Mickey - The View From Here PART TWO - Gallavich

Solitary

It was our first night in our new place and it was too fucking quiet. While Ian had slipped into slumber without difficulty, I tossed and turned, huffing and sighing with annoyance as that same slumber alluded me. I had never realized how much sound played a part in lulling me to sleep. This quiet, this strong silence that swelled in our new room, was smothering me. It was unnatural and I disliked it vehemently.

That kind of silence always brought me back to some of the worst days in prison. Not the days when I was harmed, but the days I had endured in solitary confinement. The memories of those days were some of the deepest burried in my mind. I had been thrown in a few times, the worst of which took place shortly after Kash shot me.

At the time, I’d been trying to behave. I missed Ian and my freedom, but even now as an adult I struggled with my temper and self-control. One day, maybe a month after Ian visited me for the first time, I got into an altercation with my annoying cellmate. The fight hadn’t been anything special, just a few punches thrown before we were restrained by prison guards and tossed into “the hole" for our disruption of the peace. Once that door closed, it was as if I was on a slab of ice set adrift in the ocean. The real world, even the world of our prison, was severed from me.

What always stuck with me was the silence. Sometimes, I could hear other prisoners attempting to whisper to one another, curse, or weep. But most of the time, I didn’t hear anything aside from the sound of my own breathing. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt quite so alone before or since.

Next to me, my husband slept peacefully. Envious of his rest, I grabbed my headphones from my nightstand and placed them over my ears. On my phone, I searched “violent and loud" and tapped on the first video I could find. As a soundtrack to chaos began to flow into my ears with tire screeches, gunshots, and sirens, I was able to sigh with relief and close my heavy eyelids.

Yet sleep still wouldn’t come.

In solitary confinement, the single lightbulb hanging above my cot was always illuminated. Now, I found that it was the moon shining brightly onto my face. Was it always that bright or was it darker in South Side?

“Stupid fuckin' moon,” I grumbled as I watched the thin clouds part over the spotlight in the sky.

Aggravated that sleep seemed impossible tonight, I got out of bed, leaving Ian behind to rest happily in his fuckin' cloud bed. My plan was to simply take a walk, hope for the best when I got back. My feet had other plans, carrying me through the still busy streets of the West Side nightlife to the train and back to my home, the South Side.

I walked into the Gallagher house with ease and headed straight for the fridge. I needed a beer and our old bed. As I plucked a beer bottle from the fridge, I noticed Lip staring at me with a paint roller in his hand. Still Mr. Fuckin' Fix It.

For a moment, we glared at one another until I broke the horrible silence. “Hey.”

Stationary with his paint roller, Lip replied, “hey.”

Another moment of glaring, sizing one another up.

“Thought you moved out,” Lip stated.

“Go fuck yourself,” I huffed, heading upstairs for some damn sleep. I found myself in Ian's old room, disappointed that Frank was sleeping in Ian’s old narrow bed by the window. I paid the old man no mind as I opened the window, letting the sounds from the neighborhood pour inside.

Home, I thought with relief as I climbed up to Lip's old loft bed and tucked myself in, finally drifting to sleep to the sounds of shouting in the distance and a car alarm. It seemed like a blink before it was daytime again, and there was a putrid stench wafting across the room from Frank.

The smell was unmistakable. The stink of disease and old age, the stink of a grown man shitting himself. I thought of Terry as I made my way over to Frank, still asleep in the narrow bed by the window.

Standing over him, my fears were confirmed as the fumes intensified. “Ugh, gross! Ew!” I gave the bed a kick to wake him. “Ass fuck,” I name called before I broke the news to the confused old man. “You shit yourself, Frank.”