September 07

Midnight v Outcast

Midnight - A car-crash sufferer whose consequent addiction to pain killers, crack, and crystal meth lost him his home and family. He is dying from cancer and has been bleeding from the rectum.

“Hey, Midnight,” short and muscular Outcast said, standing at the workout station shaking his fist, “I’ve got twelve days left before I hit the gate. Why don’t ya grow some balls and come and see me and let me show you what I can do before I leave?”
“Fuck you, Outcast,” Midnight said. “If you wanna fucking throw down with me then come to my house. If not, shutthafuck up.”
“Tough guy, eh?”
“Whatever.” Midnight returned to his cell.
“Hey, Outcast,” an Aryan Brother said. “Midnight just called you out, and you ain’t doing nothing about it.”
“We’ll see.”

An hour later, Midnight was sitting at a picnic table playing spades with three woods when Outcast came up behind him and said, “So you’re ready to give it a try? You want some of this?” and shook his fist.
“Yeah,” Midnight said. “You either come to my house or shutthafuck up.”
“OK. It’s on.” Holding his tobacco out, Outcast said, “Hound, mind this.”
The two of them headed to Midnight’s cell. Swaggering after Midnight, Outcast embodied the threat Agamemnon issued to Achilles in Homer’s Iliad: I myself going to your shelter, that you may learn well how much greater I am than you, and another man may shrink back from likening himself to me and contending against me.
Midnight, tall and emaciated, entered the cell, walked to the back wall, turned around, and assumed a boxer’s stance.
They squared off. Midnight jabbed Outcast above the eye. Outcast bullrushed and grabbed Midnight, and they spun around and shuffled back to the doorway.
Pushed up against the door, Midnight pressed a thumb into Outcast’s eye, and yelled, “I’ll pop this fucker out.”
Outcast slammed Midnight’s head into the door five times. Midnight tried to dig his thumb in deeper. An uppercut from Outcast ended the gouge and knocked one of Midnight’s front teeth out. Blood ran from Midnight’s mouth and Outcast’s eye, and hand, which was cut to the bone. Panting and inspecting their wounds, they stopped fighting.
Hound and a wood rushed in. The wood extracted Outlaw.
“I’m gonna clean this blood up before a guard walks,” Hound said.
Midnight disassembled his cane, and said, “I’m gonna go beat up Outcast with this.”
“You’ve only got four months left to go,” Hound said. “If you hit him with the cane you’ll get five to ten years.”
Some woods came in and calmed Midnight down.
Midnight shoved his front tooth back in, and said, “Maybe the roots’ll take, and it’ll hold.” He touched it, and it almost fell out. “Fuck!” he said.
The wood who had extracted Outcast came in and said, “Hey, Midnight, is this a dead issue now?”
“Yeah, for now.”
“Well, just so you know, Outcast’s hand’s tore up. I had to sow it up for him. He said if a guard sees it or someone drops a kite and you’re sent to SSU, you’re both gonna deny fighting.”
“Of course. I’m a convict not an inmate!”

Later on, Outcast showed Midnight the stitches in his hand sown with orange thread taken from prison clothes, and said, “Look, Midnight, it shouldn’t have went as far as it did. It’s over, and if we end up going to the hole, let’s deny fighting one another.”
“That goes without saying. I know what time it is.”

The next day Midnight visited my cell: “Outcast’s got a black eye. He’s gonna hafta wear sunglasses for a while. His hand’s swelled up – there’s a crescent-shaped scar. I don’t think he’ll wanna try me again.”
“No one can say you didn’t stand up for yourself,” I said.
“’Cause Outcast works out all day long and he’s gotta nice ice chest, he thinks he’s got balls. But when it comes down to throwing the dukes, he’s not all that. He got one lucky punch. He ain’t got nothing coming. I probably shoulda took his eye out, but I felt bad. I’m trying to go home in January. I need to stay outta trouble, but I can’t have an inmate disrespecting me. I ain’t gonna start no trouble, but I’m not gonna allow someone to disrespect me as he did. He thought ’cause I’m older he could take me.”

Later on, Outcast ran into my cell, showed me the stitches, yelled, “They call me the punisher!” and ran out again.

To read my story in this week's Liverpool Echo click on: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/03/17/shaun-attwood-on-life-in-an-american-prison-100252-20634741/


To read decriptions of most of the prisoners I write about click on: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=126288687&blogID=212516343&Mytoken=0FF0F89E-4912-4CBC-B601F033F6AA90B241980570/


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