The Sound of Skulls Cracking

a long short story, take your time

First, you hear a slap. Skin against concrete. A quick smack. 

Then the weight of a head. A thudding thump. Heavy. Reminds you there’s someone in there. 

Finally, a crack. It sears inside your ears, like oil hitting a hot pan. 

When someone’s skull hits a concrete wall, it makes three sounds at once: Smack. Thump. Crack. Like self-harming Rice Krispies. 

Hearing this the first time, it’s almost funny. What kind of idiot smacks his head against a concrete wall? You almost laugh. The hint of a self-satisfied smirk curls at the corner of your mouth.

But it stops being funny when those sounds come again and again.

Smack-thump-crack-smack-thump-crack. 

The repetition of the sound echoes inside your brain. You can’t tell the difference between the thought of it and the reality of it. So now you feel it, kind of like how you feel when you see somebody get repeatedly hit in their head repeatedly. But I’ll tell you - hearing it is worse than seeing it. The sound moves into your memory and acts like it owns the place.

Smack-thump-crack-smack-thump-crack. 

He’s in the cell next to yours. He’s on the other side of the big, gray concrete wall. You touch the the wall and feel the vibration when he slams his head against it. You don’t wonder why he doesn’t stop doing this because you know why he won’t stop - whatever is going on inside his head is worse than what’s happening on the outside. So much worse that he has to destroy it the only way he knows how.

And somewhere inside your head, you know that could have been you slamming your own head against the same damn wall. It frightens you how close you have been to being there. It frightens you more to know that there’s still time for that to happen. Plenty of time. Too much time. And now you’re starting to feel real, physical pain, not just getting confused by the thought of it 

“Hey, yo - that crazy motherfucker Charlie is trying to kill himself again!”

I can’t tell you about all juvies, but I can tell you about the maximum security one in Dallas. And in that one, violence is the only entertainment for anyone who fucked up enough to be there. Whether it’s the fuck-up kids fighting each other out of frustration from being locked up there, or the fuck-up adults who beat up on kids out of frustration from working there, everyone watches. 

But this wasn’t a fight between two people. Charlie wasn’t fighting at all. He was drowning. He needed help. Even juvie kid fuck-ups had enough moral sense to see that.

We were all in cells that had a big steel door with a narrow rectangular window that let you see into an empty congregation area, and across this were other big steel doors with narrow rectangular windows. You could see into some of the cells from your window. And Miguel was able to see into Charlie’s cell. 

“His fucking head is bleeding, dawg! Where the guards at? What the fuck!”

Two nights ago, Miguel yelled out the same thing, since Charlie was banging his head against the wall then, too. The guards came quick, opened Charlie’s cell, and restrained him by throwing him down on his stomach and handcuffing his arms behind his back.

Charlie was a big kid - over 6 feet and at least 250 pounds. It took three grown men to get him down. But Charlie wasn’t resisting to cause anybody else harm. Once they got him handcuffed, he continued his mission and smashed his head against the concrete floor.

The lead guard that night, Mr. Spence, tried to make it stop. 

“Hold his neck! Hold his neck! Don’t let him hit himself!” he said. One of the other guards did as told, but without much enthusiasm, and put his forearm against Charlie’s neck.

“Should let his crazy ass do it,” that guard said. 

“Just hold him,” Mr. Spence said. 

Mr. Spence was one of the younger guards who always seemed to take his job and the rest of us juvenile delinquents very seriously. The other guards tended to have more of a bully demeanor - always throwing a mild insult at you, quick to punish you if you talked back.

But Mr. Spence spoke to you with a distantly respectful demeanor. Not too respectful. He let you know he didn’t think much of you. But he made you think that it was possible for him to not think you were not a total piece of shit like the rest of the guards did. And for a bunch of locked up juvenile delinquents, that whole daddy-like approval meant something. It’s why everyone thought Mr. Spence was alright. 

The guards stood Charlie up and half dragged, half carried him out. He muttered something about wanting to fly and being sorry. Didn’t make any sense. We all thought we wouldn’t see him again. Surely, he would have to go to some kind of mental hospital. But they brought Charlie back the next day, slouching and drooling, looking like Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

We didn’t hear anything from Charlie for almost two days. And in the middle of the night, he started up again. Banging his head against the wall, crying, sobbing, heaving, suffering.

---

This time was different from the last. Charlie was louder. His head smacks were harder. His mutterings sounded crazier. It’s why Miguel shouted and slammed his fists against his little rectangular window. It wasn’t so much that Charlie was killing himself. It was that he was doing it in the most brutal way.

Finally, the guards came in. Five or six of them crowded around the narrow window on Charlie’s cell door. Mr. Spence wasn’t working that night, and so all the guards except one grinned and laughed as they watched Charlie try to demolish his own head. The one who didn’t was new, looked frail, a very young, lanky guy, only a couple years older than us, and he stood back, unsure of what he should do.

Miguel wouldn’t give up.

“Yo, you pencil-ass-looking motherfucker - you know your boys are doing wrong! Do something! That boy’s killing himself!”

All the guards, including Pencil Ass, ignored Miguel. Their eyes and ears were focused on Charlie and his self-destruction.

I couldn’t see what the guards saw, but based on their faces, it wasn’t hard to ascertain.

They saw an oversized, Michelin Man-shaped 16-year-old boy use the full weight of his obese body to whack his own head against a wall. It must have been a bizarre sight, and they were enjoying the show. They mostly hated the kids they were in charge of, and seeing one hurt himself in such spectacular fashion was a bit of fun in an otherwise thankless and boring low-paying job. They also weren’t the brightest of people, and this was the kind of thing that was genuinely entertaining for them.

They started taking bets. Money was pulled out of wallets and held in the air.

“He’s gonna keep going for another two minutes!”

Smack-thump-crack.

“Nah, that boy’s head is harder than a motherfucker. He’ll go five at least.”

Smack-thump-crack.

“Fatboy just gonna wear his self out and go to sleep, watch.”

Smack-thump-crack

“Goddamn that’s a lot of blood!”

Smack-thump-crack.

“He does this shit every other day.”

And then the sound stopped. A loud silence The guards were all different colors, shapes, and heights, but you couldn’t tell at that moment. Each of them looked like their hearts were yanked out of their chests and they couldn’t breathe. After I don’t know how long - five seconds, five minutes - the one with the keys snapped out of it and opened Charlie’s cell door. The guards went in and dragged him out. A deep pool of blood sat above his eyes. Charlie’s forehead was completely caved in.

---

That was the first time I really took a good look at Charlie’s face. I hadn’t talked to him before, and you don’t look at people in this place unless you’re talking to them.

He had splotchy, pale skin with bad acne and these big, bushy eyebrows that looked like birds’ nests over his eyes. His big, white cheeks were enormous, like bleached ham quarters, and his chins shook as the guards pulled him out. But his eyes, which were wide open, had a sparkle. They were a deep, intense blue - two spots of beauty on a face nobody wanted to look at.

I stared at them until the blood poured into them, and then I looked away.

It was Miguel who got me thinking we should do something.

“I know you know what went down last night,” he told me as we ate dry turkey sandwiches with stale bread for lunch. He whispered while looking away, scanning the cafeteria for an authority figure who might see him. We weren’t allowed to talk during mealtimes. 

“Those motherfuckers killed that id, dawg,” he said. “We gotta tell Mr. Spence.”

“You think he doesn’t know?” I said.

“He knows Charlie offed himself. He don’t know the guards watched his ass do it. They ain’t putting that in the report.”

I wasn’t sure if Miguel knew what he was talking about or if he just watched too many movies. But I was sure that what happened, the way the guards just let Charlie do that, was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. Charlie shouldn’t have even been in there. He needed help. Even us 15-year-old juvenile delinquents who were so bad they had to put us in a special corner of the Dallas juvie building knew that what happened to Charlie wasn’t his fault, but the fault of the people who were supposed to preside over our punishment for whatever we did. And that made me feel like I should do something. How was it okay for the people in charge to be worse than the people they’re in charge of?

“I don’t give a fuck if they try to fuck me up for talking,” Miguel said in an even quieter whisper than before, looking around to make sure he wasn’t seen. “They gotta pay. Mr. Spence will make it happen. Talk to him.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded my head. I wanted to say, “Fuck yeah!” and bang my fist on the table, but that would have resulted in me being put in confinement for a few days and a mark on my record, so I just nodded and ate my sandwich, washing it down with warm milk from soggy carton.

But inside my chest, my heart was pounding. I wanted to get those guards locked up, see them punished for what they did. I imagined looking into their jail cell, laughing at them. See how they like it. All for you, Charlie, who now felt like an old buddy I was fighting for.

---

That night, I was asleep in my cell when I was startled awake by a loud tap on my window. Guards only did that when they saw a kid masturbating. The point was to humiliate them. The guard tapped several times, loudly, making sure everyone heard.

“Hey! Stop that shit,” he said, chuckling. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

He flashed a big grin at me and walked off. The guard was Pencil Ass. Pencil Ass didn’t have that grin that night before, but he did now. How quickly they become like the rest.

In the morning, I woke up thinking about Miguel’s words to me the day before. 

“They gotta pay,” he said. 

I hadn't thought of it before, but it sounded like he was trying to instigate something. Was he being genuine, or was he trying to get somebody in trouble for the hell of it? Maybe the guards got to him. Maybe the guards told him he’d get a good rec and get out early if he helped them find witnesses. 

“You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

Was Pencil Ass warning me? Not to help me, but to mock me. Take joy in watching me squirm. That big fucking grin. All those grins. That pool of blood. 

---

We were let out of our cells for count. I tried to look at the guards without them seeing me look at them, so I could tell if they knew I wanted to rat on them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell, but I broke the rule anyway. I looked at them. I looked at them for more than a few moments. Not for too long. Not a stare. But a careful and considerate glance, feeling everything I could, any hint I could ferret out.

But I didn’t get anything more than one of the guards giving me a deadpan look. The look was something he practiced from back in the military. I could tell the guards who were ex-military because they all acted and sounded like that guy. But it didn’t give me any information. I needed information. I was about to get some.

Two guards took Miguel, one holding onto each arm, out of his cell and marched him out of the block. He took a quick look at me and looked down. He didn’t look scared, but he didn’t look good, either. Just blank. And then two other guards grabbed my arms.

“Let’s go,” one of them said. 

---

They brought me and Miguel to Mr. Spence’s office - a bare, dimly lit room with a large steel desk. Mr. Spence, bald and burly with a face that seemed to never smile, sat behind it drinking from a black coffee mug. As we came in, he watched us carefully - watching our hands and legs closely, making sure we didn’t do anything we weren’t supposed to like the dozens of other kids he had seen try - and fail.

Mr. Spence nodded to two plastic, kid-size chairs. We sat down and our butts were only a few inches from the ground and our knees up near our face. Mr. Spence loomed over us.

“What happened to Charlie?” he said. 

Miguel said nothing. He looked down, then away. 

“I know you saw it, Miguel. They said you called for the guards.”

Miguel sucked his teeth and looked at the doorway, like he had somewhere to be. 

“I don’t know shit,” he said. 

Mr. Spence looked at me.

“And you were on the other side of the wall. I know you know what happened. How long did the guards watch Charlie do it?”

I looked at Miguel. He stared straight at his shoes. Why didn’t he say something? He was so gung-ho the day before. He said Mr. Spence would save the day, get justice for Charlie. ‘Justice for Charlie.’ Hearing that phrase in my own head felt so strange.

I didn’t even know the kid, but I was going to fight for him? I wasn’t that type. Wasn’t I such a bad little motherfucker that they had to put me in here?

Fuck Charlie. He was a nut. But I couldn’t help but feeling that, yes, I did want justice for Charlie. I wanted to see those guards punished.

Either Miguel was scared to speak up or he was in on it, and the guards got him to sniff around to see who would talk. I didn’t know which,  so I just talked.

“They watched him do it for a long time,” I told Mr. Spence. “They were laughing at him, talking shit. I even some of them place bets. They clowned him until he died.”

Mr. Spence sighed. A genuine look of sadness came over him. He seemed like a too tough but good man. I felt good telling him. I felt it was the right thing to do. 

“Can you read and write?” he said. 

I nodded yes. He handed me a notepad and a pencil.

“Write down exactly what you told me.”

I took the notepad and pencil. Miguel sucked his teeth.

“Man, do not get involved,” he said.

“Miguel!” Mr. Spence stood up.

Miguel was undaunted. He smacked the notepad out of my hand,

“He can’t do shit!” Miguel said, shouting. “He knows what happened but he can’t do shit because all the rest of them pigs are against him. That’s why he’s trying to get us involved. He needs witnesses, but they’re just gonna fuck with us more, that’s all that’s gonna happen! Shit’s so obvious, dawg! Don’t you see it?”

Mr. Spence grabbed Miguel by the collar and shoved him out the door, told the guards to put him back where they found him. When he came back in, he looked flustered, worried. I believed Miguel.

“Look, you do the right thing, I will do everything in my power to help you get out of here,” he said. “My word will mean a lot to the judge and it will show you have the capability to do what’s right.”

I believed Mr. Spence. I wrote my statement and handed it to him. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“What they did to that kid was not right and should have never happened,” he said. “You’re helping to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Thank you.”

It had been a long time since somebody told me I did the right thing. It felt good. For the first time since arriving here, I felt like I didn’t belong. I didn’t like being here. Until now, it made sense I would be here. I did the kind of things that get you in here.

But now, I felt like I had bigger and better things to do in life. It wasn’t that hard to do the “right thing” as Mr. Spence called it. Until that point, I was 15 but felt 50. Now I realized how young I was and how much I could do. It felt great. And with Mr. Spence helping me get out, everything looked bright and beautiful.

---

In my cell, in all our cells I believe, was a copy of the New Testament. It was the only book they allowed us to have, and I had been reading it out of spite, just to have something to do. But that night, I flipped through it looking for messages of hope and love. My heart felt so big, why not have the Bible in it? I fell asleep with the book on my chest.

I dreamt I was in blood. A giant lake of red and I was in the middle of it. The sky was a burnt orange, and it scared me more than the thick blood I was struggling to power through to get to the shore. I had all my clothes on.

The clothes and the thickness of the blood made it almost impossible for me to swim, and I had so much further to go to get to the shore. I knew I should take my clothes off, but I couldn’t.

I knew I shouldn’t try to swim so fast, tiring myself out, but I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t in control of anything. The thick liquid was sucking me under, the orange sky getting further away as I succumbed. I couldn’t see the shore anymore. I was sinking.

I took a deep breath and woke up. The scream I heard sounded foreign. It was me, but it sounded like somebody I’d never heard before. It was frantic and desperate, two things I hadn't been before.

But I screamed again, more frantically and desperately than the last time. 

Mr. Spence was lying in my bed with his throat slashed. I was covered in his blood. In my hand was a plastic knife from the cafeteria that had been sawed into a pointy edge shank. I screamed some more.

The cement door to my cell was ajar. As I screamed, the block lights were turned on and several guards appeared at the doorway. Pencil Ass was at the forefront. He was the leader now. He grinned.

“I told you to be careful,” he said.

---

Everything I told you happened long ago, but I don’t know how long. Was it five years or ten years? I don’t know. I just know that everything around me has gotten smaller and I’ve gotten so much bigger. It hurts to have my body. My lungs feel stretched. My heart feels stepped on.

They tell me I’m never getting out. No matter what I do, what I say, I’ll have to stay in here.

I get so angry thinking about it.

But there’s nothing in here for me to break.

It’s only me in here. The only thing I can destroy is me. 

There’s a big, concrete wall in front of me.

I see everyone looking at me through the rectangular window, laughing and chiding, but I don’t care. Miguel, Pencil Ass, all the guards - they’re all laughing at me.

I close my eyes.

I’m sorry, Charlie.