16. Holmesburg Prison

Author Note: A lot of my inspiration for this blovel entry came from this site's photos of Holmesburg Prison. The photo is from Amanda Capasso. 

Yeah. I had this seventh grade math teacher. Thought he was a tough guy, took us on a field trip to Holmesburg. Check it out kids. Hallways spoked off a center hub, each hallway lined with cells. A massive three story wall around the place. "You act a fool, this is where you’ll be," teach said. "Or some place like it." I looked around, thought about the joints I smoked, the video games I played. Yeah, whatever. It didn’t seem scary, and it didn’t seem lonelier than my life.

It was the perfect place to become a jailer for blood-mouths, to wait, against all hope for one of them to maybe turn back. 

It’s a journey up there. The streets are almost empty, only occasional packs of VBs less interested in me than rats. The blood-faces may be seeing what I’m seeing. There are no people left. If there are no people there is nothing to hunt. Will they start hunting one another?

A group of blood-faces come by while I’m walking a block of row homes, via the roof. That way I can see. I drop down and watch them. SHIT.  I think it’s Angie, the hair color is right. It’s a small VB too. Then I see the jaw, it’s a hard line. Not her. The face. Not her.  But I’m shaking and then I fall down on the roof and wish I believed in praying to say I was sorry. Sorry, Angie. Sorry, VB that’s not Angie. Stop being a little bitch, TC. You got shit to do.

The prison is the same fucked up place. I don’t notice the loneliness because that’s everywhere, until I start reading the walls.Stuff my twelve year old self didn't see but I see it now. I see it because its humans trying to say something.

I wish Alisha was here.

A lot of things about wanting pussy. That was lonely too.

A picture, careful details, rear view mirrors, wheel wells, the swerving lines of a Corvette. Must have been a lot of work on these pocked walls.

I didn’t see the kid there. Motherfucker. Why a kid there?

I’m sorry, mama. I fucked up. He couldn’t say it to her. I guess that’s why he wrote it on the wall, an unsaid confession, shit that would never be forgiven.   

I feel an echo through time. These men wanting to speak to someone so hard, to say some shit like, I love cars, I love pussy, I love Malik. Not able to speak they wrote it on the walls, and nobody cared, until I came here.

I’m not that different. I carry some shit for which there is no forgiveness, because all the priests, every human who could either say, “That shit is terrible, but we all do bad shit,” or “It’s okay,” or, “Even though you are terrible, I like you anyway,” is gone. 

A writing on another wall. I’ve lost track of time because these voices, these wall scribbles make me feel like I am hearing a human voice.

Worse than dragons, the many tearings of the end!

Not one thousand lions, not a million hyenas, the breaking of all!

God. NO. NO NO. Hold BACK. 
He listens not.

The END cometh, cometh COMETH!!! 

Theses scrawlings are the shape of wolf teeth, savagely slashed in crayon. The vicious lines remind me of the VBs.

I bet the guards and the inmates hated the writer. "Crazy Bob, shut the fuck up. We’re trying to sleep." 

"I see the end," he screams. "All is going to end." They punch him, but he still speaks. They stick him in solitary, but he still sees. Still cries out. He knew about the blood mouths, the All-Fucked Era. Weird shit.

I put U-locks and stuff on the gates and prison cell doors, it takes some days. Walking around I feel their ghosts, the men who fought for their freedom and died in the riots, and the men who fought for order and justice and died in the riots. I like the haunting. Talk to me in my sleep, dead men. At least it's conversation.

I need that shit.