WHY DID IT HAVE TO COME THIS?
Fiction by Timothy J. Muise
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All bets are off when you use hard drugs. Things you thought were never possible, depravities against your nature, come flying into the picture faster than you can believe. Addiction always leads to tragedy on some level or another. The Big Man's addiction finally led him to state prison after a deep and epic tragedy. A bitter poison pill which seemed a nightmare for a while.
The drugs clear from the mind and you have to make a decision. Will you spiral down into the "prisoner" life making the choice to be a prisoner, or will you choose hope seeking to improve your life and leave the past behind. Will it be possible to atone for your sins? The strong man chooses the path to redemption.
Seeking education and a college degree is not easy in prison. The system cares little about that. Then you bump into some real peckerwood guard who never got to eat lunch in high school because his lunch money was stolen from him each and everyday. He places the face of those youthful abusers on you and his hatred manifests in petty control efforts. One day this full blown peckerwood pokes the wrong dog: he picks the one who will hold the anger and let it build. The con makes his mind up, his is not going to let it go, and he starts to formulate the evil in his mind.
Guards vist abuse on a daily basis but many times forget that some of these prisoners have release dates. Some have vast weapons experience on the street and also are quite adept at sneaking around: there former lifestyles required that. Now this fool who grew up in one of these backwoods towns where no real dangerous sorts roamed the streets knows that he can pick on prisoners as all he has to do is hit the "panic button" he keeps close to his hand at all times and thirty other oxygen wasting guards will come to his rescue. In his real life he has never won a fight, in fact he has run from any such physical confrontation because he is the true definition of a coward. In prison other guards have literally slapped him in the face, in front of others, and he curled up like a bitch and dry-snitched on the other guard. The guard was not surprised as he know that the coward was sent to this prison from another as he snitched on guards there: his true character fully revealed.
The anger builds in the prisoners heart. He listens to conversations and gathers intelligence: he learns secrets and details well. His release date approaches and he has forgeone all thoughts of success: all he sees is red. His friend, an old man who will never see the streets again, tells im about the old Mossberg 500 shotgun he has hidden in a shed. The gun holds 8 regular 12 gauge shells in the tube and 6, 3 inch magnum shells. With one in teh chamber this gun will hold 7 magnum shells: it is a true monster. With the gun is a box of 5, 3 inch buckshot shells. These are the ones with the 15-30 caliber balls inside. Each time you pull the trigger 15 large lead balls leave the barrel at 2950 feet per second! It is a devastating blase. Usually when you fire buckshot you use what is known as "full" choke on the gun barrel: it keep the shot pattern tight. This Mossberg 500 has a "slug" barrel which is choked in improved cylinder style. What that means is that the blast pattern will expand fast. Our prisoner grew up in a gun family and is a true weapons expert. He trained in shooting on the run, on the incline and decline, rapid fire and with both hands. They did all this for fun as young men but the training has stayed with him.
He leaves the prison through the front door, wrapped up, and speaks to no one. He greets his family and spends some quality time with them. He stays at his girl's house for two nights, visits his grown children, and eats several good meals. He does all these things with a heavy heart as he knows where he is really headed: to the root of his anger. In Lowell he picks up 3 bags of heroin. It has been years since he used but he still remembers well the devil's pleasure. He snorts one bag up his nose and in ten minutes he is a different man, ready to rock. He drives to the wooded area behind his friends shed and walks to the structure. Just like he was told the old Mossberg is there, covered with gun lube, no worse for wear. A quick cleaning and oiling and the pump action works like new. The shells slide into the tube easily.
The research and careful listening pays off. He finds this fool right where he knew he would be. When this backwoods coward sees or drug fueled maniac (he has slowly used all of the heroin) you can read the fear in his eyes like a billboard. The gun roars loud and hits this fool right in the mid-section. It severs his penis and testicles cleanly taking with it a large section of his lower abdomen and stomach. The fool lives with this wound for about four minutes: its pretty unbelievable. I wonder if he thought of the abuse he rendered: of his wise cracking comments? Did he wish he could have done things differently? Did he wonder "Why did it have to come to this?"
Violence is NEVER called for, but it is a reality of our society. Anger causes men to fly planes into skyscrapers killing innocents. It created the Holocaust and African genocides. We seem not to learn that only love and compassion can overcome this trait of the devil. Our prisoner did not stop with killing the fool: he could not. He went on to cause more misery in the lives of innocents for several more days. He was finally shot dead by a drug dealer in the Lower East Side of Manhattan which he was attempting to rob. The family of the fool was destroyed with grief, but they knew he was a fool and figured something stupid would eventually happen, not this though. The only good thing that came out of the killing was that other guards thought twice before they abused a prisoner: before they acted as fake tough guys. They had a hard time sleeping for quite a while as they wondered if that old Mossberg might be waiting to roar at them. Even after our man was caught in New York they had nightmares. Maybe they might just do their jobs now.
The old man tells the young black gang banger that he has an old Winchester Model 70 bolt action rifle in 30-06 hidden in the cellar of his apartment. It has a Bushnell 3 to 9 adjustable scope on it and is accurate out to 1000 yards. The young angry man plots his future. He sees red. Why did it have to come to this?

We have to work to change the guard culture and enforce the rehabilitative mandate here in Massachusetts. To get involved in this effort please contact:

Bread & Water
c/o Karen Schulman
PO Box 84
Hopedale, MA 01747