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"Freeman” a hospital screw was shouting"!

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 He took me into an office and asked me to piss into bottle then placed the urine sample on the window ledge where I could see it from inside the ward.

  “This is your bed space” a screw said to me. “No lying on the bed during the day”          

  “Yes Sir” I replied with a smile looking at the fresh sheets of a real bed so different from the filthy cell and the smell of urine and faeces that I had just escaped from. I saw some books on a shelf and went over to look at the titles. Most of them were Westerns but I was pleased to find a copy of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and sat down to read it again thinking about how the CIA had supposedly used it to program President John Edward Kennedy’s assassin and John Lennon’s too I thought. I sat in the chair by the bed and immersed myself in the book.

  “Visit for Freeman” a screw who had just entered the ward was calling.

  The Visits Room was crowded as I sat one side of long table and waited for Sara.

 Sara entered the room and came walking towards me her face wreathed in smiles and sat down opposite me.

  “Mike are you all right?” Sara asked tears in her eyes.

  “Oh I am fine and don’t worry. Just try and get Offenbach to get me bail” I replied knowing that it was a useless task in the light of the false “squirting acid” allegation  from Inspector Kruger of the Obscene Publications Squad, especially for a convicted murderer on life license.

  “Nick sends his regards.”

  “Oh great tell him that I will get off at the trial” I said confidently.

  “How long will that be Mike? I‘m really missing you” Sara said.

 I gazed into Sara’s large brown liquid eyes that were misty with tears and tried not to cry too. “Could be months” I whispered.

  “Visit over for Freeman” a screw said appearing suddenly behind Sara.

  “But I have just sat down” Sara managed to say.

  “It will be longer next time” I whispered knowing that the screws were waiting to see how I reacted to a short visit. A psychiatrist had arranged a “temper visit.” They knew that some guys would drop their pacifist act if they thought that they or their girlfriend had been insulted.

 

 I stood up and kissed her and I felt her push a small package into my mouth that I knew was hashish.

  “Your Mum is upset but says that she will bring you a dinner today” Sara said.

  “Tell her that I’m in the hospital and that I’m not allowed food there” I replied.

  “Come on Madam” the screw said as I reluctantly disengaged myself from Sara’s embrace.

  “Stand on the box” a screw said in the search room.

 I stood on the box and he ran his hands down my body and up inside my crotch and down my legs.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  “Open your mouth.”

  “Lift up your tongue.”

  “Right step down and wait in the passage” the screw ordered.

 

 Back in the hospital ward I sat in the toilet assembling a make shift pipe out of the cardboard tube of a toilet roll. I placed a piece of hash on the pipe lit it with a lighter and inhaled. One or two prisoners who entered the toilet while I was smoking sniffed the air suspiciously and I hoped that neither of them were grasses.

 I could see my urine sample in the office and it was there for several days and I knew that it had not been sent off. I felt fine at the moment but I knew that I was under stress and that it could cause a relapse.

 

 

 

In a Padded Cell

Chapter 2

   “Baker” a screw called, “Simmons” and as he called a prisoner’s name the prisoner went forward to be put into a Black Maria.

  “Muldoon” the name shocked me, my old name.”Why was the screw using my old name?” I thought. It wasn’t my name now and I was not going to answer to it.

 Soon the prison yard was empty except for me and four screws were staring at me, then the one with the clip board came towards me.

  “What’s your name lad?”

  “Michael J Freeman, Sir” I answered

  “You’re Muldoon, aren’t you lad?  Why didn’t you answer?” the screw shouted angrily.

  “My name is now Freeman and it is illegal for me to use the name of Muldoon because I don’t want to break the law Sir” I replied.

  “Well you are not a Freeman now are you lad now get your arse in that wagon” the screw ordered in an angry voice.

 

 I was taken to a magistrate’s court and remanded in custody to appear for trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with offences under the Obscene Publications Act and Protection of Children Act

 Anger coursed through me as I thought how warmongers like Thatcher red in tooth and claw with the blood of children. Her alcohol addict husband Denis was an arms dealer and her son Mark a mercenary talking of protecting children.

 Back at the prison hospital I received a solicitor’s letter from Ted Malman informing me that I had been charged with producing video titles seized during a raid on my home two years ago and he would be representing me and engaging Queen’s Counsel.

 “The bastards they have waited two years to charge me” I thought and I was now awaiting two separate trials on obscenity offences. I was worried about being recalled under my life licence and the charge of attempted grievous bodily harm by squirting acid at the police and because it was an offence of violence. I had a copy of the HM Parole Board a government document which said “a danger to the public” was a reason for immediate recall to prison without a trial.

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Sara visited me regularly on almost a daily basis and supplied me with a constant supply of cannabis that made life easier. One day she could not get any and on the way out I caused a scene in the search room. I don’t know why...

  “Up on the box lad” the search screw ordered.

 I climbed up on the box and he rubbed me down.

 “Okay step down lad” he ordered.

 I stepped down.

 “Open your mouth.”

 Instead of opening my mouth I swallowed, making a gulping sound that I thought sounded rather comical.

 The next minute a screw’s hand was around my throat in order to prevent me swallowing and I was lifted high in the air transported out of the search room carried down a set of stairs across a tarmac yard and manhandled into the Segregation Unit where I was bundled into a strip cell.

 Two massive security doors were slammed behind me. I started to laugh out loud. If anyone would have looked through the Judas hole in the big iron door they would have seen a madman cackling and laying on the floor. Actually the floor was comfortable and I realised that I was in a padded cell. I looked around and the cell and it was absolutely bare except for a plastic chamber pot, a plastic water jug and cup. I looked up at the window and it was barred and meshed so that nothing could get in or out. I realised that they would examine my excreta each day looking for what the screws thought that I might have swallowed.

 A few hours later I heard the muffled sound of feet and the outer door opening the door of the cell.

 An Asian doctor dressed in a suit shirt and tie entered accompanied by two screws. “What have you taken?” he asked.

 I smiled ignoring the two aggressive screws who were giving me menacing looks. “Nothing” I answered.

  “Was it LSD?” the Indian doctors asked a concerned look on his face.

 I realised he had been looking at my record and wondered why most prison doctors seemed to be Asians these days. “Well it would be rather a stupid place to take LSD in prison, don’t you think? One would have a bad trip” I said.

 The doctor looked at me a smile flickering around the corners of his mouth. “Freeman, what would you like to eat?” he asked.

 I realised that I was hungry and that the doctor wanted me to have a bowel movement. “I’m a vegetarian, a big jug of milk and some bread and cheese and a raw onion” replied knowing that these things would be in the prison kitchen and that it would be pointless asking for something exotic like smoked salmon, cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches.

I ate the bread and cheese and took a long drink of the milk. I awoke the next morning and taking the lid off the plastic chamber pot I opened my bowels, then I put the lid of the chamber pot back on as quickly as possible because of the putrid stench of ordure in that confined space.

 A screw came to the door and an eye appeared at the spy hole. “Have you anything to slop out? He said his voice muffled by the padded door.

  “Yes” I replied nodding my head.

 The door opened and a screw stood there.

 I took the lid off the pot. “Look a big one Sir” I said smiling broadly.

 The screw retched involuntarily as the foul smell hit his nostrils and he put the lid on the pot, banged the door shut and hurried away presumably to rake through it looking for foreign objects or packets of drugs while I lay there on the comfortable padded floor laughing out loud until my sides ached and tears ran down my cheeks. “Maybe they analyse it looking for traces” I thought giggling. I wasn’t bored now and was enjoying myself again as the joker.

 I sat on the floor and ate my prison porridge and a boiled egg swigging the vile prison tea called “diesel” by the inmates. Soon the door was opened by a screw and a prison orderly entered to take my tray.

 Later that morning a screw unlocked the doors and informed me that I had a visit but he didn’t take me to the Visiting Rooms but to the Closed Visiting Room. I knew that I had been placed on closed visits because of the swallowing incident. I was stripped searched by two angry looking screws and directed to a small cubicle with a panel of plate glass separating me from the other side.

 I thought that it would be Sara but soon a screw wheeled in Simon Parrit in a wheelchair stopping in the passage where I could see him.

  “Right strip search Sir” one of the two screws snarled.

 As I watched I became angry at this unnecessary search of one of my friends and waved to him in support. Before meeting disabled people through Tuppy Owens Outsiders Club I thought that the disabled were treated kindly by most people until I discovered from their sad tales that the opposite was true. Now I was forced to watch as two screws possessed by evil abused a severely handicapped person before my eyes. I was horrified as his distorted twisted body was exposed.

  “How can people do this to a disabled person?” I thought.  The screws were trying to make me angry and if I had been at liberty I surely would have beaten the two so called “prison officers” who demanded that one address them as “Sir” on pain of punishment for “disrespect to an officer.” I hated this kind of bully and the prison service attracted a fair share of them although there were a few decent ones around.

 After the screws had finished humiliating Simon they pushed him into the cubicle.

 “Thanks for visiting me Simon” I said knowing from experience that only true friends visited one inside.

 “The bastards” he said angrily. 

 “Those two are evil” I said.

 “Yes I will make a complaint. Hey Mike I heard you on LBC” Simon blurted eager to give me the information.

  “Really” I replied smiling staring at Simon’s perfectly normal, even handsome, head mounted on that terribly distorted body, a prison from which he could never escape.

  “Yes I was driving and suddenly you came over the radio on LBC during the Siege of Wimbledon as the papers are calling it” Simon said excitement on his face.

  “Yes they took me and my company out Simon.”

  “But how are they allowed to do that it’s illegal” Simon said indignantly staring at me through the plate glass expecting me to give him an answer.

  “They did it and Videx Ltd is no more without anyone appearing in a court of law” I said expressing my feelings. As I spoke I noticed that one of the screws stood listening to our conversation.

  “You should cut your hair before you go to court and wear a suit and tie” offered Simon staring at me earnestly through the thick glass.

 I knew ridiculous as it may sound dressing in this way  did often lead to defendants being treated more leniently by the judge as it was a sign of conformity and accepting the authority of the court.. I knew that I would never conform and would never cut my hair to appear “respectable.”

  “No, I won’t cut my hair or wear a suit Simon, I will go as I am” I said.

  “But you look like a rebel” Simon observed.

  “I’m a revolutionary artist, not a rebel without a cause” I said quickly taking in the screw’s look of contempt in the background.

  “Visit over for Freeman” said the other screw who had returned to listen as well.

  “Special search for Parrit” one screw said a pleased look on his face as if he was going to enjoy doing it.

 The two screws entered the cubicle and pushed Simon’s wheelchair out into the passage and began searching him again.

 I could not believe it but Simon was stripped searched again on the other side of the glass within my view and anger rose up in me.

 Simon’s eyes met mine and I knew that others had treated and abused him before but a strip search was entirely unnecessary as there was a sheet of glass between us and they had searched him already.

  As the oafish and brutal screws tried to humiliate him by exposing his deformed body I looked at him with pity helpless to intervene. I knew that they were trying to make me angry and lose self control. I would like to have thrashed this evil pair within an inch of their lives and images of me smashing through the glass and beating the screws started to flicker in my mind.

 After the closed visit was over and Simon had gone the two screws turned their attention to me and started to subject me to a strip search again in order, I knew, to humiliate me and make me lose my temper.

  “Take off your shoes” one screw ordered glaring at me, his face near mine where I could smell his sickening after shave and deodorant and as he snarled I saw his animal like tobacco stained teeth.

  During the search one screw knelt down and banged my shoes on the floor.

 I looked at the standing screw who was running his fingers around the seams in my shirt and looking him straight in the eyes I mouthed the words “You are gay.”

 The screw’s face turned an angry red colour “What did you say?” he snarled a remark that made the kneeling screw jump to his feet.

  “Nothing Sir” I replied smiling enjoying winding up these bastards.

 The other screw knelt down again and I looked at the other one in the eyes and mouthed the words “You suck cocks” placing my thumb in my mouth and making a fellatio sign.

 The screw exploded with anger. “He’s doing ít again Sir” he shouted.

 The kneeling screw jumped up “What’s he doing Sir?”

  “Making obscene gestures Sir.”

  “Right laddie you are on a charge of dumb insolence. See the governor in the morning.”

The padded cell episode had given me a welcome respite but the closed visits and boredom of lying in a padded cell made me want to get back to the prison hospital again where I could read books.

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