Fiction | Prison | Writing | Creativity | Prose
The Pencil
Paying a price for creativity
I cannot be considered a serious writer, living in the moment with neither past nor future. The book I’m writing could be titled A Travel Guide To Nowhere. If I’m trying to say anything at all, there’s no gravity to my life, no inescapable centre. It began with nothingness and is headed back there. The only question I seek to answer is this: what if conventional wisdom is wrong?
I’ve been in prison for almost two years and have three to go. I started writing before I entered prison, practised by falsifying probation reports, creating fraudulent identity cards, and now writing love letters for other inmates. It gets me a packet of gum each week. I don’t know if any of these fraudulent exercises helped me become a man who enjoys writing about his life, but honestly, it didn’t hurt.
In my confined world of a prison cell, freedom is an abstract memory, a small glimmer of light that gets insignificantly brighter with each passing day. The urge to express myself, to tell stories that might transcend the confines of my ten square feet, consumes me day and night.
Yet, in this realm of scarcity and hierarchy, even the simplest tools of creativity are elusive luxuries. Writing materials are scarce commodities, and those who control them have unexpected powers over prisoners like me. That power rests with Vic, a shrewd prison library inmate. Vic is known for his charisma and his ability to secure the unattainable, but he demands a price for his services.
For a pencil, a precious conduit to freedom through words, Vic gets to fuck me in the arse. I must feel good to him after eleven years of confinement. It never takes long, two minutes, and his cum is farted out. At first, I wouldn’t let myself be violated, and my arse ripped to bleeding. It happens in a dimly lit corner of the library, serving as a clandestine hub for his unrecognised transactions. He and I were trading favours, surrendering dignity and autonomy for a pencil.
I had been confined almost a year before I approached Vic, a weasel-like character, wearing wire-rimmed NHS glasses and his nose twitching as he must have wondered about the scent of my arse and the rimming he would give me if he got the chance.
“The library grants entry to those who offer what is truly valuable,” Vic murmured cryptically. “Tell me, writer man, what are you willing to give?”
Vic’s reputation bounded ahead of him, and inmates called him Vicky the whore. Yet, the yearning within me for a way to escape my surroundings burned so fiercely that I couldn’t dismiss the possibility.
I knew what I was willing to give to tell my stories, relay my experiences, and give up my essence in exchange for that pencil.
Vic’s eyes gleamed with appreciation. He extended his hand, grabbed my crotch and whispered in my ear. “If I cannot fuck it, you’ll suck it.” The unspoken pact was forged. It was a pact that transcended words, a silent understanding.
I would pay for another when each pencil wrote until it was a stub. The pencil transforms my inner world and transports me beyond the prison’s bleak reality. We exchanged pieces of our souls, intertwining our fates in a way only such a challenging and desperate circumstance can foster.
Harry Hogg: English writer raised in Scotland, living between California, Missouri, Colorado, and Scotland.
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