Liberty Prison

It's a joke calling it Liberty Prison.  Well, it took my liberty all right, but that's not what they mean.
 
Liberty Prison was built in the 60s under some hippy notion that you could have a prison that would help to 'liberalise' and 'liberate' the minds of the prisoners. They still keep us locked up, but give us lots of books to read.  Fantastic! It means we get to do yoga instead of boxing and eat lots of sloppy vegetarian food, spending our nights farting to ourselves in cold comfort.  I've not seen a slice of bacon since 2008.  To me it feels less like liberation and more like additional punishment.
 
As soon as I set foot in the place I decided I was going to escape from it.   Up to twenty years I had to serve, and I had every intention of leaving early due to bad behaviour.
 
It took me two years to dig the tunnel. It being a 'liberal' prison, it wasn't too difficult to get a hammer and chisel and I could just walk the rock I dug up out into the yard in my pockets, I didn't even have to knit a special compartment inside my trouser legs like they did in Escape from Colditz.  Just as well, 'cause I don't knit.
 
Because I'm in the Eastern Wing, I calculated that I only had to dig seventy feet to come up on the other side of the wall, right by the road. My plan was just to stick out my thumb and hitch a ride.
 
I'd virtually finished my tunnel on a Tuesday and had been waiting for the perfect opportunity, it had been raining the rest of the week and I'd have stood out walking along the road by a prison without a coat.  I'd got a bit of cash in my pocket and a map of the local area, the first useful thing I've borrowed from their useless library.
 
It took me about ten minutes to chip away the surface stone and find myself somewhere dark. Where was I?  A sewer, na, didn't smell like a sewer.  I was in some kind of room, it was… Shit, it was another cell. 
 
I'd come up under someone's bed. My initial fear was that I'd broken into the cell of some geezer who was coming up for probation who would grass up my tunnel in order to knock a year or two off his sentence, not caring that they'd be adding five or six on to mine. I couldn't help looking though, just to see whose cell I was in.  It might be someone who'd help me work on a new tunnel.  With two of us digging it would take half as long.
 
It was worse than I feared.  Far, far worse than a snitch or grass.  I'd broken into the cell of Muncher McGann.
 
Muncher's the most evil man in this entire nick.  He's so named after eating his way through three of his boyfriends.  He was only found out when he went to the doctors with indigestion.  Even the poofs don't go near him here: There's gay, and there's eat-your -boyfriends gay.
 
I turned from his sleeping form, planning to go quietly back to my tunnel, cover up the evidence of the break-in as best as I could and return to my cell to curse my stupidity.  But as I was sneaking back I heard a voice behind me.  "Oozat?"  It was too late.
 
I explained the situation to Muncher and he laughed at my wrong turning.  In spite of my fears of becoming Muncher's evening meal, I felt I had to justify myself in light of his mockery. "I can't understand it I," I said, "I had a map and everything.  I spent ages planing this."
 
"Let's have a look at that map," he said.  I took out the plan of the prison I'd paid good money to Steve 'Fetcher' Fletcher for. He studied it for a while by torchlight, did a couple of scribbled calculations on the back of the map, and laughed again.
 
"You've made a bit of a wrong turning," he said, "you needed to go East, your tunnel's actually been heading Southeast.  You've probably got the distance about right, though.  Here look, I've go a compass in my shoe, I'll show you."
 
We crawled under Muncher's bed.  I did fear, bending down, that he was going to take the opportunity to finish me off, but he didn't.  He just pointed in the direction of the tunnel.  "Thought so, look, it's heading exactly Northwest. You're another fifty feet from the exit this way."
 
I decided to make the best of a bad lot and try and get Muncher to escape with me.  If we were digging a tunnel together he'd have less incentive to eat me, plus with his navigational skills we'd be able to avoid repeating my mistake. 
 
"Sorry, I'm up for probation in a few months, no point in my tunnelling out."  He paused to smile at me.  "I'll help you though, give you a few lessons in map reading."

Muncher had a large cell, with a bunk bed.  It should be a cell for two, but not even the most sadistic guard would put another man in with Muncher.  We sat on the spare bed and he talked me through the plan of the prison and showed me where I should have dug, using the compass arrow to show me where my next tunnel should go.
 
He then took my map of the area and showed me how to find my way around with it.  I could read a map, sort of, following roads and the like, but didn't know what any of the symbols meant. They're really handy, even have post offices marked up on 'em.  That could be important if I'm strapped for cash and have to pull off a job.
 
I returned to my cell in one piece, but sat up all night too afraid to sleep. After all, I didn't just have a tunnel to Muncher's cell, he had one to mine.  There was nothing at all to stop him sneaking up on me while I slept and having a midnight snack.  I lay my mug, bowl and a few other breakable objects on top of the tunnel so that it would make a noise if he broke in to my cell, though all that would do is give me time. 

Logically there was no way Muncher would eat me, it would have been entirely stupid. He was due out in a couple of months and would be found out straight away, adding twenty years to his sentence in one munch.  Besides, he'd have had to have eaten me raw and didn't even have a decent knife to cut me into slices with.  He didn't even have a track record of eating strangers, only former lovers.

No, if I gave it any sensible thought there was no way that Muncher would eat me. Much more sensible to wait until he was released, when he could soon pick up another victim, have him roasted with spuds and gravy, and he might even get away with it. This didn't help me sleep though. Nightmares and their non-sleeping equivalent don't pay much heed to logic.
 
The next night I knew I wouldn't sleep, with the lurking threat of becoming Muncher's fourth victim looming from the other end of the tunnel.  I wasn't in the mood for beginning my new tunnel just yet, I needed a break after two year‘s of hard labour. With nothing better to do I decided to go and pay him a visit, taking a bar of chocolate I'd been given for doing Notorious Dave a favour.
 
"How's it's going, moley?" he asked, clearly delighted with his new nickname for me. 
 
"Bit fed up, to be honest.  Thought I'd be out by now, on my way back to London, looking up a few old friends."
 
He looked at me sympathetically.  "So how long have you got left?"
 
"Fourteen years left, I've barely started."
 
"Time to build a whole warren of tunnels then, moley." He laughed again, you don't get much laughter in prison.  "What you in for, anyway, must be pretty serious?"
 
"I got done for killing this copper during a bank job. I didn't even do it. Well, I did, but I was aiming for the other guy, so how can that count?"
 
"Still, murder, that's pretty serious. Why did you kill him?"
 
"Why?  There were two cops walked in on our bank job.  I was facing ten years, I'd have been locked up."
 
"You were locked up.  Only for twenty years instead of ten."

"Yeah, but you don't understand.  If you're in the game like I am, robberies that sort of thing, cops are your worst enemy.  I hate every single one of them."
 
"That's a lot of hate."
 
It was a strange conversation to be having with a man who'd killed and eaten three boyfriends.  I guess he viewed my sort of killing different: I had no personal motive and didn't even get a meal out of it.
 
It was good to talk about it, though.  You have to undergo counselling at Liberty Prison, it's part of our punishment, but you can't be honest with a counsellor, it'll all be thrown back at you when you try for probation, you have to make out you’re all lovely and harmless.

I started seeing Muncher pretty much every night after lights out.  It gets pretty lonely in prison, I have a few mates but you can't really say much, gotta keep up this hard image.  Saying what you really feel about not seeing your family and the lost years is a bit girly, you're expected to bite the bullet and bide your time.  Muncher understood what I was going through, he'd served a long sentence.  It'd been harder for him in many ways, what with everyone staying well clear.  He'd barely spoken more than a few words to anyone before I showed up.
 
Muncher was also teaching me things that'd help on the outside.  I can read and write, but couldn't do much with 'em.  He helped me read better and educated me, even taught me some maths.  He thinks I should go legit, though I'm not really cut out for it.  It's all right for him, he's an architect, he reckons there'll be work available for him the minute he steps out the door.  Well paid work at that.
 
I put off digging my new tunnel and spent the time reading and writing instead. Munch says that writing a journal is the best way to manage your stresses and tension.  The only time in his life he didn't keep a journal he killed and ate three men, so it's good to see him writing every night. He told me a lot about his life, so different from mine, public school education, everything he could wish for.  The only problem he ever had in his life was the being gay thing, and even that was a positive boon when he was at Eton. 
 
How we came to start sleeping together was that it was a really cold night, seriously cold, minus seven the weatherman said on TV the next day. Prison's better than it was, with in-cell heating and the like, but because Liberty Prison is environmentally friendly it only has the heating switched up high enough to remind you of what heat might be like, never enough to actually keep you warm.

So I said let's share a bed, nothing funny like, just to keep warm in this icebox. And that's all we did, for the first few nights anyway, just cuddled together for warmth.  After a few nights it became natural to, you know, help each other relieve ourselves. It's something you have to do in prison, no women there to do it as nature intended.  It's not like I'm a poof or anything. 
 
We slept together every night for the rest of Muncher's sentence.  Being so close it was unbearable to think that we'd be separated as soon as he walked free.  So we started to work on a plan.  The best prison break ever. 
 
I write this at home, my new home, on Muncher's old computer, having just strolled out the front gate of the prison unchallenged, thirteen or fourteen years before I was s'posed to.  I was wearing Muncher's clobber and carrying his papers.  Because we both kept ourselves to ourselves, nobody had any inkling I was the wrong man.  Back in the cell, I'd tied Muncher up and gagged him silent.  All he has to do is claim that he's never seen the tunnel in his life and was completely surprised by me, then he's free to go as well.  Nobody could ever hope to prove otherwise.
 
It means we'll both be free.  And, best of all, no-one will have the faintest idea where I am. Nobody knew that Muncher and me were friends, so while the cops nose their way round all my old buddies and flames there won't be one single plod foot set inside Muncher's bachelor pad. Plus, I'm not remotely known in the manor, so there are lots of easy places to put my hand in the till if I get bored of being the kept boyfriend. 
 
He'll be home in a few hours, once they've finished questioning.  This'll be the first time I've lived with anyone since it went tits up with the wife ten years ago.  Muncher's not like the birds I've known, he's educated, sophisticated, he's gonna take me to the theatre and everything. I'm really looking forward to our new life together.