At Light's Edge - Chapter 29: The Writing on the Wall

Twenty-Nine

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The Writing on the Wall

Current Svalbard Super Y-MAX Perimeter Temperature: 2 Celsius / 36 Fahrenheit

Early Monday morning inmates Stone and Purdue were summoned to clean a cell in wing K-10. Upon arrival the two were greeted and escorted by C/O Volchesky up to the second tier cell of Tetsuya Takahashi. Takahashi was temporarily being housed down in wing K-8 until his cell was ready for his return.

“What a mess,” Cornell lamented after the two outer doors were opened revealing the recently vacated, and very smelly, cell. “I outta kick this--”

“Hey, hey,” Renie interrupted, “remember—"

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Cornell cut his comment short, “Watch my mouth. God catches his fish before cleanin’ them and I gots a lot more cleanin’ to be done, buddy.”

“Me too.”

Cornell boasted, “It’s almost three years since I even threw anyone off of a scaffold, so I be doin’ a lot better. God is changin’ me.”

Renie remembered back to the two’s previous desert prison home at Y-MAX and how Renie was brutalized by two youths on the infirmary construction project site when Cornell was temporarily confined to his cell after being attacked himself. Renie’s two attackers coincidently ‘fell’ from a scaffold after Cornell returned to work.

“Yeah, that incident brought a tear to my eye,” Renie said with a smile.

The two laughed.

“The accident just broke my heart,” Cornell chuckled.

“Boyz,” interrupted Officer Volchesky, “if it not too much trouble, you know, maybe you clean cell, eh?”

“Ok, boss,” Cornell affirmed, “we’ll do it. Ain’t no job too hard or dirty for us. We’re the dream team.”

“More like Siberian nightmares if you ask me,” the C/O jokingly replied as he walked away.

Inmate Takahashi used his own feces and blood to write messages on his cell’s walls in English. Many of the words were those typically found in prison cells housing acute psychotic inmates, but Tetsuya Takahashi had written a few unique phrases for viewers to admire.

“Jesus, God, Christ, Devil,” it looks like to me that these are just here on the wall for show,” Renie commented, as the two began to scrub the words away.

“I hear ya,” Cornell agreed. “I got a feelin’ somethin’ ain’t right with all this.”

“Me too, I’m outta here,” Renie dashed out of the two opened cell doors with Cornell close behind closing the doors behind him as he passed through.

The boys opened the outer cell door’s observation window to see a cloud of gas forming in the cell. It appeared to be generated from the walls themselves.

“Officer Volchesky!” yelled the deep voiced Cornell, “Come quick!”

Once the officer peered into the cell and observed the cloud of unknown gas, he sounded the unit’s hazmat alarm.

“I think Japan boy play us for fools,” the C/O said angrily.

Renie stated, “I heard rumors this guy could make poison gas outta air if that was all he had available to use.”

“I show this boy about poison gas,” Volchesky started to boast, “Back in Afghanistan war days… never mind that, I said nothing.”

“I ain’t heard a word,” Cornell laughed.

“Me neither,” added Renie.

“You good boyz. I like good boyz. I remember good boyz, too, when they need it most. You two go sit in my office until all is clear, ok.”

“Ok, boss.” The two walked down the stairs and sat in the C/O’s office discussing things.

Renie asked Cornell, “You saw that stuff written on the west wall in there… Death by Homicide – Suicide – Accidental - Natural Causes – Undetermined?”

“Yeah, the five official ways to die. Of course, the official list seems to have left out execution,” Cornell answered.

“I think this guy did somethin’ to the walls,” Renie speculated.

“Like what?”

“Maybe some chemical that reacted to the soap we used, I don’t know.”

“You sure gots smarts, Ren. Wish I had more. We could have been killed, be dyin’ or sick right now.”

“But we’re not. I think God gave us both that horrible feelin’ that somethin’ was wrong to get us outta there in a hurry.”

“I hear ya.”

Renie philosophized for a moment, “What do you think it’s like to be stuck in a little cell like that with white walls day after miserable day without nothin’ to do except just stare at the ceiling and walls? No hope a getting’ out for a walk, except to go to another exercise cell for an hour once in a while.”

“And when you do get out to exercise, ya gots those dogs barkin’ and growlin’ at ya the whole time,” Cornell added.

“I’d go crazy if I had to be locked up like that.”

“Ya know, Ren, when I was on lockdown those few days back at Y-MAX, I thought I was goin’ crazy even though I could look out my cell door window and the outside window at the desert. I watched what few birds there was out there and the occasional lizard, but to have nothin’ at all… man, I just ain’t got—"

“I know what you mean.”

“I think I’d rather be juiced than live like these crazy inmates.”

Renie looked at Cornell and nodded his head in agreement.

“I read me one time that less than three to fifteen percent of death row inmates ever get executed, dependin’ on the state they be in and all.”

Renie commented, “And most are safer since they don’t go out on their prison’s mainline ever. I think it’s more torture to have a life sentence. We got lucky.”

“Blessed is what we got, Ren, blessed.”

“Yeah, blessed.”

“I memorized me some of chapter eight in Ecclesiastes. Want to hear it?”

Renie said he would, so his muscular friend quoted, “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged, yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before Him.”

“Man, that just says it all, don’t it.”

Cornell agreed, “It sure does, buddy, it sure does.”

“Boyz,” Officer Volchesky popped his head in the doorway, “It’s all clear now, just a cloud of chlorine, so not so bad. But if you two would have been in there—”

“Ok, ok,” Renie nervously replied.

“What, you not tough American boy? How about you muscleman, you tough?”

“Tough enough,” Cornell smiled.

“Now, you boyz can get back to your job, ok?”

“Yes, sir,” the youths replied.

A gentle peacefulness floated through the air like a fine mist.. The trio looked around the area in silence.

The C/O looked at both Renie and Cornell with a puzzled look on his face, “Where you think boy get chlorine?”

Renie inquired, “Is there any in the shower area, or--”

Racing off, the C/O shouted, “I check, I check everything, boyz.”

Next Chapter: A Weekend to Remember