A LIFE WORTH TAKING (Part 1)

Desesperación Penitenciaria, Monterrey, Mexico. Solitary Confinement

In the flickering shadows of darkness, sat an animal. His face was battle-tested, slender, sharp and wholly covered by worn-out green gang tattoos which superficially failed to camouflage a marsh of acne craters that were shotgun sprayed recklessly across both sides of his aching jaw and swollen cheeks. His head, naturally balding and also tattooed, ached painfully and was riddled with fresh wounds from a recent rendezvous with an onslaught of pitiless Mexican guard batons. By anyone’s standards, he was an ugly man who had lush detracting unkempt eyebrows that menacingly protruded over his thick cro-magnon like forehead which seemed to provide a safe-haven for his black beady soulless eyes. Eyes that appeared too close together; eyes that were empty, cold and deadly and mirrored the predatory gape of a great white shark –should you stare too long. The tatted tears imprinted at the corners of each of his eyes only complimented the menacingly complex wonder that was his dull green painted, clown-like face. Yet, his most distinct facial feature was, by far, the overbite of his front two teeth which made him rodent esque in appearance. It didn’t help that this countenance was even more pronounced when he was agitated for (when filled with violent anticipation) his nose would twitch, uncontrollably, seconds before unleashing his many different forms of sadistic brutality. That, unmistakable, twitching nose was legendary in certain dark cartel circles and if ever ill-fatedly witnessed; it was likely the last thing you ever saw. This was the only tell he had as a merciless sicario who kidnapped, tortured and murdered at the bidding of several ruthless Mexican drug lords through the 1980’s and 90’s. Though no one ever dared say it to his face, he was known as ‘La Rata’ (The Rat) and his violent exploits were, no less than, legendary but that had been a long time ago. 

As a grubby teenager growing up in the unforgiving slums of Medellin, Columbia, nothing was ever given and so he acquired the aptitude of taking which paired well with his voracious keenness for violence. Violence had always served his desire to take and so those two traits, within him, fed off one another. As he grew older his nefarious reputation caught the eye of a certain barbaric cartel drug lord by the name of Diablo Espinoza and he was immediately recruited and trained in the Sicario creed of merciless intimidation, brutality, torture, and murder. In doing so, this emboldened and fueled his unquenchable passion for taking anything and everything he wanted—without repercussion. With his growing reputation, as a stone cold trained sadistic assassin, taking became easier and easier to do. It was, in fact, his drug of choice and he had a ravenous appetite for it. Women, money, cars, weapons, drugs—he took whatever he wanted and if he couldn’t take your property, he would take your life, if he couldn’t take your life, then he would take the life of the ones you loved and when he did…he took extreme pleasure in taking your very will to live. One way or another, if he wanted something from you, he would simply take it—because he could. As long as he was taking, he felt alive and it mattered little who paid the price. Needless to say, nothing good resided in him. For the things, he had done and the things that he had brutally taken in his lifetime of wickedness had long since hurled his eternal spirit into the furthest reaches of an irredeemable chasm which had long been buried in the furthest most unreachable bowels of the deepest darkest abyss of immoral treachery and human depravity. 

He was in his mid-fifties and that was ancient for a man of his profession. It mattered very little now that he was confined to the cold cement and callous metal of solitary confinement. He'd be no use outside these walls anyway as he recognized he was no longer the sprightly killer he once was. He had lost his usefulness to the cartels but not his unappeasable thirst for taking. But taking was difficult—given his many years of incarceration.  For all his sins, he would forever reside here in ‘La caja’ (translated ‘The box’) which was the name given to the haunted solitary cell block of Desesperación Penitenciaria; one of Mexico’s most notorious prisons. And oh how ‘La caja’ had a way of assuring a man of eminent death; a painstaking death that was in no way in a hurry to greet you. Now, sitting silently in the flickering shadows of his cell, on his cold metal toilet, he waited for the grumbling within his tatted aged belly to release his most recent ‘taken’ prize and while doing so, he listened to the relentless maddening musical soundtrack of the other men losing their grip on reality; whispering, screaming or crying. “Hijo de puta!” echoed the words of an inmate, cursing the guards as another man moaned “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” in emotional agony. He listened intently as the jingle of keys and the reverberation of footsteps passed his steel cell door which had a built-in stippled glass panel (the width of half his face) at the top for viewing in or out, a voice box for verbal communication, and at the very bottom was a tray slot to receive food and medication. The jingling keys, the footsteps, the moans, the yelling and crazy laughter all mixed with the morning’s sounds of its high-pitched metal sliding and whining cell doors, opening and closing cages which all culminated in a soul-piercing final…“kh-khaat!”.  And so it went; over and over again…‘La caja’ played her Greatest Hits.

He was now well acquainted with the unrelenting twisted psychological cyclical mental voyage ‘La caja’ offered its guests in the way of excessive human detachment, boredom and the dubious, unrelenting ‘mente cogida’ treatment it dished out on an hourly basis. Each solitary space with its cold, paint peeled cement walls with the relentless echo of dripping pipes, flickering lights combined with prisoner groans and screams often led the toughest of hombres down the path of predictable stages of thickened psychotic episodes. Like clock-work, he could anticipate and recognize the next phase of ‘La caja’s’ torment upon any given prisoner as each punched their ticket aboard their own personalized crazy train.  On many occasions, you could hear his hard-hearted laughter directed at their weakness for he could foresee his fellow prisoners begin to succumb to their own death a mile away. First, a man would experience unending boredom and exasperation, then maddening anger, then paranoia, then terror, then uncontrollable rage followed by physical self-inflicted violence, exhaustion and then (finally) broken mortal despair. Rinse and repeat until you are no more. ‘La caja’ would have her way. 

He had heard it every night, and every day (for the past eleven years) those haunted screams of lesser men, they too, in their damp, cold and unforgiving 6’x 9’ solitary cells. They were all unredeemable forgotten men; all waiting to die. Half would kill themselves and the others well, they would simply go mad. That was the honest truth of solitary confinement in one of the most disreputable penitentiaries in all the world. The only thing that kept him from taking his own horrid train ride down the darkest deepest most horrific dwelling place of despair was a ferocious revulsion, abhorrence and vile hatred for all mankind and his deep darkest desires…to take. The thought of taking kept him mentally alive and to keep him sane he laughed at others in response to yet another man relinquishing their spirit to ‘La caja’.  He would even cheer them on, goad and encourage the frailest of men to kill themselves. When their cells finally fell dead silent he’d snicker victoriously, shake his head, give the catholic cross signal with his right hand over his heart and then blow a kiss. This made him feel powerful, like a god, because even from his stony cage, he still could take a life. This place would kill others but not him…‘Cogida que!’. ‘Fuck that.’

Amid the usual melancholy prison background noise, flickering lights and cold dampness of his cell he felt his bowels release violently into the metal toilet with a gurgling flatulent splat and he snorted pleasingly with anticipation. With great eagerness, he turned his face into the bowl of stench and scanned the putrid mound of stool intently with beady animalistic eyes and then, more thoroughly, with his tatted dirty fingers. He searched the fetid rancorous mushy contents until he found what he was looking for. Alas, he beheld the gold shimmering, diamond studded band between his fingers, rinsed it in the free standing toilet water and screamed out loud, laughing victoriously.  He rose from his position and rinsed his prize more thoroughly in the sink and then washed his hands. It had been some years since he had been successful in really taking anything of monetary value but oh this day, this glorious day…he got his prize and it had been worth every baton hit to the face, body, and head. "Yeeeeees, I gotchu Malparido!” He cackled in his cell as he recalled the beautiful implementation of his most recent and most flawless plan to take…once more.  

Forty-eight hours prior he had feigned his own death. He lied motionless partially on his bed and floor for almost six hours, curled over onto his stomach and like the poisonous banana spider—he patiently waited for his prey. Felix Patron was the lead guard and was as foul-mouthed as he was corrupt. He knew much about ‘La Rata’ as well as his legendary ruthless reputation for violence but did not fear the old man. Felix enjoyed the power of his position that he hung (teasingly) over him. So every chance he could, he poked, prodded and tried to intimidate his prisoner. One thing he always did was press his middle finger against the stippled-glass panel window each time he passed the old man’s solitary cage which was multiple times a day and he would always yell out “Malparido!” and each time he did so, the old assassin fantasized of his revenge because on Felix’s taunting middle finger was a beautiful shiny gold diamond studded ring and he was determined to find a way to TAKE it. So as the guards came into his cell, that fateful morning, Felix haphazardly, reached in to check the prisoner's pulse and in a flash, he saw the perceived dead man’s nose twitch nervously but by then it was too late. Felix’s hand was now in the death-grip of a madman who precipitously bit down hungrily at the base of his index and middle fingers which snapped quite easily (like carrot sticks) in 'La Rata's' mouth. It all happened within seconds. A shriek of the most agonizing blood-curdling horror escaped from within Felix as his blood and fingers dribbled from the old man's mouth which slapped and splattering onto the cement cell floor like chubby lil' smokies’ in a crimson sauce. With a vice-like grip, the old prisoner proceeded to suck feverishly on the wounded nub of Felix’s hand until he felt the ring enter his mouth and quickly swallowed hard. He then smiled a blood gummed soaked victorious smile just as several Mexican guard batons came crashing down upon his head—and then he saw nothing but darkness. 

Felix Patron’s retribution and reckoning came a few months later when he was, finally, well enough to return to work. Fortunately, for him, his fingers had been scooped up by a quick-thinking guard and were immediately put on ice. His digits were surgically sewn back on that very same day. He now had seventy percent of movement and feeling back in his hand and was getting better every day. His ring was lost, he was sure of that. The guards, over the past months, had failed to find it anywhere during frequent cell searches.  When Felix returned to his post he made sure the old hitman received several random beatings and rationed his food to nothing for nearly nine weeks. When Felix was convinced that his notorious prisoner was good and hungry he captured a large rodent and beat it to death, wrapped it’s bloodied, motionless body in a corn tortilla, put it on a plate and pushed it through the tray slot of his enemy’s thick cell door and through the voice box, said “TOMA ESE Malparido!” “TAKE THAT you Bastard!” and then he offered up his healed middle finger through the built-in stippled glass panel window and walked away—laughing violently to himself. 

From his cot, the old battered rat-faced man gingerly sat up yet burned with an abyss of both anger and troubling hunger; a hunger he had never quite known before that combined with a simmering fury of vile deprivation which disoriented his mind and tormented his very being. He was emaciated, weak and physically broken. Felix was still having him randomly beaten and his body ached in a way that made it hard to breathe, it even hurt when his nose twitched and it twitched uncontrollably now because his hatred for the strong that reigned over him, beyond these cell walls, consumed and stoked the fires of revenge boiling within his veins and as it did he began to plot and plan the tortuous death of Felix Patron. He laid back down, agonizingly, onto his side and wrapped himself in the itchy thin wool prison blanket and stared at the contents of the plate. Whatever was laid out before him, he knew would not be edible but he gazed upon the shadowy lump on the cold cement floor, hungrily, just the same.  

END OF PART 1

?Stay tuned for Part 2 _________________________________________________________________

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

? 2017 Jason N. Versey?

I am the author of the book  A Walk with Prudence -Practical Thoughts of Wisdom for Everyday Living

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