Felon’s Ark

Things have been quiet for the last few days. The gremlins have been beating on my walls a lot less, so I’ve been able to get a bit more sleep. I knew the peace wasn’t going to last, and today it finally ended. I awoke this morning to find – of all things – a quarter-inch of water in my cell.

I got lucky. Last night, I did something I haven’t done in several weeks. The crickets in the hallway were so noisy (yeah, we got bug problems), I stuffed a pair of socks in the crack under the door to keep them from coming in. Those two socks saved my books from getting infused with toilet water.

While I was dozing, an inmate decided that he was going to have a little fun. He intentionally overflowed his toilet to flood half the cells in the hole. Don’t ask me why.

A guard woke me up this morning and told me to look at the floor. I gave him a dumbfounded look until I glanced down and – MY THESAURUS! The water had stopped a foot or two away from the books that I kept under my bunk. I’ll never make that mistake again. I snatched up everything I kept on the floor and threw it on my bed. I was saved!

Cleanup took over an hour, and everyone living in this wing of the hole was p****d. There was so much water, we were told to soak it up with our sheets and blankets, and to pass them through the chuckhole when we finished. Orderlies were sent in with squeegees to remove water from the hallway. They weren’t happy, either.

Was there a reprisal for the offending inmate? You better believe it. Cops took pictures of the waterlogged hallway before they ordered the flooder to cuff up. They wanted to take him to the disciplinary side of the hole.

The crazy thing was, the flooder REFUSED to be handcuffed. The police dropped the nice guy approach and sent in FOUR OFFICERS WITH RIOT GEAR to handcuff him.

They took him down, and it wasn’t gentle, by the sound of his cries. Two cops recorded the whole scene with video cameras. I would have, too. It was pretty entertaining.

Bottom Line: Know the cops’ threshold of tolerance. If you cross the line, THEY WILL DESTROY YOU.