Dale
Flanagan #0021853 |
It isn’t true that prisoners
[…in America] live like animals. Animals are treated better.
M. Llosa
My first day, wearing more chains like Prometheus I’m roughly
dragged, stumbling, missing steps off of prison transport. The
cold of mid-December hits. You begin to shiver in the cold. Huge
rough-hewn construction like something you’d see on a
documentary on ancient civilisations stands before you. An old
1800s American Wild West territorial prison. Want to see it?
Search for the movie “An innocent man” (1989).
Before you can take it all in the attack all teeth barking
snarling rocks you. You fall back. The guard had set the dog on
you just holding the leash, so it cannot bite. The barking
flashing of teeth an inch from your genitals, saliva flies
coating your neon orange prison jumpsuit quickly freezing…
By the time the guard pulls the dog from you, your crotch looks
like someone sprayed it with “Silly String”. Before relief, the
dog is replaced by a huge man ramming a Taser into your stomach,
punching you, yelling profanities “Did you just attack my dog?
You filthy piece of shit! You motherfucking…” grinding the
handgun shaped Taser into your ribs he hauls you to your feet.
The yelling does not stop. “Move, give me an excuse, I’ll light
you up, motherfucker…!” Pushing, pulling, forcing you to walk
stumble slip in the snow, taser muzzle hard painful ramming
again and again into your ribs.
Disoriented in pain you don’t realize the man, the guard with
the Sgt stripes is suddenly a pave or two behind.
Later you’ll realize this is all a game to them, but in this
next moment a man has jacked a shell into a shot gun, standing
two stories above between crenellations.
“Get down! Get down! I’ll kill you were you stand!” You were
purposefully guided into a no man’s land over a red line painted
on cement buried under snow. The Sgt behind you through a
vicious smile, says: “You better get down. He is serious. He
will shoot you.”
You’re a 19 year old kid. You’ll get down, more fall down due to
the chains into the snow.
This goes on till finally you are led underground, pushed into a
filthy dimly lit cell, chains removed, thick metal bar door
clangs closed.
It’s almost relief when you are finally alone, maybe more
shellshock, PTSD*.
My first, not my worst day.
That day, when my Grandmother was discovered. Thrown away in a
Zombie House by her husband. A home for Alzheimer patients, in
which they drug you into a stupor and do not care for you at
all. Unwashed, barely fed, unvisited, unwanted… some husband.
_________________________
*Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
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