The cell door clanked shut. Ten years with nothing to do. Except think. Think about what I had done. I raped the bitch not once, but repeatedly. I lost count after busting a nut on her face for the eleventh time. I still say the little whore deserved it. And she probably liked it, too. But that didn't matter to the judge, the jury or the state Department of Corrections.
I stretched out on the top bunk. The cage door swung open a while later. I looked up. A guy twice my size -- in muscle and height -- lumbered in. The sleeves were torn off of his orange body suit, revealing a network of reptilian tattoos-- snakes, dragons and iguanas. The guard, a short man with a crooked mustache, snickered.
"There he is -- your new roommate," the guard said. "He likes to pick on little girls."
"A rapist?" the inmate asked in his deep husky voice. "You put me in here with a rapist?"
"We thought you could straighten him out," the guard said.
The inmate glared at me, his face hard as an aluminum baseball bat. "Oh, I know how we can do that."
As the guard swung the door shut, the inmate laid on the bed below me and said nothing for three hours.
Then came chow time. I ate alone. Had no problems. Just minded my own business. By lights out, my roommate still had said nothing to me. Didn't even acknowledge my existence. I figured his comment to the guard was just bullshit. He was letting me know he was running things in our ten-foot-by-ten-foot cell. Which was fine. I could respect that. It seemed I was in the clear, so I let myself drift off to sleep.
I woke up to the sound of the metal door banging shut. It was completely dark. I heard a voice near the front of the cell: "You guys got ten minutes." It was the guard.
