The Life of a Dead Man - Chapter 1: "I Am"

“My name is Sam Paige.”

I peer into the grimy pocket size mirror we’re given that hangs crookedly on the wall, and even after thirteen years I still hardly recognise the guy that stares back. My face is pale due to lack of sunlight; one hour a day to bask in the sun’s rays isn’t really long enough to maintain that perfect bronze tone.

“My name is not SK976.”

I’m gaunt through a lack of nutrition and proper meals; you just can’t get the service round here these days. I stroke the coarse dark hair sprouting through on my face, which I always let grow for a while to see how it looks this time, and I remind myself that today I’ll get rid of it, and stop kidding myself that it looks good. Bye-bye mature adult man look.

“I am not a combination of numbers and letters.”

I lift the mirror off the wall so I can look at the rest of my body; a simple task such as this can become the toughest of jobs for a guy in prison, especially when the mirror is small enough to fit in your pocket. I lift up my shirt which is a couple sizes too big for me now - like I said proper meals are a rarity in this place – and I turn my attention towards my now bony shape by angling the mirror straight at my torso. Thanks to the hour I am given every other day to exercise, I have gained some muscle definition, possibly the only plus of being in here, but the already scarce amount of chest hair I had has lessened even more, which I can only put down to the stress of being in here.

 “I am a person.”

On top of everything else I’ve also gained an unhealthy amount of extra wrinkles over the years, more so than if I wasn’t cooped up in here. The stress of this place can age a man ten years in the space of twenty four hours. It’s hard and tiring work, picking myself apart in front of the mirror each morning, and I’ve stopped kidding myself that I still look the same as I once did thirteen years ago. I lean in closer and squint at myself through the flecks of dirt: who am I?

“I am Sam Paige, and I am innocent.”

This place can eat away at a man from the inside out; can make you look like the crazy bastards you see on TV whilst you take pity from the comfort of your favourite old armchair at home. It’s the thing I fear the most, above all the violence and the loneliness and the sadness of this place, and even the eventual bitter end. It’s the crazy part that grabs and claws at me, scaring me to death.

I sound crazy, don’t I? But this is my mantra, my personal reminder that I am here for the wrong reasons, and that I was falsely accused of a sick crime I never even committed. These words are essential, a necessity, and I have to repeat them to myself every day, just to help keep what little is left of my sanity intact. I am not SK976. I am a person. I am Sam. You’d be surprised at how many people round here see you as exactly the opposite, rather a bunch of numbers and letters, another little piece in the puzzle that makes up this place – the Arkansas Department of Correction. You’ll find me in the Varner Unit, a separate facility that houses all us poor bastards scheduled to be executed according to state law. I haven’t been given a date yet, for now I’m just playing the waiting game, which after thirteen years has become pretty tedious, and I’m getting tired.  It wasn’t until about 8 years into my sentence that I really started to lose the hope that someone would come and save me. I truly believed that someone somewhere would have the evidence to let me go and that the real killer would be found and we could switch places. Of course my life isn’t a movie and so it never really played out that way, and I’ve come to accept the fact that this is my fate, and to hold on to the hope that someday after I’m gone the truth will out.

 

 

How to be the Perfect Prisoner - Step 1:

·         KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF: You can never be prepared for the kinds of trouble you could land yourself in with other inmates, and trust me; you don’t WANT to be prepared. Keep yourself to yourself; pretty easy to do for guys like me on death row, but for the little amount of social interaction time you may come across, choose it wisely. You definitely don’t want to be getting on the wrong side of anyone around here, or your death sentence could come sooner than you think, and that won’t be down to the official’s decision. On my very first day in this dump I spoke out of line to a passing inmate as I was being escorted to my cell block, something along the lines of “Smile, it could be worse”, and boy did I regret it. Baldy (a nickname I somewhat wisely chose to keep to myself) launched at me and I landed myself with a black eye and a death wish all on my very first day. Thankfully it turned out that the reason I happened to walk past him that morning was because he was being escorted to a neighbouring facility, so I was saved from word getting out about the attack and my name being on everyone’s hit list.

 

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Hey guys! Thanks for reading the first instalment of "The Life of a Dead Man". If you liked the first chapter, please leave a comment letting me know, as I will be posting the second chapter up shortly! Thankyou :)