Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Death by Dominoes

When the assassins come they kill everyone. That is what you must understand. Death is coming. It's at the door. Though uttered weeks earlier, on a different cellblock, I still recall leaning forward in concentration, struggling to hear the words, striving to discern the meaning, if any, conveyed by Wannamaker's frog-like voice.

The old man didn't speak his words so much as he breathed them out, in a guttural rasp, as weak as a politician's promise, like a man talking reluctantly through a mouthful of marbles. Weeks later, perched on an overturned mop bucket wedged in the open doorway of my single-man cell, Wannamaker's enigmatic words were still gnawing along the margins of my mind. Those whispered words...How was I to know they'd be so prescient?