’ excitement quickly dies into confusion, and their thickest silence yet settles beneath the siren. Abruptly, within the block crackles a chorus of walkie-talkies, and key-rings jangle all around the cells. The entire three shift of guards dash en masse from cell to cell, armed with batons and armored like myrmidons, and suddenly the tense prisoner quiet is cut by shouts of fearful rage, and the unmistakable sound of beatings. Cries of “get the fuck off” and “pigs” harmonize with boots and batons thudding against muscle and bone. Out of open cells the most resistant prisoners are dragged, handcuffed, into empty cells or shower holds to be locked in and bludgeoned. Though naked, though unarmed, some fight back only to be seized on by the armored mob. Outside of D-Block, the other blocks hear the shouts and grunts as distorted, ghostly echoes.
By dusk the cell-block has settled. The few unharmed inmates can do nothing but sit and whisper to their huddled neighbors who, broken and bloody, shudder underbeat the flickering florescent light. The prisoners are silent again: this time with the flat silence of defeat, as hoses was away the blood stains from the walls, the floor, the faces of the just rebellious men. Lockdown continues. Not quite death row.
Perfume
Perfume
By Stewart M.
I smelled your perfume where I sat in an aisle seat of a 747 but it was worn by a short and dumpy stewardess and every time she passed me with her carts of drinks I could not stop myself from remembering the time I first smelled it on you after I had skinned my knee climbing a wall to get to a vine laden with purple flowers just three minutes before you arrived at the café so radiant and with that perfume which seemed to emanate from the nape of your neck tucked in under your remarkable dark curls that were so thick they remained damp hours after you showered and then you asked about my torn pants and I glanced sheepishly up at the high growing vine and then down at the small bouquet in your hand and with a deep inhalation I kissed the side of your neck and smelled your perfume so sweet and so clean and that was the same scent I smelled in the plane returning home and damn it shook my smug conviction that I had forgotten you through means of booze and beach and happy Caribbean women because there was your perfume hanging in the air and it was ripping off the band aid of my fake cure and creating a wound anew while I was running down my list of half baked excuses for the sabotage I created and trying to feel some genuine confidence in that wreckage but when I got off that plane I went directly to your apartment I do not know why and with my bags in my hands I stood outside your window in the harsh wind and saw you silhouetted by a light against the closed blinds and you were brushing your hair with a tenderness that struck me hard and again the smell of your perfume came to me but this time I was only imagined while I watched you there and did nothing but stand in the cold wind and despair.