1005-1977

"Next group!"

Mark slid his feet along the wet tiles, the mold between the tiles squishing between his toes, until he was under a shower head. As the rest of the line behind him settled into place, water pounded onto his head, its cold turning hot and relaxing the goosebumps on his skin. He finally removed his hand from his tiny dick and balls and soaked them with soap.

"Close your eyes and don't open 'em till you rinse this shit completely off!"

And a chubby guard in a rain slick twisted his wrists over Mark's head, an ammonia syrup spilling out of the bucket and coating his lean physique with a false sense of cleanliness. He rubbed the last of the solution from his body and blinked his eyes open just in time to catch the towel thrown at him from another guard in a matching rain slick. Quickly, he dried off, knotting the towel around his waist, his semi-erection a normal-sized bulge through the stiff white cotton.

"This way!"

Mark and the 9 other inmates, all black and twice his size, followed another guard down a short hallway and through a thick, steel door into a small, bright room, the halogen lights overhead bouncing in erratic waves off the yellow, concrete walls. As the large door shut behind them, two heavily armed guards - helmets, kevlar vests, M-16s, 9mm's, tear gas canisters, several sets of handcuffs, night-stick - approached and took up posts at each end of the line. Behind the guards followed four men in lab coats shoving their hands into latex gloves and pulling out small flashlights.

"Drop your towel!"

"Open your mouth! Wide!"

"Lift up your scrotum!"

"Turn around and bend over! Spread your buttocks!"

"All clear!"

"Attention!"

Mark turned around, his hand over his stiff cock and shrunken balls, and watched as the first two in line were escorted naked by one of the machine-gunned guards over to the small table on the other side of the room, at which sat two more guards. On each side of the table were several stacks of garments and bedsheets and small plastic bags filled with an indeterminate amount of supplies that would cost ten cents apiece at a dollar store. After a series of muffled questions and nodded and shaken-headed answers, the two black dudes quickly clothed themselves, accepted their bedding and toiletries, and walked out the steel door on the other side of the room to two more waiting guards.

Mark followed the armed guard up to the table with the black guy on his left, his dick shriveling in his hand, and stopped in front of the white-haired guard on the right side of the table.

"Number?"

"One zero zero five dash one nine seven seven-"

"Dennison, Mark?"

Nod.

"Do you have any allergies?"

Head shake.

"Are you taking any medication?"

Head shake.

"Are you addicted to drugs and/or alcohol?"

Head shake.

"Do you have any medical condition that the state or Cedarville Prison should be aware of?"

Head shake.

"Do you plan to make use of Cedarville Prison's psychological counseling services?"

Head shake.

"What size are you?" Nod to the piles of clothes.

"Medium?"

"Yeah, that's about right." The guard looked Mark up and down, his bloodshot eyes lingering on his covered crotch. "Well, small for your underwear." And he nudged the guard on his right, the two of them giggling together as they watched Mark's hand tighten on his tiny dick.

Mark took in a deep, silent breath. "It's all in how you use it-"

"You won't be using that side in here, young'un-" And the guards laughed again.

"We'll see-"

"So we will." The guard reached down, grabbed a pile of clothes, and threw them at Mark. "Get dressed, boy."

He dressed so quickly he couldn't feel the rough cotton scratching his skin, the boxers creeping us his ass, or the zipper breaking on his pants. He collected his blanket, sheets, pillow, disposable razor, soap, shaving cream, and toothpaste, and stepped through the door to the guards and a short stroll of hoots and whistles until he was stopped abruptly in front of a cell not much smaller than his room at home.

Climpkt! Clampkt!

He laid his necessities on the bare top bunk, then sat with a slow plop onto the lower bunk, which was already covered with a scruffy blanket and flat, hard pillow. The toilet was stainless steel and rusted and sat inches from him; above it was a plastic mirror smeared with humidity and stains of soap. In the corner just beyond was a small, plywood table, on top of which sat a few dog-eared books, pictures of strange children, and two composition notebooks. The concrete walls were gray and dusty, the cement floor rougher and dustier. Mark laid back on the bed and closed his eyes, his breath soft in his ears under the clatter outside the cell. How would he be able to jerk off and not get caught?

Climpkt! Clampkt!

His eyes popped open and looked at the opening door, the bars goose-stepping across his line of sight and revealing a short, fat, red-haired man dressed exactly as he was.

"You're in my bunk, roomie," said the man, smiling.

Hail Mary

"Dude, it just ain't fuckin' right. Fucker lucky he die, I woulda killed him good-"

"Excuse me-"

Donte looked up over his shoulder into the old woman's frowning face. He raised his eyebrows.

"Please mind your language, young man. There are others here who would not rather hear-"

"Are you fuckin' talkin' to me, you old bitch?"

"Listen, young man-"

"No, you listen-" Donte looked the woman's brown habit up and down in a glance and grinned. "You stop molestin' kids, I'll stop cussin'-"

"That's it-"

"Sister Mary-"

She turned around. "Father David, I have this under control-"

"You have what under control?" said Donte. "Listen, bitch. One of our friends just got murdered. We here to mourn-"

"At the mall?"

"At the fuckin' mall-"

The nun looked down, then back up at Donte. "I'm sorry about your friend, but using that kind of language is no way to mourn him-"

Donte stood up and approached the nun, towering over her as he spoke. "So now you tellin' me you know my friend better than I do?"

"No, I just-"

"You just nothin'." He looked back at Mark, Delonte, and the rest of the Cedarville Niggers circled around the two fake-wood tables they'd squeezed together. "If you know what best for you, you'll shut the fuck up right now before somebody get hurt-"

At this, a hand appeared from behind the woman and grabbed her arm. "That's enough, Sister Mary Grabber. Let's go." The priest turned the shaking nun around with both hands and led her to the EXIT.

Donte sat down. And a WHOOP! went up from his fellow gang members, echoing through the Food Court, along with several pats on the back and high-fives. He wiped a curtain of sweat from his brown forehead and looked at Mark, who had been scribbling on a napkin and giggling throughout the whole ordeal. "The bitch lucky I don't rape and kill her-"

Mark looked down at the upside-down 3-D cross he'd drawn, then looked back up at his friend. And raised his eyebrows.

Full of Grace

Mark snapped his fist into her forehead with a quick jerk of his elbow and pounced on her back as she fell over the slight wooden chair at the foot of her bed, wrapping his palm around her mouth as he ripped her bonnet off with his free hand. "Nobody disrespects us, you hear?"

She nodded as best she could through the strength of his fingers, the one-inch gash between her eyes spilling rivulets of blood into each.

"Stigmata," said Mark. "Dudes, fucking hold her arms."

Donte and Delonte each grabbed one of her arms. Mark gripped the collar of her tunic, and with a one-handed tug, tore it from her 60 year-old body, the cotton's scream almost as loud as her moaning. Her spine showed through the translucent skin covering her back, which was spotted with overgrown moles, some of which sprouted stiff gray and black hairs.

Mark traced her bumpy, creaky spinal column with one extended forefinger. Until he got to her ass, where he separated her mushy, pocked buttocks at the crack and glared at a criss-crossed mishmash of tiny scabs from either wiping too hard or not at all. With the nail of his middle finger, he drew an upside down red star inside a slimy circle of darkening goo by clipping each shell of dried blood from around her browned hole, at which she began to wriggle and groan loudly, repeating through her struggling breaths, "I forgive you."

Mark peeled her knee-high stockings from her varicosed, flabby legs, balled them up and gave them to his friends. "Shut her up," he said. And they pushed the tight little spheres of satin deep into her drooling mouth. Using the tips of his fingers as tiny loofah sponges, Mark smeared her asshole slick with her own blood, then pushed his jeans and underwear down with one hand, his pre-cumming boner springing loose like a kangaroo from a boxing ring's corner, while he guided his taut 4 inches into her rectum with his other hand.

"I forgive you," her throat said through its tracheal membrane and sagging wattle.

"Forgive this," said Mark. And he came for the first time as close to her colonic sphincter as his genetics would allow. Quickly, he pulled out and put the head of his dick to her labia and lunged forward.

Snap!

"Fuck! She's dry as a bone! Fucking cunt almost broke it in half!" He spit twice into his hand and rubbed it into her vagina, then tried again. "Fuck, what does it take to get you wet, bitch?" Mark looked at Donte and Delonte, both of whom were trying with all their might to hold back their laughter. "Fucking turn her over," said Mark.

Once on her back, her legs splayed, the long, rigid white hairs covering her mons stared up at Mark, mocking him. He bent down and retrieved his razor from his pocket, and with a few quick flicks of his bony wrists, left her as bald as an infant, tiny crimson islands pooling in the creases of her groin. Mark leaned up and stuffed the hair he'd collected into her mouth, then buried his face between her legs with a deep breath. Two minutes of slurping and tonguing and he finally revealed her clit, drawing it deep into his mouth. Quickly, his sharp lower teeth met his sharper upper teeth through the wrinkled flesh and he swallowed it to the accompaninent of her loudest muffled "I forgive you" yet.

Mark, a red swath masking his dimples, rubbed his cock into the rivers of blood flowing in thick knots onto the floor below, then fell forward again, this time tearing her hymen with his weight and knuckly pelvis as he ground his hips against the back of her thighs and buttocks until he came a second time. At which he stood up and looked at Donte. "Give her your big stuff, dude."

And Donte obliged, going first to her anus, then her vagina, as they had agreed upon. Delonte followed, lasting longer than the other two put together, her breathing slowing and barely audible, save for a coughed, guttural "I forgive you" every now and then when Mark would slacken her rosary, which he'd chained around her neck. And tightened and loosened and tightened and loosened and tightened and loosened-

Delonte zipped up his jeans. Both her holes were torn top and bottom, undulating in and out, breathing on their own, gasping for air or more cock. Or offering forgiveness. Mark turned her over onto her stomach on the floor and unsheathed his razor. With herky-jerky curves of his hand, he traced a 3-dimensional cross on her back, its foot at the nape of her neck, its top gushing into her crack. He grabbed one of the ancient, unlit oil lamps from the nightstand, removed its glass, and poured its contents into the pumping crevices of his artwork.

He looked to Donte. "Dude. Matches."

When ____________ Collide...

All Mark could hear was the whir of the DVD player through the images on the TV meeting his eyes, which couldn't blink if he'd used his fingers to pull them shut.

"What the fuck?"

He looked at Danny, the boy's cheeks soaked with tears, and opened his mouth, but his tongue - dry and shriveled with embarrassment - refused to do his bidding.

"I can't fucking do this with you," said Danny, and he walked to the door, stopping in front of Mark. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Yeah-"

"Why were you going through my stuff?"

"Your stuff? You said everything of yours was mine. And mine, yours. I was just trying to find a movie to watch. But I found-" Danny pointed to the TV, on the screen of which featured another in a long line of the Cedarville Niggers ramming his dick into Mark's hungry asshole. "And you fucking videotaped it?"

Mark lowered his head and thought he heard his heart regain a semblance of its former self through his chest. His ability to breathe returned as a squirt of saliva welled on his tongue. "I'm sorry," he said, "it won't happen again."

"Again?"

"That was so long ago-"

"It could've been last week for all I know." Danny sighed. So hard that Mark could smell the sweetness of his own cock on the boy's breath. "No wonder they fucking do everything you say-"

Danny took a step forward and was met by Mark's bony hand on his pointy shoulder. "Don't leave," said Mark. "I love you-"

"I can't do this." And Danny jerked his shoulder away and made for the stairs.

Mark watched a few more seconds of his finest day as the only white member of the Cedarville Niggers through puffing eyes that drained all the water and blood from the rest of his body, leaving it numb and useless. Until he heard the front door slam. At which he turned and bounded down the stairs in two oblivious leaps. As he opened the door, he pulled up at the sound of metal eating flesh and bone.

He ran to Danny's body just under the front bumper of the old Bronco, the knees of his jeans tearing on the stained pavement as he propped the boy's head in his lap. Putting his ear to Danny's mouth, he could feel its impending cold, could hear every word the boy had ever uttered, every word that he'd never get to say. Rocking back and forth, he looked into the stone face of the person he'd loved the most in his life, and deposited the first tear he could remember in months into the ceramic eyes that wouldn't blink no matter how hard he wished for them to do so.

Wait.

Don't go.

Wait.

Can I? Can I have another hour?

Can I? Can I have another minute?

Can I? Can I have another second?

Wait.

Come back.

Wait.

"Hey!"

Mark looked up, and through the spiderwebbed windshield could see his mother's ex-boyfriend.

Dan stuck his head out the driver's side window. "You two faggots get out of my way before I kick your asses-"

Mark laid Danny's swelling head on the pavement softly and got up, making straight for the driver's side of the Bronco. As Dan began to open the door, Mark slammed it shut with a kick of his bloody shoe, then reached into the cab of the truck, weaving his fingers through the thinned white hairs on the back of the old man's head. With a familiar calm that freed all the strength he could muster, he introduced Dan's forehead to the windshield a second time. Then a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. And countless more times, each thrust more powerful than the last, until he could no longer tell what was glass and what was Dan's face.

With a sigh that deflated his entire being and let loose a cacophony of tears that lapped at his chin, he returned to Danny's body, a hardening mass of bone, muscle, vein, and tendon, and fell in a sobbing heap to the asphalt beside him.

Busted!

"Fuck-"

"Fuck..."

"Ah, fuck."

"Fuck!"

"Put it up your ass-"

"Put what up my ass?"

"In your crack-"

"What the-"

"They won't look for it there-"

"Fuck they won't-"

"Turn your fuckin' head around, man-"

"Sorry-"

"Two fuckin' gay ass white boys ridin' 'round with two niggas. We fucked, man!"

"Dudes! Shut the fuck up!" said Mark as he eased Donte's new CTS onto the shoulder, the police cruiser's disco ball of lights dancing in the rearview. "Listen to me. Put all your shit under my seat-"

"Mark-"

"No, seriously, dudes. Shove it all under there. And deny, deny, deny that any of it's yours-"

"Dude, that's a lot of shit-"

"How much back up you got, Donte?" Mark could see the outline of his friend's afro in the rearview, a black oval against the search light that turned night into day inside the car. He looked to Delonte's tight cornrows, neat bubbles covering his head. "Delonte? You?"

"Fuck, man, you don't-"

"Just shut the fuck up-"

A tap at his window. A gun in a holster, a hand on top, right at eye level. Mark rolled down his window, releasing a car-ful of pot smoke into the Cedarville dusk.

"You know why I pulled you over?"

"No, sir-"

"You were doing 52 in a 45-"

"Really?"

"Yes, sir. Can I see your driver's license and registration?"

"I don't have one-"

"Turn off the engine and give me the keys-" The cop pocketed them and Mark watched him walk back to his cruiser in the sideview.

Danny leaned over from the passenger side, his lips close to Mark's ear. "You don't have to do this-"

"He right, Mark. Dude, I can-"

"Will everybody just shut up? This is my decision. This is what's best."

"Fuckin' cops. I hate 'em. I wish I had my gat-"

"Okay, I need everybody out of the car." All four of them jumped at the sound of the cop's voice. "Keep your hands where I can see them and move real slow."

Mark looked back at the police cruiser as he stepped out of the car and saw that four more were behind it. A dog's furious barking met his ears through the blood swishing in and out of them. Fuck! Big time! He obeyed the cop and went to the front of the Cadillac with Danny while Donte and Delonte made their way to the back end. As they assumed their positions, the dog was let loose inside the car and began digging and yelping under the driver's seat.

The cop who'd pulled them over dropped three baggies and two pipes on the hood of the car and pointed at them. "Those yours?"

"Yep-"

"Really?"

"Yes, sir-"

"Nobody else's?"

"Nope. All mine. Nobody else even knew I had it in the car."

"Because those guys back there said it's all of y'all's-"

"No, they didn't-"

"Yes, they did-"

"Well, they're lying then-"

The cop narrowed his eyes into Mark's. "That's a lot of shit, boy-"

Mark shrugged.

"You're looking at a lot of time. Possession. With intent to distribute. At least 10 years-"

Mark looked away and sighed. "Yeah-"

"You know this car was reported stolen this morning-"

"Yes, I stole it-"

"Really, from where-"

"From wherever-"

The cop shook his head. "Stupid fucking white boy-"

Mark put his head down and nodded. Then looked back up at the cop and grinned. "You gonna arrest me or not?"

"Wait here." The cop walked back to Donte and Delonte and after a few gesticulations, sent them walking.

"Mark, you don't have to do this," said Danny.

"Listen. Yes, I do. They're my friends. Our friends. You know how much back up time they got? And being black? They'll never get out of jail. And for what? The same thing half these cops do in their spare time." He shook his head. "I'll be all right. We'll be all right. This'll be my first offense. I'll get probation or something. Sometimes, you just gotta do the right thing. And taking care of your friends is the right thing-"

"You can go," said the cop, pointing to Danny. "Start walking. And don't look back."

He turned Mark around, then frisked and cuffed him as roughly as a butterfly alighting on a flower petal. "I've got to get your info," he said, sliding Mark into the wide backseat of the police cruiser. He sat in the driver's seat and shook his head. "You know," he said, "half of us don't do the same shit in our spare time. And tell your friend Donte I wish he'd had his gat too-"

Relapse

The house was warmer inside than the evening was outside. And it was darker. And quieter. Except for his bedroom, which peeked around the corner upstairs through the light from his New York Giants lamp and almost muted the squawking of the springs of his bed. Mark breathed in a familiar sweet, plastic aroma and jumped up the stairs three at a time.

Sarah's back was to him, her greasy blonde hair stretched in tangles to her waist. She shifted again, her head fallen forward, as he stopped in his bedroom doorway.

"Mom, you okay?"

"I will be in a minute." She held both her hands up over her head.

"Mom, you shouldn't-"

"You shouldn't, you little fucker-"

"Language-"

"Fuck language-"

Sarah put the pipe to her lips, then the flame to the end of the pipe. Smoke gathered in the glass tube, then disappeared into her lungs, reappearing a minute later half of what it used to be. She patted the bed next to her until Mark's bony ass was firmly set on it.

"Flash-"

"Fuck him-"

"Mom, really, your language-"

"Fuck language, Mark. It don't matter what you do. Be good, go to church, don't cuss, don't smoke, don't drink, don't do nothing, and still you get fucked over all the same-"

"But you get to go to heaven when you die and it'll be all right-"

"Fuck heaven. And hell. There ain't no such thing as either-"

Mark giggled. "So what happened? More fighting?"

"He's a fucking meth head. Always was. Always will be. Why do you think he was so fucking hyper all the time? Walking faster than people run? Overcompensating with all that religion bullshit-"

"Amen-"

"Shut the fuck up, Mark-"

Mark giggled. He pointed to the pipe in his mother's hand. "You two could've done that together-"

"That's the problem. We're recovering-"

"You are-"

Sarah shook her head. "Well, we were. Or I thought we were. At least, I was-"

"That sucks-"

"Tell me about it. I come home today and he's smoking the shit right in the kitchen-"

"Yikes-"

"Don't make fun-"

"I'm not-

"I know-" Sarah laid the pipe and lighter on the bed and put one arm around Mark. "I'm just not gonna let people, I don't care who they are, talk about you the way he did-"

"Really?"

"Uh huh-"

"What did he say?"

"Let's just say he wrote his one-way ticket out of here with one word-"

"Whoa-"

Sarah turned to face Mark, resting her veiny hands on his smooth cheeks, and aimed her dilated pupils straight at his eyes. "Nobody talks about my boy like that. You hear me? You're my son, and I love you, Mark. Don't ever let anybody tell you any different." Her eyes blinked and fell to his lips. "You hear me?"

Mark nodded and wrapped his arms around his mother's waist as she squeezed him close to her. Then pushed her away as her lips puckered on his neck, her tongue tracing a small circle.

"Mom, I can't-"

Sarah's chin plopped onto her chest and her arms limped up by her sides as Mark left the room.

"You fucking faggot," she said.

What Was Yours?

Wait.

Don't go.

Wait.

Can I? Can I have another hour?

Do you remember? Remember when we first kissed? And you said you felt like you were home and I said I felt the same way? As if our tongues had been looking for places to rest and finally found their graves?

Can I? Can I have another minute?

Do you remember? Remember when I first touched your cock? And you said my fingers felt like the fur of a kitten and I said the skin of your cock felt like the surface of water? And then I sucked it and you said something about pretending God and Heaven exist but I didn't really hear you because you were in my throat and I was trying to force all of you into me? As if you would be my last meal before I stalked off to the chair?

Can I? Can I have another second?

Do you remember? Remember when we smiled at each other yesterday? And you said we would never die and I agreed and then you said that if we did it would be together just like in the movies? And how I thought about how you never betrayed me and how you were the only one who never betrayed me and the only one I think who ever loved me and how I never wanted to kill you and not even cut you and not even gloat when you writhed in pain from my teeth on your cock a little too tight? As if you were a gift I never wanted to open that would just sit on my lap and absorb my tears on the only Christmas I would ever have?

Wait.

Come back.

Wait.

Mark's eyes opened and he squeezed them shut to dry them. The voices of his mother and her boyfriend wafted to his ears through the drywall separating his bedroom from hers. He snaked his fingers under the waistband of his boxer briefs, grasped his hard-on with the tips of his skinny fingers, and began to stroke, pre-ejaculate smearing the glans.