Guarded Hearts

I sometimes think about what would've happened, and how our lives would've turned out differently had I not noticed it. And all because of one little thing. The rec room wasn't meant to be open. I could have easily missed it, or dismissed it, but I didn't. The door was only open about an inch or so, and you couldn't even see through the gap, but you could see from the visible door jam that the door was in fact open, and unlocked. That was what drew my attention, nothing more. That's what changed my life.

It might seem like nothing to people outside, but for those institutionalized within the federal correctional system, that door being open was like an alarm bell. It was unscheduled. In prison, almost nothing happens unless it's on schedule, and if it doesn't, then it's usually not good. The rec room was meant to have closed about five minutes ago now, yet the door was ajar, and the light was on. If the room was open, which it was, then it would be guarded. Yet there was no CO in there, so it had to be closed. Except it wasn't, because the door was open. That endless loop of broken prison logic was what made it stick out to me, and what made me investigate further.

I stopped before the door, and peered through the thin floor-to-ceiling wire-reinforced glass window next to it, scanning the large room from side to side. Again, no CO was in sight. I tried to think about who should be there, and whether they were the type to forget, or slack off somewhere instead. It wouldn't be Rosco, he was on vacation for a few more days yet. It couldn't be Tyrone, as I passed him by at the security office, just a few minutes before. Maybe it was James? No, he wouldn't be on shift until lockdown at nine, and it was only ten past eight right now. I'd ruled out three, but it didn't really matter, as there were still a good few dozen or so who could, or at least, should be there.

My curiosity soon overcame my mild fear of being discovered by a CO keen to hand out write-ups, and I pushed open the door to the rec room, taking a few hesitant steps inside. Immediately, I heard noises coming from the adjacent storage cupboard, and noticed light spilling out from underneath the door. It just sounded like someone moving stuff around at first. Scraping sounds, grunts of exertion, things like that. I figured it was just whatever CO was closing up, shifting the heavy and cumbersome fold-out ping pong table back into its spot, and I was about to turn on my feet and leave, lest I tempt fate. But for some reason I couldn't explain, I had a bad feeling about whatever this was. And yet despite that, despite knowing something was wrong here, I decided to investigate further.

I was never all that observant. My four months in prison had made me observant though. Even in medium security, you had to be able to read a room in seconds, lest you inadvertently get in the middle of something. I learned fast. I had to. If I entered this rec room when it was full, I'd always take a second to observe. Whether I stayed or not could be decided by something as small as how one of the men at the pool table was holding his cue. Usually it was a lot simpler though. A lot of affiliated hispanics in one room meant it was their day to get the room to themselves, and you had to go elsewhere. If you didn't, they wouldn't start anything then and there, but they'd figure out who you were, and you'd have a very bad time later on. Luckily I was told that one, so I didn't have to figure it out for myself.

I wasn't taught anything that could explain the way the hair on the back of my neck was raised, or why I was rolling my feet to walk silently as I inched closer to the storage cupboard. As I got within a few yards though, the door suddenly started opening inward, and I quickly adjusted my stance to one less suspicious. It wasn't a CO who walked out though, it was a fellow inmate, dressed in the same loose fitting khaki shirt and pants as myself, and almost every other inmate here. My first thought was relief, namely that I wouldn't be getting a chew-out session or write-up for being here, not from him at least. Then I saw the keys in his hand.

The two of us stared at each other in silence for a moment, as the gravity of the situation became evident. I knew this guy, a little bit anyway. His name was Norman, he was from New York, he used to be a stock broker, and he was three years into a nine year sentence for embezzlement and wire fraud. You wouldn't guess any of that by looking at him. He was tall and stocky, but with a fair bit of muscle, shaved bald, and he had a full sleeve all down one arm, all done in prison. He looked a lot like one of the skinheads. He wasn't though, and closer examination of his tattoos confirmed that he was unaffiliated, but he was friends with some of the long-timers, and he wasn't a pushover. He'd always been okay with me, and I with him, but we never really talked, so I wasn't sure how much that would be worth right now.

"How long have you been there?" He asked quietly, his voice ice cold.

"Long enough." I replied immediately.

What the hell was wrong with me? Long enough? What the fuck was that meant to mean? I'd said it without thinking, and it wasn't even true! How the hell he'd gotten those keys I had no idea, but I knew something sinister was at hand. I could see it in his eyes. Hard eyes, full of suspicion and adrenaline, yet behind that, a sense of genuine excitement was there. My assessment was confirmed a moment later, when I saw the piece of slightly yellowed clear plastic with shoelaces wrapped around it sticking out of his waistband. A shiv, probably made out of an old smashed up prison TV, or some other broken electronic device. He noticed me looking, but made no attempt to hide the weapon.

"You want in?" He asked eventually.

"Fuckin' A right."

I still had no idea what exactly he was doing here, or what I was supposedly getting involved in, but any hesitation or questioning would give me away as having lied, and likely not endear me to Norman. I figured showing enthusiasm for whatever he had planned was my best bet, until I knew more, anyhow.

"What's your name again?" He asked, glancing back towards the cupboard for a moment.

"Grant." I replied. "Grant Myles."

"You're new, right?" He asked, seeming a little confused.

"I mean, I got here in July, so, yeah, kinda."

"What's your paperwork?"

I knew what that meant. He was asking what I was in for. I'd shown my pre-sentence documents to my cellmate in the first few days, and most people knew my paperwork by now, or at least, they knew it wasn't anything bad. Bad paperwork was the term reserved for women beaters, sex offenders/sex traffickers, or anything involving kids. It wasn't hard for people to find out if someone new had bad paperwork, especially when some of the guards were notoriously loose-lipped. My paperwork was pretty good, all things considered, but something told me he was testing me, and that, in this case at least, the correct answer wasn't what I thought it was.

"What're you, my lawyer?" I replied sharply, dodging the question.

That answer would earn you some violent comeuppance normally, but I knew then that my hunch was right, as that seemed to put him at ease.

"Alright wiseass, I'm just asking." He shot back, but he didn't seem especially annoyed at my response. "Forget about it, you're in. I go first though, no arguments." He added, and threw the keys across at me. "Lock that door and get in here. She's waiting..."

Oh Jesus, what had I gotten myself into? Who was she? Did he mean a guard, and if so, who? He said 'she', and the only 'she' I could think of would be either one of the female COs, or the counselor. And those keys were CO keys, there was no doubt about that. Who the hell did he have in there? To hide the color draining from my face, I quickly walked over to the door, closed it, and put the master key in the lock. I considered just throwing the door open and running back to the security office, but I knew if I did that it would take some work to get Tyrone to listen to me, even with the keys, and it would tip Norman off that I wasn't on his side. If he had a CO in there, a female CO, then it was pretty clear what he planned on doing to her.

Without thinking, I turned the key in the lock, first one way, and then the other. I didn't lock it, but it looked like I had. I even gave the handle a rattle, as if to test it. I pocketed the keys shortly after and walked back to the cupboard where Norman was waiting, half inside, looking at something just behind the door. Steeling myself, I walked back over to him and followed him inside. It wasn't built as a cupboard, or so I was told, so it was a fairly large storage room, but the door opened right up against a large metal shelf bolted to the floor, that often held cleaning supplies, and despite the decent size of the room, it was taken up with all manner of crap. There was the old fat TV cart with the PS2 that had been broken since long before I got here, the aforementioned fold-out ping pong table, and a multitude of stackable chairs, to name a few, and thanks to that, it was fairly claustrophobic in there.

The first thing I saw out of place was the small spattering of blood on the side of the cleaning cart, just past the shelf, and then the CO's duty belt draped over top of it, handcuff pouch wide open, no cuffs to be seen. Then I turned to look behind the door and saw her. Her hands were cuffed together in front of her through the shelf, keeping her secure, and she was shrinking away into the corner behind the door, trying to get away from Norman. She was gagged with a long strip of duct tape, and I could see snot dripping from her nose as she cried profusely into it. I knew who she was immediately. I should after all, as she saved my life.

A few weeks into my stay, I was on the public phone for a long while, talking to my mother. I was trying my best to convince her that it wasn't all bad, that three years really wasn't a long time, and that with good behavior, I could easily be out on early release in two. "I'll be out before the mid-terms." I told her. I joked that, at least here, I'd probably manage to lose a little bit of weight. It turns out I was right on that count. I'd been talking to her for about twenty minutes by then, and apparently I'd caught the ire of another inmate who was waiting to make a call. I told him I'd be done shortly, but the thing is with my mother, she could talk for hours if you'd let her.

After another few minutes, the inmate rather bluntly reminded me he was waiting, and told me to hurry it up. I told him I would, but two minutes thereafter, he was still waiting as my mother started talking about my sister, and how she was trying to find the time off work to fly out and visit. Finally, he got sick of it and interjected, shoving me aside and hanging up, before dialing his own number. I wasn't one for starting fights unnecessarily, but I wasn't happy about him cutting me off, so I asked if it was that important that he called his boyfriend right that second. He was short, balding, white, and didn't look like much, so I wasn't worried about any sort of violent response. That was a mistake. He turned around and stared at me for a good few seconds, as if committing my face to memory, before turning back around and starting his call.

He ambushed me in my cell later the next day. Despite being nearly a foot shorter than me, probably only just breaking the five foot mark, and at least twice my age, he marched in, punched me square in the jaw, pulled me off my bunk, and proceeded to stomp and kick the shit out of me, wearing heavy gardening boots the entire time. A young female CO who I'd only seen once or twice before at that point, saw him storm into my cell from the housing unit's security office, and immediately knew something was going on. She followed him in, sprayed him with mace, and pulled him off me, at which point he promptly surrendered. He knew better than to attack a CO.

Chloe was her name, or CO Blackwood, as I knew her then. She stood about 5'7", with short, silky brown hair, fine caramel skin, full lips that would bring impure thoughts to the most chaste of men, and deep, deep brown eyes. She wasn't exactly thick, but she had a pleasing shape to her, with generous cushioning around her ass, and while the CO stab vest didn't exactly show off her upper figure, she was clearly quite gifted up there too. She was a real beauty, and after I recovered from the attack in my cell, she was often on my mind, and frequently the subject of my most pleasant daydreams. She was young, probably only a few years older than myself, maybe about 25 or so, and unlike so many of the corrections officers, especially the women, she was kind.

Most of the other female COs seem to have something to prove, some kind of axe to grind with every man in here, like it was their calling to humiliate and torture us, no matter who we were. We were criminals, so to them, that's what made it right. Chloe wasn't like that. She was no pushover, and she wouldn't let anyone get away with anything if they were overtly breaking rules, being a nuisance, or trying to intimidate her, but she wasn't a bully. She was perhaps the only silver lining to this place, and I respected her immensely. If it weren't for her, I could be sucking through a straw right now, or dead, and all because I insulted that stupid midget for cutting my call short. She stopped that from becoming a reality, and now she was in tears, handcuffed to a shelf whilst Norman prepared to rape her.

She looked almost unrecognizable. She'd clearly been crying profusely, and was still making a sort of sobbing, shivering and whimpering noise through the gag. On top of that, she had a small laceration on the side of her head, just above her eye, which had clearly been bleeding, but seemed to have stopped now. She was awake though, she could see us both, and she was clearly fully aware of the terrifying situation she was in. She knew exactly who her attacker was, as she tried to twist and turn away from his touch, but she didn't try to pull away from me as I wandered closer. She knew me. It soon became apparent Norman was waiting for me to say something, as he took a moment to stand off to the side of her, grinning across at me as he took a firm hold of her shoulder. I didn't know where to begin, but I had to at least try to talk him down.

"Norman, this is a bad idea man." I said eventually.

His mood changed in an instant, from one of pride and perverse excitement, to suspicion and defensiveness.

"They're gonna... they'll- You know they'll send you to supermax if you- y'know, it's not- It's a bad idea man." I stumbled out, unable to make eye contact with him.

"You said you were in, what the fuck?" He replied sharply, his hand resting on the shiv sticking out of his waistband.

"Look, it's just-" I began again, but he cut me off, pulling the shiv out of his pants and gesturing at her with it.

"This fucking whore has been teasing me for months. I don't give a fuck. Now, are you in, or are you some kinda faggot?" He demanded.

"I ain't a faggot man, I'm just saying-" I tried to continue, but he cut me off again.

"Well don't. She's mine, and you're lucky I'm offering you a piece. Now... are you in?" He asked pointedly.

I knew any further pushback or attempts to talk him down were pointless, and only likely to result in him realizing I was too much of a risk. Looking at him now, I knew he wasn't sure if he could trust me, so I had to convince him otherwise. Looking past him at Chloe though, I could see her, silently pleading with me to save her, just like she'd saved me. If I let this happen to her, I was no man, no man at all. I'd be a coward if I stood by and let Norman do this, and I'd be a monster if I joined in. Norman seemed to notice my hesitation, but he seemed to misinterpret what I was seeing when I looked at her.

"Come on kid, look. Are you telling me you don't want a piece of that?" He asked, grabbing a hold of her ample buttocks, her khaki cargo pants seemingly barely able to contain them.

Most of the COs didn't wear cargo pants, instead wearing smarter, more suit-like uniform pants, though I doubt that was by choice. Regardless, Chloe was one of the outliers, and I could tell why, as even in looser military style cargo pants, her posterior was... pronounced, and a subject of great admiration amongst the inmate population. Stick that ass in the tighter uniform pants, and you'd probably have every man who walked past her pitching a tent. I followed his gaze down for a second, before looking back at him.

"You ain't never gonna get another chance at a piece of ass this fine." He added after a moment. "What's it gonna be, do you want to fuck this bitch or not?"

If I said no right now, then he would more than likely stick me with that shiv, and then he would rape her, as I bled to death on the floor. I could be no help to her then. I looked across at Chloe's puffy red face for a moment, and into her bloodshot brown eyes, wide with fear, and locked on my own. She was shaking, and I knew if that tape was not over her mouth at that moment, she'd be pleading with me, begging me to help her, to get help, to do anything. To step up. It wasn't just fear in her eyes though, it was hope. She was looking at me with hope, because it was all she had left now. And she'd put that hope in me. I looked back at Norman.

When I nodded at him, I felt like my entire life had led up to this moment. My arrest, the thirteen months out on bail, unable to hold down a job, and then my disastrous trial and subsequent conviction and three year sentence, for something as simple as an unpaid $200 tax stamp. All of it seemed like it was deliberate, orchestrated, designed to lead me up to this point, and that after 21 years and ten months of life, these next few moments would decide what kind of man I was. I suppose I should be grateful, as some men live their whole lives and never find that moment. This was mine.

I could do one of four things here. I could- No. No I couldn't. Going along with Norman, and losing my virginity by raping the woman who saved my life was not going to happen. Every man has a monster within them, that's what my dad always said. He told me every man has a monster, but that guarding your heart against it, and knowing how to bring it out and how to use it sparingly, and righteously, was the key to being a good man. I felt repugnant, even reasoning that conclusion out, like I should be ashamed for even considering it, and perhaps I should, but I knew I had to acknowledge the monster and respect it, to be able to control it. Now I had done so, and the decision was made. No matter what happened next, I would not be a part of it.

I could do one of three things. I could let Norman rape Chloe, refuse to take part myself, hope Norman wouldn't kill me for that, and then live the rest of my life as a coward. I'd have to look at poor Chloe as he raped her, and then when he was done, tell her that I was too gutless to use anything more than words to try save her, that is, if he even let her live afterwards. I'd then likely serve the whole remainder of my sentence - plus whatever else they gave me for my cowardice, or abetment, as they'd likely see it - in a high security institution. Once eventually released, I'd look back on this for the rest of my life, as the sole moment that required me, as a man, to fight, and for only the purest and most righteous of reasons, and then remember that I didn't. If that happened, I knew I'd see Chloe's face every time I closed my eyes. I don't think I could live with that. I didn't want to live with that. So I wouldn't.

Two ideas left. Both of them were quite simple, so simple even a rat could understand them. Fight, or flight. I could run, and if I got past Norman and out of the crowded cupboard before he turned the shiv my way, maybe Chloe would still be unharmed by the time I convinced Tyrone, or any other CO to come to her rescue. Or maybe, by the time help arrived, he'd have raped her, or killed her, or both. He might just run away, and leave her alone and unharmed, but something told me he wouldn't. What he'd done already was enough to get him sent to a supermax for the remainder of his sentence, and then another decade or so on top of that, and he knew that. No matter what he did now, he was going away for many more years. He'd already gone past the point of no return, and he knew it, so he was going to get what he wanted from poor Chloe first. I could not let that happen.