The Night Stalker

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Noise was one of the few things that moved freely inside a prison. The haunting echo of my own footsteps followed me down the long, windowless corridor inside the maximum security wing of Florida State Prison in Starke. I’d visited many prisons, and the smell was always the same: a choking mixture of piss, shit, fear, and desperation, wiped down by harsh antiseptics.

Walking through an electronically operated steel door, I was patted down by two stone-faced guards. Satisfied that I was not carrying weapons or contraband, they passed me off to a smirking inmate with a hideous purple birthmark on the side of his face. He took off at a brisk pace, and I followed him into the cellblock that housed death row inmates.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Garvin,” he replied, not breaking stride.

“What are you in for?”

“I shot up my family during Thanksgiving dinner.”

I walked past the cells in death row with my eyes to the floor, feeling their occupants’ presence like a fist pounding on my back. When we arrived at an empty cell, Garvin slid back the door, and stepped to one side. “Wait inside here,” he said.

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