On his first night in prison Gary Devlin woke to find his cellmate having sex with him. “Shh, shh,” hushed the man who hadn’t said two words to him since he’d arrived. He was stroking the side of his face as he eased his penis in. Gary closed his eyes tight and clenched his teeth. “Shh.”
But it was nothing Gary hadn’t tasted before. He lay very still: it didn’t hurt so much and was kind of enjoyable the less he moved. He’d found that out a long time before. The man finished and returned to his top bunk. Gentle snoring promptly filled the air.
“What’s your name?” Gary asked him the next morning, peering over the bed railing.
“Mark,” his new lover replied. He was reading and looked at Gary casually.
“Do you have diseases?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“I didn’t mind. Last night, I mean.”
Mark grunted. “Good for you.”
Mark returned to him again that night, but Gary was waiting. He took Mark in his hand and kissed him on the mouth. Mark pushed him away. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Let me please you. I don’t need to be on my stomach.”
“I don’t need your fucking kisses. You think I’m some kind of fag?”
“I just thought -”
Mark slapped him in the side of the head. “Well don’t fucking think, right? Keep your mouth shut and stay on your fucking stomach.”
Gary did as he was told. Gary had always done as he was told. It made life easier. And it was handy, being a bitch. It meant protection. Mark was a big guy and people didn’t fuck with him. By proxy, Gary found that he was safe too. All he had to do each night was wait, and stay very still until Mark was finished. And after a while, to stop Mark from getting bored with him, he let him start using his mouth. Gary knew how to cater to specific tastes. Knew how to keep his man interested. It wasn’t like he’d never gotten down on his knees in a back alley before, or wasted a few hours on a grotty mattress in some rundown slum. Whatever it took just to get by. The comfort of another didn’t hurt much either. To be close to someone else, to feel their warmth and companionship, and for a short while feel as though someone actually cared for you.
“What are you in for?” Gary asked Mark one day. The two were sat on Gary’s bunk, Mark with his legs across Gary’s lap.
“Assault. Attempted murder.”
“Yeah? How bad did you beat him?”
“She’s in a wheelchair now.”
“Oh. Who was she?”
“Ex-wife.”
“She have it coming?”
“They always do. What’d you do?”
Gary hesitated. He shrugged. “Drugs.”
It wasn’t a total lie: drugs had been involved. Kind of. They would have been if the motherfucker had paid like he said he would. You can’t just walk away from a blowjob with a casual chuckle like that, wave it off like a promise didn’t mean anything. Shit, what did he expect walking away when there was all that junk lying around; he thought Gary wouldn’t grab one of those lead pipes and come after him? More fool him.
Gary moved the legs from his lap and stretched himself out across Mark’s stomach, the side of his face pressed to his chest. He could hear his heart beating. “What are you thinking about?” Gary asked.
“Pussy,” Mark replied.
Mark was a stoic man. He never smiled, never showed any kind of emotion in his face. It was always so very still. He kept his dark hair shaved short, in the style of a man who doesn’t care for style as opposed to one stating any kind of gang affiliation. There was an economy in his words and usually he rarely spoke unless spoken to. Gary sometimes wished, in the moments they were lying together as they were then, that Mark would raise a hand and stroke the side of his face, the way he had done that first night they’d been together.
In his head, while he worked in the kitchen, Gary thought of things he could say to Mark, to let him know how he felt without seeming overly sentimental. He imagined that Mark wouldn’t care for too much emotion. His response would more than likely consist of a grunt.
I can’t believe I had to come all the way to prison just to meet someone like you. That was his favourite, but he never did say it.
“I’m gonna get my hair cut,” Gary said one day. Mark was on his bunk, reading. He raised one eyebrow and moved his eyes in Gary’s direction to show that he was paying attention, but the book remained hovering where it was a few inches from his face to show that once he’d said all he’d have to say then he would promptly return to reading. “Short, I think,” Gary went on. “Like yours.”
“Suit yourself,” Mark said. His eyes returned to the book.
They’d been together a few months when the sex suddenly stopped. There’d been a few nights here and there when, after the lights went off, nothing happened, but it was rare and usually just a one time thing. The next night Mark would step down like he always did and they’d get to it. Gary was never allowed to instigate the act; the look Mark had shot him the one time he’d tried had been murderous.
But this time it stopped completely. Nothing one night, then nothing the next, either. Or the one after. Gary lay there, waiting, sometimes for hours on end, staring up at the underside of Mark’s mattress, freezing up with an expectant gasp whenever there was movement, but it would just be a turn while Mark slept, followed up by a low snore.
“What’s wrong?” Gary asked. “How come we’re not having sex anymore?”
Mark shrugged. He was reading again. All he ever fucking did was read. Prying a conversation from him was like trying to open a tin without any tools.
“Will you talk to me?” Gary prompted, feeling his temper rising at the way he felt mistreated and ignored. “Put that fucking book down and talk to me -” He snatched the book out of Mark’s hands and that murderous look was in those brown eyes again. Mark lashed out, grabbing Gary by the throat and dragging him in close, banging his ribs against the railing.
“I don’t fucking feel like it,” he hissed, eyes aflame, spittle flying from his lips and landing on Gary’s face and in his eyes. He shoved him away and Gary fell. “Now give me my fucking book back.”
There was someone else. Had to be. Gary followed Mark from afar, watched his every action. He didn’t speak to anyone or associate with groups. He went to work in the library, he took the books round. He sat alone when he ate, now that he had banished Gary. Sometimes he went to the chapel and Gary watched the door, but he never stayed in there for very long. Nothing had really changed for him, but still Gary could not shake the feeling that he had found someone else. Someone younger, perhaps? He chastised himself, knowing the haircut had been a mistake.
“You don’t love me, do you?” Gary asked one night, the lights off.
Mark was on his side, his back turned. He rolled over and raised an eyebrow. He snorted. “Love you? When did I ever say I loved you?”
So Gary stopped expecting a visit after the lights went out, but he wasn’t done. He wasn’t going to be jilted so easily. Mark was a heavy sleeper and never felt the bed sheets being tied tightly round his wrists and ankles, pinning him to the bed frame. He didn’t wake up until Gary was forcing the gag into his mouth. He struggled and made muffled cries. Thrashed on the bed but didn’t so much as loosen the binds. Those struggles increased when Gary revealed the razor blade. Those brown eyes popped in that skull just a little wider.
Gary stuck the blade into the flesh, into Mark’s wrists, first the right then the left. He cut a jagged, hesitant line, from the base of the palm to the inside of the elbow. Hesitant, like a real suicide. The blood arced upwards and Gary was careful not to get any on himself.
“Shh,” he hushed, stroking Mark’s head like a mother caring for an ailing child. “Shh…”
Gary watched until those eyes had closed, until that body he knew so intimately had stopped struggling. He undid the binds and the gag, hid them to one side, washed the light spattering of blood from his hands. Then, stepping up to the wall, he gripped the back of his head in both hands and butted so hard the world went spinning, hard enough to drop him to his knees, the tickling feel of blood descending down his nose. He curled up on the floor and went to sleep.
The report stated that Mark had attacked Gary, knocked him unconscious so that no one would be able to prevent him from his suicide. Gary had done his best to look confused through the questioning. “I don’t know why he did it. We hardly spoke, but he never struck me as the type to kill himself. He always seemed, I dunno…hard, if you understand me.”
Gary didn’t have the cell to himself for long. A new boy joined him a couple of days later, some real fresh meat, the kid’s first time. Gary smiled down at him from the top bunk as he entered, cat-calls following him in, all doe-eyed and wet behind the ears.
“Hello,” Gary said, smiling.
by 
Paul Heatley
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