Crush

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 Author: Gaston Cavalleri.

Title: Crush / G. Cavalleri.

Copyright © Caviar Literature LLC, 2013 

www.southamericabasics.com 

He’d been behind bars for around five months – still on trial – but things weren’t looking good for his release. He’d asked close friends to put up bail to buy time. ‘I’m innocent . . . they’ve got nothing on me,’ he’d say. But he’d said this since the day he was caught.

There was an article in the paper the day after the murder: ‘Man Executed by Lethal Injection.’ A suspect was seen leaving the scene – the description suited him and it fitted a jumper he once owned.

Sam Lambert was coming up to his 32nd birthday at the time. He’d be missing important years on the inside. ‘What’s it like in there?’ Sam was once asked during a visit from an old friend, Terry Kelly. ‘So,’ he replied, ‘Imagine a world lead by the outside’s minority. You get all the germs you’d normally steer clear of on the outside all together, then you’ve got the world that’s in here. On top of that, it’s run by them.’ Every time Terry visited Sam there was an extra cold presence. The hair would stand up on the back of Sam’s neck and he’d feel very uneasy. He’d get a very lonely eerie feeling inside. It didn’t matter who was there, Terry was often there, too.

While Sam was receiving visitors there would be other inmates with visiting family. There were security guards monitoring every movement, all within ten metres, in case there was an incident. Most inmates looked as though they’d had a hard life – covered in leathery skin, tattoos and not many shining smiles. ‘You’ve got those who can’t read or write and those who are probably better off in here. You’ve got your decent people in here, too,’ Sam once said. ‘I’ve got a lawyer in here who drove home drunk one night, swerved out of his lane and killed somebody. He had a family of his own, big house and car, too. You learn to get by in here, though. There are people who need you. Some of the illiterates get letters they want you to read and need them replied to. You can make friends by helping people in different ways.’

Sam was always a little uneasy in his cell. He always felt a presence. ‘You’ve got to watch your back in here,’ he would often say while Terry was visiting. ‘Some strange things have happened in here while I was trying to sleep.’ Sam had a bare room he shared with another inmate. In the corner of the almost empty room there was a toilet and a small bar fridge with a tiny freezer inside. In the freezer, Sam had a once-empty plastic drink bottle, which he’d squashed at its bottom end. He then pissed in the bottle and stuck it in the freezer so it now resembled a spear-like ice-pick. ‘You’ve got to be ready for anything in here,’ he’d say. He was becoming very paranoid due to the bad energy that had built up in his cell.

Sam had said to a friend during one of Terry’s visits, ‘I tell ya, you know you’re in gaol when the bloke in the next cell’s getting raped. They come in here young sometimes. Young eighteen-year-old hot-shot; walking around like he owns the place; an older tough-nut takes him under his wing – or at least that’s what he’s made to believe – then bam! You hear a teenage kid crying while getting raped. You’ve got no ceilings in here. Anything that goes on in the next cell, I know about.’

Sam was looking at a life behind bars. He once had a beautiful missus. Lily was her name. ‘I’m working. I’ve got no time and money for a missus,’ he used to say. It was never clear why he couldn’t settle with one of the most beautiful women many had ever seen. ‘She needs somebody who can support her. I’ll work hard for now, then, that’ll be me,’ Sam once said. ‘Stuff me!’ Terry snapped back. ‘Now, somebody else will be supporting her while you’re having those stupid thoughts.’ He could never interpret Sam’s way of looking at the world. They were different. Sam wanted big things. So did Terry, but he didn’t expect the big things to arrive before the small things. And for this, he eventually found time for Sam’s partner, Lily.