Morpheus Tales 29 Preview

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ISSN 1757-5419 Issue 29 – October 2016 Edited by Sheri White Editorial By Sheri White

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Coming Home By Richard Farren Barber Illustrated By Greg Chapman

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Interference By Mark Lewis

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Jesus Fuck; Or, The Beheading By Jay Helmstutler

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Life And Death By Anthony Fisher Illustrated By Andrew Vado

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Reasonable Suspicion By Allen Demir

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A Murder Of Crows By Sean Michael

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The Door Swings In By Kimberly Ilene Moore

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White Lilies and Everlasting Shadows By S.J. Budd Illustrated By Joe Young

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The Bitch Price By Stephen McQuiggan

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On The Inside‌ By E.A. Taylor

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Cover By - Cesar Valtierra - www.cesarvaltierra.com Proof-read By Sheri White All material contained within the pages of this magazine and associated websites is copyright of Morpheus Tales. All Rights Reserved. No material contained herein can be copied or otherwise used without the express permission of the copyright holders.

2

Things change, Stephen thought on the road in from the motorway. Some of the buildings were the same, but when he took a diversion to pass his old primary school there was now just a hole in the ground. That patch of bare earth suggested that the world was moving on, that his memories were history.

Mark hadn’t said anything about the school in his last letter, so the demolition must have only happened recently. Stephen made a mental note to ask him when they caught up. If they caught up, Stephen reminded himself. The meeting had been short notice, dropped on him in the aloof way management had of assuming that these visits could be planned in an instant. When he’d learned he was coming home he’d tried to ring Mark before he left the office, and tried again from a motorway services, but got no response either time.

He pulled away from the kerb, an ache in his chest that wasn’t even strong enough to be considered regret. The school was gone – life goes on. Get on with it, Mark would say and then probably make that terrible horse-laugh that had punctuated so many lessons when they were in primary school together. New teachers thought he was putting it on – it usually took them a few weeks to realise that the braying was actually as much a part of Mark as the lank brown hair and the dry sense of humour.

Some things change, Stephen thought, but other things stay exactly as they always have.

Mark fitted into the second category. He still lived in the town in which they had grown up. He taught at the secondary school where they had endured their early teenage years. The bastard still had a full head of hair whilst every time Stephen looked in the mirror he witnessed his own hairline stolidly retreating.

The drive had been quicker than expected – the new road through Toton by-passed the thirty-minute queue through town. Stephen steered the car through familiar streets that looked smaller than he remembered. Houses looked shoddy. Gutters were filled with detritus that he was certain would never have been allowed to gather in his youth. He smiled, remembering his mum rushing out of the house to pick up a stray crisp packet as it bowled down the pavement. Now crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers jammed beneath car wheels and clung to the fence around Paddy’s newsagents.

His hotel was new – a build-by-numbers chain on the edge of an industrial estate. He dumped his bags and tried to ring Mark but the number rang out.

He hung up, cursing that he had never thought to get Mark’s mobile number when they were last together. Which was...

He counted back. Two years? It wasn’t possible. There was no way it could have been that long since he had been back to Toton. There was Christmas. But then Stephen corrected himself; last Christmas Mum had come over to stay with him and Maggie. So... summer. Except they had gone away and what with the kids and everything it had got to September before he realised that he hadn’t found time to catch up.

Still, two years. That was a heck of a long time. He felt a flush of embarrassment and realised he was trying to defend the gap: He could have come to see me; it didn’t always have to be my turn to visit. But getting Mark to leave the environs of Toton was more difficult than solving the Middle-East conflict.

Nothing stopped him, Stephen thought. We’ve offered often enough.

Two years. Mark hadn’t mentioned the gap in any of his cards so maybe he hadn’t noticed it either. They were both so busy with life that the years slipped by without either of them realising.

3

“Dad,” said the voice through the whistles and crackles of the radio tuned between channels.

“Dad” again. It sounded so much like Tim, but it couldn’t be, could it? George’s son, Tim, had vanished a year ago. He had been playing in the fields with his friends and had not come back. His friends were unable to account for where he was, there were no apparent suspicious circumstances, no strangers had been seen or heard of, it had only been them present. It had not even been fully dark. Every inch of the woods had been trawled. Even, as unlikely as it was, the old wishing well had been opened up again and searched, but nothing beyond cold black water and weeds was found.

Bones had been found, but they were too old, dating from around twenty years ago, and they were adult female bones, wrapped in an old floral dress. The police had reopened their missing person files from the time, but could find no match and there was no apparent connection with Tim’s disappearance. George was desolate.

George had told the police, Tim’s grandparents, the newspapers, all of the enquirers that Tim had not been acting strangely or worried. He had not been upset, not bullied, there had been no rows, as such. Of course life hadn’t been easy without Tim’s mother, Mary. He was as happy as could have been expected. George had endured more than enough sympathetically blaming smiles.

A father looking after a boy on his own, so many had expected him to fail. George had heard nothing from him, but had never given him up for lost. The police had investigated but had found nothing. So the voice in the radio was a desperate link of hope, or a delusion.

In no way did George accept that Tim was lost; he kept Tim’s room as it was, toys and all.

Most of all, he kept their fishing equipment ready in the under-stairs cupboard as if they would be ready for a Sunday fishing trip. George remembered how Tim had recoiled when he saw the squirming mash of worms for bait in his old ice cream tub. As George hooked a worm, Tim’s face was sad. “But Daddy, doesn’t it hurt the worm?”

“It’s just a worm,” George had explained. “They don’t feel, not like we do. Their brains are just a speck. You’ve got to toughen up if you want to get on in this world, son.” At that time, George had not been aware of how truly brutal the world was, before it had taken Tim from him, as well as Mary.

Once the initial hurdle of the bait was over, fishing had become a special activity for them.

Fishing became the one way they bonded, away from the mundane difficulties of cooking, washing, teeth-cleaning, bedtime routines. On their way to the lake they talked about school and how much they missed Mary, sitting in blissful silence while the line the bait was in the water, then later discussing the catch and the sea-monster-proportioned one that always narrowly got away.

4

I. You stare at your face long enough in a mirror at night and you can scare yourself. You stare one long time into the face of darkness and you can end up fucked for life.

Nine nights ago, the face of darkness appeared on my computer screen and I stared right into it. I watched through my fingers as a man had his head sawed off by a group of masked executioners. I listened as his screams filled the room until there was only the silent image of his severed head being lifted by its hair.

And oh God the dead silence when they finally dangled his head before the camera. I have never heard silence like that—a deathly hum of audible silence that spread throughout the room and then the entire house—a silence that has since been replaced by strange clicks and taps in the middle of the night.

II. The middle of the night.

There aren’t any words for the middle of the night.

Words have no power then—not when you’re trying to make your way through the darkened house and your mind is playing games with you. The only word that really comes to mind is Jesus.

Jesus and fuck. Sometimes you say fuck, Jesus and sometimes Jesus, fuck. Sometimes the words just run through your mind and you can’t get them out, and it wouldn’t even help if you could. The only noises in the house are these odd little clicks and taps and you think to yourself, everything should be quiet if I’m the only one moving; if I’m the only living presence in the house. But then there’s another little click or tap and that’s when Jesus, fuck comes out of your mouth or at least rings as loud in your mind as the sound of those godawful screams in that clip you just had to go and dare yourself to watch.

III. The terrible commotion of the noise in that clip Allahu Akbar they shout Their shouts mingling with his horrible screams Aaaaahhhhh His screams rising Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Aaaallaaaahhh Aahhhhhhh The gurgled screams are his God’s My own Everyone’s We’re all going to die this way By the hands of a devil with a knife And terror will reign when freedom no longer rings Amen IV. There has to be some light in these words to counteract what I have seen. I have to find some order in this—or at least a way to walk through my own house at night without being afraid.

For a darkness has a hold on me, a darkness outside of me or inside of me, I’m not sure which. But I am captive to its power ever since watching that clip.

5

Ricky Jameson, deep in concentration, let his feet dangle over the cliff’s edge like weeping willows on a breezy day. He studied the valley 4,000 feet below. The height didn’t bother him, per se, but sudden strong winds did make him uneasy.

As far as he could see were acres and acres of trees. The rich canopy of shimmering leaves was unbroken by buildings, structures, roads, or even trails. Just a blanket of green that rose and fell like waves of the ocean.

Ricky’s first priority was to get to that lower level. He carefully stood, leaving his thoughts on the precariousness of life behind. There were more important tasks at hand.

On his drive to the mountain, Ricky passed a shack with a sign jutting from unruly grass advertising skydiving lessons and the experience of a lifetime. At the time Ricky had known he would be facing his present obstacle of distance so he pulled into the gravel lot.

“I need a parachute set,” Ricky said to the man in the skydive shop.

“Whoa there, hold on,” said the older man seated at a desk with a folded newspaper and crossword in front of him, startled by Ricky’s quick entrance. The place was otherwise empty. He adjusted his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Is this your first skydiving experience?” He looked down for a stack of forms amidst a sea of other documents and paraphernalia.

“Listen mister, I’m sorry, but I really do not have time.” Ricky said. “I have cash, and need to buy a parachute.”

The man looked up at him questioningly, his wrinkled face baring his skepticism. “Well, we don’t sell jumping gear here, we just offer the classes and skydiving experience, and it is an experience of a lifetime.” He pointed to a sign behind him saying the same thing.

“I understand this is a unique request,” Ricky said. “But here’s two thousand dollars. Let me know if you need more.” Ricky opened his wallet and counted the hundreds out. He dropped the stack to the desk. For a moment there was only silence as the man looked at the money and Ricky looked at the man.

Finally the man looked up. “Just one moment.” He reached for the cash as if a wind threatened to blow it away then disappeared into a back room. After a few minutes, he came out with what looked like an oversized backpack.

Now, Ricky slipped the pack on. He clicked two different sets of straps across his chest and tied a third over his stomach. With it snug on his back, he jumped.

His stomach rose instantly to his throat and he let the liberation of the free fall take over. As he pummeled to the ground, the cliffside a blur of grey, he reached to his hip and pulled the long yellow cord snapping in the wind. The parachute came whipping out and he was jerked back by the sudden change in velocity.

The parachute spread its wings like an exploding firework, and for a precious moment he felt above reality. The view was breathtaking, the wind on his face refreshing. He floated like a piece of pollen in the air, transfixed by the tranquility.

The tree tops were fast approaching. He formed his body into a pencil shape and braced for impact. It came a few moments later. He envisioned a spider web of intricately woven tree limbs as he crashed through the initial barrier, driving deeper and deeper into the canopy. His momentum slowed until finally he came to a stop. He opened his eyes.

He was suspended a good thirty feet from the forest floor. His parachute was punctured, torn, and tangled into a fine mess in the branches above. Ricky hooked his right arm around a nearby branch and unhooked himself from the pack.

6

He was there again, going through my garbage. I’ve spotted him seven times since I moved here, always digging through the dumpster behind my apartment building, like a half-starved rat. He was clearly looking for something. I knew what he wanted. He was searching for evidence of my identity, proof of who I really was.

Who was this man working for? Had my old business partners sent him, still seeking vengeance? He was after something, but I could only guess what he hoped to find. Maybe an old letter from a relative. Perhaps a message to my wife. He was wasting his time. I took numerous precautions to ensure I left no evidence of my previous existence. I hadn’t spoken to anyone from my past since I moved out here. No matter how much he looked, his searches would turn up nothing. Not that I would give him the chance to realize that.

I pulled out the rusted old knife I always kept on me. Though it had become somewhat dull over the years, it still served its role when I needed it. With the man unaware of my approaching presence, I ran over to him, brandishing the blade in a defensive manner. His eyes bulged when he noticed me, and before I could even accuse him of his prying, he darted off. He didn’t even try to conceal that he was up to something. Bastard even left all his cans.

7

I am an avid birdwatcher. I have been able to identify hundreds of species of birds on my travels, study them, and write about them in my many journals. Ornithology has always been of great interest to me. Shortly after retirement, while on a trip to India, I was privileged to see the endangered Indian Vulture. Unfortunately, the bird was entangled in the lines of a kite and was bleeding to death. I observed as a vet painstakingly started an I.V. from one of the very fragile veins in the bird’s foot in an attempt to save its life. Sadly, the bird perished.

People don’t interest me much. Whenever I turn on the television or open the papers, it’s another version of the same story: a mass shooting, a terror attack, warring religions, a child paralyzed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. The world is in constant strife and chaos. I envy the birds their freedoms, freedom from government and corruption, freedom from gravity. I guess none are free from the cruelty of man.

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The waiting room is dark. The walls are two-tone, white on top and bright yellow on the bottom. Thin grey industrial carpet covers the floor. Lime green chairs surround the room, broken into sets of three by end tables littered with magazines: The New Yorker, Newsweek, People. The room itself is glaringly bright. It’s the occupants who make it dark.

Looking at them, I expect thunder to crash at any moment. Their faces are set in a wide variety of masks which, instead of hiding their inner self, only serves to exemplify it. Among them I see the deep, worried frowns. The heartbroken this is the end. The this isn’t happening openmouthed stares. And, of course, the big smiles that signify complete withdrawal from reality. Would someone start screaming and be hauled away, like last year?

I glance at my surroundings but find the room’s artificial cheeriness too harsh. I look back to the floor, trying to find some peace in its dull greyness. The room is meant to inspire happiness and creativity. The only thing it inspires in me is a migraine headache. How long have I been waiting?

Ten minutes, an hour?

A magazine on the table next to me catches my attention. I pick it up carefully, so as not to disturb the woman on the other side. She is deep in prayer, her lips moving quickly and silently. I look at her for a moment, wondering. I decide she has the this is the end look.

I turn the crisp pages of the magazine, eyes scanning the glossy paper. My mind wanders. I read a word or two on each page. They jump up at me, ripe with disjointed meaning.

“Accomplishment.” “Work.” “Society.” “Seventeen.”

I remember seventeen. Only six years ago. My first time. It’s hard to believe I made it this far, this long. Six years of constant output, constant accomplishment. Wouldn’t a vacation be nice?

I stifle a giggle. Can I make it another year? I slam the lid on those thoughts, not wanting to end up like the woman next to me, who is now rocking gently in her chair.

An arc of light from the inner office door catches my eye. The shiny brass knob is turning painfully slow. Its movement is smooth, as if time has slowed. Then the door begins to swing inward, so slowly, so smoothly. An unreasonable fear rises up in me that there is a horrible thing on the other side. Something so horrible that to look at it is to die.

“Boedee, Jeff.” A tall stone pillar of a woman announces from the doorway. Her features are hard and unfeeling. She turns on her heel before anyone has risen to follow and moves out of sight.

A young man, no more than nineteen, rises from his chair. He picks up his briefcase, smiling nervously at no one in particular, and moves reluctantly through the door. It slides silently shut behind him.

I shiver, thinking: the door opens in, never out. People go in, never out. Not even the stone woman comes out, only stands in the doorway. I wonder how many of us will see the sunrise tomorrow. Certainly ”Boedee, Jeff’ will. He looks like a motivated kid. An hour passes in which the room continues its silence. I glance through the rest of the magazines on the table and am thinking of grabbing some from another table when the outer door opens and a young woman comes in.

My first thought is that she is too young. Her face is small and pale, not yet wrinkled by worry or age. Her body is small, her clothes simple. Then the door shuts behind her and the baby she holds makes a soft little cry of discomfort. She soothes it with quiet words and chooses the seat next to me.

9

“I’ve had enough, Isobel.” Charlotte dragged the ten-year-old clear off the ground and leaned in close, out of ear shot from their guests. “I’ve had it up to here with your shit. Now you stay up here in your room and think about what you’ve done.”

“No, I won’t.” Isobel stood as firm as a child can with folded arms, but remained careful in keeping a safe distance.

Charlotte breathed in and out, letting go. “Why did you throw my potato salad on the floor?

I’d made it especially for you. It’s your favourite.”

“You didn’t make it right.”

“I’m doing my best here.”

“She wouldn’t have liked it,” Isobel replied hotly with hurt and hatred.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere so get used to it.”

“No! I hate you. I wish you were dead.”

Without any forethought Charlotte reached her left hand up high and slapped Isobel’s cheek.

When she had realized what she had done, there was a reddening hand print flaming up on the young girl’s face.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, Isobel.” Charlotte stood holding her hands to her face in shame as Isobel stared her down with utter hatred. In those moments of remorse Charlotte had seen the same steely strength of determination in Isobel that her mother had once possessed. She wondered what Isobel seemed so determined about. Was she thinking of telling her dad? She could hardly be blamed but it would bring Charlotte’s world crashing down like crystal chandeliers splattering on a hard wooden floor.

“Isobel, I’m so sorry,” Charlotte took a careful step forward but Isobel retreated further back.

“I wish it was you that had died.”

“How about we go shopping tomorrow? Just you and me?”

Isobel seemed to be weighing her options when the bedroom door behind them creaked ever so slightly. Charlotte stood for some moments waiting for someone to come in, but nobody did.

Everyone must be outside in the garden, still enjoying the BBQ. Charlotte had been lucky that no one had seen. She ran her hand through her short brown hair remembering finally that she was the adult, she was in control.

“Look, you little bitch — if you tell anyone, you’re dead. Do you hear me? No one’s going to believe you, you spoilt little brat. No one’s going to care.”

Isobel dropped her stance and broke into tears. Charlotte turned and walked out. Out of sight she began to fall apart. Once they had gotten on so well. She felt she had done something terrible and the cries coming from the girl’s bedroom confirmed it. Then the door was shut and the crying ceased with absolute immediacy. So much so that Charlotte paused on the stairs and looked up for a few seconds trying to detect any sound or movement in the silence.

She would have handled that so much better. No one ever said her name in this house. Her name is a certain word that can bring people to ruins. Charlotte never dared to say her name in case it should ever bring her back.

Things had started so well when she had first started dating her dead best friend’s husband, Daniel. It sounded like a weird situation but in reality it was organic, natural. It was just something that had happened like a seedling reaching up for the light. At the time they were both grieving and in each other they found comfort and a different sort of love. One that allowed for recuperation and sanctuary. It had never been built upon flair and passion but that was ok with Charlotte. it’s completely ruined. Oh, Charlotte — how could you?” He stood up and faced her. He did not shout and that scared Charlotte. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll clean this up and when everyone has left, we’ll have a chat.”

10

The more I learned of Molly, and during those first few days I learned a lot, the more my initial opinion of her changed. She was surprisingly kind in the small things, and it is the small things that truly matter — anyone is capable of a grand dramatic gesture whilst an audience looks on, mental scoreboard at hand and karma ensured. What I had taken for rough edges in her personality turned out to be nothing more than the irregular grooves of shyness.

She laughed more than I believed possible — real laughter that blew away my firmly held conviction that people were humourless automatons. Yes, my opinions changed, melted by the warmth of her kindness. I went from feeling nothing but a stony reserve toward her, an aloofness fed by smouldering enmity, to outright hate.

She was hiding something, of that I was sure.

Molly was the type of person who, if you punched her (and I thought about that often, fantasised about it), a crowd would gather around her prone and bleeding form and applaud you – in between taking random kicks at her themselves, of course. It wasn’t that I disliked her, it was more that I despised her with a murderous passion that frightened me with its intensity.

I asked her out almost immediately.

Naturally, on the outside I was charm personified. I bought her flowers, held her insipid little hand in the most public of places, laughed at all her inane ramblings and gazed adoringly into her vacant eyes over countless shots of ridiculously priced coffee, and I fooled her every time. What she took for the thousand-yard stare of tongue-tied love was actually the laser scrutiny of unadulterated malice; so contemptuous of her very being it could cloak itself in what it detested most — unblinking adoration.

Yet, for all my probing, for all my seemingly nonchalant questions about her family and her past, she remained maddeningly reticent, casually steering the conversation back to my life (as if I would share the mysteries of my divine existence with someone as stupendously unworthy as her).

She did it so deftly, so nicely, her cutesy demeanour never slipping once; wearing her dimples as a badge of innocence when I knew they were merely the mark where the Devil had pinched her cheeks on the stormy night he had shit her out.

One thing I did ascertain, however, was that she lived alone. She had told me that categorically on more than one occasion, told me so often in fact, I took it as a heavy-handed hint she wanted me to move in. But, if she lived alone, rattling around her big old house “like a pea in a tin” as she was so fond of saying, then whose face was pressed up against the glass, peering down at me each night I called?

I never asked — I needed her to tell me herself.

Perhaps she had a sick parent or a senile old aunt she didn’t like to talk about. When she did decide to open up and reveal who her houseguest was then I would know the relationship was moving on apace, that she was learning to trust me and I could make my move; until then I kept schtum.

It was difficult though. The old woman at the top window looked to be in pain, but the queer thing was it did not seem to be physical in origin; I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but, nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the source of her distress was my nightly visits.

Unable to help myself I returned time and time again, lingering long after the chaste kiss I shared with Molly (You don’t mind if we take it slow? It’ll be more...profound when I give myself to you) to stare up at the window at the old woman staring right back. It got so that I felt I was courting the decrepit old thing, that my nightly rendezvous with her was the sole reason I was dating Molly in the first place.

11

My cellmate died yesterday. I sure wish he would stop moving, though. He hangs there, just a few inches from the floor; low enough that his toenails scrape on occasion and make me think he might escape, but high enough to keep him from making it down. I have no clue what to do with him. He said he could no longer take the gnawing hunger in his belly and now it seems he traded it for a hunger of a different kind. I soaped the bars near his legs so he could not find easy purchase and pull himself up and off as his arms flail incessantly at me trying to reach me and drag me in, so I am sure he is not going to try and pull a Houdini on me. We had been trapped in the cell for almost a week before he decided to end it all and tore some strips off the mattress cover and fashioned a crude noose from them. Less a noose than a choker, you should have seen him tie one end to the upper bars and then climb up and put his back to the hallway, and then tie off the other side of the strip to the next set of bars over. He then left his legs go and much to my surprise (and his own by the look of it) the makeshift “noose” held firm and bit deeply into his throat, choking him to death. It was a slow death, unlike what you see in the movies or read about in books. He flailed about for nearly two hours, running on reserves of adrenaline and willpower that I am sure he did not even know he had. He stared at me with eyes filled at first with fear and helplessness that slowly morphed into intense hatred, and then finally gave way to the cataract grey visage of the dead I see now. I thought that covering his slowly bloating form with a sheet might help me sleep a little better, but what was at first a funny caricature of a ghost became terrifying when the power generators finally gave out. I need to get out of this cell, but I have no clue on how or what to expect once I am out of here.

The foam of my mattress is not as filling and nutritious as I had hoped, but still it is all I have unless I want cellmate tartare. I am thankful for the “openness” of my cell as my former roommate has started to rot something fierce. I sprayed him down with as much liquid soap as I could to try and mask the scent, but it was like pissing on a wildfire. After kicking the toilet for several hours over the past three days, I was able to separate it enough from the wall to get a trickle of running water pouring out of the bottom to drink. I was on a steady diet of stale piss and foam until then, so the variety has helped me out immensely. I had thought of killing and eating my cellmate for a few days, but I am not the Ed Gein kind of criminal. Now that he is putrefying, I am glad I didn't as I am sure he had something going on deep inside of him that would have made me sicker than the haute cuisine the Delaware Correctional Institution has to offer. Looking at the cord that is crossing Miller's neck, and how far it has cut through his decaying skin, tells me that it is either going to finally snap or his head is coming clean off soon. I am hoping for the latter, but I am pretty sure the former is coming so I take off my work shirt, soak it in water, and then while hanging off the bars like a kid on the playground, I use my fist wrapped in wet cloth to punch out his teeth. It's harder than you would think to knock out a person’s teeth with a punch, let alone doing it while swinging like a chimp on the bars of my eight-by-eight cell door. It takes me a few minutes to get acclimated and adjusted to the act and to get around his arms that are trying to rend and rake my flesh from my bones before I manage to pop out the less-than-pearly whites in his head. It's good timing too, because the excited and angry walking corpse of my former “friend” has now come loose of his final moorings and is trying desperately to gum me to death. I drive his head against the bars a few dozen times (the first two or three worked to stop him, the others were because I was really tired of his snoring all those years and needed payback) and once he has been mashed through the three-inch gaps like so much brain Play-Doh out of my own personal fun factory, I smile in relief. The good part is that he is out of my hair. The bad is that he is out and I am still in; and starving.

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