12. A Dude Died; His Mom's Probably Sad.

Remember when I told you that some people never leave prison?  Two weeks ago, this statement couldn't have been more true.  I witnessed a convict die in a sallyport.  He was in an ambulance.

It's really difficult to kill a person.  You really have to mean for a person to be dead, especially when you are stabbing him.  I've been stabbed, seen stabbing, and done stabbing.  It's a tough business made more difficult with the limited materials we have available to us here.  Out in the world, you could slice someone up with a fancy Buck knife but still be denied a kill.  The bones and muscle of the human body make for great armor.  While you can make someone look a mess, killing them would only come after a sliced artery or the puncture of a vital organ.  The latter is made difficult by the position of the rib cage, which seems to be the area most often attacked, second only to the back.

Good sense would tell you to attack the softer tissue of the stomach on the sides just under the rib cage, or, if using a thrusting weapon, up and into the armpit.  The reality is that when you get to stabbing good sense goes out the window.  A primeval enthusiasm comes over you and in the frenzy you end up mostly slicing up your target's hands and forearms.  While this would be more than adequate in the world, to leave some body in that state in prison guarantees reprisal.  You wont see it coming and it wont necessarily be the guy you attacked in the first place.

In prison, people will mostly get stabbed because they probably would have won if it had been a fist fight.  Some would argue that there isn't a good reason to stab someone.  I wont say that I agree with this or not, but I will say that the reasons in here are cowardly.

Say you've run your mouth to a guy hoping that would end it - only it doesn't.  Guy now wants to kick the shit out of you and you're rethinking this because you believe that the dude most likely will kick the shit out of you.  You can't say you're sorry, you know you can't.  So you go get that "situation" and while the dude isn't looking, you get to stabbing him.  If you're doing it right, you'll be trying to kill him.  There isn't a reason to be stabbing somebody if this isn't your objective.  You probably wont, though.  Nine times out of ten he'll survive with some sweet scars.  Chicks dig scars.

Every once in a while someone does die.  The ambulance comes in and out of here on a regular basis.  You can hear the siren wailing down 26 Mile Road and then hear it snap off when it enters the parking lot.  I can only guess as to why they do this.  Maybe it's because as soon as they get to the prison it isn't an emergency anymore.

On this particular day I was out on the yard when I heard it coming, screaming it's pretense down the road.  It quieted suddenly and I knew it was for one of us.  I watched it pull around back and stop at the gate to enter into level four.  There's a sallyport there where all the vehicles have to wait for a gate to open, drive in, then wait as the gate closes and the vehicle is searched inside, outside, under, and in the engine compartment.  After 20 minutes they are let through to go pick up the stabbed convict.  They collect him up and the process is reversed in an agonizingly slow manner.  While the guard nonchalantly searches the ambulance, the radio is screaming and the paramedic has a blood bag.  I can see them racing around the ambulance and arguing with the guard.  I then hear the radio, "Never mind, he's gone." and the paramedic stops arguing with the guard.  The guard just finishes his search as if it was a store truck, only instead of produce it's carrying a corpse.  Just some convict.  I'm sure he had a family of some sort, or people who at least vaguely cared about him.

I wasn't sure how to feel.  I have a peculiar view of death.  I don't feel so upset about death anymore.  I used to, but you had to be close to me, really close.  Now, it's just more of a condition.  It's something that makes the living pitied.  Death, to me, is just a thing - a burst of a bubble.  You're here, then you're not.  POP!  I just don't have any feeling for it anymore.  I don't think I really did to begin with.

I just wanted to reflect the point that an alarming number or people are still being stabbed and beaten and even killed in prison.  You'll never hear about it.

I apologize about the last two posts being dark.  I've been in a weird place.  I promise to lighten it up with the next one.

I won that fight, by the way.  By a landslide.  And Dad, I'm working on your addiction question.  Love ya guys. - Ryan