all right

Occasionally adding corroborative details to add verisimilitude to otherwise bald and unconvincing,
but veridicous accounts
with careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination.

21 May, 2012

A Prison Conversation

Sometime in the future, two inmates in a prison’s exercise yard are conversing surreptitiously.  At an adjacent, sunnier corner of the yard, a drowsy, armed guard leans against a wall.

88267:  What are you in for?
103552:  Coke: possession with intent.
88267:  Ah, they’ve really cracked down on that, I hear. 
103552:  Yeah, though it’s easier to get the stuff in here than outside now. 
88267:  How much? 
103552:  Ten bucks a can, or fifteen a bottle, for the sweet, calorific tooth-rotter— 
88267:  No, how much time you get? 
103552:  Five years.  First offence, y’know.
88267:  Five years for selling Coca Cola!  How much, I wonder, would you get for selling burgers? 
103552:  Lethal injection.  I had a friend who was caught selling happy meals, and he’s on death row as we speak.  What are you in for?
88267:  Pædophobia.  Twenty years. 
103552:  What the?  You’re a child-molester! 
88267:  No, pædophobia: the word, you’d think, would mean “an irrational dread of children”, but it’s used to mean “hater of pædophiles”. 
103552:  Wow!  Did you kill one, then?
88267:  No, I wrote on my website that I didn’t think old adults should be allowed to marry young minors. 
103552:  No wonder you’re in the protected section of the prison—
Guard:  Oy, you, Peddo.  Time’s up.  Stop talking to normal prisoners, and get your bigoted arse back in your cell. 
88267:  Ah, well, at least the heroin supplied by the canteen is good and cheap…

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