Those lovely blue eyes - Part II

Click Here for Part-I

Billy – The Brawler! How I had hungered to avenge myself on him. That hulking ugly brute of a boxer had filled my nights with fear and fury for almost all the days I had spent as an under-trial in this prison. Had I not been sentenced to death and segregated from the rest of the prison population, I’d probably have killed him or died trying. So! He was planning an escape! Now I had my chance to avenge myself.

I was surprised at the vehemence of my thoughts. Less than forty-eight hours from death and here I was hungering for revenge. For the past few weeks, I had assumed that I was resigned to death and indifferent to the emotional storms that comprise life. I had declined any attempts to appeal my sentence and counted the days to my death placidly.

Now, all of a sudden, the haunting eyes were back in my dreams and my hunger for revenge burned as hot as ever. It seemed like I had not accepted my fate and moved on but had merely been caught in one moment of apathy like a fly in amber due to lack of choice. The first opportunity of revenge that arose had broken through my fugue and my emotions had got the better of me.

Billy! The man, who had destroyed my fragile self-respect in one uncaring brutal act, was now at my mercy. One word from me and his plans of escape would evaporate like a dewdrop in the desert sun.

* * *

When I had been diagnosed with AIDS and, almost immediately after, been arrested for the murder of my girlfriend I had sunk into apathetic indifference. Death was, anyway, a stone’s throw away and it had not mattered to me that it would come by execution rather than by a long-drawn process of illness. I thought that I might as well live the rest of my days in prison instead of the rat-infested tenement that I had shared with Violet.

It was Billy who shattered my sense of relative security in one brutal hour in the prison showers. I was chivvied along with the rest of the naked, sweaty, hairy and stinking mass of humanity into the showers and had just stood under the icy water for a second when there was a rush of men behind me and someone rabbit-punched me.

I fell to the floor and, at once, there was a hand pressing my face into the grime on the floor. Fingernails pierced my hands and legs as I was spread-eagled. Rough fingers dug into buttocks and spread them. Then there was the pain and the burning and the pounding as my anus was penetrated.

All the physical pain was insignificant compared to the bitter bile of humiliation and the impotent raging of inexpressible fury that burnt my being. It is difficult to express the utter shame that engulfs your soul when your body is violated and you are helpless. I felt soiled and, for days after, I could hardly see myself in the mirror for fear that I would see my shame branded on my face.

“Enough man! We don’t want to kill him” said a voice.

“He is walking dead, anyway!” said another.

“What?” roared a gravelly voice close to my ear.

Suddenly the pressure on my body was off me and I was being lifted up. For the first time I saw my molester. He was a monster of a man with a flattened nose, a cauliflower ear and brutal piggish eyes.

“What do you mean – walking dead?” he said.

One of the others said nervously, “He is in for Murder one, Billy! Word is he is almost certain to get the chop”

“Asshole! Why didntcha tell me before? Let’s get the hell outa here”

I scrubbed myself over and over again as though the soap would wash the shame away. The pain and weakness in my body and the dizziness in my head was such that I would have probably laid myself down in the showers and curled up but for a brutal whack on my back.

“Get going, you scum”

Every single step and every small act was an ordeal but, somehow, I dressed up and went on to the dining hall, picked up my meal and staggered to a table and slumped on the seat. As I was squirming uncomfortably to find a position that would lessen the pain, a couple of jerks came over to the table where I was seated.

One of them smirked at me and said, “So, how’s the day, girl?”

I was too far gone in pain and exhaustion to even feel a spark of anger and uncaringly bent to my plate.

Suddenly, a presence loomed in front of me and someone said, “Bugger off!” There was a clatter of plates and a patter of feet rapidly making their way away.

“You are under Billy’s protection, now” said the man. I raised my head and saw one of the others who had held me down in the showers.

“Why?” I asked apprehensively. My last few years had been with the scum of the world and I knew enough to know that being under someone’s protection in prison could mean that you were his paramour while there.

“Not that, Scholar! Billy is gay, alright, but he don’t want no truck with you walking dead.”

“Yeah! Right!” I muttered.

He lingered on as though waiting for something and then slowly moved away. Like he expected me to be grateful to Billy after all that had happened in the morning!

I had met this sort of sudden respect for the near-dead before. It was as though they either thought that death was something catching or that the near-dead would shortly be whispering tales about them in the ears of the Maker.

For the rest of the period as an under-trial I took far less interest in the progress of my own trial and far more in trying to come up with a way to get my back on Billy. Whether we were in the showers or the dining hall or the exercise yard, he always had his three cellmates tagging along like shadows and I could see no way of getting to him to shove a knife in his back.

Then my trial came to an end and I was sentenced to death. As one of the walking dead - officially now - I was shifted to the death row and segregated from the rest with no chance to get at Billy.

* * *

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The genesis of this story is the broad plot outline given for Indifictionworkshop by Sandeep Nair. The story is also carried here.