1.10 Ray

About fifty yards long and three yards wide, the corridor is lined with small, barred windows and piss-yellow steel doors on the left side; and, a bank of windows on the right. As I make my way towards the bathroom, I see that most of the cells are cramped single-occupancy hutches like my own.

Halfway down the cellblock, however, there are two cells side-by-side that are three times larger and accommodate four prisoners each locked up behind a chain-linked fence. Judging by the elaborate tattoos that cover their torsos and thighs like exoskeletons, many of the men moldering in these cells are yakuza.

In the first of these larger cells, a middle-aged man sits on a cushion, fanning himself, while another leans up against a wall, his nose in a comic book. (Yes, a comic book.) Two other inmates sit cross-legged before a small fold-up table, engaged in a quietly intense game of Old Maid.

I've read that yakuza consider time spent in jail a “holiday”, and, upon release from prison, can expect to receive a bonus equivalent to what they would have earned had they been out on the streets menacing society. Be that as it may, these guys don't seem to be enjoying their vacation all that much. If anything, they look bored to tears. I imagine that a gaijin walking past their cell must bring, as they say in the joint, a little ray of sunshine into an otherwise cloudy day, because they all perk right up as I shuffle by.

“Gaijin,” they murmur to each other. “Check out the gaijin.”

Approaching the end of the corridor, there is a weather-beaten old man, eyes clouded with cataracts, staring vacantly out of his window. His thin, wizened body looks as if all but the very last drops of life have been wrung out of him. Even so, just as I am passing, this fossil of a man lets out a harrowing scream that gives me such a fright that I'll be damned if I didn't nearly soil myself.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The first installment of No.6 can be found here.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.