24. Excerpt from Earl Bishop’s Prison Journal

10-12-08:

 

Everybody’s on edge here, all the time like we’re seconds away from fucking Armageddon.

 

Like aliens are about to invade and spray us with death rays. I’m talking War of the Worlds/Independence Day type shit.

 

No, Deep Impact. Yeah. That’s what people act like in here, like meteors are a couple thousand miles away and tumbling towards earth.

 

It’s just this general sense of impending doom, like everybody’s waiting for—no, wait, fuck that—expecting the final “lights out” call at any moment.

 

Anxious for the whole world to turn into a vacuum and suck all the life out of each prison cell, one by one.

 

It’s the oldest excuse for anarchy, if you think about it. The reason why huge groups of people rise up and yell and scream and loot and plunder and rape and murder every time there’s some natural disaster or their backyards turn into a warzone.

 

My cellmate is this guy named Paul. He looks normal, for the most part. Could be a rapist for all I know. He watches me when I pee like he’s just waiting for me to stop looking at him out the corner of my eye. I can hear him at night, whispering my name in his sleep with a different emphasized syllable each time, “Eaaaaarl, Earlllllll.”

 

And I’ve only been here for three months. You telling me I deserve this shit?

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