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ts.o2_07

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// INTERVIEW ONE - Miriam Torres  

Are you guilty?

       Yes, ma’am.

Tell me what happened.

       We were bad for each other. Real bad. Twenty-seven years of marriage and I can count on one hand how many days were spent in bliss. I hated who he was when I met him. I hated the dozen people he became, just like he hated me. Every day was a screaming match and every night was a promise we were through. That one of us was going to leave. Then the next day started and we were back to normal, ‘cause we both had a mortgage to pay and neither of us wanted to fill out the paperwork. Was like some fucked up rendition of Groundhog Day1.

       Except the kiss never happened and he finally got fed up with it all. Put his hands on me and called me foul names, then left with his car and the clothes on his back. And I lost my shit, I guess. More than usual. Worse than usual. I tore up the house— my house, the house I’d worked thirty years for! Scared my son half to death when he came by, screamed bloody murder at him like he was a kid again. He said, ‘Please just calm down. He’ll come back. He’s going to come back.’

       He tried to convince me to check into a ward, you know. Said I wasn’t handling this well enough to be alone, that he was worried I’d do something drastic. I threatened to call the cops on him if he didn’t get the hell off my property. So he left, and I was alone again, and everything got worse.

       We went hunting a lot when we were younger. Had a bunch of old rifles in the basement that never got collected, and there was nothing better for me to do so I cleaned and polished one. Fired a round through the window just to make sure it worked. Then I waited and pretended I was young again.

       One of them came back. Not sure who— they look so similar, you know. It’s horrible. And I’m not sure how long it took, either. Everything was so blurry. He called out for me, but I’d made up my mind hours ago that he’d have to come to me. And when he did I…2

Why did you do it?

       I was scared of him leaving again. I was scared of losing that part of me and knowing he’d still be out there and I’d still be stuck3.

Do you regret what happened?

       I don’t know. Regret won’t change anything. He’s in the ground and I’m in here. I wish I could say sorry. I wish anyone would believe I meant it.

       I wish I had at least gone to the ward. Wouldn’t have been pretty, but at least they could’ve picked up the pieces instead of me having to figure out what happened three days into custody. Once I realized, I couldn’t stop crying. Must’ve apologized a million times. They tried to get a plea deal going, to get me into a facility4 instead of behind bars, but by the time everything settled I wasn’t convincing enough to be worth that.

Why did you come here?

       I was overflow5— I spent eight years being shuffled through prisons before they gave up on trying to find a place for me. I was good, you know. Never got into fights, stayed out of gangs, always listened to guards even when they were being cruel. But ‘good’ doesn’t mean anything when you are what I am. And the station always had vacancies, so they packed and shipped me off before I knew what was going on.

       Was my first time leaving the country, actually. The ocean was pretty.


       // End INTERVIEW ONE   



// INTERVIEW TWO - Johannes Nuzaire  

Are you guilty?

       I’m not. Fought tooth and nail to prove I’m not, and failed spectacularly. I still say I’m innocent, but nobody believes me. Do you believe me? Would you believe me if I said I’m a good man, ma’am? I went to church, I raised my girls well, I never did drugs and hardly ever drank! My record’s clean as it can be. It isn’t right that I’ll be spending the rest of my life like this. I try to tell myself it’s His plan, but…

       Mark down ‘yes’, ma’am. Make it easy on yourself. I’m already a dead man.

Tell me what happened.

       I was set up, is what happened. Or maybe there was something in the water that made everyone act like fools. Or maybe I have an evil twin who did everything under my name! Wouldn't that be something?

       I do electrical work. I think that’s why they wanted me here, now that I think about it, but that’s besides the point. A buddy of mine called me up one day because his whole store needed a rewiring— well, it’s more specific than that. Knot and tube remediation. But I don’t want to bog you down with the details, ma’am. It’s boring stuff.

       My buddy ran a corner store, one of those small bodegas everyone downtown loves. The building it was in was an old thing, with internals that were on her last legs after. So I took me and my boys out, and we did all we could to patch it up. Got about halfway through on the first day, then stopped and said we’d be back tomorrow.

       But I got pulled over on my way home by a nice young man. He asked my name, then asked me to step out of my car and slapped a pair of cuffs on me. I didn’t struggle— I’m not that stupid. We made small talk while he drove me down, then he told me he was shocked how put together I was, considering I murdered a girl in the city.

       There was no ‘tomorrow’ for me. I was fast tracked from the county jail to federal prison. They didn’t have any evidence, can you believe it? Just a few witnesses6. She was young and pretty. I never had a chance.

       It’s a damn shame. I hope the others finished everything.

Why did you do it?

       I didn’t. But reality means nothing against crocodile tears and birds parroting whatever the flock says.

Do you regret what happened?

       I ask myself a lot: what’s the point of anything, if it can get ripped away so easily by people who won’t even take the time to make sure you deserve it7? You spend your whole life staying in a neat little box because they said you won’t get hurt if you stay put, and then it turns out even that’s not enough. What a joke.

       If I had known back then that I’d be dragged through the dirt and thrown in the trash, I would’ve done everything I was sentenced for and more. Every day I pray, Oh God, give me a second chance. Let me make them all sorry for putting me through everything they did.

Why did you come here?

       I was more than qualified. And it came with the promise of a reduced sentence8— which, when you’re where I am, is the perfect carrot on a stick. It wasn’t easy, oh no. They put me through a whole bunch of tests, which makes sense considering it’s a, uh, government-y research place. But Lord Almighty, it was excessive. A physical, half a dozen blood and hormone screenings, dredging up medical records I didn’t even know existed— and the placement exams! What a headache.

       And yeah, the station is a slab of concrete and the work is nightmare fuel. But working here means I’ll be rotting for a decade instead of a lifetime, so I’d say it's worth it.

Did you deserve it?

       No, ma’am. I might be the only one in this hellhole who’s well and truly free of sin9.

       // End INTERVIEW TWO   



// INTERVIEW THREE - Dijon Giles  

Are you guilty?

       As in, ‘did I do all that’? Yeah. You saw the case, right? It was pretty open and shut10.

Tell me what happened.

       I wrote things down for a reason11. What else is there to say?

Why did you do it?

       I don’t know. Maybe pleasure? I’ve always been a sick fuck. Having that power over someone— real power, I mean— is, um, nice. Not for whoever’s under the knife, obviously, but for me. It feels good. For a bit, then it gets stale and you have to pawn it off and clean up and regret starts settling in. It’s thick, you know. Like breathing through a wet towel. Makes the world all syrupy. But the initial rush is nice. I tried a lot of hard shit to see if I could recreate the feeling. Nothing ever worked.

Do you regret what happened?

       I regret getting caught. Over a speeding ticket, can you believe it?

Why did you come here?

       I thought it would kill me. Then it turned out I liked the work and could tolerate the people. Which shocked me. I was never a people person. Just looking at others makes me feel like hurling. But everyone here is alright. Even the pigs in armor aren’t so bad if you’re good. Sometimes we bicker over who’s winning football— not that any of us actually know, but we can guess. Not the fucking Cardinals12, that’s for sure.

       Hey, did you know there’s a graveyard here? Not for the doctors, if there’s a body left behind they get a med-evac during summer. But for us and the bloodbags. Must be packed by now.

Did you deserve it?

       What’s ‘it’? When and where does ‘it’ begin? There are layers to this, you can’t— you can’t pretend like the preamble doesn’t exist. Did I deserve it? You tell me.

       Did I deserve getting handed off between families like a cheap heirloom nobody wanted? Did I deserve getting beaten, the hands on me every fucking day— did I deserve to have my head held underwater until the world went dark? Did I deserve every bruise and burn and cut and visit to the ER, the doctors, the social workers— who did nothing, by the way. They saw everything and did nothing. Did I deserve it? Did I?

       Sometimes I think, maybe I was destined for this. Destined to be a sick, irredeemable fuck. No amount of struggle would make me better, and God, I struggled. I suffered. I tried. But some people just aren’t meant to be people13. And that makes every wrong committed against them, against me, a right, because in the end I was worse than all of them combined. That’s how it feels. That’s how I feel.

       But even that isn’t genuine, is it? All I’m doing is appealing to your sympathy. Preying on your better nature. Pretending to be human— a real human, with feelings and dreams and fears— pretending not to be this… this fucking thing hiding under skin and meat. You’ve seen it before, I bet. Killers breaking down in confession, offenders breaking down in court. That isn’t real. They’re lying. Like I am. Like everyone else in this station, because they’re upset they got caught. There are no people here, miss. Just monsters and monsters in denial14. Don’t cry for us.

       Sometimes I think to myself, if I move and talk and walk like a person should…if I lie to myself long enough, maybe one day I’ll finally feel correct. Maybe I’ll feel real. Maybe any of this will feel real. Maybe everything I did will finally click, and I’ll be so distraught I’ll walk myself off the nearest cliff.

       It’s a trick, don’t you get it? Is it working? I hope not. I hope you’re not that stupid.

       I deserved it all, miss. I deserved worse. They should have shot me in the head and left me to rot in the woods. At least if I were worm food I’d be useful.

       // End INTERVIEW THREE   
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