The Cellmate

The young man sitting in the jail cell awoke with a start. He’d fallen asleep sitting up, and while he was out the guards had brought a new man to the cell. Tray McNair sized up the guy sitting perfectly still on the bench directly across from him. He was wearing a black hoodie drooped over his head, but Tray could make out the gaunt, pale face of a man in his fifties, a glint of light reflecting off of shadow-hidden eyes that seemed locked on him in an unsettling way.

“S’up?” asked Tray in as casual and confident a voice as he could muster. The man didn’t respond, and continued staring. After numerous arrests for petty crimes, Tray understood the unwritten jailhouse rules, and he also knew that sometimes the quietest guys were the most volatile. “Yo, you don’t want to talk that’s fine, but stop staring at me, man.”

The man continued to stare, and Tray felt a physical chill run up and down his spine. Trying not to show how nervous he really was, he got up and went to the cell door, calling out to no one in particular.

“Yo, this dude here is crazy. Put this crackhead in another cell. You hearing me?”

“Shut up, Tray,” came a disembodied voice from down the hallway. “No one wants to hear your bullshit.”

Shaking his head, Tray sat back down and tried to ignore his cellmate, but the stare was too threatening, too much of a challenge to let go. Tray stood back up.

“Listen, man. Either you stop staring at me…”

Voices came out of the darkness. “Are you hurt?” “Can’t see no blood or bruising.” “Tray, can you hear me?”

As he regained his vision, Tray saw three guards with concerned expressions hovering over him. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. I came down here for the hourly check and you were lying passed out on the floor.”

“Where’s the freak?” asked Tray as he got up to a sitting position.

“Who?”

“The old white dude with the hoodie.”

“We haven’t put anyone else in your cell since you got here.”

It was then that Tray’s fingers touched the two clumps of dried blood on his neck, right over his jugular vein.