“Hurry up, billet,” McPherson called back, waiting for me as he held the end corridor door open. I hoped he’d follow me the second I came through the door, but the prick didn’t, standing his ground as if sensing my fear. I didn’t turn back, despite wanting to. I continued to follow the screw and turned the corner. If McPherson turned back, I knew he’d find my stash.
4.
A blood-spill kit is a sealed plastic bucket that contains a disposable overall, disposable gloves, safety goggles and a yellow hazmat bag. It was used to clean up blood as well as any other bodily fluids including vomit, urine and shit. Turns out, the clean-up was for the latter.
5.
Every unit always had at least one painful crook. That one guy who didn’t care who he pissed off. While the hospital wing had a couple, none were worse than Timmy Eastman. This guy was in his early 30s, mentally retarded and a complete basket case.
A skinny, bald dude with a single black rotten tooth is how best to describe his appearance. He also walked with a limp as if one leg was shorter than the other. Timmy had this weird twitch which made his head wobble from side to side, as if he was trying to draw the figure 8 with the tip of his nose.
Timmy’s favorite pastime was giving screws grief. It didn’t matter if he was in his cell, unit or out in the yard. It wasn’t that he was trying to be painful, he just wanted attention. He would goad the officers charged with watching him into a false sense of security, then make them instantly regret any inroads they thought they achieved by offering him sweeteners like a hot drink, snacks or privileges. As I said; the dude was a retard.
His most famous trick was shoving things into his arse, hard enough to make it bleed. It didn’t matter whether it was a pen, plastic cutlery or a television remote control. If you gave it to Timmy, he would make it disappear, his arse turning into a virtual toy chest.
6.
I could hear the commotion as soon as I pushed through the corridor doors that led back into the main ward. There was a row of isolation cells behind the officer’s station and it was there that a group of officers and nurses were standing.
“Timmy, put your hands through the trap so we can cuff ya,” someone at the front of the group said. I couldn’t make out who it was, the crowd around 4-deep. The speaker had the view-flap open. This was a little trap door that sat above the trap itself. While the trap was a small door to access the cell, the view-flap was more of a viewing window. The screws would use that instead of the trap when dealing with irate crooks.
The view-flap was also useful for stopping a prisoner from throwing piss, shit or anything else at the screws. Some even tried to spit at them, but failure often followed. While the screws hid behind their little window, there really wasn’t any point in throwing anything at them. All it did was make things worse for the cell occupant.
“Timmy, last chance. Put your hands through or we’ll send the dog in.” Something suddenly tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see Dhurrin himself standing behind me.
“Grab a seat over there,” he said, pointing at a row of chairs near the prisoner television. It was out of the way and as I nodded, heard the familiar echoing of a dog barking. A few seconds later the dual-doors swung open and one of the prison’s infamous attack dogs entered, snarling and snapping as his handler desperately hung onto the other end of the lead.
The dog barked several times, the noise loud enough to cause my ears to ring. His handler held him back far enough to avoid the teeth from clamping onto the wrong victim. I’ve seen these dogs in action several times. They are a bunch of muscles with a set of teeth fixed into them, nothing more.
The commotion continued at the cell door, Timmy kicking it a few times. I watched as the dog kept pulling at its lead, desperate for release. It was ready to rip anyone a new arsehole, crook or no crook. But the sound of its barking must have given the retard a bit of a scare because I heard the familiar ratcheting of cuffs closing, then heard the rattle of keys on metal as the cell door was opened.
“You’re up, billet,” one of the officers said and I grabbed my things as Timmy was led out, two Tactical screws hanging on to each shoulder as they marched him down one of the corridors and into another cell.
The site that greeted me inside the open door was the worst I’d ever witnessed, and I’d seen some bad shit in this unit. But walls painted in faeces wasn’t something I’d dealt with before. Not personally anyway. I’d heard about it, sure. But cleaned?
He’d shit in his hand and smeared the faeces across every wall, including the window. A brown smear covered every flat surface in the cell. He’d also kicked the fuck out of the metal toilet, hard enough to pull it from the wall.
“Need you to clean it up asap,” Hans Zimmerman said, shielding his face from the stink. The smell was bad enough to make my eyes water, my stomach somersaulting inside me. I fought to keep my food down, a struggle that I eventually won.
All up, I had to spend almost an entire hour in that cell, but by the time I was finished, all evidence of the faecal attack had disappeared.
