Marshmallow

        “Everyone to their room. Let’s go.”

        The children shuffled down the hall and filtered into their inescapable rooms.

        Jack and Coby stepped through the last door. It fell with a clicking lock. The room was a stagnant black. Light poured through the small window of the door. Coby’s eyes glowed. His dark skin blended with everything else, but his eyes held an incandesce light.

        Roommates, not friends, Jack kept in mind. Coby looked up at the ceiling.

        “Soon as I be out here. Be hitting me some pussy. Mm. You hittin’ those white girls, Jack?”

        “Yea.”

        “Shit, yea. Bet you cram in there and make ‘em bleed. Yea.” He looked at Jack. “So what you wanna do?”

        Jack looked at the only exit of the room. The sound of the other children was gone. Night in the asylum with a nigger, Jack thought.

        “What you thinkin’?”

        Jack spoke in a heavy whisper.

        “They take our belts, shoelaces, pant strings, but they give us pencils? You oughta stab that Indian fuck right in the eye.”

        Coby laughed like an exploding oven. His eyes lit with glee.

        “Shit, you smart, Whitie.”

        Coby bounced off his bed and pulled his dick out. He hopped to the corner and sprayed his piss.

        Jack sat on his own bed, listening to the carpet absorb the thuds and yellowness. It would soon waver the stench of piss.

        “They clean that shit up,” Coby said.

        He hopped back over the bed, clenching his dick. He strummed it, drying it off. Urine drops flew over their beds and themselves. He tucked it back in and snapped his waistband. Jack held on to his pride. Coby rubbed his jaw with a piss-ridden hand.

        “Shit, they should let us at d’em girls down the hall. Clarice likes you. Could be hittin’ that black skin, just like me. I’d be fuckin’ Febuairee.”

        “February?”

        “No. Febuarairee, but I’s like the season. I like that.”

        Coby pinched his nose and blew snot. He rubbed it on his sheets.

        “Man, I like your pants. Shit’s baggy, yea. Mine be too tight. Let me try ‘em on.”

        Jack was petrified. He wasn’t going to let the nigger roam free, but he did want to hold out as long as possible, he held in mind. Jack shrugged. He unzipped his fly, pulled them down, and handed them over. Coby took off his pants – he wasn’t wearing underwear. He strummed his dick at the site of it.

        “Feelin’ good.”

        Jack couldn’t stop himself from seeing the Coby’s black dick. He knew he couldn’t trust these people. The dick’s neck was scabbed over in dark flakes. A discoloring, bruised yellow wrapped itself around in blotches.

        “You can put mine on.”

        Coby held out his pants. They were stained and had pubic hair lining it like a fur coat.

        “Nah.”

        Jack didn’t know the time. No clocks, no watches, no light. Every night lagged on like a looping string. No sleep. The beds were like slabs of concrete – the walls were softer. Routine blood pressure and temperature tests with the thermometer under the tongue and the eight squeezing motions were twice a night at random intervals.

        “I like this,” Coby said, grabbing his crotch through the pants.

        “You want ‘em back?”

        “Yea.”

        He took them off and sat absentmindedly with his dick out and his shirt on like Donald Duck. He punched his left arm with his right fist.

        “Helps me relax.”

        Jack pulled his pants on and tried to see through his zombie stare of drugs. The black kid with the scabbed dick sat in front of him.

        “Here, hit me in the arm.”

        Jack made a fist and looked at the kids’ drugged eyes, then looked to the only exit. Jack slugged his arm. Coby nodded.

        “Go on, son.”

        Jack hit him again, pulling his arm back farther and making a tighter fist.

        “We got to fuck up that Indian. He’s stupid. You see how stupid he is?”

        “Yea.”

        Coby stood up.

        “Here, hit me my stomach. Right in my tummy. Mm.”

        The yellow bruised dick jiggled in front of Jack’s eyes.

        “Doesn’t that hurt?” Jack pointed to it.

        Coby gripped it, pointing the head down like a creature with a body and a head.

        “No – Um – I mean it hurts, but it feels good.”

        He strummed it and itched his balls.

        “Go on, hit it.” He pointed to the creature with its yellow patches of skin.

        The drugs faded as Jack scrunched his face. No one at the window, he noticed.

        “I don’t want to.”

        “What? Jack. Jack. Thought we was friends. You that Indian’s friend or mine?”

        Jack paused.

        “Yours.”

        “Then hit my dick, son.”

        Night in the asylum. Drugged, vulnerable, unwatched, and locked in with a nigger with no pants, Jack thought.

        “No.”

        Coby’s playfulness dropped. Scorn showed its writhing contempt. Coby pushed Jack with both hands, making him fall back and roll of his bed. He lay on the floor. Jack’s shock was still registering. What time is it? What day is it? Did I have homework to finish that I wouldn’t even do in the first place? Wasn’t I in school?

        Donald Duck’s nigger friend came over the bed, itching his balls like they were on fire.

        What happened to Susan, who laughed like a man, but had a dreamy, cloud-riding smile. Where’s Susan? Where?

        Jack jumped to his feet and scurried backwards to the wall. He rounded the room in a circle. Jack pushed Coby off him. The dick flapped like a broken arm. A merry-go-round of a scabbed over dick chased Jack. After half a dozen circles, he spun, clinched Coby’s shoulders, and knee’d him in his stomach. Coby gasped for air and hit the carpet, rolling on to his side, staring at Jack. The white of his eyes illuminated the area like eggs injected with fluorescent. Deep hatred leered at Jack.

        Hatred of a white man, he thought. I hung his forefathers, skinned them, raped his cousins, severed his mother’s foremothers and set their heads on pikes. I came in his great godfather’s soup, told him I did, and forced him to drink it through a smile.

        Jack didn’t say anything. He backed up to his bed and laid down, watching the black kid’s rabid eyes. The scabbed dick leaned ground-ward, defeated.

        Jack pulled the covers up and over his body and folded the pillow in half under his head. He knew he couldn’t let his eyes never leave the slave’s, the cotton picker’s eyes.

         

         

        The lock on the door clicked open. Blood pressure and temperature check. Jack looked to the ground – empty. Coby lay peaceful in his bed, wrapped in covers with his pants on. The nurse stood before Jack, squeezing his ball, inflating the arm wrap on Jack’s arm, and releasing it. He didn’t speak. Jack knew when the thermometer was put in front of your tongue that you open your mouth. They don’t ask. Jack wondered if the nurse could smell Coby’s piss. Probably not, he thought. This man, this nurse, has blocked out stenches and sites that would make any other person cower.

        The door locked again. Still night and Jack knew he shouldn’t go back to sleep. The bed was too hard anyway. Coby’s eyes were closed. Jack rummaged through his mind of what to do with him. He had to piss, but banging on his window for a nurse would wake Coby, so he threw his sheets off himself and looked down. He felt a draft.

        “Where’s my fuckin’ pants?” he asked, covering his mouth and looking to Coby.

        Jack bounced up and crept over to the corner that Coby had used before. He pulled his dick out and showered the wall and carpet, hoping to God he wouldn’t see those glowing eyes. Flapping his dick, he turned to check one last time. Coby’s eyes shot open in fear.