By Maxwell Radwin

The new inmate coming in has been accused of holding up a family outside of a food market and, for reasons unknown, shooting at two others with a revolver. From the looks of it, he has just finished being interrogated and processed, a case number entered into the system. The ink is still wet on his fingertips. His wrists are swollen where they were tied. At the front of the cell, he shouts about an arraignment, a hearing, jury selection, whatever comes next. He doesn’t know. No one has explained it to him. I’m innocent, he says, turning to the other men in the cell, I know everyone must say that but in my case it’s true. I’m innocent. I want to leave. When can I leave? None of them meet his eye. A few grunt and nod, if only to quiet him down. They turn over in the cots they’ve piled onto. In the corner, they stand in bunches. They’re lined up shoulder to shoulder in tight rows, trying to fit, trying not to trample each other. It’s worse than he imagined, worse than it’s ever been described to him, and he starts rattling the bars on the cell door. Someone tell me how long they’re going to leave me in here. This is a mistake and I’m tired and I asked for a phone call. I asked for an attorney and a glass of water. I’m dehydrated. We all need doctors, he says, coughing. Surely they can’t withhold doctors if people are sick in here. He squints through the light to get a better look at their faces—bruised, tired, tattooed. So pressed for space are some that their foreheads touch, their cheeks. They sit on each other’s laps, embracing, jaws clenched, raising up their noses for better air. I’m not like you, he says to them. I didn’t attack that family at the market, shoot at those people. I didn’t. I didn’t! Are you listening to me? He stomps his feet and shakes the bars but the only answer is silence and hot breaths, the spark of a lighter at the back of the cell. Cigarette smoke rises over their heads. It has nowhere to go so it hangs in the light, curling into itself. Cigarettes and gum, playing cards, domino tiles and pictures of nude models are passed around then lost to the floor, kicked back and forth until someone has space to bend down and retrieve them. A voice somewhere says, I’m innocent, too. But what does it matter? Just be quiet about it. We’re all just trying to get along. You know, this man here raped a schoolgirl—and so did that one over there. It’s true, another says, I did. Me too, I raped a schoolgirl, too. And I robbed a bank. Well, I didn’t do anything, I was just walking down the street. Same here. Yes. I thought I was the only one. The cell echoes with voices and groans, shifting limbs—shoulders in necks, elbows in groins—always on the verge of silence but never quite. The new man puts his head in his hands and weeps for his family, his friends, the lovers he’ll never know. The others put a hand on his back and tell him to rest, try to sleep. He crouches on the floor with his feet tucked beneath him. Divots in the concrete cut at his shins. He holds his legs to his chest, hugging his knees. Piles of men lie tied up in limbs all around. The lights flicker and go out, come back on and go out again. The darkness is absolute. They look down for their bodies, pat around for their faces and chests and legs. Yes, they’re still there. Time is still passing. Time enough to age, anyhow. I can hear my fingernails coming in, someone says. Can anyone else hear it, too? Are you there? Or am I dreaming? When the lights come back on, everything is the same or close to the same, rearranged by inches. The light hums. It’s too yellow. Flies bounce at the bulb cover. To give up on sleep is to stare into the creases in the necks of the men in front of them, the constellations of freckles, picked-at moles and film gathering on their ears. Hairs curl out of follicles and back into the skin. Pus. Wrinkles and scars. Birthmarks. Fading tattoos. Beads of sweat rolling along the rift of a shoulder blade. The new man, having soaked through his shirt and pants, strips down like the others, nudity held off by loin cloths and rags, a hand cupped over privates. He takes in their spiny backs and hollow ribcages. He looks down at their elbows, sharpened from hunger. Their knees look like knotty branches. Long necks and sunken eyes, lips stuck to teeth and veins crawling down their scalps. Skin bleached from the darkness. For sport they bite their thinning nails. They dig out the dirt and suck at the blood. This is a high-security penitentiary, one of them says from the corner, I’m sure of that now. No, no, someone answers, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s a regular prison. No, it’s a jail. No, a police station, like the millions of police stations anywhere in the world. They scratch their heads and try to think. They ask themselves where they came from. They wonder aloud if they’ve been tried and sentenced or if that’s still to come. No one can remember. The arraignment comes before a hearing and a hearing comes before a trial, the appeal of the trial, sentencing, but something else has to happen before all of that, or maybe not…a police station then. The holding pen at the back of a police station in the city, or not exactly a city. More like a town. A field on a red dirt road. On the water. With gallows hanging on the dock. Guillotines and electric chairs. Heads on pikes. Bodies quartered to pieces by horses and racks. Although if it were any of those things, the new man says, there would be a guard or officer walking the hall, which so far there has not been. Where is he? I still haven’t spoken to an attorney. I still haven’t gotten my glass of water. That was weeks ago. Even longer. All I want is a clean glass of water and I will agree to be sentenced. Forget a hearing and everything else. He stomps the ground, cursing. The other men point into the corner. The elbow of a pipe passing across the ceiling has droplets of condensation along the metal; sometimes they’re heavy enough to fall. Reflected in the curve of the pipe is their own pack of faces, the new man’s at the top. It’s less a reflection than a rough sense of things, the metal being so scuffed. Mostly colors and shapes, although the shapes are warped by the curvature of the pipe. Elongated bodies and squashed faces, the cell stretched out wide. The men hold up arms to find themselves in the picture, lift up on their toes. The ones standing closer see more of their faces, are reflected larger, and they rock back and forth to manipulate the proportions of their features—big eyes, warped mouths. They play at it for hours. For days. Everyone gets a turn. In falling drops, they see themselves again, a growing face that becomes the pinkness of an outstretched tongue. Then the biting taste of rust. The decay of soft concrete. Sour skin like meat. The whole cell reeks of it. The air is hot from breathing. The men along the walls, unable to sit down, lean on one leg then the other. They press their faces to the lime, cool despite its roughness. At the front, they hang on the bars. Their heads almost fit through but not quite, not without getting stuck. Down the long hallway, they can see there aren’t any other cells, just blank walls. The light ends too soon, being so dim, to show what’s at the end of it or for how long it might go on. It’s infinite, someone says, I’m sure of it. No, there’s a door. There used to be a red exit sign hanging over it. A door to what, though? The outside? Administrative offices? It can’t be. No, because they’re not administrating anything. There’s no case number or paperwork, not in any way that counts. Am I wrong? Anybody? The lights go out again. The hum has stopped; the bulb must be dead. The men looking up take in nothing but the ghosts in their retinas. Whispered prayers float in the air. Promises to the light. The bristle of hair on an arm touching the hairs of another arm. Bodies leaning into each other, claiming shoulders and chests. Viscous flesh—the sweat, the grime—peels away like a kiss. Also in the air: coughing, grunts, mucus clearing sinus passages. The new man confesses: I held up the food market because I was hungry. I’m sorry! But you didn’t hold up a food market, someone responds, you held up a family walking out, and they didn’t even have bags. And then you started shooting. Yes, because I was scared! The new man lets out a sob. The cell is silent around him. The men breathe against one another. No sirens or distant planes, only the cavity of those things. Beating hearts. Shuffling feet. Saliva in throats. Names of more friends. When the lights come back on, the cell has changed by inches again, slight rearrangements of bodies. Limbs tied in limbs. Hair grown together. He looks down at himself, grabbing at his face and chest and legs, and then checks up at the pipe where new droplets have formed. Among their reflections, their warped pack of faces in the stretched curvature of the pipe. Except which one is me, he asks; I can’t find myself up there. Can anyone else? Can anyone tell? The other men scratch their heads and look around. The cell is the same as it’s always been. Hot and dark. The light flickers and flies buzz around the bulb case. Water droplets are getting ready to fall again.

Maxwell Radwin has published in The Gettysburg Review, Words Without Borders, the Harpoon Review and Flash Fiction Magazine. As a journalist, he has covered Latin America for the Washington Post, Miami Herald and Mongabay, among other publications. He lives in Mexico City.