THE DEUCE CHRONICLES

The day had me smiling because I learned that I'm back in college. A yearlong battle with screwed up paperwork that I'm finally claiming victory over. Joyous. Check. Happy. Hell yeah...until I came out for the evening recreation.

I'm relaxing with my friends in the day room, discussing Titans. A DC Universe television series. We had it on our movie channel. Two seasons worth. Zero commercials, and having an escape from the day-to-day grind of mass incarceration. Now I'm convincing my friends that this series was awesome, being that I watched the first season on TNT a few years ago. So, they assured me they would watch it when we locked down for the night.

Still smiling, I hopped up from my chair to check my Jpay account, hoping for an email from someone in the free world. Lucky me, I had two. I read them, then sent out multiple replies. Once done, I searched for the Carter VI album. Lil' Wayne performed a song I heard on the BET Awards I fell in love with it. I found it and placed it in my cart. I logged off, then headed for the middle table.

Twin was sitting there painting an owl he made from toilet tissue wrapped around a soda bottle. I'm admiring it. He made feathers from tissue that...my friend had enormous talent. That's when I got on him about why he hadn't started working on my cover art for my Marvel novel I wrote. He and I began a back-and-forth over my being meticulous in the details of what I desired, which he hated. Hey, he was the greatest artist I ever met in prison, so pushing him to create a masterpiece was always necessary. Especially when I knew it would help bring attention to the forthcoming release of my latest novel. As he rolled his eyes over my response, a loud commotion grabbed my attention on the top tier.

I'm stationed in the center of the day room. The metal staircase resided behind me, rising maybe twelve feet to the top tier. Two cells were possibly three feet from the staircase, and that's where I found this black man scrambling out of his cell...on his hands and his feet. He was screaming, "They're going to kill me!" I'm thinking he was being jumped by a few men, but nobody was there. Nobody.

His frantic black eyes were staring at the cell as he staggered to his feet...inches from the lip of the top step. In his inebriated state, he dragged his headphones--which were tangled around his leg--with him. He crushed them under his feet, reaching for the staircase's handrail. His left foot missed the top step, causing him to tumble down the stairs. Metal stairs. He didn't cry out. Nor did he do anything to stop his descent. He kept screaming, "They're going to kill me!"

He was high on Deuce. Or K-2 to those uninitiated to prison life. All the men in the unit were staring at him, not fazed by his actions. This was a daily thing to see men losing their minds. One of the older men headed for the booth, where the correction officer watched us. Words were exchanged, explaining that the inebriated man was OK. OK...seriously?

Most times when someone smoked Deuce, it took 15-20 minutes for the smoker to calm down. So, as he screamed that he was going to die, he climbed off the concrete floor, unfazed by falling down all those metal steps. His attention was on getting back into his cell.

I'm watching this insanity in stunned silence. This man was out of his mind. Someone yelled, "Hold him down." I'm like, "You do it." All of us were making a decision to help, or not. The wild part was that he stormed back into his cell, screaming, "I'm not going to die!"

I'm checking out the men in the unit; some were like, "Get him calm, or we're going on lockdown." The inebriated man was Muslim. So, one of his Muslim brothers started for the inebriated man's cell to help him, but that guy's celly ordered him to back off. He did, but a few other Muslims raced to his aid. Me, I said time to call it a night.

I'm housed on the top tier, on the right side, nine cells from where the inebriated man resided. I climbed up those stairs and found that the sixth step was dented from where his head cracked it. I stepped over it, shaking my head as the Muslims were trying to calm him down.

I made it to my cell, then peeked behind me. The man, in his inebriated state, sat between three of his Muslim brothers. They were pacifying him as he threatened them. I crossed the threshold of my cell and focused on my safety.

This was our reality now, and I didn't desire to be a part of it. Especially as I found out later that the last time the inebriated man lost his mind, he jumped off the top tier. He did that craziness, and instead of being placed under a therapist's care, he was still doing the same crap over and over again.

My celly entered the cell, locked eyes with me and just shook our heads. We talked about what we witnessed, then started discussing if the inebriated man had jumped off the tier, how he could've hurt someone. We also talked about how the Muslim community used to beat the crap out of men who disrespected their religion by bringing shame to them. Instead, that inebriated man was in his cell, sleeping off what he smoked...waiting to smoke Deuce again.

This was what I'm in the midst of. What kind of crap is that?