Prison

I never much liked school. Probably because the only thing anyone ever learned there was which prison they would like to be incarcerated in as an adult: the prison called prison or the prison called society. Would you like to spend your few decades on earth locked in with hundreds of people who can and will literally, non-figuratively break you like a pathetic twig and will at the first sign of weakness on your part begin attempting to kill you literally every waking second of every day? Or would you like to spend them in a planet-sized Chuck E. Cheese performing humiliating and purposeless tasks in exchange for rapidly depreciating tokens that can be turned in for the grand prize of not freezing to death in the goddam streets? Tough decision. Maybe that’s why mandatory education was 13 years long. To give us enough time to decide.

Torture

Flayed raw. A frenzy of skin and blood and searing pain.

“Tell us who started the fire!”

Another crack.

Memory

He didn’t like when I called him by his number. I think what he didn’t like about it in specific was I was a higher number than he was. He was Number 6. I was Number 2. Always got a good giggle over how upset he would get over that. I could tell he was brooding, which just made me giddier. I would’ve poked him but for the foot of reinforced steel.

Torture

“Tell us! Human scum, tell us!”

“I don’t know I don’t know! You have to believe me I don’t—”

A flashbang of stars. Then dark amoebalike blobs blistering my vision. Blasting heat violating every part of me. Spreading out from my back. Another lash. Another.

“Tell us who started the fire!”

“I dont know Idontknow”

My lips and my tongue and my teeth and my thick saliva all one, whole body a disarray of ruthless sun-hot pain. I could hardly speak. Just choke the words through searing blood-wet gasps.

My torturers were relentless. Tireless. Of course they were.

“You’re lying! You do know! You know! Tell us!”

They told me I knew who did but I didn’t.

“Idontknow”

“You started it!”

They told me I started it but I didn’t.

“Youhavetobelieveme”

My words were a slurry. My brain a soup. Lungs pounding.

They had to believe me.

I didn’t start the fire.

And I didn’t know who did.

Memory

It was Sylvester’s favorite toy. He would flaunt it during mealtime as he strutted up and down the rows like only a turkey can. He had many other gadgets capable of intimidation at his immediate disposal, like his gun and his baton and his handcuffs and even his beak and his imposing feathers, rotten but mostly still intact, and his arresting voice. Gobble gobble! But he never paraded those the way he paraded his silver pride and joy.

Flick.

This was because he liked showing off and reminding us of the pecking order and this did the trick in a way that even, say, twirling his baton wouldn’t’ve: subtly. But still with absolute certainty and the unspoken promise of severe and violent punishment for stepping out of line.

Flick flick.

But I think even more important to Sylvester’s mealtime performance, his twice daily display of power, was freedom. What that little flicker was really doing, hovering before him as he strode up and down the aisles of the damned, was showing off how free he was compared to us. A free bird. He was at home here. This was his country now. Had been for the last 40 years or so. “The home of the free.” No matter where he went, he was free. Even in this palace of internment. Even as he swaggered amidst the rows of inmates and convicts allowed no more than flimsy plastic sporks with which to down our rock-hard bread and soup swimming with maggots still squirming. Even here, he was free.

Flick flick flick.

Memory

Number 6’s cell had a window. Or so he said. It took me a long time to believe him. Mostly cause mine didn’t. And I didn’t think he would’ve been given a better cell than me considering that, as Number 2, I was much closer to being Number 1 around here than he was.

By the time I learned he wasn’t lying, I was too focused on the dire situation we had found ourselves in to be impressed.

Up until then though, I didn’t buy it. A window? Come on. There was no way he would’ve been granted such a luxury when I wasn’t. I contented myself in this belief as I delighted in the dust and the grime of my metal cell, no sunlight to detoxify the squalor by day nor any moonlight to counterbalance the freezing darkness by night. This was what life was like in my cage. My cage was my world.

Memory

One day Number 108 dropped his spork during the morning mealtime. The guards were on him in seconds. Beating him. Pounding him senseless. Thrashing him within an inch of his ancient life. He was old. Older than me. His arms were as thin as twigs. He had no way to fight back. Especially not against undying, untiring, unyielding zombies. I’d once heard his real name was Jerry. I didn’t know how true it was, but the truth of it was irrelevant. What was more impressive to me was that anyone still talked about stuff like that. Stuff from the old world. I hadn’t used my name, for instance, in decades. And no one else had either. But I guess that was the thing about Number 108. People talked about him. And the reason people talked about him was that his number was the same as the number of the prison. Division 108 Federal Human Penitentiary Premises and Punitive Corrective Detention Facility ^_^. The ^_^ was part of the name. You always had to say the ^_^. If you didn’t, the guards would get upset and you would maybe get a beating. Problem was nobody ever figured out how the ^_^ was pronounced. So the risk was always high. Amongst us prisoners, we simply called our home “The Division.”

Anyway, the point is people thought that 108 was getting special treatment cause he was the 108th prisoner interred in The Division, which had the official designation of 108. There were many supporters of this theory, Number 6 chief among them. Number 6 hated Number 108 quite passionately.

Finally, another guard came to 108’s rescue. He ran over, his undead blubber a bouncing mass atop twig-thin bird legs, from the other side of the mess hall. The two turkeys who had been doing the beating looked bewildered, but backed off, submitting to this senior guard’s authority. 108 meanwhile was still down on the cold ground, willing barely functioning lungs to catch what they could of the fetid cafeteria air. He spit out a bloody tooth. It was quite exciting. It was also a little bit funny that the old man had a savior in one of the guards. He was spared further beating for now, but in the long run, this was actually worse for him. The other prisoners would probably scrutinize and judge and hate him even more after this, I thought. Nobody got saved by the guards like that unless they were getting special treatment. Whether the previous rumors about 108 were true or not, this incident would be enough to confirm them in the mind of most, I figured.

Only that’s not what happened.

108 wasn’t saved by this guard.

This I realized just a second later when I saw who 108’s hero really was.

It was Sylvester.

Flick Flick Flick.

Flick.

Memory

“Was it you?” I asked Number 6 that night, my voice barely carrying out of the tiny barred window of my cell and then in through the tiny barred window of his.

“Was what me?”

“Were you the one who dropped Number 108’s spork?” I thought it might have been. Number 6 was sly like that. He did things to people. Got them in trouble. And he got away with it. He was right on the cusp of cunning. Almost — not quite, but almost — evil, I’d have said. You didn’t want to be on his bad side.

Silence.

“Were you?” I asked again in the dark.

He didn’t answer.

Torture

“Admit it! You started the fire!”

Sylvester leaned over the table, screaming in my face. I was tethered to my seat at the ankles and the wrists, back still aflame from the previous beatings.

“I didn’t start a goddam thing.” I spat at him but I missed. My spit was as red as cranberry sauce on the metal table.

Memory

“Hey, Number 6, guess what?” We were in our cells. Our voices were carrying through the tiny barred windows again.

“‘Guess what number I’m thinking of?’” He mimed back what I was about to ask him in a high-pitched voice. An approximation of mine. Rude. My voice wasn’t that whiny and annoying.

“How did you know what I was gonna ask?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

“Because, Number 2, you’ve asked me the same question five times per hour every hour for the past 25 godforsaken years. That’s how.”

He didn’t sound too happy about it.

We were just silent for a second.

“So are you gonna guess?”

He sighed. “One,” he said. “You’re thinking of the number one.”

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?” I almost fell off my splintered wooden sleeping pallet in surprise. Good thing I didn’t. Or else I would’ve messed up my masterpiece. “How did you know?!?!?!?!?!?!!”

He just sighed again.

Memory

Like most of us, Number 6 was in for life. He had committed major crimes against the state. He told me about them one time. They were the one thing I ever asked him about that he actually seemed to want to discuss with me.

His crime was knowledge.

“I know something,” he told me through the bars. He was standing right next to them. I could tell. I was standing right next to mine too. We both stood right next to our respective barred windows when we wanted to make sure the other was hearing properly. It was the way to make the sound carry best.

Of course our cells were right next to each other, with the windows both facing the same way, into the hallway. Our only time to speak face to face was during mealtime. But outside of our cells, he was strangely evasive towards me, never getting near me. So for years I never got more than a passing glimpse of him.

“I know something that the turkeys don’t know,” he told me. “Something very important to them that could alter the course of the society they’ve built.”

“And they want you to tell them?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to?”

“Hell no. Why the hell do you think I’m locked up in this dump in the first place?”

“Cause you’re not telling them, right?”

“Bingo, kid.” He called me kid sometimes. God knows why. I was over 50 years old. I'd spent most of those years locked up in here. I guess he was older than me. “Now, pop quiz for you.”

I gulped.

“Where do you think I’d be right now if I told?”

“... Free?”

“Ha! Good guess, but not quite.”

“Then where would you be?”

“Same place 108 went.”

I gulped again. “Do you think it hurt?” I asked.

“Do I think what hurt?”

I tried to answer but suddenly my mouth felt thick and dry and rough like it was stuffed with wadded sandpaper and I couldn’t.

But Number 6 knew what I was talking about because he then said, “You mean when 108…”

I managed a simple “Yeah” in reply.

“Hell yeah I think it hurt. What? You think it didn’t?”

I wasn’t sure what I thought. I didn’t say anything.

“Look,” said Number 6, realizing I wasn’t even gonna answer, “I’m not saying I liked 108. Hated the guy, in fact. So I don’t care that he… well, anyway, that aside, it obviously hurt, right? It had to have. Right?”

I still didn’t answer. I was thinking about something I had heard a long time ago. Something I had remembered for over 40 years at that point.

“Hey, Number 6, guess what?”

“I know, I know,” he said, waving me off with a dismissive hand motion. I couldn’t see him do it, obviously, but that’s what it sounded like he was doing. I could hear the pat off his bare feet on the metal floor as he ambled back to his pallet, ready to turn in for the night. It was lights out soon. “One. You’re thinking of the number one.”

“No, that’s not it.”

The patter of his footsteps stopped. He was away from his window now and I couldn’t hear his voice so well, so I just barely made out what he said in reply. “Then what is it?”

“Did you know that it is possible to catch on fire and not realize it until you are practically already dead?”

Memory

Number 6 wasn’t impressed by my masterpiece. But that’s only because the first and only time he saw it was under the exact wrong set of circumstances. That’s partially my fault; I didn’t tell him — or anyone — about it until it was too late because I was always too shy about it. And I couldn’t have really showed it to anyone anyway given that we obviously weren’t allowed visitors of any sort inside our cells.

Oh, some of the guards knew about my masterpiece, sure. Sylvester among them. I knew that behind my back they laughed about it and about me having created it. I knew this because they laughed about it in front of my face as well. And why not? Not like I could do anything about it. But regardless, that’s why it stands to reason that sometimes, even if only perhaps very rarely, they must have laughed about it and made fun of me for it while I wasn’t around as well.

I don’t blame them. Not anymore anyway. Now that I am older and have made my way considerably up in the world, I too can see my masterpiece for what it really was: worthless trash. In fact, I’m kind of embarrassed about it. But it’s part of the story, so I can’t leave it out, nor can I call it anything other than “masterpiece” even though it most certainly wasn’t one. My obligation towards accuracy at the threat of getting shot to Swiss cheese necessitates that I refer to it now exactly as I did back then.

I mean, unless you all want to put the guns away. No? Yeah, figured.

Alright. So I get shot if I lie. That means I’m going to describe my feelings toward my art without embellishment. So here they are. Without exaggeration, I was enamored by my work. Enthralled. Captivated by my own imagined artistic prowess. If only I wasn’t doing life in turkey prison, I could’ve been a world-renowned artist, I thought. Appreciated not only by the subjugated human hordes across the world or imprisoned like me, but even by our avian overlords.

My artistic implement was my index finger. The one on the hand I didn’t use to wipe my ass with. My medium was the scum on the jail cell floor. Technically it was on the walls too, but it was easier to finger the grime off the floor and keep it the way you wanted. Gravity was the worst kind of rival: the kind that could take time. Not good to make an enemy that can take time when time is all you have. Powerful as it was, even the filth clinging to the jail cell walls was not immune to gravity’s long game. Carefully stencil out a drawing on the walls and watch as, over the course of months, it loses its original form, tugged down slowly into so much shapeless gunk.

So. While some of my piece ended up crawling up the walls where they met the floor and I no longer had any room to draw anymore, most of it remained on the ground. As for accidentally stepping on what I had drawn on the floor and screwing it all up: what do you take me for? I knew better than to make that kind of mistake.

In case it isn’t entirely obvious by this point, I was quite proud of my masterpiece. Proud of the progress I had made in 40 years. Four decades spent perfecting my art, imbuing heart and soul and skills honed into this fragile array of dust and grime, these gently sloping lines curving and coiling into the image of a god, magnificent and real.

The image of a turkey.

A monument, I thought, albeit a rather flat one, to the greatness and the accomplishments of the birds.

The piece was more impressionistic than it was realistic, I admit. Ok, fine: it barely looked anything like a turkey. Of course it didn’t. I always sucked at art. And besides, the only turkeys I had seen for the past 40 years were the same couple of undying guards. How could I have created an accurate representation given my limited choice of materials and canvas, and with such slim source material? That’s right. I couldn’t have.

Oh, right. When I say “slim,” I mean inadequate. Not thin. The guards I had based my masterpiece on were anything but skinny after all.

Take Sylvester for example. Hulking brute. A necrotized sac of fat puffed up with all sorts of preservatives and fillers meant to enhance the volume of meat on his bones: the old American way. So bulbous and bloated was he that us prisoners — especially me and Number 6 — had to try hard to stifle our laughter every time he came sashaying down the mess hall rows or waddling down the hall by our cells.

In fact, the only time I didn’t notice him was when I was busy working on my masterpiece.

As I was that night.

The night everything changed.

It was a night just like any other. At least at first. I was working diligently on my masterpiece before it went invisible, as it did every night. Before lights out turned my world into an empty pitch pit. I remember thinking to myself that it was almost done and that my work tonight amounted to some of the finishing touches. The last few flourishes on what I truly believed at the time was the greatest turkey portrait known to man. Yes, “man.” Singular. Because it was only known to me.

Until, all of a sudden, Number 6 saw it.

“What the hell is that? Number 2!” I swear I jumped 10 feet in the air at the sound of his voice.

I turned to my barred window. Number 6’s face was there, squished up against it, putty-soft, his lips wedged awkwardly into one of the insignificant gaps between the metal rods. The implications of this did not register instantly. But when they finally did, I leapt again, this time to the window.

Our faces were close. Any closer and we would have been kissing. Or bumping foreheads, considering his was particularly large. I realized this was my first time getting a good look at his face. I studied it. It was old, the skin leathery and wrinkled. I felt like I recognized him from somewhere. But I didn’t have time to think about that. There was a more pressing issue on my mind.

“Number 6!” I said, trying hard to swallow my accelerating heart. “You’re… you’re… you’re out of your cell!”

“No shit I’m out of my cell. I’m more curious what you were doing huddled in the corner. And what the hell are all those… lines?” He said it like he had no idea what he was looking at. Like he had no idea that he was one of the first to witness possibly the single most artistically important tribute to turkeykind yet conceived.

“O-oh,” I stammered. “Just drawing.” Suddenly my face was hot. Burning red. On fire. I hoped it was too dirty, or the lighting too dim, for Number 6 to notice. I tried to hide my masterpiece from Number 6 by standing between him and it.

A brief pause during which Number 6’s dark, watery eyes traced the lines I had spent decades etching out of the grunge and the grot. “It’s hideous.”

“L-look. Never mind that. What’s going on? Why are you out of your cell? How are you out of your cell?”

“Shhhhhh.” He hissed at me to be quiet. I was getting worked up and my voice was growing loud. “Stay calm and stay quiet. We don’t want to alert the other guards.”

Other guards? What was he talking about? “What is it?” I whispered this time.

“We got a bit of a problem.”