It smells like shit.
I can do better than that.
It smells like death, like rotting flesh. The worst part is the smell of wet socks, not wet with the drizzle of fresh rain that sets into your socks on spring mornings—no, wet with a dark substance, one that would be a disservice to call water. A sludge mixed with every bodily fluid you can think of… best to ignore it.
I was caught in a life that wasn’t mine. A product of my environment, a legacy of poverty. A number. Cold steel.
Yo Q.
Wassam Ray?
Me and Jah, we’re gonna run it back one more time.
Y’all do whatever, that shit not gone work.
Bro whatever, you tryna drown here? Jah feels his shit actin up again, he needs his medicine.
Well dude should know he isn’t gonna get it.
What you tryna say, Q, he should just die? We ain’t animals.
You saying all this like I’m the one who locked you up in hea.
Man, just pass the light.
Grabbing the box from under my pillow, I stumble from my top bunk—raft now—into the water. It splashes up at me, its diseases grazing my lips, nose, ears. Started at our ankles a couple days ago, since then it’s just been pouring and flooding.
Look man, this the last one.
Aight.
I wouldn’t have been able to squeeze my arm through the cell before, neither could Ray, but the guards have us on a new diet. It’s called if it’s in your cell it’s food. Last one of them packed up, told us he quits.
16: Didn’t y’all learn from last time?
2: Man y’all ain’t gonna kill me with all that smoke again.
Man I told them.
6: Nah Jah the blocks still smoky from last time.
You know Jah ain’t talking. Look it’s gone be on me if he dies, none of y’all locked up with him you won’t have to see it. He needs his medicine man la’ juvie don’t even belong in hea.
I tune out. The water seems darker now. Can’t imagine what’s all in there, how many people it’s killed.
How to survive being poor in America
1. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps
2. Be cold, steal
Yo Q.
What.
That was your last one?
Yes… There ain’t nobody outside is there.
Ye they must have evacuated. I hope my girl alright.
She probably is since she ain’t locked up nowhere.
I mean you know how shit is, they have more ways of locking up people.
What you mean? Only way I know is with cages.
Bro wake up, ain’t you poor? Even if we were out there, shit would be no different.
It’s dark out now and pitch black in the cells, the storm got the lights. More and more have been coughing, the smoke can’t be good for Jah.
Q-
I am a stain,
But can’t change
Cold st-
Quin bro he’s seizing up, what do I do what do I do?
Bro calm down, stop panting you going freak yourself out.
What do I do?
You can’t do nothing, you just gotta wait.
Q, he’s dying, I can feel it. His eyes are all white he’s not even here. He can’t even see me!
Where do you have him?
He’s up on the top bunk—he’s shaking himself off.
Just hold on to him, aight? Don’t let him fall into the water.
You can hear the bunk hitting the wall. It goes on and off for hours. He has to be dead now, nobody could live that long no oxygen. 5, 9, now 13 rest in power. At least they didn’t have to manage this hell no more.
Yo Q.
Yea.
He good now he asleep.
Ray, I don’t think—
Nah he’s good he asleep.
Yea you right, he should rest.
16: Jesus that shit is blaring. Y’all, the doors are open.
The alarms all went off. Looks like they’ve decided that enough of us died. The rich, the workers, and now the scum get to go.
“Evacuate your dorms, head to the main gate, and wait there with your hands in the air,” the intercom blares, shaking us into action. How the hell we supposed to tread water with our hands in the air? The water is up to my chest, others’ chins. Ray grabs on to Jah.
Ray, you can’t bring him.
He gives me a look and I know to shut up. The light shines through the windows, or else we wouldn’t have been able to tell left from right. Hell, we wouldn’t have known up from down if there wasn’t no water. We slice through the sludge, holding our breaths. It smells even worse than before. It’s diseases baking in the heat, the smoke baking the dead, waste… No point thinking about it. Just got to move.
We pass by 5’s cell, but we just keep on. No point dwelling on the dead, not when you’re trying to escape it.
The main entrance is wide open—never imagined I’d get to leave through it.
We’re greeted by fifteen, twenty guards suited up in their riot gear. Guess that’s what this was, or had the potential to be. Some loud booming voice demands we put our “hands in the air.” The bulkiest of us have to tread a bit harder to comply, but I am lanky enough to get by without any extra work.
Ray—
Nah I’m not dropping Jah. They can see I’m holding somebody.
“17, put your hands up.”
Look my friend here is hurt real bad, he needs medical help.
“17, hands up. If not, we will engage you as a threat.”
Fuck you mean engage me? I’m carrying another inmate, you know, the ones y’all abandoned.
“17.”
I can’t—
They lock us up on the boat. When they don’t have cages, they use chain links, line us all up in order, using our numbers. A group of them go in to check on the rest, or I guess make sure nobody is hiding. I mean, I love freedom, I don’t think anybody after having been up there would have stayed, but I guess they thought it was important. I know this kind of goes against what I said before, but something about the dark water and the floating orange has a way of grabbing your attention. I even catch some of the guards staring at 17 and 13 bobbing in the water. They won’t get them though. Maybe that’s where I got it from—no point in dwelling if you’re tryna escape. Seems like the type of shit they would live by, I guess we would live by, or maybe anybody who needed to would live by.
Shyonne Nugent is a third-year Carleton student studying Political Science with a minor in English. She was previously published in Sumac’s Winter 2024 issue.
