Death Cells
By Conrad Person
You can talk to the other guys if you want, but I’m in the end unit, so since old Walt Cusack—who killed two bank guards in ’75—died of prostate cancer, it’s been lonely. I hoped the new guy would be somebody sociable.
And he was. A four-eyed fellow named Ned who had set a bomb at some politician’s office. He was pro-life, but not that day. I’m not judging though, because I did worse. He was a great reader, yet he listened to a hick like me who only knows stuff like changing oil and setting fence posts. He even let me have his chocolate milk on Saturdays because it gave him the runs.
We got to talking about dying, a subject the guys avoid, yet it’s always on the edge of our conversations. I asked him about heaven and hell and he said there was no such places but instead, God had put a circuit in our brains so that in the final moment, we feel peace and happiness no matter how we die. That’s what those near-death people are really experiencing. And it’s just as real inside their minds as if they were actually going to heaven.
“But Ned, don’t some folks say they see devils and fire?” I didn’t like to bring it up, but it preys on me sometimes when I can’t sleep.
Ned says that’s just their fear plus usually a lifetime of somebody or other preaching at them about sin.
I don’t know if Ned is right, but at night after I pray for God to forgive me and for him to be extra kind to the folks I… well, you know. I close my eyes and think of heaven. I imagine a place with plenty of food, and folks glad to see me, and dogs. Lots of dogs. I keep practicing, so no matter whether I die here in my cell or in the room down the hall, I’ll have that on my mind instead of pain and hard times and a God who has given up on me.
Conrad Person is a child of the African-American migration from the rural south to the industrial north. His current projects include a memoir of steel town family life and a novel drawn from his father's life. His flash fiction can be seen in SHOTGUN HONEY. He lives in The City of Brotherly Love where those who fool around find out.
