Author: Lioness Black
Rating: PG13/T
Notes: I don't know anything about being in prison. I watched a Diane Sawyer special about women's prison once, and that's the best I've got, lol.
Warnings: Mentions drug use, suicide, murder, and gay sex of questionable consent.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just good fun.
Roger guesses what everyone wants to hear is that the food sucks. Everyone always asks how the food is. In all honesty, the food isn't bad. It's three hot meals a day, much more than he was getting before. Those meals weigh heavy on his drug induced skeleton.
Waking up in a cold cell isn't very different from waking up in a cold apartment, except there's no warm girl lying next to him. Instead, there's a fat man named Tiny in the bottom bed of the bunk. The principle is the same.
Roger is Tiny's bitch. He never thought he would ever be anyone's bitch. When he was on stage, feeling like a god, the world was his bitch. Not anymore. Now he's a scrawny little thing with the smoothest skin. He fought him at first, but Tiny is three times his size. Now he just waits until it's over.
"I'm HIV positive!" he told Tiny in panic the first time.
Tiny shrugged. "Who isn't?"
Going in with it just gave Roger a head start. If he didn't, he would have had it in a month.
All Roger wants is a guitar. He's always told that he'll have to wait. He'll get it with good behavior. It's been six months. Sure, Roger has a lot of time to wait it out, but his hands itch with the desire to play. He took his guitar for granted before. He wouldn't make that mistake again.
Roger waits for the mail to come. Once a week, sometimes more, there's a letter from Mark. It's small talk, stupid shit, like Mark doesn't even know how to talk to him anymore. Roger cleaves to the notion that Mark hasn't forgotten about him.
He writes Mark back, but he doesn't mention Tiny. He talks about ideas for song lyrics, and how much he misses him, and how things will be different when he's out.
Things will be different. When he's out, Mark will probably be married with kids. Mark will be successful. Mark will have a life. Roger will still have the nothing he went in with, but if he can say those words to Mark, then maybe they'll be true.
Roger doesn't talk much. He says the few words that are required of him, but he keeps mostly to himself. He could buy a dose of heroin for cigarettes, but even heroin has lost its interest.
All he wants is to play his guitar, read his letters from Mark, and wait until this is over.
"What are you here for?" It's one of the guys in Tiny's group. Roger doesn't know this guy's name, some animal, Snake or Tiger. He killed a cashier at a mini-mart he was robbing. He's fucked Roger before, too.
"I killed my girlfriend," Roger replies.
"Why'd you do that?"
"I was high. I got her hooked on drugs. We got HIV from used needles, and when she told me, I freaked." He shrugs.
His eyes light up with interest. "How'd you do it?"
Roger's eyes are tired. "I slit her wrists and made it look like a suicide. I even wrote her a note, so everyone would know why she did it. Why I did it. I was wasted, I don't know what I was thinking. I knocked her out first, so she didn't scream or fight me. Then I did it and left her in the bathroom."
Snake-or-Tiger reaches out and touches Roger's cheek. "That's beautiful, man."
Roger shies away from the touch.
"Come on now, puppy. There's two ways to leave this place. Walk out in forty years or in a body bag. You want the second one just because you don't want to play nice?"
Roger is used to these threats. Sometimes they're full of shit, but other times, they're serious. He's yet to take the time to find out which is which.
He lets Snake-or-Tiger touch his face before he's pushed to his knees.
Will I lose my dignity?
Roger has never heard those words before, but they seem real to him. His hands sweat for his guitar. He can hear the notes in his mind, he can feel them in his soul.
He already has lost it, he suspects, as he gives this strange man a blow job in the corner of the prison yard where ten guards can surely see them and do nothing.
Will someone care?
They feel so close, so real, like he's heard people say them before. They're true to him, how will the real world accept him? He's a convict now. Everywhere he goes, everyone will know. He'll always be a marred man.
The tears on his face are soon mixed with semen. He then sits in the corner alone, crying until it's time to go back inside.
Will I wake tomorrow, from this nightmare?
No. Not for a long time.
---
Mark holds Mimi as she cries. Mark is crying too, but he keeps his sobs silent.
"I could deal with this," she says, "if he were just leaving me. I could deal with this if it was simply over, but it's the way he's leaving."
Mark nods. "I know."
She pulls away and looks at Roger, thrashing around, his arms and legs bound to the hospital bed for his own safety and the safety of everyone around him.
"If he were just here," she says. "If I could just talk to him. He's in so much pain."
"The hallucinations are just his way of coping with the pain," Mark says.
"I know," Mimi replies, "but it just seems to make it worse. I can't believe I'm saying this, Mark, but I want him to go so he'll stop being in this pain. I don't know what he's seeing on that side, but I think he's punishing himself for everything he's ever done. He's a prisoner now, a slave to his own mind. I just want him to have some peace in his last days."
She reaches for Roger's hand, but it's shaking wildly, and only slaps at her. She retracts the hand and begins to cry again. "I want him to know I'm here. I want him to have some comfort and... I don't want him to hurt anymore."
Mark wraps his arms around Mimi's shoulders. "I know. It'll be over soon."