(There's) No Place like Home

By Anthony Matos

There is an organization that recruits and inserts agents into American jails and prisons with one mission: extermination. The saying goes that everyone deserves a second chance; but in this new age of Depression with over-crowded prisons and backed up courts, a drastic and violent change must happen. Agents are given targets and implanted into prisons with their identities only revealed to selected individuals of power. They establish connections with inmates until they isolate targets and execute.

The largest amount of wealth within the once respected America is now being funneled into the sewer. Murderers, gang members, rapists, pedophiles, inside traders: they’re all enjoying the most modern conveniences our money has to buy. Fully equipped gyms, televisions, 3 meals a day and a roof over their heads while their victims may struggle just to make ends meet; or may have met their end already.

How much money does it take to keep a killer alive compared to how much it costs to bury their victim? Before you answer, just save your breath. You’re living your life the best you can, and your bandwagon ride on the next big social charity isn't important anymore. It’s not going to change what we’re doing here. But what we’re doing here is going to change your world forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Matos
• Release date: Apr 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458155153

Anthony Matos

I'm Anthony Matos. I'm 30 years old and from Western Massachusetts. I finished my first book in 4 months and want nothing more than to keep writing stories I find interesting.

Book preview

(There's) No Place like Home

by

Anthony Matos

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Anthony Matos on Smashwords

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Matos

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To Amber

For all the beautiful things you brought into my world.

Rehabilitate: To restore to former capacity. Reestablish the good name of. To restore to former state. To bring to a condition of health or useful and constructive activity.

Recidivism: A tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Albert Einstein.

Chapter 1

From across a dark concrete hallway, two grown men struggling for life and death can be felt like a thick razor-wire blanket. It’s that heavy weight of sweat, blood, and desperation that thickens the air and chokes the fragile quiet of a night in this New Mexican prison. The moon’s glow through small windows high atop Level VI reveal wide white eyes in every cell, all pointing toward cell 34. It’s the only one with its door open. And it’s the only one, at least for tonight, where a man’s violent life is being choked out of him.

*

I’ve walked down the same street I’ve been taking home from work for 5 years now, and as much as I hate to admit it, everything’s turned to shit. Try and keep your blinders up, do your own thing, go home, get laid by yours or someone else’s hand, and go to sleep angry, bitter, and drunk. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

And believe me; I’m not speaking for myself. It’s everyone on my street, my block, this city, fuck, for all I know it’s the whole country.

There’s this disjointed feeling that we’re no longer pieces of a whole, we’re just disenchanted drones working for some big project we’ll never see completed. And it’s on everyone’s face when I walk down this street. Those pointless eyes that meet yours for only a second, then hit the floor before we can recognize what we’re all living in.

The same tired features of this city just brush past me like dead, faceless strangers in a crowd. Early model cars line the curbs on the cracked roadway. With the price of gas this high, who can afford to move their piece of shit anywhere? The morning sun splashes off the red brick buildings and gives them a shine they don’t deserve. People stare off their balconies burning their cigarettes into their faces while their kids sit on the granite steps doing the same thing. Reynolds’ Liquor Store has its sign buzzing bright blue even this early in the morning.

In a Depression, most people do what depressed people do; depress their depression by dousing it in drink. Business booms every day, and the collective band of gray and brown twisted characters huddle by the entrance regardless of night or day. Business men in finely pressed suits and dark overcoats try to breeze past them and avoid them like the plague they are, unable to wrap their minds around the idea that this might be them in a year or so as American markets slide.

One suit’s haste to avoid one form of society’s finest causes him to bump into a crowd of kids. They are a mess of vivid mismatched clothes, poorly done tattoos and piercings. I’m across the street but I can still hear the lanky kid with the ear lobes the size of coasters telling the guy to watch where he’s going in the most unsettling and violent way. The man in the blue suit scuffles across the dirty sidewalk with his red face burning bright beneath his gray hair. It’s a scene where apathy and helplessness meet.

I stop and wait at the corner as a rustard colored abomination squeaks and squeals its way down the potholed pavement. Betraying our memories of a bright yellow school bus filled with a great friend you’d lose, a few good friends you’d forget, and a bunch of background faces you never cared about. This monstrosity struggles along almost completely empty. Within its smeared windows you can barely make out 7 souls compared to the 60 plus that should be on their way to school. I can’t blame those punks walking around instead of riding that bus. They have a better chance of learning about the shit we’re in now on these streets than going into our most desolate rundown buildings in this city, our schools.

Wave aside the black smoke from my face and cross the street to my small flat on the fourth floor of Tanner Building. It’s an imposing brown-bricked structure that seems to be leaning forward as if it could slam down and swallow someone into its walls. I feel like I’m unlocking the door to my own prison cell every time I slide my keycard into the terminal and the red door buzzes, releases itself from the lock, and groans open.

We’re not supposed to have any animals in this place but, it always smells like cat piss. The green carpet that lines the hallways and stairs has begun to peel away from the gray walls. I personally think the land lord has completely forgotten that people actually live here and that he is the lucky recipient of checks from random strangers every month.

My final approach to my solitude just a few doors down is interrupted, as it always is, by some strange tenant that feels the need to reach out to anyone. This time it’s a frizzled red head who smoked her skin into a rugged burlap sack. She closes her door behind her and brings her bright purple nails, which happen to extend an inch from her finger tips, to her smeared red lips.

You scared me! You shouldn’t be sneaking around the halls like that, you know.

I think I may have muttered an apology that had no heart or direction but it was undetectable to the human ear. I stepped past her while those lost blue eyes in her sad little head followed me, wanting desperately for an exchange of any kind. I opened the door with my keycard and caught the mental train wreck out of my eye’s corner shaking her head.

I couldn’t say I hate the people who live in my building. They’re just burnt out silhouettes of what they should’ve been if the world they knew wasn’t sucked dry. But the one thing I’ve learned along the way is never to stop and listen to someone else, because your void plus their void equals no way back.

I shut the door behind me. The familiar smell of me, a candle that’s supposed to be autumn and burnt remains of the chicken I forgot yesterday in a drunken stupor. Home bittersweet home.

Toss my keycard on the end table with the unopened envelopes that have red URGENTs branded all over them. Walk across the hardwood floor to the small kitchen space and the grab the loose door handle of the fridge. A picture with a slightly younger version of myself smiling with my arm around a vibrant brunette in a time and place that now seems like make-believe, stares me in the face. It’s seen better days when it was set in a nice metal frame by a bed side. Now it’s been crumpled and then flattened out just about every other dark drunk night.

She did ask me once if it was possible to be with someone forever. I answered with some bullshit that was nothing more than my way of filling the air and covering up my uncertainty and fear of the unknown. If I could see her now I’d have the answer. It is possible, living or dead, because one of us is going to be chained to an expressionless statue of the other and trapped in the loneliest place on the outer edge of the world. The other’s going to have dinner and a movie with someone else and may blink about you for an instant. Then nothing more and never again.

But enough of that for one night.

The empty fridge has scattered crumbs of evidence that food did exist here once. Push aside the week old white and red Chinese grease box and grab a beer. I hold my grip for a second and decide I better wait to kill this day a little later than 8 am. The half empty orange juice carton is there to keep the illusion of normalcy alive.

With a cold bagel in my mouth I crash into my worn navy blue recliner parked conveniently in front of a modest flat screen. The rest of my place is like this life I lead, just enough to get by. Undetected and miserable. Void of any sentimental soul. Hell, I haven’t made it up those brass steps to my bed in a couple weeks now.

Time to live my life vicariously through this worldwide propaganda-colored window. The television flicks on and a tiny make-up caked face with beady blue eyes surrounded by a massive frame of blonde bangs and hair greets me.

The Chinese official who chose to remain anonymous claims the eastern superpower has successfully orbited Mars for the first manned orbit of the Red Planet. The source says the first Martian landing by man will be within the next few weeks. While this is a historic time for all mankind, not all Americans share the same enthusiasm.

A black man with designer eyeglasses sneers into the camera. Who cares about Mars? We have enough problems here. Fix this planet first, and then go play Star Wars.

Details remain as accessible as the Chinese government allows. Says the blonde with as much emotion as a machine. In other world news, the Russian Federation continues its advancement into the Mariana Trench in its research expedition for life forms and resources.

I lean back into my seat and let the colorful pictures, transmitted from a Russian submarine, of glowing red underwater ghosts float on my screen. So many dreams being achieved and so many new ones being created. The blonde media microphone bursts my underwater bubble.

The European Union has finally reached an agreement over its continental health care system after a dispute over wrongful deaths occurring in other countries. This marks the only time in history multiple governments and countries have shared the same health plan.

If you’ve never had siblings, you can skip this part. Think of a Christmas morning where every one of your brothers and sisters in the room have nice, shiny gifts sitting on their laps and you get to hold the camera and snapshot all their shit-eating grins. I’m feeling that while I’m waving the tiniest, imaginary American flag. Let’s show ‘em up, right?

In national news, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, and Maine have all opened their new correctional facilities in a joint ribbon-cutting ceremony.

It’s a great day for our country to open up more housing for inmates to get a better opportunity to correct their mistakes, make better choices, and rejoin our society in more positive, constructive ways. The gray handlebar mustache on this old bald guy in a sharp blue suit just screams out tear me right off.

Yeah, what a great day for our country. The world gets the nice shiny gifts; we get better buildings to store our trash. I’m thinking it’s about time to begin wasting my day away and start toward the fridge when my cell phone rings. It never rings anymore.

*

Please… why you doin’ this? I paid Carlos. It’s done.

All these words seeping out between his clenched yellow teeth was a remarkable feat considering how close they were to shattering. The tattooed arm wrapped under his chin was constricting and the red on his wrinkled face was giving way to a shade of blue.

I don’t care who Carlos is, he’s probably dead. I don’t care what you paid for, what you did, or what you ate this morning. The assailant pulls with his free hand against his own wrist and was now trying to pop this guy’s head off like a bottle cap. I don’t even care that you murdered that innocent lady when you were 22.

The two men stand like a nightmarish shadow in the cell, one slowly slumping forward as his knees begin to wobble. The struggling has given way to absolute acceptance that he has lost any control over his own destiny. All he can do is listen to the man who talks as calmly as a waiter explaining tonight’s dinner specials, while his bloodshot eyes are in danger of ejecting from his skull.

To be honest, I don’t give a fuck about the lady, and I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry or not.

His windpipe must be cracked by now. He mouths words that will never come out as tears and saliva pour down his weathered face.

What I do give a fuck about is you’ve been in here for 43 years and my Employers are tired of supporting people like you. Just go to sleep knowing you would’ve been paroled in a few months. You would have smelled free air. You would have seen your family who hates you or has long forgotten you. You would have been just another waste of time and money. This system is a mistake. I’m here to correct this mistake.

The snap is like a thunderclap.

*

There’s always a time when you know you shouldn’t answer a call. It’s someone with a problem that will shatter your peaceful little charade of quiet.

Yeah, who’s this? I knew who it was, but I needed to buy myself time to figure out an escape route.

It’s Terry, you fuck. Get your ass down to Becky’s. She’s out of her mind 'cause Colin got clipped in prison. The voice on the other side of this call is Terry, but it seems too hollow. It sounds like Terry’s voice bouncing inside an empty shell. Produced.

Alright, I’ll call her.

No man. Becky smashed her phone earlier when she found out. She’s fucking flipping out. Get down here and calm her down. She’ll listen to you.

Things get complicated after walking into other people’s lives. Your wide open field of freedom suddenly has walls with faces. Soon enough you’re walking through a maze of faces and there’s no place to hide. Your void plus their void equals no way back.

I put my phone into my pocket and rub my face. This is the price you pay for giving a shit about your fellow creatures. Quiet isolation in a pretty location is a deserted island and your cell phone skimming across the ocean, never to return. If I had my own spaceship I’d be flying to distant stars and not to find signs of life. Signs of life include needs, wants, arguments, and expectations, with a dash of laughter and enjoyment to break up