focused on getting my hand in the cuff so the two bastards didn’t get away with
this. When I did get the cuff back on, I rolled out of the shitty position I was in.
Big One jumped and fell on me as I lay on my stomach. Little One’s fist beat on
my head over and over and over. Big One got some punches in, too, and even
slammed my head into the floor a few times.
Little One’s hand cracked from punching me in the head. “Damn,” he said, “I think
I broke my fucking hand on his head.”
They laughed.
They radioed the “incident” in. Come to find out, I put the cuff back on when my
hands were in front of me. They must’ve really done a number on me, because
I had never been cuffed frontways like that there, and I didn’t even realize that’s
how they were on. They stripped me of my threads, and coughed and gagged at
the smell of my boxers. Chains from my ankles to waist were my new clothes. I
was then placed in a cell with nothing in it.
I looked at my reflection in the slab of steel bolted to my wall and saw for the first
time just how good they beat me. “Damn!” I laughed. The cuts on my forehead
were the most surprising. The lumps and red welts not so much. “I look like a
freak.”
“Why are you laughing over there?” my homie Killer asked. “You should be mad
as hell right now! Fuck, I’m mad!” He was talking to me through the ventilation
system. He had seen my face when they brought me back to my cell.
“No reason to be mad now,” I said. “Better to bottle it up and explode later.”
The vent he was talking through was low to the floor, so I could sit and talk to him
easily. “Damn, BADger, do you think your family will help you with this shit? You
gotta file a lawsuit over this.”
Suddenly I was no longer in a laughing mood. Thoughts of my mom, little nine-
year-old brother, and thirteen-year-old sister entered my mind. I had been
distracting myself to stave off thoughts of them. My siblings had been taken
away from my mother by social services because of her meth addiction. She
could’ve gotten them back, but she failed urine screen after urine screen—just
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