My Time in Dently

I’d never before considered murdering someone. The idea that I might know who deserved to live and who must die always struck me as arrogant. What marked someone as valuable and just, or waste and immoral, and who among us could rightly make the call? No no. Leave the moralizing to the philosophers and let me never wonder how you might become a prisoner, one of The Others.

But that’s what I was now: a captive in a small cell, one of The Others, a deplorable aspect of society, stripped of my old luxuries of gourmet coffee and sleek cars.

Staying unnoticed in Dently Penitentiary had become my only concern.

It was an art, being small enough to fade to the background and yet not so undefined that you attracted attention because of your singularity. Avoiding eye contact proved the hardest. I used to be a businessman and conducting interviews, giving presentations, meeting important clients at the latest chic cafe, filled my old days, things which required giving someone your full attention, a winning smile, and sealing the deal with a firm handshake. I didn’t touch anyone now, not if I could avoid it.

What used to be my strongest characteristics now became a millstone constantly dragging me over cliffs and down deep holes. I had to fight myself those first weeks more than anyone else. I wanted to strike deals, organize the chaos into a working system and, most dangerously, find the leaders of this sewer and talk shop. Luckily a smashed foot put me in the infirmary for a while and by listening to the staff I learned just what kind of people dwelt in my part of the prison.

A curious lot: car thieves, drug dealers, tax evaders, embezzlers, forgers, and the odd serial road rager. At first I wondered why I was placed amongst these garden variety lowlifes, but I soon learned that everyone resided here, even murderers. The only prison for counties around, Dently Penitentiary gathered us together, the strangest and deadliest kind of church you could imagine: All Welcome.   

And like church, we all gathered every Sunday in the yard, an impressive space filled with a track, and a nice grassy area meant for friendly sports like soccer, football, and lacrosse. No one played by the games’ rules; they played to see who could inflict the most damage without attracting the guards.

It intrigued me, watching those lugs chase each other around, calling insults and sneakily landing unobtrusive blows. In all my time there I never saw a fight break out on the field. I think they enjoyed the challenge too much to degrade it with simple violence—plenty of time in the rest of the week for that. A strange aura of respect filled that place, one that immediately dissolved into shivs and night lynchings, but still, it offered a tiny portal back to our lost lives. 

But mealtime proved the best spectator entertainment. Almost each day brought a new selection of injuries, empty seats and, if we were lucky, new prisoners and sudden fights. That’s what happened shortly after I first arrived: a fight instigated by two former rivals now sharing the same prison. It flared to life like a match and quickly burned hotter once other rivals began enacting their own vengeance. I wanted to stay out of it, content to merely observe and slowly drink my carton of lackluster orange juice. The inmates had other ideas and I soon found myself with a mysteriously injured foot and a head so pulverized, the nurse jokingly said I was one blow from a coma.

My time in the infirmary quickly became boring once I’d acquired all the useful information. I longed to be back in the action so I might test my theories and revise old tactics. Once I exited that dismal place—always too cold to be really comfortable—I left behind what was once me and became The Worm.

Now, I didn’t choose that name and in fact I didn’t learn of its existence for many months. Whispers filtered down to me of this prisoner who destroyed something so slowly and surreptitiously, the damage didn’t appear until the whole façade crumbled from within. Someone said it referred to those worms back in the olden days that so completely ate their way through wooden ships, whole sections had to be replaced lest the ship sink. A crude way to describe things, but I always did like the idea of sailing the oceans.

You’re probably thinking I changed irreconcilably after that bump on the head and now I felt no compunction at watching the life ebb from The Others. That I was an artist who viewed all Others as simpletons and relished the chance to show my brilliance in startlingly horrifying ways, some perverse loon who saw beauty in convulsing bodies and choked-off breaths caused by cell-brewed poisons. That managing such feats in a closely watched prison held no difficulty for the sheer prowess of my talent and only heightened the pleasure I derived from a fresh kill.

I wish it were that simple. Murder, as I learned from my time in Dently, was what everyone imagined committing at some point, and those imprisoned for it were only treated as worse because society thought it ought to be that way. But once you spent enough time in a bleak cell, each day the same, and each night longer than the last, we all became potential murderers, waiting for our chance to strike.

In truth I gained my moniker because the leaders of The Others collectively decided that I should begin the operation of escaping. Someone discovered my previous life’s work and jumped to the conclusion that, as an independent inmate and boring lurker, I matched their arbitrary guidelines for a tunneler.

I immediately assured them I had no architectural skills and, as a child, couldn’t even make a passable mud fort for my tin soldiers. That talk happened on a Sunday and by the following Sunday, my stitches itching, I assured them I would get transferred to the library to begin my life as a structural engineer. 

Miserable work, absolutely miserable. None of the books made sense and the diagrams invaded my thoughts until even sleeping brought no escape. Math, something I used to enjoy, became my worst enemy and as I struggled to make sense of angles, braces, and the crushing weight of gravity, one factor slowly overshadowed everything: I couldn’t do it. My mind, the axis on which my successful career rested, had become pudding, pulverized in the attack. The dizzying plans I’d made back in the city and the shrewd deals I’d pushed through now made as much sense as advanced trigonometry. And you cannot learn how to tunnel by watching The Great Escape, as I learned on one of the more ironic movie nights. 

The most frustrating thing was I knew what I’d lost. I remembered the words I used and the anecdotes that earned me millions. Once upon a time I had a firm hold on greatness and the riches and women such a life conjured. Now my hands grasped nothing more complex than a dishrag as I toiled in my new job in the kitchen. I told the leaders my lessons had paid off and soon we could begin work. A lie, of course. The only lesson I’d learned amounted to realizing my personal hell wasn’t seeing the creatures that surrounded me, but knowing I had no way to escape them, and that soon I might drown amongst The Others.