Goatie 26

The screech of the prison panic alarm had me going. The sound of running feet. Hardened souls flexed their muscles. I hid under the sheets until they passed, held my breath and waited for possible reverse gear. It was probably nothing. A fight. A casual stabbing. Some vulnerable bastard being taken advantage of. Or some name being disrespected; maybe somebody was looking at him the wrong way. Harry the Hatchet, before he did a jumper, was big on punching first. Never asking questions last, because that was too long and complicated. Maybe the screws just found a mobile phone. They loved finding mobile phones like a dog loves finding a smelly old bone. It made the chitter-chatter of worker bees so much better. Gave their lives meaning. Cut off and not being involved in all the drama made the silence stronger and stretched into solace. But I knew it was worse, much worse than that. Prisoners all over the prison were setting themselves alight. Proclaiming: ‘I believe in the coming apocalypse’.

Tadpole came in to check on me, but he was really hiding from the others. His voice has softened since I started the hunger strike. I was also off my meds. The strangest thing was the goat man no longer sat on my chest. No longer appears whispering in my dreams. Perhaps he was waiting for me to die. Fat chance.

Droopy Eyes was on holiday. Tadpole told me her name was Crystal. For some reason we both found that funny. He asked me to call him ‘Neil’. Sat beside my bed with a book on his lap. Sometimes dozed off, before jerking away. His nerves were almost as frazzled as mine. I wouldn’t tell. I might have been a cunt, but I wasn’t a grass.

Neil told me a low voice his mum was epileptic, and he hated and loved her at the same time. Hated her for being different.

Glancing at him, I replied, ‘I hated my ma, for marrying my da, but it was nothin personal.’  

‘It was personal,’ he said. ‘Feeding the ducks, my mum fell into the water and wondered why her jacket, blouse and shoes were wet. Why I was squealing so much people came from all over to help. We’d a tribe of mothers around us. And their gawking children. Some of the kids I went to school with. I hoped she’d died. “I’m fine. Fine…Fine…” brushing herself down as if wetness was breadcrumbs. Till the end of her life, she was “Fine”.’

‘I’m sorry tae here that,’ I said. ‘Gossip dies. People forget. Naebody really gi’es a fuck. But I take it there’s a moral tae this story.’

He scratched underneath his chin, where’d had a rash. His dark eyes hardened. ‘The moral of the story is you should take your medication and eat something. Stop pissing your life away feeling sorry for yourself. Prisoners are murdering themselves the hard way. And it’s something to do with you. Even if it isn’t, it’s too late.’

‘I don’t feel sorry for mysel. I feel sorry for yeh. A judge put me in here. Yeh come o yer ain accord.’ I sniffed. ‘Too late for whit?

‘Too late to stop it. They’ve split themselves into factions. Goat men and non-goat men. Believers and non-believers. If they send you back to the block—they’ll murder you.’

‘Why would they dae that?’

‘Take your medication and shut up, or you’ll find out. Maybe we’ll get some peace.’

‘I’ve no been takin my meds and I feel fine.’

He sighed. ‘You’re no fine. You’ve been taking fits, small ones. I’ve seen about a dozen in the past week. They don’t get the same press as the grand mal. But petite mal are just as dangerous. You lose yourself like my mum in the duck pond.’

‘Quack,’ I retorted and smiled.

‘It’s no laughing matter. Generalised or partial? You lose your identity. You become a thing to be feared and misunderstood. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, figured it out. Myshkin’s thoughts are broken after an episode. He’s outside time and understanding.’

‘I’ve no got a clue whit yer talkin about,’ I admitted.  

‘Huffing through his nose, he tried to explain. ‘I used to be obsessed with Ian Curtis. You know, Joy Division.’

I tried to think, but all I could conjure was a skanky guy with black hair.

‘Joy Division was, of course, a masterpiece of Nazi propaganda. Men had needs. Girls were prostituted and raped in concentration camps because men needed to be rewarded for killing by being given access to women’s bodies. Even some inmates, if they worked hard enough, got a free ride.’ A crooked grin on his face at his pun.  

My bum was sore. I shifted up the bed to try and relieve the pain. ‘I didnae know that,’ I admitted.

He shifted in his chair and the book he was reading fell onto the floor. I’d a quick dekko of the title. Something to do with Babi Yar. He checked his page and slanted a corner before putting it beside the chair leg. ‘That’s how Curtis and Joy Division had a lot of skinhead followers. But I wasn’t following him because I was a skinhead. I was following him because if I figured him out. Figured his music out. I’d cure my mum.’

‘Did yeh?’

‘No,’ he barked. ‘Daft really. Spikes. That’s what they were. Like the non-rhythmic dancing of Curtis that mimicked grand-mal seizures. That’s what killed him.’

I’d a daft notion. ‘I thought he hung himself?

He shook his head. ‘That as well. But he’d this idea, like you, if he didn’t take his medication he’d be normal. He’d be cured. When, in fact, it just made him more fucked up. Depressed or manic. Highs in which the music poured out of him and he couldn’t get it down quick enough. The notion that he wasn’t playing the music, but it was playing him. Coming from a higher realm. And it had a short wick. Bit like you, with your goatman?’

‘Yeh’ve got a point,’ I admitted. ‘But I don’t really know whit it is.’

He jumped when the panic alarm went off. ‘I better go and answer that,’ he said. But made no motion to rush away. ‘Probably another candler.’

‘Whit’d yeh mean by candle?’

‘Goat men that set themselves on fire.’

‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘My hunger strike is small change next to those boys.’

He squinted at me. ‘I’ll get you something to eat. Something small to start with like soup.’

‘OK,’ I said.