Issue Three

Jackie squatted in the prison yard,
drawing symbols in the dust.
He was gripping a stick between his
thumb and forefinger, gently laying
down circles and ciphers and codes.
They'd become an endless spiral,
swirling out from his feet. Sometimes
he'd dig the stick deep into the dirt,
gouging up little spits of earth. More
often, he'd tap and tuck and tease until
the fine details emerged.
He'd been drawing for nearly an hour,
squatting on his haunches, the pain in
his hips long forgotten. His tongue was
sticking ever so slightly out of the left
corner of his mouth, a little pink
exclamation point on his dark skin. His
chin jutted out, and he peered down at
the symbols from under his glasses.
Every so often, he'd slowly raise a dirtcaked
finger and push them further up
his nose, never taking his eyes from his
work.
This was good news for the man
walking towards him.
The other guys in the cell had named
the man Ratbucket; he still didn't know
why. He didn't question what the other
guys in the cell said. When they told
him that if he wanted to stay alive, he
had to prove himself, he just nodded.
And when they said that to prove
himself, he had to kill another prisoner,
he'd nodded again. As far as Ratbucket
was concerned, if you nodded at
everything they said to you in prison,
you got along just fine.
The problem, of course, was that he'd
never actually killed anyone. He'd told
the others he was in on a murder
charge, even before he could stop
himself, and they'd laughed and said
that in that case, he'd have no trouble
with the job. But as he approached the
hunched figure doodling in the dust, he
felt cold prickles on his spine that had
nothing to do with the wind sweeping
down from the Adirondack Mountains.
The toothbrush was in his hand. The
head of the gang – a big sucker with
one frozen eye named Marlin – had
given it to him. It had been melted and
filed and melted and filed again until it
was a thin spike. Ratbucket held it
cupped in his palm, with the spike lying
along the inside of his wrist, his hand
turned to keep it hidden from the
screws. Sweat ran down his fingers,
pooling in his palm.
He could feel Marlin's eyes on him from
the other side of the yard. He could feel
all their eyes on him. Nobody would
miss Jackie, he told himself. He'd only
been in here a day. Ratbucket had
seen him come in yesterday, and the