Fiction: The Radiator

By Z. de Chauncy

 

Tony lay on his back, and the chatter of the other inmates faded into the background of his mind. He had learned to turn off and tune out the sounds of other people's pain, and prison was no different.

 

In the dim fluorescent light from the hallway that kept the low light cameras spying, he could see the bloodstains in the folds of the steaming radiator, between his thin lower bunk and the steel toilet. In the morning, before inspection, he would have to clean it. It was the guard's job, after he hosed down the blood early that morning, but it would be Tony who would be punished for allowing signs of the breakdown of discipline to remain.

 

The radiator began to clank as warm oil swirled through it. It was a legacy of 1960's prison architecture. What bad turn in life would compel an architect to design a prison? Tony reached under the pillow to lay on the lower bunk when his hand found treasure. His blood stirred as his imagination shocked him. The excitement left him fully erect.

 

He gingerly lifted his pillow and underneath found a pocket of heaven: two slices of wheat bread wrapped in wax paper, beginning to harden but not yet stale and certainly not moldy, three slices of processed cheese, still tightly wrapped in their cellophane homes, and best of all, a tube of unopened hand cream.

 

His mouth salivated at the idea of a late-night snack. It had been 7 years since he had had one. When he was twenty years old, still at his mother's house, the fear of the police kept him awake and he ate half a jar of peanut butter from her cupboard. He had fallen asleep there. The police almost left him there, until one was clever enough to check all the closets and cupboards.

 

Tony unwrapped the cheese, wincing in pain, and careful  not to disturb the neighboring cells who would envy his treasure, or the fresh bandages on his hands and arms. For sure it could buy him a great deal, a couple of blow jobs from Sundance, the toothless transsexual, or a few packs of Marlboros. Maybe he could even get a few lines of blow. But no, the reward of a grilled cheese sandwich seemed right for all he had been through.

 

He took all three slices of cheese and placed them between the two pieces of bread. He wrapped the bread carefully back into the wax paper and put them in one of the top folds of the radiator. Soon the smell of toast filled his cell. Surely his neighbors could smell it, but no one would be sure whose it was, if he was careful not to burn it.

 

Just 24 hours ago, he was in the top bunk. For four years he had endured the torment of his cell mate, Leo. Leo was a bald con from Boston. He had never been arrested for a violent crime, but a decade in prison had changed him. He was a tyrant. He wasn't a large man, but he was full of anger and resentment. He didn't walk like a rooster, like the kids did, like the Mexicans and the Skinheads did. It was different. He wasn't pretending.

 

It was the kind of confidence that only comes from not caring, and from expecting no possibility of escape. Ten years of working out and winning ugly fights made him accustomed to getting what he wanted. Often, that was Tony, and Tony never had it in him to fight. Tony came to the same conclusions, the conclusions of no hope, that his fate was inevitable, and freedom a myth. Yet, for him, it didn't give him the blind confidence it gave Leo. It made him a slave. A helpless slave and a bitch. A bitch that got fucked up the ass, every night, for four years, with a shank to his throat.

 

It was humiliating to Tony, especially since Tony was nearly double his size, but it was more than just Leo that scared him. It was the people that protected Leo, the people that were even more afraid of Leo than Tony was. There were at least 40, most of them Boston people, Irish assholes, some of them into the whole white power thing. Prison did that to people. They'd do far worse if Tony managed to put Leo down.

 

But one day Leo pissed them off...at least three guys were fingered because he snitched. It's not that Leo was a snitch, his credibility was solid, but that's why he did it, because he never thought anyone would suspect him. Tony didn't know if the stories were true, but the old Irish guys said they were going to give him a break on his next parole hearing, if he'd just rat out his buddies. They wanted to make sure he never made it to that hearing.

 

Problem was, they couldn't do it themselves. They needed Tony to do it, to keep their hands clean. 

 

Tony pried the grilled cheese sandwich out of the radiator, but struggled with his bandaged hands, as the toasted prize burned him. The paper gave way and unraveled in his padded hands, dropping the sandwich to the floor. No matter. He picked it up and placed it on his pillow, allowing it to cool.

 

They promised Tony nothing would happen to him. That he'd finally have his peace and his revenge. They even swore they'd lie to the guards and say it was Leo's fault, that Leo stabbed him first. But to do it, Tony had to make it look legit. But Tony was scared. Leo was one of the fiercest fighters on the cell block. The man had no fear. How was he supposed to kill a man that wasn't afraid of dying?

 

The skinheads promised a solution, and last night, at nearly 4 AM, as promised, they passed a sock down from cell to cell, filled halfway with steel washers. Tony waited quietly through the evening, as he was beaten and raped by Leo, as he brooded in the top bunk, as he stayed vigilant for the weapon that would come in the night to liberate him.

 

Tony tasted the sandwich. He could hardly tell the bread was toasted when the melted cheese oozed into his mouth. He bit with a large and satisfying crunch.

 

Leo was fast asleep when the sock came. Tony wasted no time, and he hardly felt anything when he wrapped the end of the sock around his hand twice and beat Leo as hard and as fast as he could. Leo slept with his shank and got one good hit with it, but it was only Tony's shoulder. It stuck in a bit too far and the handle got slick with blood. Leo was so busy trying to pull it back out that Tony had time to move him up against the radiator, where he pinned his bald, perverted head up against the hot grill.

 

It's the screams he remembered best, and it took at least a full minute to kill him, bashing his head with the steel washers that kept him pinned against the hot radiator, the blood steaming on contact. Somehow, Tony managed to pass the sock back down the corridor to his anonymous ally and mangle his arms and hands with the shank before the guards came.

 

When they found him, Tony was bleeding on the floor. No one could tell where Leo's blood began and Tony's ended.

 

He spent the day in the infirmary, talking to the warden's legal people. No one really thought twice about it. He had fucked himself up good enough that no one doubted his plea of self-defense. Murder in prison, anyway, wasn't really murder. It was order, as far as they were concerned.

 

Tony finished his sandwich and was ready for dessert. He wrapped the tube of hand cream in the wax paper and put it into the radiator folds to warm. Finally, he was going to get off. The minutes of waiting for the lotion to heat up felt like hours. Finally, when he was certain the cream was ready for service, he reached in with his swollen hands and managed to tumble it to the floor as he had done his sandwich.                                  

 

He took a deep breath and walked to the spot where it fell on his floor, picked it up and set it on his bunk as he removed his trousers. Then, he removed his underwear, excited at the possibility of a peaceful masturbation session.

 

He lifted the tube and twisted the cap. It wouldn't budge. In fact, he could barely grip it. He tried every way he could imagine to wrench it, and eventually succumbed to using his teeth. Nothing.  Finally, he decided to conjure up his junior high science and to stick the tip of the tube into the radiator, hoping that the heat would expand the cap and make it easy to remove. 

 

Tony stood there, staring at the bloodstains as his tube of hand lotion cooked. His trousers were still around his ankles and absolutely nothing on earth mattered more than attending to his urgent erection. He pulled the tube out and tried again, yanking, pulling, biting.

 

But this time, the cap was fused to the tube. Nothing short of a sharp knife was going to get it open.

 

 

 

 

 

Z. de Chauncy is from Corpus Christi, Texas. He holds an Honours MA in English from Bar-Ilan University and fronted the punk-blues band Kids From Nowhere in Tel Aviv. He writes plainspoken, brutal short fiction, and his debut album, No Man Has Walked Further to Find Home, is forthcoming. He keeps a Substack, Under Indifferent Stars, and writes at manfromcorpuschristi.com.