The nurse who was sliding a needle into my IV didn't look familiar. On this shift it had always been the cute one that the cop spent all his time and taxpayer's money on trying to get a piece of. This chick wasn't even wearing the right uniform. She looked more like one of the nurse's aides by the scrubs that she was wearing. In fact she looked damn near too young to have even gone to nursing school yet. Jet black dyed hair cropped real close in a punk sort of way and skin so pale she appeared almost translucent. Kind of tall but skinny as a rail. I had been sleeping and hadn’t noticed her come into my room. The cop was strangely absent.
“Who are you? I haven’t seen you before.”
She looked at me and smile and turned back to my IV.
"Hey! Did you talk to my doctor or the head nurse? Today is my court day. I’m not suppose to have anymore painkillers before I go to court."
She ignored me as she pushed the syringe plunger down. I noticed she had a weird little black tattoo at the base of her thumb and forefinger.
She had barely pulled the needle out when what felt like a supercharged rush of cocaine hit me. She kissed her finger on placed it on my lips.
“Bye bye. Enjoy your trip,” she whispered.
***
I barely remembered what happened in court. I was so fucking loaded and hallucinating so badly I literally had no concept of where I was.
Drooling, crying, shouting out “motherfuckers, shit, Jesus Christ, you cocksuckers,“ over and over. The judge was obviously not pleased by the foul mouthed and disheveled wreck that was sitting in front of him. There was a court appointed attorney sitting next to me who had visited me just one time at the hospital prior to my arraignment but he either was so shocked by my appearance, had been bought off by whoever had done this to me, or just flat didn’t give a shit, because I was sent immediately to the state security hospital for the criminally insane for a 60 day observation period. The state trooper who was to escort me over to the booby hatch refused to even handcuff me much less stick me in his car for the fifty mile drive unless someone pumped me full of tranquilizers. *** cell.
I woke up two days later in a cinderblock I was laying on a plastic mattress with no blankets, no sheets, and no pillows. All I was wearing was a paper nightgown that left my ass hanging out in the breeze. Someone was looking through the tiny window that was set in the middle of the steel door of the cell.
“Sleeping beauty has finally fuckin' woken up.” I heard yelled out.
A tiny door under the window opened and a set of brown kaki pants, matching shirt, a white t- shirt, and white jockey shorts, along with a pair of shower shoes were shoved through the opening.
“You got five minutes to get your ass dressed, nut!”
My mind was oven baked. I could barely get the underwear on much less the rest of the clothes in five minutes. The door swung open and two beefy guards stomped in, each took one of my arms and led me out the door. They half walked and half dragged me to what appeared to be some sort of locked down television viewing area. Several other drugged out dudes in equally disheveled states sat there watching I Love Lucy. I was thrown roughly down on to a plastic covered chair.
“Just sit there and keep your goddamn pie- hole shut.”
I drifted in and out for hours but finally started to come around. At that point I had no fucking idea where I was and none of the guard where very helpful whenever I asked a question when one of them would come into the room. They all had different styles of responses to my questions but the meanings were the same. “Shut the fuck up! Would you like to have this billyclub shoved up your ass? Sit down and shut the hell up you dumb fuck! Shut your mouth, you retard!” I got the general drift.
Time had lost all meaning by then but it must have been getting late because the evening news was on when a guard swung the door open and stepped in. He pointed at me. “Come on, you stinking turd. You’ve cleared processing. Let’s get you down to your unit.”
After I was handcuffed, I was led down a hallway and shoved rudely on to the unit, the heavy metal door slamming behind me. There was two Indians, four blacks, and three other white guys sitting at several tables and who were all sitting there staring at me. One of the white guys was about the biggest dude I have ever seen. He was easily six foot six and way over three hundred pounds, some fat but a lot of muscle. Big cannonball shaved head with a tarantula tattooed on the top of it and a swastika inked right in the middle of his forehead. And he had mean, beady little eyes that had blue tears tattooed under them. Now that I think about it, he kinda looked like that fat bastard, Butterbean, that years later was always fighting on cable TV. A guard walked over and removed my handcuffs.
“Time to eat,” was all he grunted.
Supper was being handed out, and man it looked like shit. And I hadn't eaten in I don‘t know how long. Suppose to be some kind of chicken patty but looked more like someone had stomped on a mouse, fried it up in a pan, and threw it on a bun.
There was a blob of mashed potatoes big enough to feed two men and it was covered with some yellow, gelatin like gravy. All topped with a pile of mixed vegetables and a oatmeal cookie as big and hard as a hockey puck. Kool Aid to drink. Kool Aid got served at every meal .
There were three tables bolted to the floor and each table could seat four people. Two of the tables were full, the blacks had one table to themselves, the two Indians and two white guys had one, and the big man was sifting at the remaining table all by himself. I could feel everybody watching me when I walked over to his table and sat down. Those beady eyes were burning a hole in me.
"Gotta pay to sit at my table, punk." He had a voice that sounded like it had been thickened by years of whiskey and cigarettes, but he talked real low, kinda rumbled. "Ass, grass, or cash. No one rides for free." Didn't that use to be a bumper sticker?
"Excuse me?"
"What, are you fucking deaf? To sit at my table you have to pay. Today it will cost you that cookie and half of them spuds."
"What if I don't want to pay?"
“Then you'll have to squeeze in with the rest of the retards over there."
I pondered his offer for a quick second and decided fuck it. "Hey, man, I don't want any trouble. But I'm hungry as hell. I haven't eaten for probably three days now."
"Your story is tearing at my heart, but tough shit."
This guy was fucking enormous. There was no way in hell I could take him on and not get either seriously beat to shit or outright killed. But I was so hungry you could hear my guts rumbling from across the room. I was beyond the point of caring.
That hotshot of mescaline or LSD or Angel Dust or whatever that broad had shot into my IV had burned a hole in my psyche. I had lost the ability to give a shit.
"Look, man. I just got locked up in here so I'm not looking for any more trouble. I respect where you're coming from, I know you're the boss here. But I'm fucking hungry, so if you want to get squirrelly, I guess you should just fucking jump."
It got so quiet in there you could hear a mouse fart in the corner. The big man didn't say a word, just sat there looking at me like I had just flown in on a starship. Suddenly his face broke into a grin.
"Fucking A! Finally a motherfucker comes in here that's got a set a nuts on him." He stood up and pointed a sausage sized finger at the other two tables.
'Unlike the rest of you fucking retards and baby rapers."
He reached across the table to shake my hand. I could feel the bones in my hand crunch.
"Norm Grabowski is the name. Those pricks may think they run the show." He shot the middle finger to the guards who were staring at us from the observation pod. "But this is my fucking unit."
Truer words had never been spoken.
Norman "Spider" Grabowski was the end result of over twenty one years spent in the state's finest penal facilities. From the age of thirteen on, Norm had been locked up in every correctional institution in the state, eleven months being his longest break between sentences. He had a rap sheet a mile long. It started off with shoplifting, and then continued on with burglary, auto theft, assault, sale of prescription narcotics, statutory rape, possession of over one hundred pounds of marijuana, cooking speed, and about anything else you could think of. He was also a suspect in the unsolved murders of five black inmates. Now at the age of thirty-three, Norm was a high ranking member in good standing of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, a gang not known for their liberal views, and had been committed to the security hospital as mentally ill and dangerous after stabbing a guard at the penitentiary in the stomach. Guards and inmates alike were scared shitless of him.
Norm shoved his sandwich into his mouth and stood back up and walked over to the table where the other two white inmates were sifting. "Let me introduce you to these homos." Norm stood behind a lanky, greasy haired, foul smelling man of about forty who was wearing clothes from the disco era. "This first shitbag is Bob. And he is a shitbag, literally. He got thrown off a tier at the pen by a gang of brothers who were strong arming him.
Busted up his back and left him shifting and pissing in a bag. They had to put him in here for his own safety while he recuperated. But Bob, being the great guy that he is, wound up almost strangling a nurse to death while he tried to rape her with his useless dick. Now his whole life revolves around coffee, cigarettes, and enemas."
Norm leaned over and spit a green lunger onto Bob's mashed potatoes, walked over and stood behind the remaining white inmate, then suddenly grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed his face down into his tray. The guards in the pod all jumped to their feet.
"This puke is Danny. Danny got brought in here for raping his ten year old sister. Said some demon was talking to him, told him to do it. The quacks have been pumping him full of thorazine and electric shock three times a week and now Danny has refried shit for brains. Every night he lets the soul brothers come into his cell and play ass darts on him. Then the injuns get sloppy seconds."
Norm wheeled around and faced the guards in the observation bubble. "Get back to jacking-off, you fucking pussies," he screamed. You could see the guards shuffling around uneasily in their bubble.
He came back over and sat down at our table. "I'm not going to insult you by introducing the rest of these scrotum heads. They're not worth the shit on the bottom of my shoe." The blacks and the two Indians ate their supper silently while looking down at their trays. "Just a combination of city and prairie niggers," he yelled out towards them.
Norm leaned over this dinner tray and gave me a grin. "'I'm glad you're here, brother. I need a good right hand man," he whispered hoarsely.
***
A week had passed and I was starting to work on a wicked case of claustrophobia slash cabin fever. Being locked up on a maximum security, crazy as a shit house rat ward, without being crazy will kind of do that to a guy. It's not something that I would recommend. Because of my association with Norm, the other inmates avoided me like I was carrying the Ebola virus, so I didn’t have any problems in that area. But it's damn hard to live in a place where the accepted behavior includes sitting in the television lounge jacking off while watching Oprah, participating in a nightly massive anal and oral gangbang of a brain fried fellow inmate, throwing your shit around like you were playing handball, or sitting down with a issue of Rolling Stone and eating the entire magazine after you got done reading it.
It was recreation time and we were out in our unit’s tiny yard. There was an old, rusty Universal weight machine stuck in the corner and I was watching Norm go through his routine on it. He was using every plate on the stack and was still doing at least fifteen reps per session without breaking a sweat.
I was voicing my concerns to Norm that I had been there for a week and had only talked to the shrink once.
“That’s all they need." He grunted as he benched the entire stack of three hundred.
"Who's they?"
"The court. The Man. You know what I mean, brother."
He sat up and wiped his medicine ball sized head with a towel. "Look, this is how it works. You stroll into a bar and hit a dude over the head with a baseball bat. He doesn't die but he winds up in a coma so he might as well be dead. You act like a born again retard in court. They send you here for a court ordered observation. Shrink comes in and has a little sit down with you. Writes up a nice report to the court and the next thing you know you get the big M. I. and D designation. Mentally ill and dangerous. That's the worst you can get in this craphole." He wagged his finger at me. "Gotta watch those shrinks. They are very fucking sneaky."
"How long a sentence is a M and I?" My voice was squeaking.
Norm gave a evil grin and started pumping out reps again. "Don't forget the D on the M I and D. Dangerous is the key word here. Judges hate the word dangerous. Bad at reelection time. They don't want to be the guy that lets out the nut who rapes a boy scout and burns down a church the first day he's out on the street. So a M I and D could be for years. Could be forever. All depends. Getting committed ain't like getting sentenced to the joint. That's the thing about the bughouse. Free world people think that a convict is getting off easy by getting sentenced here instead of prison, like it's a fucking country club."
He let the pile drop with a loud crash. 'What bullshit that is! In here with the M. I. and D., the big bitch, that can be as good as a life sentence. You throw in the electric shock and all the dope they pump in you every fucking day, couple a years you'll be doing the thorazine shuffle and shittin' in your pants. Just like old Danny. The unit punchboard."
I couldn't believe the shit I was hearing. I was so stunned I couldn't hardly speak. "That bitch in the hospital dosed me, man. LSD or some shit. I've dropped a lot of dope and never been that fucking whacked. That's why my ass is in here.
These fucking doctors have to figure that out. Won't they?
Norm sat back up on the bench. "Dude, I'm not saying that it's going to happen but I seen it happen a dozen times since I been here. But it seems to me that someone wants your ass in here. Maybe so you'll be easier to get to. It's more than obvious than you're gonna have some badasses looking for you after the shit you pulled." He stood up, casting a huge shadow over me.
"But it doesn't have to be that way, little dude. I know how to get you out of here. But it ain't for free. Its gonna cost you, big time. You'll owe both me and the Brotherhood."
He started in on his lat pulls. "Up to you. So think about it." He grunted as he pulled the stack down. "Just don't think about it forever."
Norm had AIDS. He had contracted it shooting speedballs and sharing the needle with his Aryan buddies at the penitentiary. He had done the hit on the guard because he had nothin' to lose. That was why he was at the security hospital. Since he was going to die anyway, the state figured it would be safer and smarter to send him to the security hospital while he waited to punch out rather than to lock him up in segregation. From the hole he could still carry out prison business, but by putting him in the nuthouse they could cut him off from his Neo- Nazi friends. Isolate him somewhat.
'Wonder if they don't commit me? What if the doctors clear me. Then I just have to stand trial? If I copped a plea I'd maybe I'd only do five to ten. The court may take in to consideration about my father's life being threatened? With good time I could be out in a few years."
It was almost time to lock in for the night. Norm and I were the only inmates sitting out in the day room, the rest of the unit had either already hit the sack, the medication the committed inmates were on tended to make them turn in early, or they were in Danny's cell, pounding his ass for a nightcap.
"That's the chance you have to take. You can wait it out and see what the courts say. And you may be right. They may just go to trial and you can cop a plea. But if they don't, or if that guy you whacked dies, you could wind up being in here until you're a shriveled up old man blowing dudes for Snicker's bars and cigarettes. Man, look at Danny.
The bucks are in there every night nailing him. I'm not going to live forever. And you'll be in here all by your lonesome. Think about it. I'm going to fucking bed, got me a new stroke magazine in the mail today, gotta break it in." The giant inmate lumbered to his feet and headed towards his cell.
The guard on duty announced on the intercom that it was five minutes to lock down and as I was walking to my cell, I glanced in at Danny. They had him stripped down as naked as the day he was born. One guy was hitting him from behind while another was slamming him in the mouth. He looked out of the corners of his glazed eyes at me. I turned around and walked over to Norm's cell. "I'm in. I'll do what ever the fuck I have to do to get out of here."
***
"First thing you have to do is give me the address of your parents and any brothers and sisters."
It was morning and we were leaning over trays of greenish scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a gigantic, sweating sweet roll that was laying on top of the whole mess. The sight of Norm shoving it all into his gaping cake hole was about enough to put me over the top.
"What the hell for?'
'That's just the way the system works, dipshit. I get you out of here, you're going to have to work for us. You decide to bolt and run away from your obligations, the Brotherhood needs to know where to find you. They can't find you, well then mommy and daddy and little sis will have to take the heat for you. And I can goddamn guarantee you that if they know where you are, they'll talk." He spread his python sized arms wide. “Take it or leave it."
"My mom ran off years ago and now my old man is on the lam, too. The only address I can give you is for my brother down in Florida." This wasn't going to be good but what the hell else could I do?
"Florida's no problem. Got plenty of brothers in the sunshine state." Norm reached over and grabbed my sweet roll.
"When does it happen?" I was going to have to rush to my cell, the combination of the smell of the breakfast and the thought of what Norm was telling me was making me want to power puke.
"Couple of days. My boys on the outside have to make sure you gave me the right addresses of your folks. And by the way, if you try to fuck me and give me some bogus information you will be in a world of shit. I'll take you out right here."
I was on my hands and knees barfing into my toilet when Norm stuck his head in. "I forgot to tell you this. Get your armpits wet and soap 'em up and let 'em dry without washing off the soap.
Tonight show the nurse the rash, tell her that you're allergic to the roll-on deodorant. They'll switch you to spray. But don't use it, just leave it in your cell. You're gonna need it."
***
Straight up midnight and the unit was quiet as a tomb. I looked out the cell door window of my cell and could see just the tops of the heads of the two night guards, both of whom Norm said were major league stoners and never made more than two rounds a night, usually one at the beginning and one at the end of the shift. They were watching a movie on the VCR, looked like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I turned back to my bed to check out my supplies. Two cans of Right Guard, one mine, one Norm's, a damp towel, and a book of matches.
I stuck a piece of cardboard that I had cut from the back of a notepad to fit into my cell door window so the guards wouldn't see the flame. I took one of the cans of Right Guard, lit a match, and sprayed it. It took off like a fucking flame thrower!
As soon as I directed the flame to the security crash proof glass that was installed in my outside window, I knew that it was going to work. The glass seemed to start to melt almost immediately. Halfway through a can I had an opening about ten inches wide. Within five minutes both cans were empty and I had a hole easily wide enough for me to slide out. I cooled down the edges of the hole with the damp towel and started to slide my head out the hole.
"What in the double fuck is going on?"
In a panic I pulled my head back in. One of the guards was standing inside my cell! He had obviously been smoking weed. His eyes were like two piss holes in the snow and he was holding a can of beer. I couldn't believe that I didn't hear him come in. He was standing there in the middle of the cell with his jaw hanging down and this look of stupid amazement of his face.
On nothing but shit in your pants fear and pure animal instinct, I threw the hardest fucking roundhouse right that I have ever thrown to this day. The punch pole-axed him right between the eyes, I could feel the bones snap in my fist, and the guard dropped to the floor like he had been shot in the head.
I turned and somersaulted through the window, falling about four feet, and landing flat on my back, knocking the wind right the hell out of me. I staggered to my feet and while clutching my throbbing, broken hand to my chest, I slipped into the shadows and began to work by way down the side of the building to the cover of the woods that bordered the back of the hospital.
There was only one light on in any of the cells. It was Wes Dibley's, the resident evil genius and mad bomber. Locked down for trying to blow up a bank, he was the one who had given Norm the idea about using the Right Guard as a blow torch. He was stark naked and was standing in his toilet bowl, a Playboy in one hand, his dick in the other. His head turned slowly towards me, like it was on a swivel, like he was a fucking owl. He gave me a slight nod and a smile and turned back to his fun.
I ran into the woods.
***
When I broke free of the woods on the other side I came out on to a county road. Following Norm's directions, I stayed down low in the ditch and ran south about two miles to a closed Exxon station. Behind the station, a beat up old Cadillac was idling with it's lights off. When I walked up in front of the car, the lights came on, blinding me. I heard the door open.
"Did Spider send you?" The voice was female.
"That's me," I whispered.
"Well, get in cowboy. You can drive." Sliding over into the passenger seat was a woman child who was crack whore thin and had the teeth to match. Her hair was spiked up in a punk fashion and she must have had thirty facial piercings. Her face looked like it was made out of aluminum and every inch of skin on her that I could see was covered in amateurish jailhouse tattoos. She was smoking a huge fatty that she was washing down with a peach wine cooler.
I put the car in gear. "Where to?" I was sweating like a whore in church and smelled worse.
"Keep going south about four miles and we'll catch the interstate into the city." She passed me the joint.
"Are you Norm's wife?"
She laughed like a little girl. "Me? Norm's wife? Hell no! If he screwed me he'd crush my bones to dust." She giggled again. "Norm has a little dick anyway."
That was about all she seemed to want to talk about that and I wasn't real interested in the size of Norm's crank or his sex life so I let the subject drop. I needed to calm down anyway. She popped a CD in the stereo and cranked up some kind of death metal shit so loud I thought my ears would start bleeding. As I pulled onto the interstate she slid over next to me, unzipped my fly, pulled out my crank, and slid her lips over the head of it. I groaned as my eyes rolled back into my head and I had to fight to keep the car on the road. In spite of the situation - I had just broken out of a mental hospital - I felt myself wanting to cum immediately.
She sat back up. "Oh no you don't." She reached into her purse and pulled out a vial of white powder. Licking the head of my dick she tapped out a small pile of the coke onto it and rubbed it all over the head, numbing it.
"Mmmmm. That's much better." She started in again, blowing me all the way to Minneapolis.
***
"What the hell took you so fucking long you scrawny crank bitch?"
We were standing in this incredibly nasty, filthy house trailer, just north of Minneapolis, that smelled like extreme body odor, cat piss, pot, and Old English 800 malt liquor. And standing in the kitchen screaming at us was this enormous, bleach blonde woman, that I figured out quickly was Norm's wife. She wasn't wearing a shirt or a bra, just a pair of dirty jeans, and her giant tits were completely covered with a massive Harley Davidson tattoo. As she moved around they swayed like bowling balls. I'll bet the bed she and Norm bone-danced on had to be reinforced with cinder blocks.
She reached out and grabbed Cathy's face with a grizzly bear sized paw. Cathy being the woman that had picked me up.
"Did you fuck him? Huh? Is that what took you so long?"
Cathy giggled. "No, Glenda. I just blew him."
Glenda slapped her hard across the face and then turned and glared at me. I felt as if I was locked in a pen with an insane Doberman.
She shook Cathy's head like a dog shaking a rat and pointed at me with her free hand. "Now you listen to me you bag of shit. Cathy is off limits to you, you understand? You touch her one more time you'll find your balls in my martini glass and your ass floating in a swamp. I don't give a shit what Norm says."
She turned back to Cathy. "Strip down and get on the couch," she ordered.
Without a word, Cathy stripped down, she was even scrawnier naked, and knelt on the couch, doggie fashion, while Glenda walked to the back of the trailer. When she came back out, she had taken off her Levis and was strapping on a huge black dildo.
"Sit your ass down in that chair, asshole. I want you to watch this."
Pushing a sleeping, mangy cat and a couple of empty Budweisers out of the way, I eased myself down into a recliner.
Spitting in her hand, Glenda lubed up the fake dick and shoved it hard into Cathy's ass. The scrawny creature cried out in agony. No pretense on foreplay there. Glenda looked over her shoulder at me. "Don't you think about fucking with me! We own you, you piece of shit. Don't ever forget that." I could hardly hear her over Cathy's screams of pain.
***
The sun was trying to stream in through the grit and grime that was coated on the trailer's windows. The seemingly endless dildo assault on Cathy had finally ended and she was laying in a corner, unconscious. Glenda had force fed her a handful of reds that a mule would have had a hard time swallowing. The whole incident had been like watching an X-rated version of the Twilight Zone. Glenda had taken off her fake crank, but was still lounging naked on the couch, like a sexually satisfied walrus, working on her sixth bottle of Bud and smoking from a large bowl of hash. I was trying my best not to look at her. I just kept my line of vision on a velvet rendition of Norm sitting on the table with the rest of the disciples in The Last Supper. Norm was drinking a bottle of beer and had his arm around Jesus' shoulders. Glenda leaned back and let out a loud belch that practically rattled the windows, then glared over in my direction.
“Take off your fucking clothes off and get over here."
"Huh?"
"You heard me, fuckstick! Take off your clothes and get over here. You got a pussy to eat."
"Glenda, please, I don't think Norm would..." I was stammering like one of the nutjobs in the hospital.
"Listen to me, shitbird! I don't think you quite understand the situation you're in. Norm and the AB got you out of the stammer. So now you work for us. What we say, whatever we want, you do. Jesus Christ, you're stupid. What do you think Cathy is here for? She's paying off a debt her old man owes up in the penitentiary. If it wasn't for us he'd have an asshole so big you could park a go-cart in it. You owe us! We broke you out and we're protecting you from the people who want your stinking ass dead for hitting their boss in the head with a goddamn ball bat! So you will do what we say and you will damn well like it, scumbag!"
She leaned back on the couch, spread her legs, and used her fingers to open up her gaping snatch.
"Now get out of those fuckin' clothes and get over here. But first get in my purse over there by your chair and get me a fresh pack of cigarettes."
I shakily stood up and took off my clothes while the fat hog leered at me and then picked up the dildo and began to slide it into herself. I shuffled over, stark naked, and opened up her purse. When I bent over she must have seen something she liked. "Oh, yah. I'm gonna break that brown eyed beaver in good." My dick and balls shriveled up to the size of a thimble and a couple of acorns. I was close to puking or passing out, it didn't really matter at this point.
Nestled in next to her Marlboros was a wad of cash the size of a Big Mac. My adrenaline started pumping like I had just mainlined a dose of meth when I saw what was nestled under the cash. A snub nosed .38.
Glenda had already realized her fuckup, because by the time I had whirled around and aimed the pistol, almost dropping the damn thing in the process, she