Once we were bunked up, I started with the psychological torture. I acted like I wanted to make love to Phil. I would score him real booze from the guards, get him liquored up and bond, but then wake him up with hard slaps on the side of the head. This usually got guys to break. Hang themselves before I even had to choke them out. I would lay out a nice, thick bedsheet and position the room in the right way so they could easily hang themselves. Beg them to do it.

The problem was Phil didn’t bite. Instead he woke me up in the middle of the night by biting me hard on the neck, drawing blood and sending me to the infirmary.

The last words I heard out of his mouth before I was escorted out of the cell are what had me twisted up in that motel room smoking Winstons and reading Bible verses like a zealot.

“I know exactly who you are fucker. Aneurysm. Aneurysm. Aneurysm. I’m out soon baby. I’ll find you!”

The wounds of Phil’s bites were easy to heal, the fear from hearing the news that he escaped from prison the night after he attacked me wasn’t.

The Atlanta news, hell, national news was glued to Phil’s story. He broke out of the Georgia pen and vanished into the country night without a trace. Was I the first person he would come looking for? No. The guy was going to find a way to get to El Salvador or some anonymous shithole?