the Psychopath and the Coat

"Imagine you see a car wreck and you see a mother crying. It is curious to you so you go home and copy it in the mirror. That is a psychopath." 

- Paraphrase from Robert Hare

The day was a dreary drip as the chilly temperatures warmed a bit and the nights snow began to melt. The slush of the snow soaked my worn brown shoes, it sprayed across my retro trench coat, which I always wore.

While I looked ridiculously eccentric, it was nothing in comparison to my companion. He was a tall drink of water, lean and fit. He wore a raincoat which was so long it swept across the plasma of snow, his pants were partially obscured by the coat but the vibrant pink poked through. He was inane in his attire and his magnanimous attitude only added to his foolish manner. His face held an absurd expression which was meant to look like quiet contemplation but looked more like he was eating a "warhead." Long blonde locks swept across his white forehead and his piercing eyes looked expectantly in front of him at the looming structure ahead.

The prison we strode towards was a daunting grey, it gave the air of a building which had housed every kind of heinous wretch. It's omniscient gaze was keen and jabbed through the downcast day in an ominous way.

"You ready lad?" The professor barked in his high pitched grainy voice.

"I think so," I replied hesitantly. New York State Maximum Security Prison was by far one of the most gruesome and dangerous prisons in the nation and the idea of me, a geeky junior in college, entering such a place seemed unthinkable.

We made it to the gates which were the first of three lines in the security labyrinth. We were searched and walked through a metal detector. Both of our jackets were thoroughly inspected and the whole ordeal took ten minutes. We passed the second line of security which was a fence riddled with razor wire. This search took less time and we were on to the third and final line of security in under five minutes. The last line was a solid brick wall. Along the lines of the wall were doors with long bars which were used as entrances. We swaggered in, our educated minds ablazing. The sight that met my eyes was surprisingly boring, my chest which had been puffed out in anticipation for masculine challenges slouched back inwards like a turtle shrinking back into its shell. While the men were rough looking they were obviously medicated. They milled around behind the bars of the weight room. All of them looked like they could rip a human body in half. The only exception was a smaller man who looked like he was a head shorter than I. There was almost a complete lack of tension which would normally accompany a weight room. It felt uncomfortably at ease.

"They are usually docile." The professor said seemingly having read my mind.

"Yeah, it's disconcerting. Why is that?"

"Well a way to reduce violence is by lowering testosterone. A lot of the medications we give them here have the side effect of lowering that fussy hormone." A buzzer sounded and all the men shuffled out of the room back to their cells. Each of them was coupled with an agent who led them back.

"Time for consultations." The professor said strutting past the weight room and towards a barred off room nearby. He opened the door and we entered a white room with two chairs on opposing sides of a metal table. The table was a linoleum grey and reflected its dull reflective light across the wall. The table had an iron bar plateauing across its visage, my guess was that it was used to restrain prisoners. Three pale chairs sat around the table and peered up at us with an expression that spoke of many days of use. As we sat the walls became more bright as the LED lights were mirrored off of the opaque hue of blank. I lost even the comfort of my shadow in the vibrance of the room and thought that I couldn't really blame the inhabitants of the prison for being insane.