SlAMMER

by Allan Guthrie

Part One
Narrative Exposure Therapy

 

MONDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 1992

Nick Glass lifted his elbows off the desk and leaned backwards a few inches. The prison shrink’s breath was sweet, like hot milk. Not unpleasant, exactly. But it made Glass feel ill. He’d have asked if he could open a window, but the pokey little office didn’t have one.

John Riddell visited once a week, usually on Mondays, and the smell was stronger each time. ‘How are you settling in?’ he asked.

Glass said, ‘Okay,’ thankful that, when he breathed in now, all he could smell was furniture polish.

Riddell opened the file in front of him. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, nodding. He slid his specs down his nose and peered at Glass. It was a look he’d clearly practised. ‘You sure about that?’

Glass gave Riddell a look back. Glass could do looks. He’d learned over the past few weeks. That wasn’t all he’d learned.

Riddell said, ‘Everything you say in this room is confidential.’

‘Right,’ Glass said. As if that mattered.

‘You understand that, Nick?’

‘I’m not a child.’

Riddell leaned forward. ‘I didn’t mean to be patronising. I’m sorry.’

The smell again. Glass saw a lime-green plastic tumbler, milk spilling out as it fell to the floor. Then the image vanished and Glass only saw what was in front of him. ‘Right.’

‘It’s just . . .’ Riddell took his specs off.

‘Just what?’

‘This is a chance for you to get it off your chest.’

‘Get what off my chest?’

Riddell put his specs back on. ‘Whatever’s on it.’

‘My chest’s fine.’ But Glass could tell Riddell didn’t believe him. He wondered who’d been speaking out of turn. Shouldn’t matter, he knew, but the idea that he was being spoken about made him feel as if someone had poured cement down his throat and it was hardening in his stomach. People could be telling Riddell anything at all and he’d believe it too. He looked the sort.

Riddell fiddled with his pen, eyes straight ahead.

Glass tried to guess what they might have been saying about him. He should ask. No, he didn’t want to go there. You never knew where it might lead.

Maybe they’d been talking about him and Mafia. Saying they were too close. Making homosexual references. Puerile shite like that.

Glass wished they’d grow up. He was only twenty-two but he was a damn sight more mature than the rest of them. He’d lived. Seen things, done things, felt real pain, the sort that crushed your bones and scooped all the flesh out of your body.

Riddell said, ‘How are the officers treating you? You okay with the nickname?’

He might as well have picked Glass up and slammed him headfirst against the wall. What the hell was wrong with Riddell that he had to be such a provocative bastard? Maybe his wife had left him. Packed a suitcase, stormed off to her mother’s. It had to be something like that.

‘Can I go now?’ he asked.

Riddell looked at his watch. ‘This is supposed to be a thirty-minute session.’

Glass glanced at the clock on the wall behind Riddell’s head. Twenty minutes to go. No way could he endure that.

‘So how about we just pretend?’ Glass said. ‘Nobody needs to know we cut it short.’

Riddell sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘This session could benefit you. It’s not about making you uncomfortable. It’s about helping you adapt.’

Glass said nothing. He was fine. Didn’t need any help. He could adapt by himself, thank you very much.

‘Your wife,’ Riddell said. ‘And daughter.’

Glass dug his nails into his palms. Yeah, so it could be difficult for families, he knew that. But there was no need to bring Lorna and Caitlin into it. He didn’t want to talk about them here. They were part of a different world and none of Riddell’s business.

He’d be curt, maybe Riddell would get the hint. ‘Caitlin’s settled into school,’ he said. ‘Lorna’s fine. None of us miss Dunfermline.’ Glad to be rid of it. Well, glad to be rid of Lorna’s mother.

‘Must be tough for Caitlin, though. Difficult age. Remind me. Five, six?’ Riddell waited, then filled the silence himself. ‘You became a father very young.’

Glass sat it out, stared at the empty photo frame turned sideways on the desk. Tin. Pewter, maybe. Glass wasn’t sure of the difference. He felt sorry for Riddell, not having a photo to put in it. Maybe his wife hadn’t left him after all. Maybe he didn’t have a wife. Maybe he had no one. Glass was angry at himself for feeling sorry for the poor sod.

‘Okay,’ Riddell said. ‘Sign this.’ He turned a sheet towards Glass, handed over his pen.

A list of names. Dates. Times.

Glass was surprised by how many he recognised. He scrawled his name. Then he levered himself to his feet, turned to go.

‘Thanks, Nick,’ Riddell said. ‘Any time you feel like talking, let me know. It’ll do you good.’

Prison Officer Nick Glass didn’t think so. But he nodded, for show.

*

‘We have to take Mafia to the Digger,’ Fox said, half an hour later.

Glass had been working here long enough to know that Officer Fox was talking about the segregation unit. God alone knew why it was called the Digger. Prison was so full of slang you hardly knew where to begin. And if you asked how one thing got its name, you had to ask about another, and before long you didn’t care any more, so you stopped asking.

The Digger it was.

Glass looked at his colleague. ‘Why us?’

Fox was at least fifty, fat and proud of it. He was the kind of man who’d walk around all day with his hand down his trousers if he could get away with it. ‘Our job, Crystal, isn’t it?’

Glass ignored the nickname. It had stuck. Nothing he could do about it now. At least it was better than what he’d been called at school. Nicholarse Glarse. Arse for short. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Been at it with Caesar again.’ Fox started moving, heels clicking on the polished floor.

‘Is he okay?’

‘He’ll live. Caesar just toys with him.’

‘So,’ Glass said, finding it hard to believe he was struggling to keep up with the much older, much bigger man, and thinking, not for the first time given all the muscles on show here, that he should start working out, ‘how come nothing happens to Caesar?’

‘How do you know what’s going to happen to him?’

‘Just guessing.’

‘Well, fucking don’t,’ Fox said. ‘Just do what you’re fucking told like a good little boy.’

It wasn’t just that Glass was young. He looked young. Always had done. Glass wondered if Fox had always looked like a fat bastard. One of these days, he’d ask.

A cat hissed at them as they moved down C-Hall. Fox kicked out at it, missed. The cat hissed again and turned tail. Disappeared back into the guts of the building.

The cats were one of the many surprises that had confronted Nick Glass when he’d first arrived here six weeks ago. The Hilton, as they all called it, was a modern prison. When it was being built, a small feral cat population had decided that the building would make a good home. So they moved in and despite repeated attempts – humane and otherwise – to remove them, years later they were still here.

Couple of days ago, Glass had spotted a kitten. Terrified little black thing in the corner of the locker room. Glass wanted to pick it up, take it home, give it to Caitlin. She’d love it. It fled, spitting, before he could get near enough, though.

He was hopeful he’d catch it another time, and was looking out for it as he and Fox approached the cells on the left. Three levels, called flats, both sides of the Hall. Mafia’s peter – his cell – was on the second flat, or, as Fox said, ‘on the twos.’

Up the stairs, past the ginger-bearded Officer McDee who was too busy chatting to one of the few female guards, Officer Ross, to notice Glass. Then past a group of cons. Nods, grunts, shuffling of feet. Glass wondered if Darko was with Mafia, wondered what the hell they’d been up to. Glass might have found out from Fox, but the expression on his fat face wasn’t one to inspire conversation. Fox didn’t like any of the other officers paying too much attention to Ross.

Glass wasn’t in a hurry. He’d get told soon enough.

Fox rattled his keys in time to the music filtering through the cell door. He shoved his key in the lock and twisted it, all in one movement, and walked inside. The radio was blasting out the chorus of a pop tune even Glass recognised: ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, a song the cons loved cause it was full of drug references.

Mafia was sitting on his bunk, the lower one, Darko patting his face with a cloth.

The stink crept up on Glass like it always did when he walked into one of the cells. Damn, he should use the slang. The peters. Fags, sweat, a faint whiff of shit. And an industrial chemical that pervaded the whole place.

Made him shake. Made him wonder what he was doing here.

‘What you been up to now, you blind fuck?’ Fox said to Mafia, snapping off the radio and creating the kind of sudden silence that got him the attention he was so desperate for.

The reason Mafia got his nickname: he wore dark glasses. Reason he wore dark glasses: eye problems. He had a medical condition that meant he couldn’t see further than a couple of inches in front of his nose.

Mafia was one of the few cons Glass could speak to. Most of them didn’t want to be seen talking to the officers. Mafia didn’t care what anyone thought, though. They’d struck up a rapport right away, Glass and Mafia. Glass had been wary, having been warned that certain prisoners would try to take advantage if he got too close to them, revealed too much of himself. But Mafia wasn’t playing a game. They just liked each other. Glass couldn’t see Mafia as a double murderer. Not that Mafia would talk about it, but that in itself was unusual and a sign that he might be innocent. Glass hoped so. On the outside, they’d be drinking buddies. Or at least that’s what Glass liked to think.

He didn’t know, though, since he didn’t have any drinking buddies.

Anyhow, Fox was right: Mafia was virtually blind. Claimed he’d been run over nine times crossing the road on account of his terrible eyesight, worst injury being a broken hip. Glass wasn’t sure if that made him lucky or unlucky.

Mind you, everybody lied in prison. Glass believed him, though. It was too imaginative a story to be anything but the truth.

Glass nodded towards him.

Mafia tilted his head in response. ‘Who’s that? McDee? Agnew? Not that fucker, Sutherland. Is it the lovely Officer Ross? I can usually smell her.’

‘It’s me,’ Glass said.

‘Don’t fucking answer him, Crystal. He’s a rude fuck.’ Fox stepped closer, pushed Darko out of the way. It wasn’t hard. Darko was only just over five foot tall and rail-thin. Caitlin could probably knock him over with a shove of her little hand.

‘Hey,’ Darko said.

‘Hey, what?’ Fox stuck his chest out, looked like he was trying to poke Darko’s eyes out with his nipples. ‘Eh? Want to join your cellie in the Digger?’

Darko said nothing.

‘Fucking right, you don’t. Now fuck off or I’ll have you deported back to Yugo-fucking-slavia.’

‘The Digger?’ Mafia said. ‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope.’ Fox turned his attention back to Mafia. ‘Although it is pretty fucking funny, now you mention it.’

‘You can’t put me in there.’

‘Orders,’ Fox said.

‘Who from?’

‘Your granny.’ Fox stabbed a finger at him. ‘Now get on your feet and start moving. And try not to fall down the fucking stairs this time.’

Mafia didn’t budge.

‘You want to do this the hard way?’

Mafia sighed. Stood. And Glass got a good look at his face. His cheek was puffed up, lip swollen.

‘I’ll lead the way,’ Glass said.

‘Thanks,’ Mafia replied.

‘You pair should just be done with it and fuck each other,’ Fox said. ‘Spare us all the bloody foreplay.’

*

copyright (c) Allan Guthrie, 2009