Stories

The End. . . Almost The night began as the countless others have: a dusky evening filled with nothing except anticipated monotony. Then the door to my cage flew open. Several corrections officers rushed in and, seconds later, had removed me from my concrete and steel home. The ensuing search and formal interrogation took far…
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A Broken Promise Prison; the best way to describe it, would be to state it’s an oasis or boredom in a desert of horror’s. However with no apparent horror’s to contend with, I often appreciate the boredom. Our afternoon recreation period is simply a much needed break from the long days of nothingness. It’s during…
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Clams On Ice I’m married, and if this union had taken place in the free world, it would have been just another legal coupling among a sea of others. However, there are people out amongst you, that along with not agreeing that I should be allowed to express myself through writing, are completely against the…
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Another “What If” I was born into a family that at one time fished for their very existence. Therefore, it was only natural that this rite of passage be passed to me at an early age. It required a two dollar bamboo pole, which I grasped onto like a child would cling onto his mother…
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Release the Hounds “Holy Shit”… I don’t gamble, but I would bet my last pack of smokes, the C.O. doing the count the morning of June 6 recited something along these lines — or far worse! As for releasing actual blood hounds to track the escaped convicts, that came much later. The first thing the…
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The Head Trip For the past several years, I have seriously wondered if I had developed some type of mental illness… or worse. I briefly explained this in “Potholes — The Aftermath,” an earlier Zap Tale. To be perfectly honest, I’m still not certain what I have become, despite having my epiphany and being freed…
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Potholes: The Aftermath Since writing Potholes of the Soul or I should say during it, I almost pulled the plug on my typewriter forever. To be honest, from working on my memoir, dealing with the daily struggles of prison life, and my on-going fight to once again be free, I had a serious case of…
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I Should Have Read the Book As a young father of twins my idea of good parenting involved being cool, rather than being the yelling-all-day father I had experienced growing up. Bad idea? Maybe. But as any parent knows, kids don’t come with an instruction book, and you just have to take your best shot.…
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A Zap Tale Night Before Christmas It was the night before Christmas And all through the jail The convicts were locked in And madder then hell Except for the perverts Laid back in their bunks Heads filled with pictures Of cute little chumps When out from the yard There arose such a roar That the…
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Our Little Secret As I briefly referred to in Always The Bad Guy my cast of friends and associates was as diverse as the league of Nations is colorful. One in particular was truly despised by every housewife and girlfriend in the five boroughs, and in all likelihood probably Westchester too. You know the one:…
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