Truer words had never been spoken. Norman "Spider" Grabowski was the end result of over twenty one years spent in the state's finest penal facilities. From the age of thirteen on, Norm had been locked up in every correctional institution in the state, eleven months being his longest break between sentences. He had a rap sheet a mile long. It started off with shoplifting, and then continued on with burglary, auto theft, assault, sale of prescription narcotics, statutory rape, possession of over one hundred pounds of marijuana, cooking speed, and about anything else you could think of. He was also a suspect in the unsolved murders of five black inmates. Now at the age of thirty-three, Norm was a high ranking member in good standing of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, a gang not known for their liberal views, and had been committed to the security hospital as mentally ill and dangerous after stabbing a guard at the penitentiary in the stomach. Guards and inmates alike were scared shitless of him.
Norm shoved his sandwich into his mouth
and stood back up and walked over to the table
where the other two white inmates were sifting.
"Let me introduce you to these homos." Norm stood
behind a lanky, greasy haired, foul smelling man of
about forty who was wearing clothes from the disco
era. "This first shitbag is Bob. And he is a shitbag,
literally. He got thrown off a tier at the pen by a
gang of brothers who were strong arming him.
Busted up his back and left him shifting and pissing
in a bag. They had to put him in here for his own
safety while he recuperated. But Bob, being the
great guy that he is, wound up almost strangling a
nurse to death while he tried to rape her with his
useless dick. Now his whole life revolves around
coffee, cigarettes, and enemas."
Norm leaned over and spit a green lunger
onto Bob's mashed potatoes, walked over and stood
behind the remaining white inmate, then suddenly
grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed
his face down into his tray. The guards in the pod
all jumped to their feet.
"This puke is Danny. Danny got brought in
here for raping his ten year old sister. Said some
demon was talking to him, told him to do it. The
quacks have been pumping him full of thorazine
and electric shock three times a week and now
Danny has refried shit for brains. Every night he lets
the soul brothers come into his cell and play ass
darts on him. Then the injuns get sloppy seconds."
Norm wheeled around and faced the guards
in the observation bubble. "Get back to jacking-off,
you fucking pussies," he screamed. You could see
the guards shuffling around uneasily in their bubble.
He came back over and sat down at our
table. "I'm not going to insult you by introducing
the rest of these scrotum heads. They're not worth
the shit on the bottom of my shoe." The blacks and
the two Indians ate their supper silently while
looking down at their trays. "Just a combination of
city and prairie niggers," he yelled out towards
them.
Norm leaned over this dinner tray and gave
me a grin. "'I'm glad you're here, brother. I need a
good right hand man," he whispered hoarsely.
A week had passed and I was starting to
work on a wicked case of claustrophobia slash cabin
fever. Being locked up on a maximum security,
crazy as a shit house rat ward, without being crazy
will kind of do that to a guy. It's not something that
I would recommend. Because of my association
with Norm, the other inmates avoided me like I was
carrying the Ebola virus, so I didn't have any
problems in that area. But it's damn hard to live in a
place where the accepted behavior includes sitting
in the television lounge jacking off while watching
Oprah, participating in a nightly massive anal and
oral gangbang of a brain fried fellow inmate,
throwing your shit around like you were playing
handball, or sitting down with a issue of Rolling
Stone and eating the entire magazine after you got
done reading it.