right there beside your mom.” When she doesn’t
laugh, I decide to grant her some space. I go scouring for the red ball. It’s special to me.
She says while I search, “One new inmate, alone
and shirtless, sat far from the circle. He was doing
something to himself. Something unusual - I had to
ÅVLW]\_PI\
“When I snuck over, I noticed a tattoo on one of
his arms. It said ‘Me’, and under it, [she peers up so
even from within the dusk I see the crimson cracks
in her eyes] seams of scars, like maggots crawling all
over his bicep. I gaped at all the notches and asked
what they were for. ‘To keep score,’ he said. ‘But
against whom?’ I asked. He responded by lifting his
other arm, this one free of marks, but also possessing a tattoo. It was the name of his opponent.”
“And who was this mysterious ‘opponent’” I ask, indistinguishable from the rest of the gloomy waste in
this corner. I grope among piles of rope for the ball.
Crooked machines, like iron vultures, nip
at their work. Groaning of iron.
“I couldn’t read it yet because I noticed a shank
between his legs - I shivered. I felt my gut yell for
help but my throat smothered the shout. I trembled
[\Qٺ0M\WWS\PMSVQNMIVLZQOP\JMNWZMUaMaM[
carved a single tally under that second tattoo. The
one bearing the title of his rival: ‘The Law’. Blood
dripped from his bicep, smacked the land, veined
across the dirt, and seeped into the sand.
“All I could do was stammer, so I told him, ‘Don’t
worry, it looks like you’re beating it.’ But then a prisWVMZNZWU\PMKQZKTMPI^QVOW^MZPMIZL[KWٺMLIVL
said, ‘Not when you consider the Judge sentenced
him to eternity. Sure, the rest of us will be executed
soon, but death happens to everyone. That poor
loser has to wither away here forever. What’s worse
than that?’
“The marked man nodded and said to me, ‘Yes, but
Sister, I no longer have to cut myself, so I ask you,
who’s truly free?’ Then he rose and faded to the
edge of the yard, like an apparition. Even the other
inmates enjoying the game paused to stare. They
shook their heads and murmured together that ‘the
craziest really are the ones that confess.’”
“The metaphor is obvious, babe” I say, giggling, and
trudging from the dark. “Stop torturing yourself
with these crazy thoughts.” I slither back onto the
mattress and kiss a spoke in her rib cage. “Now that
the lesson is over, can we have some fun?” I roll to
my back, vigilantly so the bedsprings can’t bite me,
and with a wink, I reveal the red ball, dangling it by
one of its black straps that lock behind the jaw. The
factory hissing. The factory groaning.
Author's note:
“The Prisoner Game” shows how people often
ignore their self-destructive worlds and require
disasters to teach them the truth. When the author
describes his experience in a dangerous and corrosive setting, he does so bluntly and without negative
ZMÆMK\QWV[_PQKPPQV\[\W\PMZMILMZ\PI\PMPI[
come to accept this unusual and unacceptable place.
He is also unaware of his own verbal irony when
he declares that he’d rather die than spend time at
KP]ZKPI[\I\MUMV\ZMÆMK\Q^MWN \PMXZQ[WVMZ[QV
his lover’s nightmare. In contrast to the author, the
female character has both physically and metaphorically woken up from her “nightmare.” She separates
from the author, inches away from their dangerous
bed, and stares toward the window, communicating
PMZLM[QZM\WÆMM