NIGHTMARE

Fifteen tons of truck and payload rolled across the gravel lot at Denham Grain Company, approaching the edge of an embedded concrete slab.

Seventeen-year-old Eric Mansell stood behind the slab, gesturing the truck forward with both hands. When the bay doors on the underside of the truck lined up with the opening centered in the concrete, he signaled the driver to stop.

“You’re good!” Eric shouted over the chugging of the truck’s engine. The rig shut down. Diesel fumes hung in the air.

The driver opened the steel doors on the underside of the grain truck. Three hundred bushels of corn began to pour into an underground storage bin. A great plume of dust billowed out around the truck and escaped into the sky.

Eric wiped grime and sweat from his face with his sleeve. It was hot today. He looked around while he waited on the grain transfer. From where he stood, he could see the row of homes on the next block over. Half were trailers, one strewn with children’s toys and beer cans. The rest were older houses in decline. A burly Rottweiler was chained in one side yard.

As Eric watched, the Rot’s head popped up. It bolted to the end of its chain as an old Ford Taurus pulled up in front of the house next door.

She’s home, Eric thought. He watched her enter the house with a stack of books and papers, the screen door slapping shut behind her.

One minute, Eric Mansell stood leaning on a synthetic broom on a dusty grain lot. The next, he was gone, headed for an encounter with the owner of that car. His job was forgotten. No one called after him.

Eric walked across the street, and up to the front door of the white clapboard house. Without knocking or calling out, he let himself into a tiny living room furnished from second-hand stores. The room was clean, with a few feminine touches—doily and flowers on the coffee table, knickknack shelves, a fishbowl on the television….

She was already in the shower—he could hear it running. A contented grin settled onto his face.

Eric unstrung his boots and slid them off, peeling out of his socks and shirt as well. He shucked out of his jeans and left them lying with his underwear on the floor. His face, neck, and hands were dark with the filth of his autumn occupation; the rest of him was pale and soft, not very hairy.

He walked past a bedroom door and into a pink and steamy bathroom. A robe lay across the laundry hamper. A curtain encircled the tub.

He pulled the curtain back. His high school math teacher stood at the far end of the tub, glistening and clean, a bar of soap in her hand. Her hair was down around her shoulders, frothy lather all over her ample chest and sleek nude body.

“Eric…” she said.

Eric climbed in under the hot spray while Miss Learson watched him, absently holding the bar of soap.

She reached for him with a sudsy hand. Eric moaned as her fingers curled around—

Wham!

Wham…WHAM!

The first jarring blow to the small of his back forced the erotic dream from Eric’s mind, and the breath from his lungs. The second and third blows launched him into the air and sent him plummeting downward, a tangle of confusion and cold sheets. Stale air whizzed around him before he hit the concrete floor.

His left hip met the floor with a muffled crack. His head bounced once. The thin upper bunk mattress landed on top of him.

There was no time to recover. Even as he reached to grasp his aching head, the mattress was thrown off and he was picked up by the collar of his nightshirt.

Eric weighed less than some of the dumbbells Frank McWilliams curled daily in the prison weight room. He was pulled roughly to his feet, then a little higher, so he had to rise up on his toes to keep contact with the floor. Face-to-face with McWilliams, he shrank back from the big red-rimmed eyes and snarling lip. His bladder forgot itself just long enough for a trickle to run down his leg.

McWilliams spoke directly into his young cellmate’s face: “Fish, I told you about that damn moaning. One more time, and you’ll be ridin’ a bag out of here, you understand me?”

The larger inmate didn’t wait for a response. He released Eric with a backwards shove. Eric’s feet tangled in his thin green blanket and he fell back, striking his head on the stainless-steel toilet, which tolled like a bell. McWilliams turned away and was back in his cot before the reverberations ended.

Eric stayed still for a long time, lacking the courage to replace his bedding and climb back into his cot. When the other inmate’s breathing steadied, he rolled over onto his mattress and wrapped up in his bedding right there on the floor. He pulled his blanket over his head and shut out the dank reality his life had become. The long night resumed where it had left off.

Once the pain subsided, Eric tried to reenter his favorite dream, but it was no use; the raven-haired beauty had fled—frightened off by the brutish McWilliams. Eric only floundered in the darkness looking for her.

Thus, ended Eric Mansell’s third day at Sannier State Correctional Facility.