Chapter 8 – Revelations

She was absolutely stunning.

I know everyone says that about their heartthrob, but she really was just plain … stunning.

Long, flowing, golden hair. Mediterranean, shallow-ocean blue eyes. Olive skin. Curves in all the right places.

And the most delicious curvature at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, as if to say, “hold onto your seats, because the devil is about to take over!” And I guess that was a truer statement than I understood at the time. For the devil did take over, just a long way down that particular road, when I was already too far gone to notice.

Life took me for a ride with Lola, my one true love. I could say that I was filled with regret. That somehow, if I was sent back in time like in The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, I would do it all over, better, and come out on top, Of her. I grin at my shadow outline on the wall.

I want to meet my very own Magician, who can send me back in time to ‘do over’ what I had done wrong, or at least to undo what had been done wrong to me (for I still felt the victim in my own life – maybe that is why I am where I am … but I’ll park that stream of consciousness to play with on the long dark, dank, lonely nights here in prison).

Maybe I would have a better time of it than poor old Ivan. And then again, maybe not. For we are all creatures of habit, aren’t we? So, where was I? Ah, yes. Lola, and the ride of a lifetime (albeit short).

Maybe that’s why my life took a turn for the worse. Did I get off that particular road too soon? Should I have stuck it out with her, to see where the path would lead? Was I impetuously impatient? I like to think of myself as spontaneous.

Maybe that’s why the whole of my life seems to be one, long train-wreck. But none of this is getting us any closer to Lola, who I would possibly kill to see one more time. Just once, a glance, a smile, a whiff of her sweet personal perfume. How did I meet her?

It was at work. In uni, I worked flipping burgers at the student union greasy café. Nothing special – just the normal omelettes for breakfast, toasted cheese sandwiches and burgers for lunch, and all the other fun stuff, like the philly cheese steaks, which start off being a right hash, but after a year of practice become an art form, chopping the meat, flipping the spatula, clanging it on the grill and spinning it up in the air, flicking loose meat with a twist of the wrist (I know, sounds down-right kinky, doesn’t it? And in full view of the public, too!).

All of this was what was on my mind. And women, of course. I wasn’t a complete slut at university. I kept something back. (Now, I realise, that what I usually kept back was my heart, but that’ll all come out in the wash, for sure.)

I watch the damp grow into glistening bulb on the ceiling, beneath where I imagine the slop bucket from the cell upstairs resides. I know the floor is concrete, and nothing so simple as urine-shit-streams would be seeping through the ferrous layers to form black-rainbow bulbs to drop into my cell, but it does me no good. My mind’s eye oil paints the surface with blood and DNA, for I know the cell above me contains a sick man.

I know he is sick because nobody bothers him. As skinny and easy a target as he is, the message got around quick, because he went from being the primary target for the bull queens, to being their baby, getting all the treats and none of the torture. They left him alone, and talked about him in strangely kind and gentle words, almost whispered as he walked past or away from their latest conversation. In a world where we are all lining up to die, there is something statuesque about a person who is doomed even if they break free. (For that is what we all hope will happen – either freedom through appeal, or, more realistically in our late night embattled dreams, freedom through escape – for no freedom is greater than that which is battled for, and protected for the rest of our existence as our own dirty little secret.)

So I lay on my bed, hands behind my head, and watch the moisture form the bulb of diseased death, to drip down the wall towards me, tracing its fast-snail-like path towards my arm, moving at the last minute to let it roll to the floor, before rejoining my elbow to the wall for the calming reassurance of ice against skin. No matter the season, this place somehow remains forever freezing. Like hell.

I know I am putting my elbow into the diseased slime-trail of the killer drop, but I don’t care. This is not true, the image I painted. The man above me is dying, but not of anything that could kill others. That is his own little ruse, played out on the prison population, and backed up by doctors who don’t care enough to dig deeper, cause they see what everyone else does – a scrawny dying man in a world of dying men, left alone to rot in piece.

I caught him giggling to himself, the tears running down his face, and I couldn’t help myself; I broke the cardinal rule of prison, and poked my nose into his business. (In prison, you don’t poke your nose in unless you know your nose is tougher than the people whose noses are being put out of joint by your poking, if you catch my drift. Otherwise, you don’t live a very long and ‘healthy’ prison life, as the many beaten and murdered inmates will attest to, or would, if they could.)

I couldn’t help myself. So I did. I asked him what was wrong. And he said, ‘nothing.’ Then, as if looking for some spies around (of which there were many), he pulled my ear towards his face, and I fought the urge to cringe away, for I wanted ot hear what he had to say.

“I’m not ill.”

I laughed, and said, “I know. And I’m innocent.” We all said that. We were all innocent until proven guilty. And in our heart of hearts – for those of us who still hadn’t stealed ours over – we had not been proven guilty.

“No. I mean, I’m ill, and I’m going to die. Just like all of us here. We’re all going to die.” And he started giggling again, so hard this time that the tears were pouring down his cheeks. And from a few feet away, it looked like he was confessing his own misery to me, which I expect was the genius of life and Mother Nature. Thank you Mother.

“I’m dying from life – for from our first day, we are given this deadly poison called our breath, our lungs, our heart, all pulsing and pushing and beating, marching to different drummers but along the same road – to death. We are all going to die.” And he started giggling again, so hard and so infectious that I found myself giggling along – but in my case there was no mistaking the giggle – the squashed face and squinted eyes, the half-bent, hand-on-stomach crouch, tears of pure unadulterated joy running down my face.

We probably made such a pair, the two of us, one looking like he was giving himself an out, a confessional to another prisoner of his misery and dying pain. And there was me, bent over in double, laughing, wondering how badly I was going to get beaten by the bull queens who had taken this poor, scrawny, dying form under their protective wing. Did they know they would probably go before him? But I was not going to tell them. That is someone else’s job. For now, I was enjoying the joke, for I had worked out the truth – he was sick, but not of a physical disease.

“MDP syndrome.”

He nods and covers his lips, then bursts out giggling, shushing himself and me and looking around nervously.

“Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

“I studied hypochondria most of my life. Or should I say rather that I have been a studied hypochondriac most of my life. And of all the conditions I have wished I had, that was top of the list. To be ill but not ill. A true freak’s genetic disorder. Pardon the brutal nature of my words.”

“Life is brutal, for it gave me this. But in a land of leopards, the spot-less leopard is king.”

“Well put. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“You are innocent.”

“Everyone here is innocent.”

“But you are truly innocent. There is no blood on your hands.” And he took my hands in his, and looked at them closely, tracing first one palm and then the other with his bony fingers, before bringing them to his lips and laying the driest whisper kiss on each palm. “They are squeaky clean. Besides, you don’t even have callouses on your palms. All good killers have callouses. It comes with the territory.”

“How did you … ?”

“Know that you were in for murder? I could see it on your face, honey. It was written out in your eyes as clear as daylight.” He winked at me then, “Besides, I have friends in low places who know everything. It’s on your files. No way you committed a double-homicide, crime of passion or no. If I’m right about you, and I usually am, your passion ran out a long time ago. What was her name?”

“Lola.” And I sat down next to him, and let him talk me into a trance over the next hour or so, wondering how such an amazing human being came to be here, on death row. Double-homicide, it turns out. Crime of passion. He came home and found his lover at it with his dog. So he killed his lover, and then some poor old bint who had come in to see what all the noise was, and who tried to stop him from beating his dog to death. She did, but at what cost?

And that was what made me think of Lola.