Old Dog sits across from me, sitting on an overturned bucket. Chairs are hard to get up the stairs. I’m sitting on my bunk, chess board between us on an old milk crate.

We’ve been playing for a few hours now. Not many pieces left on the board. I quite like playing with Old Dog. He’s shrewd. Not really that smart, but he definitely got a gift for planning ahead.

“What did you do before you hit the joint, Old Dog?” I ask softly, ready to move my knight.

We’re sharing some candy, biscuits, and booze. We picked up another pack of smokes, and there’s a bit of a party feel in the air. One of the guards even found us a radio.

“English professor.” Old Dog chews on a smoke.

His teeth are yellow, and so are his fingers. He likes to roll his own cigarettes and smoke them right down to the skin.

I smack my leg, laughing. “No kidding? Really? I never would have guessed.” I take in his long, lanky grey hair, his tough skinny build.

I move my knight, taking a piece, making him hiss through his teeth. I’m trying to imagine him with a haircut, shave, and decent suit. It’s difficult.

“How long you been in here, Old Dog?”

“Twenty years.” He rubs the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. “Thereabouts.”

“You ever getting out?”

“Nope.”

“What did you do, Old Dog?”

He looks up at me, clear blue eyes steady. “I killed one of my students.”

“Well, mother fuck me. Care to tell the story?”

I can tell he doesn’t want to, but he also knows I’m just looking for an excuse to beat on him again. He still has a nice purple bruise across his neck. The chess is not quite occupying me as much as I’d hoped.

“I disciplined the little fucker.” He moves pieces on the board. “I can’t remember rightly. I caught the little shit egging my car. My wife had just divorced me that day. I don’t rightly recall, but apparently, I beat him to death with my briefcase.”

I start laughing, slapping my knee. “You’re kidding? A briefcase?”

“Yup. As I said, I don’t rightly recall, but they showed me the footage.”

I’m laughing so hard now, tears are leaking out of my eyes. “You…you were caught on camera?”

“Yep. Whole school was covered by cameras. Not like I was thinking.” He looks up, grinning. “The final shot was the briefcase to the throat. The little fuck was probably dead already, but the last hit almost took his motherfucking head off.”

“You don’t say.” I’m still laughing. “Well, I’m impressed, Old Dog. You miss anything from outside?”

He studies the chess board. He probably misses everything.

“Hey, Lummox!” I bellow.

He’s standing by the door like he’s Old Dog’s personal assistant. Maybe he is. Maybe they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. Anything is possible.

“What you in for?” I call out.

“Robbery,” he speaks over his shoulder.

“What did you steal?”

“Shoes.”

I’m laughing again. Oh, this is too good.

“You’re in jail! For stealing shoes!” I roll back on the bunk, roaring with laughter. “It’s not the answer I expect from a fat cunt like you, but maybe you have fine taste in fashion. What the fuck do I know?”

Lummox turns around. Looks right at me. “Hey there, Mr. Covington. You don’t know what it’s like. To not be able to afford decent shoes. Your feet hurt everywhere you go. You get cold and wet, and if you can’t afford good shoes, you can’t afford to get sick. And sick is what you get if you walk around in holey shoes.”

I wipe the tears from my eyes, sitting up. “You know what, Lummox? That actually made a certain kind of sense.”

He doesn’t turn around. Just grunts.

I’ll have to ponder this at some length. People too poor to afford shoes. Huh.

What about socks? I don’t even know who buys my fucking socks. I usually have some say in the shoes, but it’s all put together by a tailor. And sometimes stuff just arrives for free.

What a world.

I look down to the board and mop up Old Dog with my final move. He exclaims in surprise.

“I didn’t even see that coming, Mr. Covington!”

“That’s the whole idea.” I waggle a smoke at him.

I don’t let him call me Jaxon yet. But maybe soon.

I already had some respect for Old Dog. Finding out his crime has only impressed me more. Maybe he’s a bit crazy.

I like that.

“May I go now?”

“You got a date or something?”

“I suppose not. We can play again. Or I can get some cards. You like poker?”

“I do like poker.”

“Then we should play. Unless you want us to fuck off for a bit. I know you like your space.”

“Yeah, sure, Old Dog, you and Lummox can fuck off. Hey, what have we here?”

Benny’s at the door with a skinny-looking kid. New guy.

I gesture at Old Dog and Lummox to stay. Benny hangs in the doorway.

The two guards nearby raise their heads, and we share a second of eye contact. I wish some of my criminals were as dependable as these guards.

“He demanded to be brought to the big boss, Mr. Covington.”

“Did he now?” I take a hard drag, squinting through the smoke, “What’s your trouble there, young man?”

He’s twitchy, looking at walls furtively and scratching the back of his arm. His eyes dart around before falling on me.

“I’m crazy, you see.”

“Uh-huh.” This should be good.

“Like really nuts.” He looks right at me as if this should mean something.

“Go on kid. I’m losing patience with you, but what the hell.”

He twitches some more. “I need to speak with the boss guy. Let him know I don’t mean nothin’. Don’t go stabbing me in the shower for mouthing obscenities and such. I can’t help it.”

I’m starting to think the little fuck is trying to intimidate me. I don’t believe he’s that crazy, not for a second. I think it’s an act.

How do I know this? Because I see crazy every time I look in the fucking mirror. It doesn’t look like this.

Crazy isn’t what you think it is. It doesn’t show, not on the surface. Not the real crazy.

The real crazy lives so deep in the mind, it hides itself. It’s like it has its own survival instinct. It blends in.

It’s not as obvious as this poor little fuck.

He takes a step forward, looking at my face, eyes jittering back and forth.

“Is this supposed to scare me? Little Punk. Little crazy. Hold on. I have to find a name that sticks.” I puff my smoke, looking at the ceiling, trying to come up with a decent word. Something descriptive that I’ll remember.

“My name’s Mike.” He looks confused.

“No, it’s not. Its Mozzie. Because mosquitoes are little and annoying and fucking useless. Get out of my cell, Mozzie.”

“I told you!” He takes two steps towards me. “I’m fucking crazy and dangerous, and my name is Mike.”

He looks desperate. Maybe this act works on the non-crazy. I’m sure it does.

It would probably work on Prof. And Charlie, shit, he’d run scared!

Wouldn’t work on Ali, though. She’d stare him down with icy calm, just like she does me.

Maybe there are grades of crazy. Me and Ali, we’re at the top. More human than human.

Calmly, I hold out a hand.

“Jaxon Covington. You have one minute to get the fuck out.”

“I don’t give a fuck who ya are! I’m tellin’ you to watch out for me!”

“Why exactly did you come here, Mozzie? What’s the thinking, of asking to be taken to the big boss? Just so you can quiver like a piece of shit and disgust me?”

He stares at me. His eyes really are jiggling around.

Maybe he’s coming down or something. We’ll have to get Old Dog to shoot him up so he’ll calm down and we can have a decent conversation. Or bang him up with a briefcase.

Mozzie’s mouth works. He even spits a bit.

“You are a disgusting creature, Mozzie. Get the fuck out.”

“You gonna make me, Jack old boy, huh? You gonna make me?”

I don’t move.

The only movement in the cell is the smoke pouring from my cigarette.

I feel cold down the spine, my muscles going tight and hard as I stare Mozzie down, a deep, dark smile creeping across my face.

His crazed eyes bore into mine, but he has no fucking idea what crazy even looks like.

Lummox, Old Dog, Benny, and the two nearest guards throw themselves on Mozzie and start beating the fuck out of him.

I feel a crackle of power through my body, and I start laughing as I watch them punch the shit out of little Mozzie.