Summer 2020 Archive
Fiction
Amends
By Ryan Priest
Convict 330834 was released into the world as Jamal White, convicted sex offender. This was no rebirth. The man who had been Jamal had died five years before, upon his incarceration.
Inside of the razor-wire topped concrete walls, the shell, the hollowed-out, breathing, walking, eating shell, had begun to fill again with pain, hatred, fear, and routine. Finally, after a year or so of pressure cooking, a convict began to form. Only this new Jamal didn’t die on release. The defining characteristic of a con is a sort of indestructibility. Once created, there is no getting rid of him.
Most people think when the judge imposes a certain sentence on you, you serve it to the day and then are released. Nothing the government does is that cut and dry. There is a certain bureaucracy involved and you’re no longer even human. You’re stock, chattel that the different protocols each get their time with.
Jamal’s release after five years required his staying for four months in a halfway house with other ex-inmates. During the day, they were supposed to look for jobs, and some had to attend substance abuse meetings or classes. The conditions of Jamal’s parole required no such classes.
Within no time, he’d found a job in a warehouse, basically the only job an ex-con can get. More than half of the parolees never made it out of the halfway house. They’d disappear or break curfew, and it was back to the prison for them. Most were spending all of their free time looking for or doing drugs. They call it recidivism. Not Jamal White though.
He made his four months. With the money he had earned at the warehouse, he had managed to find a run down but dirt-cheap apartment complex. This newly acquired separation from the state did not come free.
“My name is Jamal White, I am a convicted sex offender. I am required to inform you that I am moving into the neighborhood.” Over and over again. He couldn’t stand to look his new neighbors in the eyes while giving them his spiel. Some spit at him, others threatened him, but nobody was too eager to engage physically with an admitted ex-convict.
He had done it all, everything required of him, and that first night in his own bed, in his own apartment, almost made it all worth it. That first free sleep without the threat of rape or some other form of brutality. A sleep with no predetermined time of waking. A sleep he didn’t even have to take if he didn’t want to. He could leave all of his lights on and play his music straight on until morning, and no eight-dollar-an-hour correction’s officer armed with only a club and a GED would come in to beat the routine back into him. He chose to sleep anyway though. He had a big day planned. After five years there was someone he needed to see again.
Jamal had been convicted of the aggravated rape of a then seventeen-year-old Heather Flannigan. Now, the very first morning of his new freedom, he spent watching the twenty-two-year-old version leaving her house on foot, headed to her job at the mall. Not that she really had to work. By the look of her two story, five-bedroom house, her family had enough money to support her for another forty years.
She didn’t look like she’d aged a day. Her hair was still long and filled with golden waves. She was still as delicately slim as he’d remembered her. The clothes were more grown up, but there could be no mistaking that it was the same girl underneath.
“Hello Heather.” Jamal said moving up behind her. She had already walked far enough away from the house to risk it.
The look on her face changed from one expecting to see a friend to that of someone who’s seen the devil incarnate. “It’s you.”
“I’m finally out.”
She stood locked in place, eyes as big as saucers.
“What do you want?” She asked in a voice that shook with every word. The last thing she had expected was to see his dark face staring at her at nine thirty in the morning.
“I want to know why you did it,” Jamal asked slowly. “Why did you say I raped you?”
“Look, I was a dumb kid. Sorry, but we all do stupid things.” She said with a cavalier shrug that mocked every moment he had spent in that hell.
“Why didn’t you come forward and admit it was a lie? You had five years.” Jamal asked through clenched teeth.
“My dad would have killed me,” she said, growing defensive toward this accusatory confrontation.
The two had only met one time before. Jamal’s friend had known Heather’s friend, and the four of them had met up and hung out one evening. Heather had been flirting with Jamal all night, so when it came time to leave, he gave her a ride home. She asked him to park the car, and they did it -- nervous and clumsy, as teenagers do, but consensual nonetheless.
After they were finished, she’d even kissed him good night and gave assurances that she’d like to see him again. So, it came as a surprise when the police had shown up at his job with handcuffs and words like “rapist.”
He only ever saw her once more, and that was as she took the stand pointing a finger at him. He’d waited five years, replaying the incident in his head every night, questioning his own memory. He had been over the seduction, the sex, the kiss afterwards, carefully pausing on every detail for fear he may have behaved in some inappropriate way that he’d been unaware of. But no, five years and the same answer, an emphatic no, he’d never raped anyone.
“Why did you do it? I’d never done a thing to you.” It felt good to say it out loud for once, the truth.
“Look, my little brother saw us pull up at the house and he told my dad that I had been driven home by a n-, a black man. When I got in, my hair and makeup were all messed up and my bra was in my purse, so he knew something had gone on. What was I supposed to do?” Heather was getting noticeably annoyed. Who was he, some black ex-con, to be stopping her on the way to her work, bitching about stuff that had happened years ago?
“Well you’re not supposed to tell him that I raped you.”
“You don’t know my dad. He’d have killed me. My parents are old fashioned. They think whites should stick with whites and blacks with blacks. If I told him that I had had sex with some black guy, he’d have thrown me out on the street. I told him not to call the police, but he wouldn’t listen,” she explained indignantly.
“Rape is the most horrible crime you can ever be accused of.” Jamal was seething. “They raped me. They raped me and beat me every day in that prison. Even rapists hate rapists.”
“What do you want me to say? Sorry?” She began to continue her walk, and he unconsciously joined her, still swirling over all the things he should say. He’d imagined it a thousand times, and he had auditioned several phrases just for this one moment.
“You are a worthless, self-interested, lying, evil, entitled, dumb...” The words seemed cheap, immature. They were simply words, and words felt so cheap and immaterial. His words to the cops had meant nothing, the words at his trial had all been lies. The words in his pleas and screams had never once stopped an attacker or summoned help. Words simply didn’t matter. Jamal couldn’t believe they’d taken five years of his life on nothing but the word of such a fork-tongued suburban cretin. Skin tone mattered more than words.
His friends had all left him, believing her. His only living family, his mother, had been forced to leave the state to find work, so he hadn’t even seen her in three years. He was alone in the world now, with the low ceiling placed over the head of any ex-felon, and there was absolutely no justifiable reason as to why.
“You are just a nigger ex-convict, and if you bother me again, I’ll tell them you were trying to rape me and they’ll send you right back,” she said, empowering herself smugly. She was done hearing about how horrible a person she was from a near stranger. The way she saw it, that was just one thing she had done, and it was ages ago. She felt bad about it, sure, but so what? She had to get over it sometime. She wasn’t about to go live in a cave, forever chastising herself for it.
She stormed off to her retail job, but Jamal gave no chase. She hadn’t even gone to college. He’d often wondered how she had been spending her time. Apparently, after robbing him of his years, she’d squandered her own.
There was no surprise in him that she had been so callous and unaffected. He’d seen grown men who had stabbed their best friends in their sleep, and when asked why, they always had some proud, obnoxious, and absurd rationalization for it that always left the stabber as the real victim. He’d learned many things about the way people will treat one another, especially if they can get away with it. In his first year inside, he had learned what physical punishment the human body can endure. He’d learned about his own strengths and weaknesses while attempting to fend off murderers and rapists who had rationalized their attacks into some twisted form of heroism. “Get the rape-O!”
He’d learned even more in his remaining four years. Especially after his repeated assaults made the warden take pity on him and grant his request for permanent solitary confinement. Safe from the others, the guilty, he was free to read and study. He’d earned his bachelor’s degree with a major in philosophy and a minor in Russian literature.
Opportunities are everywhere for inmates to better educate themselves if the element of perpetual violence can be removed. Several degree programs exist ranging in grade levels from kindergarten through full correspondence collegiate courses, all to help the recidivism. Sadly though, most convicts with a degree just end up as smart warehouse workers.
No company on Earth wants an executive who’s done time. Banks don’t loan to felons either, so starting your own business is out too. He’d taken the government up on their free college, though. He had fallen in love with books in that cell with only sub-human guards and the sounds of other prisoners to keep him company.
He was expected at work in a few hours, and he’d go. He didn’t know how long he’d have to keep the job for. If he missed a day, they could and would send him back to prison.
Jamal White looked at his old and worn denim jacket. He had been arrested in it. He needed a new one. With his first day as a free man, he had bought himself new boots, the white shirt he was wearing, and the small cassette player that was currently taped underneath.
He felt for the buttons and turned it off. He wondered how much money five years of wrongful imprisonment amounted to in civil court. Jamal smiled. Yes, he would get to buy himself that new jacket, he’d clear his name, and finally, he’d knock on every one of those doors again and show them the proof that he was no rapist and never really had been. Then, and only then, would he really be free.
The End
By Ryan Priest
Convict 330834 was released into the world as Jamal White, convicted sex offender. This was no rebirth. The man who had been Jamal had died five years before, upon his incarceration.
Inside of the razor-wire topped concrete walls, the shell, the hollowed-out, breathing, walking, eating shell, had begun to fill again with pain, hatred, fear, and routine. Finally, after a year or so of pressure cooking, a convict began to form. Only this new Jamal didn’t die on release. The defining characteristic of a con is a sort of indestructibility. Once created, there is no getting rid of him.
Most people think when the judge imposes a certain sentence on you, you serve it to the day and then are released. Nothing the government does is that cut and dry. There is a certain bureaucracy involved and you’re no longer even human. You’re stock, chattel that the different protocols each get their time with.
Jamal’s release after five years required his staying for four months in a halfway house with other ex-inmates. During the day, they were supposed to look for jobs, and some had to attend substance abuse meetings or classes. The conditions of Jamal’s parole required no such classes.
Within no time, he’d found a job in a warehouse, basically the only job an ex-con can get. More than half of the parolees never made it out of the halfway house. They’d disappear or break curfew, and it was back to the prison for them. Most were spending all of their free time looking for or doing drugs. They call it recidivism. Not Jamal White though.
He made his four months. With the money he had earned at the warehouse, he had managed to find a run down but dirt-cheap apartment complex. This newly acquired separation from the state did not come free.
“My name is Jamal White, I am a convicted sex offender. I am required to inform you that I am moving into the neighborhood.” Over and over again. He couldn’t stand to look his new neighbors in the eyes while giving them his spiel. Some spit at him, others threatened him, but nobody was too eager to engage physically with an admitted ex-convict.
He had done it all, everything required of him, and that first night in his own bed, in his own apartment, almost made it all worth it. That first free sleep without the threat of rape or some other form of brutality. A sleep with no predetermined time of waking. A sleep he didn’t even have to take if he didn’t want to. He could leave all of his lights on and play his music straight on until morning, and no eight-dollar-an-hour correction’s officer armed with only a club and a GED would come in to beat the routine back into him. He chose to sleep anyway though. He had a big day planned. After five years there was someone he needed to see again.
Jamal had been convicted of the aggravated rape of a then seventeen-year-old Heather Flannigan. Now, the very first morning of his new freedom, he spent watching the twenty-two-year-old version leaving her house on foot, headed to her job at the mall. Not that she really had to work. By the look of her two story, five-bedroom house, her family had enough money to support her for another forty years.
She didn’t look like she’d aged a day. Her hair was still long and filled with golden waves. She was still as delicately slim as he’d remembered her. The clothes were more grown up, but there could be no mistaking that it was the same girl underneath.
“Hello Heather.” Jamal said moving up behind her. She had already walked far enough away from the house to risk it.
The look on her face changed from one expecting to see a friend to that of someone who’s seen the devil incarnate. “It’s you.”
“I’m finally out.”
She stood locked in place, eyes as big as saucers.
“What do you want?” She asked in a voice that shook with every word. The last thing she had expected was to see his dark face staring at her at nine thirty in the morning.
“I want to know why you did it,” Jamal asked slowly. “Why did you say I raped you?”
“Look, I was a dumb kid. Sorry, but we all do stupid things.” She said with a cavalier shrug that mocked every moment he had spent in that hell.
“Why didn’t you come forward and admit it was a lie? You had five years.” Jamal asked through clenched teeth.
“My dad would have killed me,” she said, growing defensive toward this accusatory confrontation.
The two had only met one time before. Jamal’s friend had known Heather’s friend, and the four of them had met up and hung out one evening. Heather had been flirting with Jamal all night, so when it came time to leave, he gave her a ride home. She asked him to park the car, and they did it -- nervous and clumsy, as teenagers do, but consensual nonetheless.
After they were finished, she’d even kissed him good night and gave assurances that she’d like to see him again. So, it came as a surprise when the police had shown up at his job with handcuffs and words like “rapist.”
He only ever saw her once more, and that was as she took the stand pointing a finger at him. He’d waited five years, replaying the incident in his head every night, questioning his own memory. He had been over the seduction, the sex, the kiss afterwards, carefully pausing on every detail for fear he may have behaved in some inappropriate way that he’d been unaware of. But no, five years and the same answer, an emphatic no, he’d never raped anyone.
“Why did you do it? I’d never done a thing to you.” It felt good to say it out loud for once, the truth.
“Look, my little brother saw us pull up at the house and he told my dad that I had been driven home by a n-, a black man. When I got in, my hair and makeup were all messed up and my bra was in my purse, so he knew something had gone on. What was I supposed to do?” Heather was getting noticeably annoyed. Who was he, some black ex-con, to be stopping her on the way to her work, bitching about stuff that had happened years ago?
“Well you’re not supposed to tell him that I raped you.”
“You don’t know my dad. He’d have killed me. My parents are old fashioned. They think whites should stick with whites and blacks with blacks. If I told him that I had had sex with some black guy, he’d have thrown me out on the street. I told him not to call the police, but he wouldn’t listen,” she explained indignantly.
“Rape is the most horrible crime you can ever be accused of.” Jamal was seething. “They raped me. They raped me and beat me every day in that prison. Even rapists hate rapists.”
“What do you want me to say? Sorry?” She began to continue her walk, and he unconsciously joined her, still swirling over all the things he should say. He’d imagined it a thousand times, and he had auditioned several phrases just for this one moment.
“You are a worthless, self-interested, lying, evil, entitled, dumb...” The words seemed cheap, immature. They were simply words, and words felt so cheap and immaterial. His words to the cops had meant nothing, the words at his trial had all been lies. The words in his pleas and screams had never once stopped an attacker or summoned help. Words simply didn’t matter. Jamal couldn’t believe they’d taken five years of his life on nothing but the word of such a fork-tongued suburban cretin. Skin tone mattered more than words.
His friends had all left him, believing her. His only living family, his mother, had been forced to leave the state to find work, so he hadn’t even seen her in three years. He was alone in the world now, with the low ceiling placed over the head of any ex-felon, and there was absolutely no justifiable reason as to why.
“You are just a nigger ex-convict, and if you bother me again, I’ll tell them you were trying to rape me and they’ll send you right back,” she said, empowering herself smugly. She was done hearing about how horrible a person she was from a near stranger. The way she saw it, that was just one thing she had done, and it was ages ago. She felt bad about it, sure, but so what? She had to get over it sometime. She wasn’t about to go live in a cave, forever chastising herself for it.
She stormed off to her retail job, but Jamal gave no chase. She hadn’t even gone to college. He’d often wondered how she had been spending her time. Apparently, after robbing him of his years, she’d squandered her own.
There was no surprise in him that she had been so callous and unaffected. He’d seen grown men who had stabbed their best friends in their sleep, and when asked why, they always had some proud, obnoxious, and absurd rationalization for it that always left the stabber as the real victim. He’d learned many things about the way people will treat one another, especially if they can get away with it. In his first year inside, he had learned what physical punishment the human body can endure. He’d learned about his own strengths and weaknesses while attempting to fend off murderers and rapists who had rationalized their attacks into some twisted form of heroism. “Get the rape-O!”
He’d learned even more in his remaining four years. Especially after his repeated assaults made the warden take pity on him and grant his request for permanent solitary confinement. Safe from the others, the guilty, he was free to read and study. He’d earned his bachelor’s degree with a major in philosophy and a minor in Russian literature.
Opportunities are everywhere for inmates to better educate themselves if the element of perpetual violence can be removed. Several degree programs exist ranging in grade levels from kindergarten through full correspondence collegiate courses, all to help the recidivism. Sadly though, most convicts with a degree just end up as smart warehouse workers.
No company on Earth wants an executive who’s done time. Banks don’t loan to felons either, so starting your own business is out too. He’d taken the government up on their free college, though. He had fallen in love with books in that cell with only sub-human guards and the sounds of other prisoners to keep him company.
He was expected at work in a few hours, and he’d go. He didn’t know how long he’d have to keep the job for. If he missed a day, they could and would send him back to prison.
Jamal White looked at his old and worn denim jacket. He had been arrested in it. He needed a new one. With his first day as a free man, he had bought himself new boots, the white shirt he was wearing, and the small cassette player that was currently taped underneath.
He felt for the buttons and turned it off. He wondered how much money five years of wrongful imprisonment amounted to in civil court. Jamal smiled. Yes, he would get to buy himself that new jacket, he’d clear his name, and finally, he’d knock on every one of those doors again and show them the proof that he was no rapist and never really had been. Then, and only then, would he really be free.
The End
