317

Three knocks hit the cell window.

Officer Young jumped to his feet, sending his folding chair clattering to the floor behind him. He scrambled to retrieve his rifle and gripped the barrel in two, white-knuckled fists.

“The hell?” he whispered to himself.

For the first time in six years, Officer Young stood at attention. He stared down the length of the hallway, refusing to believe that the knock came from his prisoner. Inmate 317 had been in solitary longer than Young had been an officer. And 317 never made a noise.

There it came again. Knock, knock, knock. It was dampened by the six inches of bullet proof window, but the noise clearly implied the sharp impact of knuckles on glass. He turned around. Young now faced the tiny, murky window which he never truly bothered to examine before; it didn’t take an observant man to guard a locked door after all. His job was mostly to occupy that chair through the wee hours of the night and only half-way doze off. He meant this shift to last just a month, then hop off to a bigger facility with a higher rank than ‘Officer’. Somewhere along the line, however, the man behind that big, steel door became Young’s whole career.

And again, like clockwork. Knock. Knock. Knock. It was slower this time, and Young’s stomach tightened at the sound.

“Cut it out in there!”

He rammed the butt of the rifle into the door, unsure if it was even loaded. The booming twang of metal against metal echoed down the hallway and back.

“Be calm, Alastair,” rang an unfamiliar voice.

Young’s heart really started pumping now. He was not aware that he was on a first name basis with 317. Where’d the inmate even hear that name? No one called him Alastair except his mother when she’s cross, and he hadn’t visited her in a decade. He made it a point in his mind to take a vacation soon and do just that. He desperately needed a vacation.

“Alastair?” called the inmate with a sickening lilt.

“It’s Officer.”

Young took a deep breath and rammed the end of his gun into the door again with embarrassingly little conviction. He heard the inmate chuckle.

“Look here, Al.”

“Quiet.”

“Look at me!”

The command was sharp and sounded nearer than it was, as if spoken directly into his ear. Sufficiently compelled, Young peered into the little window.

He dropped his gun to the floor with a clang.

Behind the yellow muck and razor wire, buried within the glass, two wild eyes bore into Officer Young. They flickered and widened at the sight of him. Like a hungry animal. The little indent in the door only allowed the view of the inmate’s eyes and the bridge of his nose.

Young held a palm to his chest, having to remind himself that the steel was indeed a foot thick.

Nevertheless, the sureness in those eyes, bloodshot on the whites and yellow in the iris, convinced him otherwise. It seemed the door was nonexistent. Or thin as air. That creature in there with the pinpoint pupils was starving and ready to eat an officer whole.

Another chuckle seeped through the glass. Low and smooth.

“So, what’d you think?”

“What?” Young spoke to some point just above the window, skirting over those eyes which seemed to whiten each passing minute.

“I saw you on Monday, peekin’ Tom. Ain’t I pretty?”

“I don’t—”

“Now, don’t deny me. It was my shower day. You remember.”

Officer Young remembered well and grew red in the face for it. The slowness of the shift, like every shift, burdened him to find something more engaging than a steel chair. All that silence and thinking and meditation made him rather curious. What did his prisoner look like? What had his life been beyond the supervision of Officer Young?

Who was Inmate 317?

He must have been something impressive, thought Young. Six years. And who knew how long the man had been in solitary before Young picked up the droll shift. Indeed, 317 must have been a regular Prometheus.

A little overtime last week, which seeped into the morning hours, allowed Young to cover shower time. His suspicions were thus confirmed. Spying through the corner of the little window, he examined his prisoner in full form for the first time. The body of 317 was rather inhuman. He found the silhouette broad and monstrously tall, yet it moved with an uncanny sort of grace. As if he were dancing. 317 hummed while he showered also. It was almost too low to pick up on, but when Young closed his eyes and pressed an ear up to the door, he was certain it was humming amidst the pattering of shower water.

“Can’t you answer me?” said 317. “There’s no one around.”

“Get back from the door.” To the stark horror of Officer Young, his voice cracked.

317 cackled now. “You did think I was pretty!”

Young retreated quickly to the side of the door, safely away from the inmate’s searing gaze. He recovered his chair from the ground and fell into it. Christ! What could he do now? He ran his hands through his thinning hair, leaving a gel residue on his palms. Thinking about getting help, he looked down the length of the hallway. Useless. It was a graveyard shift. If he needed help, he had to help himself, and that’s what he signed up for.

“Alastair?”

“What?”

“I think I deserve to see you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think, 317.”

“Well, don’t you want some company? Aren’t you curious?”

Curious, sure. But Young had already screwed this night up royally. 317 grew too close for comfort, in a manner of speaking. Would the inmate dare to tell the day guards about this? The best he could hope for was that no one would believe the accusation. Not from a man in isolation.

Beads of sweat rolled down his temples to his chin. They never kept the damn AC on through the whole night. Didn’t they know he was still down here? That it was still hot as hell? He stood up and flapped the collar of his uniform to get some air.

“You owe me, peekin’ Tom.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Young’s voice carried a little bite in it this time. He rushed up to the door, pressing against the steel with both palms. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean, huh!”

The inmate recoiled. It was just enough to catch sight of a hairline and cupid’s bow before his eyes fully occupied the window again. “Be calm, Alastair. Just take off your shirt.”

“What?”

“Just your work shirt. And the slacks. C’mon, I know you have an undershirt anyway.”

Young fiddled with the badge on his chest. Maybe it was only fair. An eye for an eye, and one body for another. It wouldn’t cost him a thing, and it was so damn hot anyway. After all, if there was nobody down here to help him, there was no one to catch him out of uniform.

No, wait. It was lunacy! He was a correctional officer for christ’s sake. And 317 was just an inmate. An inmate, however, who caught him spying through the window on shower day.

What a stupid mistake.

Young sighed and let his shoulders drop. “If I do it, will you stay quiet about all this?”

Those snake eyes rose to the tip-top of the window, scanning the officer up and down. “Oh, I promise.”

Young turned around and tucked his chin, working to unbutton his shirt from the bottom up. The inmate was correct; beneath the collared shirt, he sported a crinkled white tank which was too long for him. He grumbled and dropped his slacks, belt and all. The white fluorescents above exposed the faults of aging in his bare arms and legs. Reduced to his t-shirt and drawers, he pursed his lips and pretended to be captivated by the speckles in the cement wall before him.

“You shy? Turn around.”

A chill ran down Young’s back as he spun to face the inmate again.

317 whistled and laughed. “Now I’m jealous. You’re fit, you know.”

“Can I dress now?”

“Hardly! There’s no rush, babe. Lemme breathe you in for a minute.”

“Christ.”

He hugged his arms around his midsection and trained his eyes to the ground. Young was certain he had a dream like this once. A nightmare, rather. Except, in that dream, he was a young man again, naked in front of his old drill sergeant. The other trainees wouldn’t acknowledge him. They were all in perfect uniform, standing in line on either side. The overzealous sergeant towered over him, wagging a finger in his face and berating him for being out of uniform. The stress of it all usually woke him up.

Young would have given anything to wake up in this moment.

“Hey, Al.”

Young looked up to discover those eyes again, still and unblinking. “Yeah?”

“You married by chance?”

“No.”

“I’ll be damned,” said the inmate. “Who’d pass you up?”

“Nobody did. I’m just not—what do you care?”

“Ah-ha, a stallion. I like that on you.”

A stallion. Young scoffed at the notion. Anyone who really knew him would call him an altar boy. He couldn’t deny relishing the comment, though. It suggested all the merit and charm that he longed to have, all the company that he longed to keep.

Officer Young strayed closer to the cell door.

“Were you married?” he asked. “Before your arrest?”

“What, at sixteen?”

“Oh. I didn’t know when you were locked up.” He bit the inside of his cheek and looked at the ground.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Well, I was in and out for a while. Had just about as much lovin’ as you’d expect a felon to get.”

Officer Young couldn’t figure what kind of ‘love’ could ever prevail in the middle of a prison complex. He was naturally ignorant of the inmates’ lives, unlike some of his colleagues. During his time in the general facility, he often saw more than he cared to. Guards favoring inmates. Holding long conversations with them. Correctional officers sneaking in candies and cigarettes and weed for the nice ones.

It all crossed a line with Officer Young; he was on the straight and narrow his whole life.

The guards would all joke about it later on, in their off hours. But not Young. He would sit in a corner and snack on his greens, musing over turning them all in to the warden. Never had the gall to do so. But he took solace in what he felt was a moral superiority to his colleagues.

That all changed with 317, however.

He was not like an inmate to Officer Young. He was not like a human. 317 was an anomaly, through and through. He never posed a problem, never a complaint. The man simply hummed when he showered; beyond that, no one knew how he spent his days. In fact, Young wondered why such a placid man would be forced into isolation anyway.

“What got you in here?” asked Young. “For good, I mean.”

The inmate indulged in a pregnant pause. Then sighed. “They say I killed an officer.”

“Did you?”

“Do you think I would?” The eyes widened, and they began to water. “You think I’d ever kill one like you?”

Young couldn’t say. He supposed a man guilty of that would’ve been less civil than 317. About a decade back, Young handled a case that was very nearly the same charge. He processed a woman (the name he couldn’t recall) who originally had a warrant out for grand larceny. She killed one of the arresting officers, with her bare hands at that, and she was rather vocal about it.

She was a spitter, too. That woman hissed and writhed all the way from county down to her forever cell. And it initially took three officers to take her down and cuff her. Young tried to be careful, but he walked away from that case with more than a few scrapes. That was the day, he remembered, that he decided to transfer to the men’s facility.

But 317 was nothing like that woman. The inmate was strangely soft-spoken. And to Young’s knowledge, he never tried to proclaim his innocence. But his eyes did. The way they housed the man’s exhaustion and earnestness made it doubtful that he was capable of murder.

Officer Young had to chalk it up to a fault in the system. 317 just fell down the wrong pipeline, and the industry took care of the rest. Oh yes. He’d heard all about it. Young was in the business of keeping people in prison, not serving justice. For most of his career, he figured it better to keep an innocent man locked up than allow a guilty one free. But now that he faced 317, and those tiresome eyes, it seemed different somehow.

“How long you been in that room?” asked Young.

“Stopped counting after year twenty.”

Young lowered his head, concealing the fact that his own eyes were watering now.

“But six years,” the inmate continued, “been just you and me, right?”

“I suppose.”

Not really. It was never technically just the two of them. There were the cafeteria servers that pushed their carts down here. There were the inspectors that visited every once in a blue moon. There were the day guards, of course. But they didn’t stand here by the door. They never checked on solitary. What trouble could be caused behind a foot of solid steel anyway?

They certainly didn’t care. They didn’t give a shit about the person behind the door.

But Young did. He cared about 317. That inmate was the prime occupant of his thoughts for all twelve hours of each shift. 317 must have been innocent, because Young could never care for a truly guilty man.

And in that way, it really had been just the two of them for the past six years. The two of them and no one else, each and every night.

Officer Young looked back up at the window to find that the inmate’s eyes were closed.

“317?”

The inmate kept his eyes shut and shook his head subtly. “Didn’t I deserve a life?”

“A life,” Young repeated. Yeah, they deserved a real life. Not this grimy, old window.

“Didn’t I deserve to love somebody?”

“You did,” said Young. “You still do.”

He pressed up close to the door again. He wanted to do something, anything, to fix all this. 317 was innocent, surely innocent. Maybe he could put in a query in the morning. Maybe he could ask about parole. Cut the time for good behavior, right? Those eyes pleaded with him behind the muck of the window. Officer Young despised the window. It made the eyes look yellow and dirty.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The inmate’s eyes flickered open. “317, sir.”

“Don’t be smart. I’m trying to help you.”

“It’s just 317. Always has been.”

Young sighed. Oh, boy. Such a waste. He could have been something if not for that rank, old cell. They both could have been something.

“You wanna help me?” said the inmate.

“I do.”

“You got a key?”

Young’s hand groped at his hip, where the key ring would usually hang, only to find the elastic band of his drawers. His eyes flew to the slacks lying on the ground. The little ring of brass keys peeked out from beneath, but he didn’t reach for them. He simply froze.

“Just for tonight,” 317 continued. “I’ll stay here with you. Wouldn’t that be alright?”

It would’ve been more than alright. All he could want was to see the man himself.

317 banged a fist against the window, causing the officer to stumble backwards.

“Don’t you wanna see me?” cried the inmate. “Don’t you hate this goddamn window?”

He did. Officer Young hated that window and all it obscured in its griminess. They both deserved better. Better than a filthy, old window!

His head pounded. So did his heart. Young scooped up the ring of keys from the ground and fumbled through them. He slipped the correct one into the little lock which sat beneath the knob and pried open the great, metal door. It screeched and whined on its hinges.

An odor wafted out from the cell. Decades of a stale isolation.

The little window was gone. The eyes remained, and the officer found that they were still quite yellow. Jaundiced, even.

They belonged to a long face with a sharp jaw. 317 was clearly younger than Young, but much taller and much burlier. He towered over the officer in a pair of orange boxers with a gentle smile.

Young smiled back.

317 was beautiful. He knew he would be. He always knew he would be!

The inmate stepped out of the cell and wrapped his arms around the officer.

“Thank you,” he said lowly. His voice projected much clearer and deeper without the muffling of the door.

Officer Young relished the warmth of the embrace. For a moment. Then, the arms tightened and swept Young off his feet. The inmate tossed the officer to the ground, and into the cell, with all the effort of tossing out the trash.

Young’s back slammed against the concrete floor. He scrambled to his feet, holding his chest and wheezing, and the metal door swung shut with a clang.

He rushed to the window to see the inmate collecting the gun, and dressing in his uniform.

“Hey!” he shouted, banging his fists on the door. “317, you bastard!”

“I do have a name you know,” said the inmate calmly. The yellow eyes appeared briefly in the window again. “And it ain’t 317.”