It was the best job in the whole prison, I thought, standing there by the door, freeing people. The pain and fear were at an end, and the prisoners were on their way home to loving families and new opportunities. Work on the cell block was hard and thankless, but I was able to tolerate the misery, the beatings, and their horrible grimaces knowing someday I’d be putting a smile there instead. And it was quiet. There was time to think. Most people don’t realize how loud a prison is; all day and all night, shouting and violence rang out all through the cell blocks. It made your head throb. At night, my wife would ask what’s wrong, why are you holding your head? Why do you have these headaches every night? She said I must be having migraines and didn’t understand why I refused to go see a doctor. I couldn’t explain it. I had to shove it all down and forget it. But that was all over. Now, there was quiet. And when it rained, I stood and watched the water drip down the wrought-iron bars. Elsewhere, there was chaos and suffering, but there, it was beautiful.

The first release of the day, inmate #3031, approached. That sound of footsteps came down the half-mile of tunnel separating the prison from the world, drawing steadily closer was my favorite thing. This was a sweeping sound, like with a limp, like a shopkeeper brushing debris from the sidewalk first thing in the morning. I watched inmate #3031 grow from a tiny dot on the yellowish prison light into a man, bathed in sunlight, then stop.

“Have a good one,” I said. I stuck the key into the lock and turned until it clicked. When gate swung open I liked to whistle little tune,  ding-dong, like a convenience store door-chime, but Inmate #3031 just stood there, staring. I stared back and cleared my throat, but he didn’t move. I jingled the keys for encouragement, but still nothing. I thought about asking if there was “a problem,” but enforcement wasn’t in my job description. So, I waited. After a while hanging there, trying hard not to make eye contact, he spoke.

“How long’s it been?” he said.

“How long’s it been what?” I said, pretending I didn’t understand. He bunched up the ashy skin on his forehead, straining to remember something, I think, counting up the years he wasted inside. His bald head was totally smooth and white, un-cracked, no wrinkles or pockmarks. He had a moonlight tan. Inmates were often invisible, but even the sun didn’t know this one.

“Since I’ve been in here,” he said. The spreadsheet said twenty-six years. I didn’t respond. My job was to lock the door behind them, not to talk. I performed the job as written. It didn’t bother me, though. They all talked. They all thought they had something important to say, but they all said the same thing. I just ignored it. I preferred the quiet. A dusty breeze blew into the tunnel, ruffling his prison clothes, but Inmate #3031 still didn’t leave. He moved a step closer to the door and faked like he was peeking around the corner, looking for something, or someone.

“Can I wear this? On the outside?” he said, tugging at the uniform. I didn’t answer. I had a personal policy against answering stupid questions. You could wear a prison uniform anywhere you wanted, if you wanted to, if you were so inclined, prison or not. Inmate #3031 dumped his clear plastic sack of personal effects on the ground. A pair of baggy drawstring sweatpants (gray), a plain, extra-large long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves cut off (light gray), a pair of worn-out slippers (maybe blue, washed to hell, and grayish), and some spare change and wadded-up receipts scattered on the floor.

“You can’t do that here,” I said. I cringed a little. It came out like I was still on the block. He looked up at me, scared. He had beady eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Actually, it was just that facial features were small. Or, his head was huge and they looked small by comparison. His nose could be described as beady, too. The nostrils were round like they had black stones stuck in them. And his mouth was beady and small, too. He opened his tiny mouth and words dribbled out. “Won’t people just think I’m a prisoner if I go out looking like this?

“Look, pal…”

“Teddy,” he said. “Teddy Janeczko. But you can call me inmate #3031, if that’s more comfortable.”

“Right. Look, Teddy,” I said. I stumbled. “It’s just Teddy now. Got it? Go ahead. Go on.” I made shooing motions with my free hand. I was getting tired of holding the door.

“Let me change my shirt, at least,” he said. He pulled the prison shirt up to his neck, where it got stuck. He thrashed around for a bit, arms stuck in the sleeves. I normally wouldn’t help, but I felt a pang of disgust. I didn’t want to watch that. I grabbed the shirt and pulled it as hard as I could, bracing my foot against his stomach. The neck hole stretched, but got stuck again around the middle of his head, so I dug my foot into his fatty midsection and yanked. He lost his balance and hit the ground with his full weight. With the collar strangling his head, I noticed that there was about two or three inches of extra flesh around the skull. The elastic dug into it, making a noticeable dent.

“I can’t breathe!” he said. With his arms freed his hands clutched at the shirt and pulled weakly. I tried yanking it again, but only succeeded in dusting the floor with him. “I can’t breathe!” he said, definitely breathing through his mouth, and mucus shooting out of his nostrils. I pulled the shirt back down around his neck and he lay on the ground, panting. The collar had left a red mark and an impression in the flabby stuff encompassing the head. After a minute, he pushed the shirt down over his torso and put his arms back through the holes. “I guess it’s for the best, whatever,” he said.

“The what?” I blurted, still trying to catch my breath. Something about him got the best of me, too. It was gross. Icky. Words didn’t fail me, but now the only words I had were the childish ones.

“I can never make up my mind about these things,” he said. He pulled himself into a seated position and leaned against the wall of the tunnel. The big head fat flattened against the wall. “What to wear, you know.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “What the flip are you talking about? What difference does it make?”

“It’s too much work,” he said. “Every day the same thing, what to wear, trying to look presentable. Such a waste. You get that right?” He looked my neatly pressed uniform up and down. I smirked. I couldn’t help myself. “Me, I can’t do it,” he said. “It’s too much decision making. It’s a waste of time and life is short. I bet you won’t understand this,” he said, tugging the shirt down to try and cover his stomach, “but I think I prefer the way it is inside. You know. I don’t have to decide anything, really. I just wake up and slip on a cold pair of prison socks and slide my feet into my sandals. No shoelaces, nothing. It’s easy. On the outside, there’s all sorts of crap and all kinds of complicated rules and whatnot. No brown belts with black pants, no white shoes after Labor Day? I can’t hardly keep track of all that crap.”

“The white shoes thing isn’t true anymore,” I said. “That changed a while ago.”

 “Ugh,” he grunted. “This is exactly what I mean.” He put his head in his hand, fingertips sticking into the dent left by the shirt elastic. The hand was quite large, almost big enough to make his head look normal sized. The arm was enormous, too. When he was sitting, he could rest his chin on his palm with his elbow touching the ground, and the joints were sunk down between massive slabs of muscle and fat. I shrugged. I didn’t have to feel sympathy here by the exit, either.

“You know what I did on the outside?” he said. I didn’t answer. It didn’t matter, I knew he’d keep on rambling anyway. “I was a money launderer. At first, I did it to get by, but—and this might surprise you, but I found I really just loved doing it. I made enough to live on but I just kept doing it. I don’t even remember how I got started. I think I saw it in a movie. I think it appealed to me right away because, really, underneath it all, I’m a dishonest person. I think I should just be inside. On the outside, you know, consequences start to catch up with you. In Prison you just get sentenced to more prison. Big whoop. I can launder as much money as I want without ever being disturbed. I think I’d rather just stay here.”

“I don’t make the rules, Ted,” I said. “So please get a move on before the next release comes on through. Those volunteers over there,” I pointed to the group of rosy-cheeked idealists arranged around a folding table, “they’re with the non-profit. They’ll set you up with some new clothes and some direction in life, which you obviously clearly need. Now, please, exit the prison.”

He reluctantly hoisted himself up. Since sitting there, the entire back half of his body had turned flat, forming something like a perfect right angle between his lower back and his thighs. The prison pants hung off his buttocks at an absurd angle. He shuffled just past the threshold of the door and stopped short, preventing me from shutting it.

“Wait a minute,” he said, twisting halfway around without moving his hips. “I think I forgot my belt in my cell, could I just run back and get it?”

“Absolutely not. Employee’s handbook page one, Ted,” I said. Belts were verboten in prison, to prevent self-harm. The arrogance of this guy was really starting to get on my nerves. I felt myself losing my benevolent disposition. “Face forward and continue walking,” I said. I’d crossed the line. The old me came out, the corrections officer, Mister D-Block. Teddy grumbled something inaudible, his face disappearing. He limped over to the volunteer table with one hand holding up his pants, the other swinging the plastic bag of effects at his side, and began haggling over the price of a belt. I felt bad. “Oh by the way,” I called after him, “Be careful not to walk too far to the right or left. That’s private property. Walking across that sidewalk there risks a hefty fine. And walking on the right side of the street, under those street lights, is strictly off-limits. There’s a four-foot-wide right-of-way that extends about a mile straight ahead, so try not to step off of it.” I gestured helpfully in that direction. He smiled. I smiled. He waved farewell and then started to haggle with the volunteers, refusing to pay $1.50 for a belt made of nylon webbing with a silver buckle. About half a mile up, his prison-issued pants fell down and he tripped, crashing onto the ground. He lay there for a few minutes before lifting himself up and walking off, his front side flattened like a frying pan. Before long, he disappeared behind the crest of a hill, leaving only me, the volunteers and the whispering hills of sagebrush surrounding the prison.

As I was walking back through the cell block to my apartment, I passed through the prison’s gym and lingered, soaking in the effluvium of improvement and progress, the sheen of an oily muscle growing larger and the stench of mold, the occasional shrieks of random laughter, feeling generous, good, but good like they say in church, and not like they say in business, exceeding the edges of my person. I felt like laughing myself, so lucky to have seniority, my choice of occupation and on-campus housing an affordable price. It was then I remembered what Teddy’d said, but couldn’t hear the words in my mind. He grumbled, face hidden, words inaudible. It played over again in my imagination with no changes, inaudible words, face hidden.

Climbing the steps past the warden’s office, giddy, blood rushed to my head and away from my stomach. My stomach sagged lower and lower the higher I climbed and I was in a cold sweat by the time I reached my front door. I fell to my knees on the living room carpet, not sure if I should rally or rush to the bathroom. What’s wrong? My wife said. Can I get you anything? I made prison beef Wellington (with a dough made of crushed ramen, mystery meat filling and cooked on a light fixture, my favorite, the way “mom” used to do it.) I hardly choked down a few bites before retiring, visions of a balloon getting bigger flashing at me between snatches of disturbed sleep. I stayed awake ‘til the icy blue morning came through the blinds.

The day was overcast. Inmate #3032 approached, a chronic recidivist named James, sex pest and extortionist. His eleventh stint was coming to an end, and there was hardly an inch of his body not covered by prison tattoos from various criminal organizations and gangs; the Latin kings, the Aryan nation, the Gangster disciples, Amway, and so on. I stuck the key into the lock and stopped.

“James,” I said. “We’re old friends by now, aren’t we?” He shrugged. I went on. “Tell me something, why do you keep coming back here?”

“I guess I never really thought about it before,” he said. His mind traveled somewhere. He looked calm. “I finally managed to get the top bunk a few years back,” he said, scratching his chin. “That was nice. But I guess it would have to be when I moved from cell 105 to cell 106. It’s about five solar minutes east of cell 106, on account of the angle in the corridor. It’s great in the afternoon.”

“Don’t you have people on the outside, James?” I said. “Don’t you miss them?” I studied him for a reaction.

“Not really,” he said. “You know, the last time I was out, I did have a girlfriend. Janice. She left me right away. I’d cheat on her, and she’d call me and ask where I was. I’d say I’m at the gas station buying hot dogs. But she was already there and the hot dog grill was out of service, you know. It is what it is. I got caught. In prison, your sex partner would beat you senseless for that kind of betrayal. It’s too dangerous to lose the respect of the other prisoners, you really have no choice. I suppose it’s in my nature. I don’t really believe in that, fate, or nature, or whatever you want to call it. I believe we’re a product of our circumstances, but when your circumstances defy explanation, you grasp for any bit of sense you can find.

“You could say I’m deranged, if you want to,” he went on. “I don’t think I have respect for anyone, even children. I was born that way, so I really have no idea. Are you going to open this?” he said. His nonchalance caught me off guard, and I felt ashamed, derelict in my duties, so I opened the door and watched him saunter off into the gray mass of public anonymity. I caught a chill standing by that open door that I couldn’t get rid of. It ruined my sleep and my appetite even for prison food. The mystery still hung over me, but I didn’t have to wait long to figure out why. Less than a week later, a scrawny figure in a leisure suit crested the horizon and made its way toward the prison gate. Soon, the man was upon me, his wrinkled head shaded by an enormous hat. He walked right up to the gate and put his face between the bars.

“Please step away from the door, sir,” I said. “Blocking the exit is a fire hazard.”

“Hey Mack,” he said. I recognized him as soon as he opened his mouth. It was Inmate #3031. His head had shrunken to its original size, much smaller than I’d imagined, like a raisin or a prune. And his arm had shrunken too. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that money laundering was legalized?”

“Phew. That’s just for corporations,” I said.

“I’m a corporation,” he said. Then, a little more forcefully, “I’m a corporation.”

“Sorry, Ted. And by the way, Panama hats are not really considered fashionable anymore, either.”

“Jesus,” he said. He took the hat off his head and tossed it to the ground in anger. A stiff breeze blew it out into the vast private desert surrounding the right-of-way. It whirled away, joining a family of tumbleweeds. “Shoot,” he said. He’d developed a striped pattern of tan-lines, suspiciously like prison bars. “You got any sunblock?” he said.

“I don’t, sorry.”

“Could you just let me inside for a bit?”

“I can’t,” I said, feeling powerful. I held out my palm, other hand resting on my belt, jangling the various tools and accessories. Teddy’s facial skin hung down, covering his features.

“Please, please can you just let me back in?” he said. He stuck both arms deftly through the narrow bars and clasped his hands together. “Pretty please. I’m begging you I swear to God. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll rat on the other prisoners. I’ll become an informant in the Crips or the Bloods. I know I’m white, but I’m desperate. My will to get back into prison is so strong, something that’s impossible to you doesn’t seem difficult at all to me. Didn’t I say I was desperate?”

I was so taken aback that I said nothing, which only made him madder.

“I’ll even join the inner circuit of pedophiles,” he said. “They call them Chomos, that’s like a gang too. People don’t even speak to them unless it’s to tell them they’re about to be murdered. My life on the outside has less value than a dead body on the inside of these walls. Nobody would ever question me if I chose that. Nobody doubts a guy who says he’s a pedophile, and on the outside, they all dedicated their lives to convincing us they’re good people, community members. There’s no danger of being attacked by them. And unlike other gangs, there’s no way to jump in new members. There are no kids in there. It’s all just hypothetical.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but he went on.         

“Even if you still don’t believe me, I’m going to try and get inside anyway. I’m going to wait until you’re distracted and sneak inside. The guards won’t know what to do if they see someone running through that tunnel and they might shoot me. My death would be on your head. I doubt you could live with that. You’d go insane yourself and end up in there with us, and they’d know you betrayed one of them. You’d never last. I know you have your own system of brotherhood in the correctional officers’ circles. You make coffee when it runs out or you just drink the coffee other people make, day in, day out, not caring whether someone can tell you’re a taker. That you only take from people and never give.”

At that point, he lunged. His entire body almost fit through the bars of the gate. He reached for the keys on my belt, leaving me no choice but to raise my baton. As I prepared to strike, my training failed me. The bones in his head looked fragile and thin. I felt I was about to strike my own father, an old man whose skin was creased by sun and sadness. I lowered the baton.

“What’s wrong?” Teddy said “Why didn’t you hit me?”

I myself didn’t understand it. That feeling of disgust had a new neighbor whose name I didn’t know.

“I dunno,” I said. Was it my conscience? I thought It couldn’t be, because it was something I couldn’t control. I’d always been able to reason with it. No, it was something else, something silly like guilt, something easy to get rid of. I figured why not get rid of it then and there? “Come back when my shift is over, Ted,” I told him. “Come up and have dinner with me.”

“Are you sure?” he said. I nodded. He agreed to come back and walked about twenty feet down the right-of-way and sat there for the remainder my shift, trying to cover his exposed scalp with the white polyester blazer. At five pm, I opened the door and beckoned him inside. He shook violently the entire time we walked the prison hallways, jumping when an inmate threw a spoon or slammed a tray and made the whole stairway clatter as we ascended past the warden’s office. Make yourself at home, I said, and introduced him to my wife. I sat uneasily at the kitchen table, watching him for any unusual behavior, unable at first to break the bad habit of being a corrections’ officer.

“Mind if I take a load off?” he said, settling on the couch.

“Please,” I said. “Dinner should be ready soon.” I struggled to make small talk. My wife served us a spread of enchiladas made from Doritos reconstituted in a trash bag. After taking a meager portion for himself, Teddy began to yawn, and his eyelids began to droop, so I offered him a blanket, to rest for a while, even to stay the night, if he wanted. He thanked me and fell asleep sitting up, his eyes halfway open, a very jarring sight. I thought maybe he’d died until I heard snoring.

Morning came early with the deafening sound of construction outside the prison walls. I dressed myself, bleary eyed, and my wife, my loving wife, handed me a cup of coffee. Teddy was prostrate on the couch, awake, staring at the ceiling.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said. “I have something to ask. Is it alright if I just stay here for a bit? Just until I get back on my feet?” Why not? My wife said. We should all do our part. I refused, absolutely not, I said, a little embarrassed to be arguing in front of him. Ashamed, I let up.

“Thank you,” he said. “You won’t regret it. Oh, by the way, could you move me a little closer to that air vent? I’m feeling a bit stuffy.” he asked. My wife and I, sweating and shoving, managed to push the couch a few inches closer to the vent. Teddy breathed deep and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. I thought maybe it would invigorate him, or something, rejuvenate. There was a rumble like an earthquake and a plume of dust shot out of the vent.

“We’ll have to get that fixed,” I said, and went off to my post.

Construction shook the foundations of the prison all the way at the end of the tunnel. My keys and accoutrements vibrated all day long as the non-profit raised the walls of their new non-carceral reformatory complex, planned to cover one hundred and fifty-six acres on all sides of the prison. The paroled inmates were forced to scale partially built cinder-block walls and temporary chain-link fences that had been raised across the right-of-way (without approval from city council) or risk getting lost in the maze of new offices that sprouted up across the construction site, ending up inducted into one program or another at random. Unable to focus on the calm and steady footfalls of the inmates, I worried about Teddy in my apartment touching things, talking to my wife, maybe settling into a freeloader’s lifestyle with my couch as his bunk. I raced back home at the end of my shift, surprised to see him as I left him, supine on the couch, coated with dust.

“Listen, Ted,” I said, sitting down beside him. “You gotta get your act together,” The couch squished beneath me, and when I stood up, there was a moist print of indigo mold spores on my uniform. I brushed it off.

“I know, I know,” he said. “I’ll get a job soon. It’s the economy right now, it sucks so bad.” He sighed and cozied up under the blanket and started coughing violently. “I’ll check out some job listings tomorrow, I promise,” he said. Reluctantly, I left him there to try and see about the construction dust that was billowing out of the vent, covering an entire corner of the room. It was being looked at, I was told. The shaking and vibration would stop any day now, they said. They passed me from one phone extension to the next without giving me a real answer. The non-profit complex, meanwhile, rose up at a rapid clip, and before long, our living room window looked directly into what looked like a new gymnasium. I drew the blinds and tried to forget about it.

The following day when I returned from work, the couch was empty and the blanket sunk into a human-shaped divot in the cushions.

“Teddy?” I said.

“Yo, what’s up?” His voice seemed to emanate from the HVAC ducting. “You’re out of milk, by the way.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m here. I checked craigslist. Nothing good on there, total bunk. Tomorrow’s another day, right?” I wandered the two-bedroom apartment looking for him, finding nothing but a set of dusty footprints leading to the fridge. In the bathroom, Teddy’s voice reverberated from the shower in a rich and pleasant way.

“Do you get the Starz network or nah? It said premium, but I tried to order it and nothing happened. Do you like boxing?”

“It’s prison TV, we can’t order any new channels,” I said, confused, putting my ear up to the wall to try and find the source of the talking. The gymnasium across the way was almost finished. They’d already painted lines for a pickle ball court. And the large mold colony on the sofa had also grown bigger. I did my best to ignore it, crowding my wife’s side. When the evening news was over, Teddy’s voice came out of the heating register.

“Do you think we can watch the late show?” he said. My wife jumped up in fright. I reassured her it was nothing to worry about. I was trained, I knew how to handle this kind of thing. It would require some tough love.

“How are you planning to get a job if you’re incorporeal or somewhere in the heating system, Teddy?” I asked him. “Won’t you need a body to hold the pen when you sign paperwork? What’s your plan here, bud?” There was no answer. I couldn’t stand shirkers, but my wife, slave to her ideals, didn’t want to evict him just yet. Later that night, after another blast shook the building and the lights went dark, I phoned central operations, and they promised they were looking into it. This went on for a few weeks, but each time I called their office, they claimed to be short staffed, and they said they couldn’t do anything about the lights or the parolee in the ducting until construction was finished. I was never so pissed at the prison in my life. I can’t say now whether it was the right thing to do, but I put in a transfer request to Marketing, whose offices and housing were far, far away, across town at the mall. Can we live in the mall? my wife asked. Can we possibly shop at every hour of the day? I didn’t know. I stood at the door of the apartment opening and closing it, letting myself in and out, trying to decide whether to break code and visit the commissary outside of hours.

The phone was ringing as I got home one evening, much later than usual, held up trying to untangle the mess that resulted from ex-cons getting lost in the new waterpark. A green mist hung in the air of the apartment that stung my eyes and throat. It smelled like wintergreen lifesavers melting on tin foil.

“Teddy? Are you in here?” I said. It was so minty. “Are you going on a date tonight?” There was no answer. We deduced that the green mist was Teddy’s new physical form, but couldn’t figure out how to communicate with it. After letting the phone ring for a while, I answered. It was confirmed. The dream was at an end and my transfer had been accepted.  We packed up our things and moved out. My wife hung a note on the door reading “Please don’t breathe the mist, it’s Teddy,” and we locked the door behind us. I was confident science would discover a way to reconstitute him, sooner or later.