The Jailhouse Diaries: Part Nine

Within minutes of the prisoners taking over, the cellblock was transformed into a ring of Hell. Flaming toilet paper rained down from the upper level cells, everything that could be broken was being broken. The normally clean environment was quickly strewn with debris and broken glass.

Without any authority in place, the thin veener of jail society was replaced with pure rage, where any and all accounts were being settled. Prisoners were being shanked for any and sometimes no reason. Prisoners were being hung by their necks from the railing on the upper tier, jerking from their necks in nooses quickly made out of bedsheets and pillowcases. Their blood, piss and shit dripped down onto the concrete below. It is doubly disgusting when you figure that most of these guys were HIV positive.

If I was a religious man, I'd say that this looked like how I imagined Armageddon would look like. But I'm not a religious man, and besides, God has nothing to do with what happens in jail.

The vatos led us out into the cellblock with their shotguns. There were seven of us; a couple guys from the SORT team looking naked without their vests, guns, and truncheons, two regular prison guards, and three surviving members of the homeboys. The other eses who had rushed in to secure the cellblock had gathered all the other guards and lined them against the bars to entrance at gunpoint, ensuring that any rush by the authorities to retake the jail would grind up their own first.

There was a cheer as the Mexicans led us in as their prized prisoners. Like typical beaners, they started shooting their shotguns off in the air in celebration (they also ended up shredding several prisoners looking down on this from the upper tier with their buckshot, but no one gave a fuck at this point.)

The vatos knelt us all down. "ISN'T THIS FUN?" Ernesto yelled out to the cellblock, getting a scattered peel of applause and dodging a flaming roll of toilet paper that was chucked at his head. "WHILE WE OUT OF OUR CELLS, WHO THINKS WE SHOULD HAVE FUN WITH THESE PUTOS?" The applause was louder this time.

Ernesto suddenly whipped around, racking his shotgun and firing in point blank in one of the SORT guy's faces. It exploded, showering the rest of us with blood, brain, and skull fragments. An eyeball rolled to stop just by my knees, all blue and bloody, staring up at me in an eternal "What the fuck?" Ernesto racked the shotgun again and stuck it the next guy's face. It looked like he was going to go down the line, and I was fifth.

"ERNESTO AMIGO STOP!" we heard a booming voice down the hallway. Armando was walking from the solitary cells, flanked by fellow gang members. "NOBODY KILLS THEM BUT ME!"

Armando "El Diablo" Herrera looked at all of us. He looked furious as he strapped on one of the bulletproof vests worn by the SORT team. He looked first at one of the homeboys. "I heard you wanted to kill me," he said. "Well here's you're shot. Get up here and try and kill me."

The homeboys knees were shaking as he stood up. He got his fists up and took one punch at Armando, hitting his square in the face. Armando shrugged it off, then reached up, grabbed the homeboy by his head and with one jerk broke his neck. A knot of bone jutted out of the back of his lifeless neck. Armando produced a revolver that he'd taken off one of the guards and put two bullets into his heart.

I can't believe that it wasn't until then that I started pissing in my pants.

Armando looked at the next fellow in line, one of the guards. "You were the one who brought me my meals in the solitary cells..."

The guard didn't hear him. He was pleading, "Please, I have a wife..."

"...everyday, you bring me the same thing. Chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets and Jello."

"...my child is only three..." the guard wept.

Armando knelt down by him. "Let me tell you something," he said. "I FUCKING HATE CHICKEN NUGGETS!"

The guards pleas ended and turned into a blubbering and choking as Armando rammed a shank into his gut, and drew it upwards, the jagged edge tearing his abdominal muscles. One swift cut upwards, and then one to the side and the slippery loops of his intestines spilled out onto the floor. The guard was somehow still conscious and Armando picked up his intestines and wrapped them around his neck and choked him until his face was purple as his eyes were bulging out of his skull.

After a few minutes, he let him go and he dropped lifeless to the ground. He didn't even bother to give him a coup de grace. I guess he really didn't like chicken nuggets.

I had given up any hope of even receiving a quick death when Armando looked at me, but suddenly his expression looked tender. "You, you were my woman," he said. "For a few weeks, you took my dick up your ass, like a woman," then his expression darkened. "Then you betrayed me like a woman."

"Still, your asshole was sweeet," he hissed. "I will give a chance to get away from this with your life."

Armando pulled out the revolver and pulled out all of the bullets except one. He spun the chamber and then snapped the cylinder back into the frame with a flick of his wrist and held the gun out to me. "You stick this in your mouth and pull the trigger three times. If you don't die, I may let you be my bitch again."

I could barely hold the revolver as I stuck the barrel in my mouth. The gunmetal stung the open pits in my gums. I tried to bring tension down on the trigger (let's face it, this was a cleaner way to die than anything else I'd seen so far,) but my survival instincts could not do it. "Please," I whispered. "I can't."

"PUTA!" Armando twisted me around, grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and stuck the shank, still warm from the guards entrails, against my throat. "DO IT OR I SLIT YOUR THROAT AND PULL YOUR TONGUE THROUGH THE HOLE!" he screamed into my ear.

I put the gun back in my mouth and pulled the trigger before I could think about it. Click. I nearly vomited.

"Goood," Armando said with the shank still against my throat. "So far, so good. Two more times now. Let's go."

Pulling the trigger the second time was harder than the first. It took Armando digging his shank into my neck to get me to do it. Click. I gasped, drawing in air like it was my last breath. It could very well be.

"Come on," Armando said, tenderly. "One more time. You can do it. You always were a goooood bitch. I'd hate to lose you."

My chance was only one in four now that I'd pulled the trigger twice and hit empty. Those odds were still good though, and I'd been lucky so far. I tried to tell myself all that to keep myself calm, but my hands still shook and the barrel of the revolved moved unsteadily in my mouth as I slowly brought pressure down on the trigger, drawing the hammer back.

And when it clicked this time, the hammer fell on a live round. BOOM.