T-Bag Fanfiction Makes Me Happy
Title: Alliances
Character/Pairing: Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell
Prompt: 001. Beginnings
Rating: R
Summary: “Theodore Bagwell, you are found guilty of attempted murder…”
Author's Notes: Blech. I know nothing of the criminal justice system of the US and thus, this is going to be inaccurate on many counts. Erk. Forgive my errors. Just pretend that… I don’t know. Pretend it’s possible. Set after Proportions. Rated for murder and graphic thoughts and that sort of thing.
Alliances
“Theodore Bagwell, you are found guilty of attempted murder…” And the rest of the judge’s little spiel Teddy just tuned out because he already knew what she was going to be saying and so why should he even bother listening? Lionel Bridge survived only out of luck and it was his fault. Shouldn’t have looked up when the other teacher walked in, should have just torn open the nigger’s face and let him bleed out like that and make sure he died, but no. Now he had attempted murder and a ticket to Alabama State Prison regardless of his age and he’d be there for twenty years if they got what they wanted.
The CO that introduced him to the whole scheme of things was named Officer Riley and he had a soft sort of look about him but didn’t flinch when the prisoners shouted obscenities. “Bagwell…” He mumbled on about things that Teddy already knew but he didn’t bother cutting him off because the man looked kind of pretty babbling on like that.
They made sure to put him in a cell with a white guy ‘cause they seemed to take from his mannerisms that he wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of the Negroes and that suited him fine ‘cause the blacks were all bigger than him and he didn’t feel like having his ass kicked just because he thought they were lesser men than him. So instead he was in a cell with a man by the name of Richard Angus who was in for knocking over a bank, or trying to ‘cause he got caught after all.
“People call me Roach.” Richard Angus bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes at Teddy. He was tall and skinny with track marks down his arms and a shaved head even though he didn’t bother shaving anything else. “What’re you in for boy?”
Teddy sort of realized that it was a kind of test of him to see what exactly he was made of and see how far they could push this. And it was obvious enough to him that he had enough of a record to him at eighteen to make it alright in here. “I’m Theodore Bagwell.” He knew calling himself anything else was going to get him shanked really quick in here. “Tried to kill some nigger.”
Roach laughed and clapped hands with him, scratching at the beard he never really bothered to deal with. “Nice, boy. How old are you anyways?”
“Eighteen.” Teddy climbed up on his bunk and licked around the edges of his lips. “You ever kill somebody, Roach?”
“Fuck no.” Roach shorted, leaning up against the bunk and leering at Reddy with a look he guessed was supposed to be dangerous but didn’t really phase Teddy at all. “You ever kill someone, boy, or are you just tryin’ to make a name for yourself down in here?”
Teddy laughed a little bit and thought about Mona and the thirty-seven holes in her body and Johnny all torn up and bloody and lying in the dirt where no one was going to find him ‘cause no one wanted to. “I got two bodies to my name right now. I’m gonna have more someday.”
Roach snorted and turned away from him to take a piss. “Two by eighteen? That’s bullshit, boy.”
Teddy laughed, lying back on his bunk and biting at his lower lip with his head angled a bit to the side. “I ain’t bullshitting. Y’all better watch out for me once I’m outta here ‘cause I’m gonna make sure people never forget.”
For the first few days he kept to himself and let the word spread about Theodore Bagwell with two dead people to his name that nobody knew about but him. Probably would have been shanked too during all that and the way he pushed past the Negroes in line but something kept everybody away and Teddy liked it that way. He spent all the time painting pictures in his head of drowning COs and slaughtered prisoners like pigs but couldn’t figure out a way to get it out on paper.
Roach hung around with about a dozen white men, some with track lines and shaved heads and some without. They had a kind of ringleader that they called Pauly whose real name was Paul something. Pauly was in for a triple homicide and rape of teenage white boys and he had himself a prison bitch he called Loot who was pale and scared looking and was in for identity theft and he followed around behind Pauly everywhere.
Every time they went past him Teddy couldn’t help licking his lips and smirking at the way Pauly would always give him a sideways sort of look of appraisal. Teddy could live off of that look.
It was about two weeks after he came that Roach broached the subject though Teddy wasn’t totally sure ‘cause he stopped counting after his second day inside.
“What do you think of the Negroes, boy?” They were lying in their bunks each and Teddy was counting dead people in the back of his head when Roach said it.
Teddy pulled himself up so he was sitting and ignored his hand, which was twitching slightly. “Filthy niggers. What else is there to say?”
Roach laughed at him and swung around to stare Teddy right in the face and Teddy could see the drugs dancing in Roach’s eyes. “Quick to please, ain’t you boy?”
“Depends on what you want.” Teddy moved forwards and cupped the other man’s cock in his hand, arching an eyebrow at him because, really, it was all just another game in the end.
Roach just laughed some more and pulled away from him with a look on his face that Teddy couldn’t fully get. “Save that for someone who wants it, boy. You gotta be careful whose dick you grab in here. Grab the wrong one and you’ll lose a hand.”
“So cut it off if you think I’ll let you get away with it.”
“Idle threats, boy. I’m not the one you should be watching out for in here. Keep an eye on them rugheads. Never know what might happen in here.”
Teddy laughed at the words that sounded so much like a dire warning. “I ain’t scared of a couple of Negroes.” He ran his hands through and over his hair while thinking about how pretty Roach would look if someone carved out his eyes. “They should all be scared of me if they know what’s good for them.”
People talked in prison and he just let them talk because there wasn’t much a couple of words could do to him and if they really wanted to bother him they all had their little shanks hidden up their sleeves. Why they didn’t use them Teddy didn’t know and he didn’t really care either because it kept him alive so the whys were just inconsequential sorts of things, now weren’t they?
In the prison showers a couple of times he watched Pauly and Loot while he washed himself up and licked his lips thinking of all the things he could do to scar Loot’s pale, pale skin. It got him so hard it hurt and he had to bite his lip and hiss slightly at nothing because everybody knew that Loot was off limits as long as Pauly was there.
“You keep lookin’ at ‘em like that, snowflake, you gonna end up in the grave fast.” A rughead shoved him in the showers and bared his teeth at him with the kind of warning that he never bothered to take seriously because no one dared to go through with them. He instead just curled his lip at the nigger and brushed his way past him but didn’t get to far because the man reached out and caught his arm, dragging him back to hiss in his ear with hot breath that make Teddy twitch with all the things he could do to someone at this close range. “You keep actin’ out like that towards me, you gonna end up in the grave faster. Got that, white boy?”
“You don’t run this place. I can do whatever the fuck I want.” Teddy murmured under his breath and moved away from him, pretending not to notice that Pauly and Loot and the rest of their little gang were watching him as he left.
For the next couple of days he found himself sitting around with a fish named Connor that liked to mutter to himself about things that he’d done, and Teddy liked to listen because he could get a lot of nasty ideas from a man like that. Connor was twitchy and quiet most of the time and pretty much kept to himself for the most part except for when Teddy was hanging around him. Roach said a couple of times that Connor was out of his fucking mind but Teddy ignored him because he knew that if Roach figured even a tiny bit of what was going through his mind half the time he’d be calling him a lot worse.
CO Riley watched Teddy carefully in the yard and pulled him aside at one point with his eyebrows all furrowed and looking suspicious like just maybe he was starting to figure out just what was hiding behind that eighteen-year-old face, that thing that no one else was willing to see yet. “Bagwell, I’ve been hearing some rumours ‘bout you. Something about a couple of murders?”
He just smiled and leaned up against the fence, his tongue darting out over his lips and looking at Riley in that way that got people on edge. “You know how it is, boss, just makin’ a name for myself, know what I’m saying?”
Riley took that as a good enough answer and moved along and went back to pretending Teddy didn’t exist, even though he always kept an eye on him from a long distance away to make sure that the suspicious little voices in the back of his mind were just little voices and meant nothing. Teddy thought about what it would look like if he hooked something in Riley’s gut and tore out his liver and his intestines and forced him to eat them just to see the look on his little face when he tasted all that blood. It was the sort of thing Connor would think of.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in there when Pauly talked to him for the first time, Loot shifting his weight behind him and looking like some poor little puppy that somebody’d kicked too many times, and Teddy was pretty sure he knew who’d been doing the kicking. “You Roach’s cellie, huh? What’s your name, boy?”
Teddy took a good long look at Loot over Pauly’s shoulder and smirked at him and watched the shifting get all the more pronounced as Loot looked down at the ground at some patch of grass that’d been stomped on too many times, much like himself. “Theodore Bagwell.”
“Theodore Bagwell… Theo Bagwell…” And then Pauly started laughing, reaching around to smack Loot’s ass which made the other man jerk slightly and look more pronouncedly into the distance at something clearly very profound because it was holding his attention pretty damn good. “Man, you got the most unfortunate little name I’ve ever heard, haven’t you T-Bag? Y’know what that means, T-Bag? You ever t-bag somebody?” Pauly leaned in a little bit and winked at Teddy. “Bet you have. Bet you liked it too.”
And as Pauly walked off it seemed somewhat decided that he wasn’t Teddy sitting on the outside of the prison social ladder anymore. He was T-Bag and he’d just gotten his first little introduction to the Alliance for Purity and that suited him pretty damn fine. He looked over at the fence and saw that Riley was looking at him a little bit funny and he just tilted his head at him and walked off, kind of laughing and kind of humming a little bit to himself because things just might be turning up for him about now.
That night he lay awake in his bunk and waited for everything to quiet down a bit to talk to Roach, who was always awake because without his drugs he couldn’t sleep and he hadn’t gotten any of late. “Hey, Roach, what’s t-bagging?”
Roach laughed for a little while and stretched his head around to look down at T-Bag with an incredulous sort of look on his face that made T-Bag kind of want to rip his lung out and eat it. “You serious, boy? Has Pauly gotten around to givin’ you a proper hello now?” He didn’t wait for a response, just flipped back over and kept talking like the question had never been posed. “Knew it’d happen at some point, what with what you’re in for and all. Don’t pay him any attention, boy, he’s a retard. Thinks he’s ruler of the fucking world.”
“What is he then?” T-Bag asked and he thought in the back of his mind that he could be the ruler of the fucking world if anybody would ever just let him have the chance to do something to get there. “Seems to rule all your asses pretty damn well. He keeps that Loot guy on a pretty short leash too. Acts like he’s king.”
“Don’t mean he is. You shouldn’t be gettin’ all these ideas, boy, it’s just gonna end up bad for you. Pauly thinks he’s cool and we humour him ‘cause that’s what we do. The man’s got a record on him that makes people shake.” Roach shifted on the bed and T-Bag was half-fascinated by the way the mattress moved. “What’s got you so interested in Pauly, anyhow? You want to be his bitch?”
“I ain’t going to be anybody’s bitch. I’m my own man, y’know what I’m sayin’?” T-Bag licked his lips and cracks his neck carefully which felt damn good especially when he pretended that the sound was someone else’s neck snapping beyond repair. “I’m gonna be the one with my own bitches someday. And I’m gonna hold onto ‘em better than Pauly does.”
“You keep dreamin’, boy.” Roach discredited him so easily but that was nothing because Roach was nothing. “Never gonna happen. You’re gonna get yourself shanked in here soon if you keep talkin’ like that. Howie’s sure willin’ to give it a shot.”
Howie was the nigger that’d been biting at T-Bag’s ass since their little altercation in the prison showers. T-Bag licked his lips and laughed a short little bit at that because there was no was he was going to be scared off by some rughead. “He can try. Moment he does I’m gonna slice his throat open and gut him.”
Something about the way he said that made Roach shut up for a really long time, as if he was starting to realize that when T-Bag said that sort of thing he wasn’t just making a show of himself he really meant it and someday he was really going to do it. After a while of Roach shifting in his bunk and probably thinking a lot about what T-Bag just said, he finally said something in reply. “Better hope you don’t get caught.”
“They’re never gonna catch me until I want them to.”
T-Bag spent the next really long while just thinking about how he was going to let all of this sort of play out, following along behind the rest of the Alliance for Purity and watching Pauly rave on about the African American problem and watching Loot look prettily at the ground like nobody gave a damn about him and thought about how he could show Loot how much he gave a damn. He could do a lot to Loot and he was going to do it at some point but he just had to find himself the right moment to do something, which had to be getting damn soon ‘cause it was starting to hurt again. Something deep and dark inside of him that lived best when he was hurting people kept throbbing painfully and telling him that he needed to slice someone’s throat or carve someone’s gut to appease it again, like some sacrifice to a kind of god and he wasn’t going to argue with it because it was what kept him alive half the time.
“The way you walkin’ round in here’s like you think you can take all o’ us, white boy.” Howie hissed in his ear when T-Bag fell behind the rest of the Alliance when they were walking through the yard. “You think you can take me, white boy? Give it your best shot.”
T-Bag sort of swivelled a bit on one look and regarded Howie in his best sort of way that said he really didn’t care. “Best keep your tone polite, nigger, or I just might.”
It all started and ended in around a second and then it was just like it never happened, which was sort of like nothing T-Bag had ever done before. He always drew the deaths out but this was so brief, so human and so feeble it didn’t entirely satisfy him like tearing people up did. Howie stepped forwards ready to hit him and he slid a razor he’d stolen from Roach from his sleeve, stepping quickly forwards and slashing Howie’s throat like he slashed Mona’s so blood bubbled from the rughead’s mouth and people started yelling and then there were shots being fired everywhere and someone pushed him to the ground and hissed in his ear. “Out in the open like that, T-Bag? You gonna get us all shot!”
He didn’t care really though because it was enough to make the quiet little impulses in the back of him where all his nerves came together in one great knot stop shouting at him and it made everything start breathing again. It was nice to feel like that. He liked his lips and laughed even though nobody could hear him over the gunshots.
Riley looked at him like he was some sort of a monster that needed to be contained somewhere fast while he led him to the SHU, and he sort of was being contained somewhere fast. Didn’t matter. Something about the SHU was kind of nice because it was quiet and alone and a lot like all the little demons living in the back of his head. They thrived in places like this.
Time passed by pretty fast in the SHU and he let it do so, twitching slightly and thinking about all the things he could’ve done to Howie if he’d had more time and wondering if he died or not because if he hadn’t T-Bag would make sure that little mistake was rectified damn good. He talked to himself a little bit sometimes because the only things listening was him and the walls and the walls weren’t going to tell anybody what he was thinking about in the deep caverns of his mind even when he talked about Mona dead and bleeding everywhere and how she used to say things about drowning people and little Johnny with his innocent eyes that never managed to look betrayed. Mr. Bridge was an unfortunate mishap along the way, but that too could be rectified in time ‘cause once he was out he was going to make sure that no one could ever forget Theodore Bagwell. He spent a lot of his time in the dark thinking about dead people and when they finally let him out he was quieter than before, more cautious than before, and more willing than before.
Roach looked at him uneasily when they let him back into the cell and sort of hedged around what he was trying to say for the first few minutes. “So, you really can kill somebody, huh, boy? What’d you think you were gonna prove like that? That you’re tough? Gettin’ us all into shit?”
T-Bag shrugged and wandered around the cell, pacing a bit like some sort of a caged animal that was just waiting for the door to be unlocked so he could really give everybody a show to watch, but he couldn’t do that just yet because that would screw all of this up and too much was riding on it in his mind for it to get screwed up now. “Wasn’t tryin’ to prove nothing, amigo. Just watching out for my ass.”
“You been doin’ a lot of that, boy.” Roach sounded like he was trying pretty hard to warn T-Bag off but he really didn’t scare that easy. “Best start paying attention to the rest of us up in here or we all gonna cut you.”
“Then cut me. It’d be nice to see all the blood pool out on the ground.”
The more T-Bag watched everybody in the Alliance the more he realized that Loot wasn’t always a step behind Pauly with that look on his face like somebody just murdered his momma. He sat alone on the fringes of the pack an awful lot when they were all boasting about how many niggers they were going to shoot when they finally got out while T-Bag listened in and swore to himself that he’d best the highest they got by five and even then he’d go further because that was the way he operated. Loot didn’t look so interested in the topic of conversation, so T-Bag took to watching him instead and the way he fiddled with his pockets and looked at everyone blankly like he’d been stuck in some sort of a nasty dream cloud for way, way too long.
He swaggered over to Loot one of those times, the sides of his mouth curled up a bit in some sort of a threatening smirk that Loot looked at warily like he was getting prepared to be eaten, though resigned for it to happen. “Loot, huh? What’s your real name, boy?” He was younger than Loot, but he felt older.
Loot looked over at Pauly as if to make sure that all this was okay with his little owner and protector, but Pauly was spitting threats about all those rugheads he could have cut up and wasn’t paying attention to his poor little ward that was about to be coerced by a far more dangerous devil, though nobody really could know that. “Lee Brown.” His voice was a lot clearer than T-Bag was expecting, and he spoke like an educated man. It made T-Bag lick his lips.
“You’re big man Pauly’s little bitch, now ain’t you?” He wanted to see whether the dig would sting, and if not just how much it would take to get it to.
Loot looked at him wearily out of the corner of his eye and sighed, slumping a little bit and looking off into the distance because he never seemed to look at somebody when he talked, even though he spoke like some kind of a man of authority. “That’s what people say.”
T-Bag pushed his shoulder lightly and forced him to look at him just so he could look into his eyes and try to figure out what exactly the other man was hiding there, be it animal or human or something else entirely, he just had to know. “Yeah. That’s what all them say, but how ‘bout you, Lee Brown? You gotta have an opinion in this whole matter, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Loot stared sullenly forwards and refused to look T-Bag in the eye like he was holding out some sort of an awful secret, “I’m out of here soon enough anyway. Might as well play the part until then.”
T-Bag edged closer to him so their legs pressed up against each other and he could feel the heat of the other man’s flesh which gave him that sort of primal high that being close enough to strangle any human being seemed to give him since Mona and more prominently since little Johnny. He missed this feeling when he was in the SHU. “Does Pauly keep you safe like you wanna be? Ever think you might need some harder sort of protection?”
Loot couldn’t entirely hide the fact that the idea interested him on some level. “Not really.”
T-Bag listened to the eyes and not the words as he slid a razor from his sleeve into Loot’s, leaning in really close to whisper in the man’s ear at close enough range that his breath bounced from Loot’s face and back to his, drowning him in the heat of it. “Well, you think about it anyways, hear? Never know when you might start thinkin’ about different options.”
He glanced up and saw that Roach was watching him with a look like he was sure that he couldn’t be trusted, but only T-Bag knew that for sure so he just winked at the skinhead and dragged himself to his feet, meandering away to let Loot think in peace, even though they both already knew the answer.
It happened on some day or another, but T-Bag had stopped being able to tell one day for another a long time ago so he couldn’t be exactly sure whether it was a Sunday or a Saturday or a Tuesday or some other day that nobody had a name for, and it didn’t matter to him because in prison there was only time and the actual date didn’t matter much to anybody.
There was a lot of blood and a lot of people yelling and then he was standing next to Loot watching people race around trying to find something to help because Pauly was lying there on the floor with his throat cut open real wide and gaping like Howie’s had been. It was nice to know Loot’d picked up something from him already. “It’s nice to hear you’re taking me up on my offer.” He drawled, ruffling the other man’s hair and it didn’t feel like he was that much shorter anymore. He felt powerful.
Loot looked like he wanted to crumple up in a heap and die. He kept fiddling with his pockets like that was somehow going to purge him of all of the sins he’d committed in his life, which everyone knew wasn’t true. “You said you were going to protect me now.”
T-Bag reached into his pocket and flipped it out so it hung there on the side of his pants and he looked up at Loot with his eyebrows raised challengingly to see if he was willing to take it. “You take a hold o’ this and it’ll all be fine for you for as long as you’re in here, you got me?”
There was a hesitation before Loot took it and then it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Alliance started assembling themselves around him without a few people - namely Roach - because it was some unspoken truth that now that Pauly was dead and Loot had chosen T-Bag, he was in charge now. He was the one calling the shots and they knew better than to question a guy like him.
He could live like this.
Character/Pairing: Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell
Prompt: 001. Beginnings
Rating: R
Summary: “Theodore Bagwell, you are found guilty of attempted murder…”
Author's Notes: Blech. I know nothing of the criminal justice system of the US and thus, this is going to be inaccurate on many counts. Erk. Forgive my errors. Just pretend that… I don’t know. Pretend it’s possible. Set after Proportions. Rated for murder and graphic thoughts and that sort of thing.
Alliances
“Theodore Bagwell, you are found guilty of attempted murder…” And the rest of the judge’s little spiel Teddy just tuned out because he already knew what she was going to be saying and so why should he even bother listening? Lionel Bridge survived only out of luck and it was his fault. Shouldn’t have looked up when the other teacher walked in, should have just torn open the nigger’s face and let him bleed out like that and make sure he died, but no. Now he had attempted murder and a ticket to Alabama State Prison regardless of his age and he’d be there for twenty years if they got what they wanted.
The CO that introduced him to the whole scheme of things was named Officer Riley and he had a soft sort of look about him but didn’t flinch when the prisoners shouted obscenities. “Bagwell…” He mumbled on about things that Teddy already knew but he didn’t bother cutting him off because the man looked kind of pretty babbling on like that.
They made sure to put him in a cell with a white guy ‘cause they seemed to take from his mannerisms that he wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of the Negroes and that suited him fine ‘cause the blacks were all bigger than him and he didn’t feel like having his ass kicked just because he thought they were lesser men than him. So instead he was in a cell with a man by the name of Richard Angus who was in for knocking over a bank, or trying to ‘cause he got caught after all.
“People call me Roach.” Richard Angus bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes at Teddy. He was tall and skinny with track marks down his arms and a shaved head even though he didn’t bother shaving anything else. “What’re you in for boy?”
Teddy sort of realized that it was a kind of test of him to see what exactly he was made of and see how far they could push this. And it was obvious enough to him that he had enough of a record to him at eighteen to make it alright in here. “I’m Theodore Bagwell.” He knew calling himself anything else was going to get him shanked really quick in here. “Tried to kill some nigger.”
Roach laughed and clapped hands with him, scratching at the beard he never really bothered to deal with. “Nice, boy. How old are you anyways?”
“Eighteen.” Teddy climbed up on his bunk and licked around the edges of his lips. “You ever kill somebody, Roach?”
“Fuck no.” Roach shorted, leaning up against the bunk and leering at Reddy with a look he guessed was supposed to be dangerous but didn’t really phase Teddy at all. “You ever kill someone, boy, or are you just tryin’ to make a name for yourself down in here?”
Teddy laughed a little bit and thought about Mona and the thirty-seven holes in her body and Johnny all torn up and bloody and lying in the dirt where no one was going to find him ‘cause no one wanted to. “I got two bodies to my name right now. I’m gonna have more someday.”
Roach snorted and turned away from him to take a piss. “Two by eighteen? That’s bullshit, boy.”
Teddy laughed, lying back on his bunk and biting at his lower lip with his head angled a bit to the side. “I ain’t bullshitting. Y’all better watch out for me once I’m outta here ‘cause I’m gonna make sure people never forget.”
For the first few days he kept to himself and let the word spread about Theodore Bagwell with two dead people to his name that nobody knew about but him. Probably would have been shanked too during all that and the way he pushed past the Negroes in line but something kept everybody away and Teddy liked it that way. He spent all the time painting pictures in his head of drowning COs and slaughtered prisoners like pigs but couldn’t figure out a way to get it out on paper.
Roach hung around with about a dozen white men, some with track lines and shaved heads and some without. They had a kind of ringleader that they called Pauly whose real name was Paul something. Pauly was in for a triple homicide and rape of teenage white boys and he had himself a prison bitch he called Loot who was pale and scared looking and was in for identity theft and he followed around behind Pauly everywhere.
Every time they went past him Teddy couldn’t help licking his lips and smirking at the way Pauly would always give him a sideways sort of look of appraisal. Teddy could live off of that look.
It was about two weeks after he came that Roach broached the subject though Teddy wasn’t totally sure ‘cause he stopped counting after his second day inside.
“What do you think of the Negroes, boy?” They were lying in their bunks each and Teddy was counting dead people in the back of his head when Roach said it.
Teddy pulled himself up so he was sitting and ignored his hand, which was twitching slightly. “Filthy niggers. What else is there to say?”
Roach laughed at him and swung around to stare Teddy right in the face and Teddy could see the drugs dancing in Roach’s eyes. “Quick to please, ain’t you boy?”
“Depends on what you want.” Teddy moved forwards and cupped the other man’s cock in his hand, arching an eyebrow at him because, really, it was all just another game in the end.
Roach just laughed some more and pulled away from him with a look on his face that Teddy couldn’t fully get. “Save that for someone who wants it, boy. You gotta be careful whose dick you grab in here. Grab the wrong one and you’ll lose a hand.”
“So cut it off if you think I’ll let you get away with it.”
“Idle threats, boy. I’m not the one you should be watching out for in here. Keep an eye on them rugheads. Never know what might happen in here.”
Teddy laughed at the words that sounded so much like a dire warning. “I ain’t scared of a couple of Negroes.” He ran his hands through and over his hair while thinking about how pretty Roach would look if someone carved out his eyes. “They should all be scared of me if they know what’s good for them.”
People talked in prison and he just let them talk because there wasn’t much a couple of words could do to him and if they really wanted to bother him they all had their little shanks hidden up their sleeves. Why they didn’t use them Teddy didn’t know and he didn’t really care either because it kept him alive so the whys were just inconsequential sorts of things, now weren’t they?
In the prison showers a couple of times he watched Pauly and Loot while he washed himself up and licked his lips thinking of all the things he could do to scar Loot’s pale, pale skin. It got him so hard it hurt and he had to bite his lip and hiss slightly at nothing because everybody knew that Loot was off limits as long as Pauly was there.
“You keep lookin’ at ‘em like that, snowflake, you gonna end up in the grave fast.” A rughead shoved him in the showers and bared his teeth at him with the kind of warning that he never bothered to take seriously because no one dared to go through with them. He instead just curled his lip at the nigger and brushed his way past him but didn’t get to far because the man reached out and caught his arm, dragging him back to hiss in his ear with hot breath that make Teddy twitch with all the things he could do to someone at this close range. “You keep actin’ out like that towards me, you gonna end up in the grave faster. Got that, white boy?”
“You don’t run this place. I can do whatever the fuck I want.” Teddy murmured under his breath and moved away from him, pretending not to notice that Pauly and Loot and the rest of their little gang were watching him as he left.
For the next couple of days he found himself sitting around with a fish named Connor that liked to mutter to himself about things that he’d done, and Teddy liked to listen because he could get a lot of nasty ideas from a man like that. Connor was twitchy and quiet most of the time and pretty much kept to himself for the most part except for when Teddy was hanging around him. Roach said a couple of times that Connor was out of his fucking mind but Teddy ignored him because he knew that if Roach figured even a tiny bit of what was going through his mind half the time he’d be calling him a lot worse.
CO Riley watched Teddy carefully in the yard and pulled him aside at one point with his eyebrows all furrowed and looking suspicious like just maybe he was starting to figure out just what was hiding behind that eighteen-year-old face, that thing that no one else was willing to see yet. “Bagwell, I’ve been hearing some rumours ‘bout you. Something about a couple of murders?”
He just smiled and leaned up against the fence, his tongue darting out over his lips and looking at Riley in that way that got people on edge. “You know how it is, boss, just makin’ a name for myself, know what I’m saying?”
Riley took that as a good enough answer and moved along and went back to pretending Teddy didn’t exist, even though he always kept an eye on him from a long distance away to make sure that the suspicious little voices in the back of his mind were just little voices and meant nothing. Teddy thought about what it would look like if he hooked something in Riley’s gut and tore out his liver and his intestines and forced him to eat them just to see the look on his little face when he tasted all that blood. It was the sort of thing Connor would think of.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in there when Pauly talked to him for the first time, Loot shifting his weight behind him and looking like some poor little puppy that somebody’d kicked too many times, and Teddy was pretty sure he knew who’d been doing the kicking. “You Roach’s cellie, huh? What’s your name, boy?”
Teddy took a good long look at Loot over Pauly’s shoulder and smirked at him and watched the shifting get all the more pronounced as Loot looked down at the ground at some patch of grass that’d been stomped on too many times, much like himself. “Theodore Bagwell.”
“Theodore Bagwell… Theo Bagwell…” And then Pauly started laughing, reaching around to smack Loot’s ass which made the other man jerk slightly and look more pronouncedly into the distance at something clearly very profound because it was holding his attention pretty damn good. “Man, you got the most unfortunate little name I’ve ever heard, haven’t you T-Bag? Y’know what that means, T-Bag? You ever t-bag somebody?” Pauly leaned in a little bit and winked at Teddy. “Bet you have. Bet you liked it too.”
And as Pauly walked off it seemed somewhat decided that he wasn’t Teddy sitting on the outside of the prison social ladder anymore. He was T-Bag and he’d just gotten his first little introduction to the Alliance for Purity and that suited him pretty damn fine. He looked over at the fence and saw that Riley was looking at him a little bit funny and he just tilted his head at him and walked off, kind of laughing and kind of humming a little bit to himself because things just might be turning up for him about now.
That night he lay awake in his bunk and waited for everything to quiet down a bit to talk to Roach, who was always awake because without his drugs he couldn’t sleep and he hadn’t gotten any of late. “Hey, Roach, what’s t-bagging?”
Roach laughed for a little while and stretched his head around to look down at T-Bag with an incredulous sort of look on his face that made T-Bag kind of want to rip his lung out and eat it. “You serious, boy? Has Pauly gotten around to givin’ you a proper hello now?” He didn’t wait for a response, just flipped back over and kept talking like the question had never been posed. “Knew it’d happen at some point, what with what you’re in for and all. Don’t pay him any attention, boy, he’s a retard. Thinks he’s ruler of the fucking world.”
“What is he then?” T-Bag asked and he thought in the back of his mind that he could be the ruler of the fucking world if anybody would ever just let him have the chance to do something to get there. “Seems to rule all your asses pretty damn well. He keeps that Loot guy on a pretty short leash too. Acts like he’s king.”
“Don’t mean he is. You shouldn’t be gettin’ all these ideas, boy, it’s just gonna end up bad for you. Pauly thinks he’s cool and we humour him ‘cause that’s what we do. The man’s got a record on him that makes people shake.” Roach shifted on the bed and T-Bag was half-fascinated by the way the mattress moved. “What’s got you so interested in Pauly, anyhow? You want to be his bitch?”
“I ain’t going to be anybody’s bitch. I’m my own man, y’know what I’m sayin’?” T-Bag licked his lips and cracks his neck carefully which felt damn good especially when he pretended that the sound was someone else’s neck snapping beyond repair. “I’m gonna be the one with my own bitches someday. And I’m gonna hold onto ‘em better than Pauly does.”
“You keep dreamin’, boy.” Roach discredited him so easily but that was nothing because Roach was nothing. “Never gonna happen. You’re gonna get yourself shanked in here soon if you keep talkin’ like that. Howie’s sure willin’ to give it a shot.”
Howie was the nigger that’d been biting at T-Bag’s ass since their little altercation in the prison showers. T-Bag licked his lips and laughed a short little bit at that because there was no was he was going to be scared off by some rughead. “He can try. Moment he does I’m gonna slice his throat open and gut him.”
Something about the way he said that made Roach shut up for a really long time, as if he was starting to realize that when T-Bag said that sort of thing he wasn’t just making a show of himself he really meant it and someday he was really going to do it. After a while of Roach shifting in his bunk and probably thinking a lot about what T-Bag just said, he finally said something in reply. “Better hope you don’t get caught.”
“They’re never gonna catch me until I want them to.”
T-Bag spent the next really long while just thinking about how he was going to let all of this sort of play out, following along behind the rest of the Alliance for Purity and watching Pauly rave on about the African American problem and watching Loot look prettily at the ground like nobody gave a damn about him and thought about how he could show Loot how much he gave a damn. He could do a lot to Loot and he was going to do it at some point but he just had to find himself the right moment to do something, which had to be getting damn soon ‘cause it was starting to hurt again. Something deep and dark inside of him that lived best when he was hurting people kept throbbing painfully and telling him that he needed to slice someone’s throat or carve someone’s gut to appease it again, like some sacrifice to a kind of god and he wasn’t going to argue with it because it was what kept him alive half the time.
“The way you walkin’ round in here’s like you think you can take all o’ us, white boy.” Howie hissed in his ear when T-Bag fell behind the rest of the Alliance when they were walking through the yard. “You think you can take me, white boy? Give it your best shot.”
T-Bag sort of swivelled a bit on one look and regarded Howie in his best sort of way that said he really didn’t care. “Best keep your tone polite, nigger, or I just might.”
It all started and ended in around a second and then it was just like it never happened, which was sort of like nothing T-Bag had ever done before. He always drew the deaths out but this was so brief, so human and so feeble it didn’t entirely satisfy him like tearing people up did. Howie stepped forwards ready to hit him and he slid a razor he’d stolen from Roach from his sleeve, stepping quickly forwards and slashing Howie’s throat like he slashed Mona’s so blood bubbled from the rughead’s mouth and people started yelling and then there were shots being fired everywhere and someone pushed him to the ground and hissed in his ear. “Out in the open like that, T-Bag? You gonna get us all shot!”
He didn’t care really though because it was enough to make the quiet little impulses in the back of him where all his nerves came together in one great knot stop shouting at him and it made everything start breathing again. It was nice to feel like that. He liked his lips and laughed even though nobody could hear him over the gunshots.
Riley looked at him like he was some sort of a monster that needed to be contained somewhere fast while he led him to the SHU, and he sort of was being contained somewhere fast. Didn’t matter. Something about the SHU was kind of nice because it was quiet and alone and a lot like all the little demons living in the back of his head. They thrived in places like this.
Time passed by pretty fast in the SHU and he let it do so, twitching slightly and thinking about all the things he could’ve done to Howie if he’d had more time and wondering if he died or not because if he hadn’t T-Bag would make sure that little mistake was rectified damn good. He talked to himself a little bit sometimes because the only things listening was him and the walls and the walls weren’t going to tell anybody what he was thinking about in the deep caverns of his mind even when he talked about Mona dead and bleeding everywhere and how she used to say things about drowning people and little Johnny with his innocent eyes that never managed to look betrayed. Mr. Bridge was an unfortunate mishap along the way, but that too could be rectified in time ‘cause once he was out he was going to make sure that no one could ever forget Theodore Bagwell. He spent a lot of his time in the dark thinking about dead people and when they finally let him out he was quieter than before, more cautious than before, and more willing than before.
Roach looked at him uneasily when they let him back into the cell and sort of hedged around what he was trying to say for the first few minutes. “So, you really can kill somebody, huh, boy? What’d you think you were gonna prove like that? That you’re tough? Gettin’ us all into shit?”
T-Bag shrugged and wandered around the cell, pacing a bit like some sort of a caged animal that was just waiting for the door to be unlocked so he could really give everybody a show to watch, but he couldn’t do that just yet because that would screw all of this up and too much was riding on it in his mind for it to get screwed up now. “Wasn’t tryin’ to prove nothing, amigo. Just watching out for my ass.”
“You been doin’ a lot of that, boy.” Roach sounded like he was trying pretty hard to warn T-Bag off but he really didn’t scare that easy. “Best start paying attention to the rest of us up in here or we all gonna cut you.”
“Then cut me. It’d be nice to see all the blood pool out on the ground.”
The more T-Bag watched everybody in the Alliance the more he realized that Loot wasn’t always a step behind Pauly with that look on his face like somebody just murdered his momma. He sat alone on the fringes of the pack an awful lot when they were all boasting about how many niggers they were going to shoot when they finally got out while T-Bag listened in and swore to himself that he’d best the highest they got by five and even then he’d go further because that was the way he operated. Loot didn’t look so interested in the topic of conversation, so T-Bag took to watching him instead and the way he fiddled with his pockets and looked at everyone blankly like he’d been stuck in some sort of a nasty dream cloud for way, way too long.
He swaggered over to Loot one of those times, the sides of his mouth curled up a bit in some sort of a threatening smirk that Loot looked at warily like he was getting prepared to be eaten, though resigned for it to happen. “Loot, huh? What’s your real name, boy?” He was younger than Loot, but he felt older.
Loot looked over at Pauly as if to make sure that all this was okay with his little owner and protector, but Pauly was spitting threats about all those rugheads he could have cut up and wasn’t paying attention to his poor little ward that was about to be coerced by a far more dangerous devil, though nobody really could know that. “Lee Brown.” His voice was a lot clearer than T-Bag was expecting, and he spoke like an educated man. It made T-Bag lick his lips.
“You’re big man Pauly’s little bitch, now ain’t you?” He wanted to see whether the dig would sting, and if not just how much it would take to get it to.
Loot looked at him wearily out of the corner of his eye and sighed, slumping a little bit and looking off into the distance because he never seemed to look at somebody when he talked, even though he spoke like some kind of a man of authority. “That’s what people say.”
T-Bag pushed his shoulder lightly and forced him to look at him just so he could look into his eyes and try to figure out what exactly the other man was hiding there, be it animal or human or something else entirely, he just had to know. “Yeah. That’s what all them say, but how ‘bout you, Lee Brown? You gotta have an opinion in this whole matter, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Loot stared sullenly forwards and refused to look T-Bag in the eye like he was holding out some sort of an awful secret, “I’m out of here soon enough anyway. Might as well play the part until then.”
T-Bag edged closer to him so their legs pressed up against each other and he could feel the heat of the other man’s flesh which gave him that sort of primal high that being close enough to strangle any human being seemed to give him since Mona and more prominently since little Johnny. He missed this feeling when he was in the SHU. “Does Pauly keep you safe like you wanna be? Ever think you might need some harder sort of protection?”
Loot couldn’t entirely hide the fact that the idea interested him on some level. “Not really.”
T-Bag listened to the eyes and not the words as he slid a razor from his sleeve into Loot’s, leaning in really close to whisper in the man’s ear at close enough range that his breath bounced from Loot’s face and back to his, drowning him in the heat of it. “Well, you think about it anyways, hear? Never know when you might start thinkin’ about different options.”
He glanced up and saw that Roach was watching him with a look like he was sure that he couldn’t be trusted, but only T-Bag knew that for sure so he just winked at the skinhead and dragged himself to his feet, meandering away to let Loot think in peace, even though they both already knew the answer.
It happened on some day or another, but T-Bag had stopped being able to tell one day for another a long time ago so he couldn’t be exactly sure whether it was a Sunday or a Saturday or a Tuesday or some other day that nobody had a name for, and it didn’t matter to him because in prison there was only time and the actual date didn’t matter much to anybody.
There was a lot of blood and a lot of people yelling and then he was standing next to Loot watching people race around trying to find something to help because Pauly was lying there on the floor with his throat cut open real wide and gaping like Howie’s had been. It was nice to know Loot’d picked up something from him already. “It’s nice to hear you’re taking me up on my offer.” He drawled, ruffling the other man’s hair and it didn’t feel like he was that much shorter anymore. He felt powerful.
Loot looked like he wanted to crumple up in a heap and die. He kept fiddling with his pockets like that was somehow going to purge him of all of the sins he’d committed in his life, which everyone knew wasn’t true. “You said you were going to protect me now.”
T-Bag reached into his pocket and flipped it out so it hung there on the side of his pants and he looked up at Loot with his eyebrows raised challengingly to see if he was willing to take it. “You take a hold o’ this and it’ll all be fine for you for as long as you’re in here, you got me?”
There was a hesitation before Loot took it and then it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Alliance started assembling themselves around him without a few people - namely Roach - because it was some unspoken truth that now that Pauly was dead and Loot had chosen T-Bag, he was in charge now. He was the one calling the shots and they knew better than to question a guy like him.
He could live like this.