Part 18 & 19 – Hero Apomixis

Hero2

Synopsis of Hero Apomixis by C.A. Seller

Hero Apomixis is a work of stream of consciousness written over 22 months while the author was incarcerated in Attica Correctional Facility in 2000/01. A story of tortuous experience at the hands of a broken social services system, bad parenting, and the Prison Industrial Complex, Hero begins to lose his mind as evidenced by fantacide and dreamories only interrupted by prison feedings. Hero is either a victim or a sociopath. The book challenges us to ask, “What would you do?”

“If you like Dante, if you like Bosch, if you like Burroughs, you’ll dig the brutally dark brilliance of C.A. Seller’s HERO APOMIXIS. A rare stroke of ever darkening courage. Welcome to hell.” Ron Whitehead

 

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Apomixis-mr-chares-seller/dp/1517359465?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

 

 

CHAPTER 18

 

The lights in Hero’s cell were still off when he was cracked

out for P.M. meds. Downstairs some cute homo with a hairdo

like Betty Ruble and a beard like Fred Flintstone smiled

at him while they were waiting in line. Hero ignored his

big liquid saucer eyes and ridiculous bangs, thinking the

eyes really were girl’s eyes but he was too much with that

five o’clock shadow. They were nothing but trouble in jail,

homos. There were stories of some of them running around

letting guys fuck them in the ass raw-dog even though they

knew they were HIV positive. He’d heard it referred to as

“Blessin’ A Nigga’.”

Back upstairs the steady told Hero that the other cop

had turned off the juice because he’d heard loud Rap music

“down there.” He told Hero that it would go back on.

If one cop turned off your power no other cop would turn

it back on without the first cop’s ok. It was done this

way out of respect for one another which they appeared to

have a large overabundance of because they didn’t seem to

have any for the inmates. Hero was guilty for being accused

and now that he knew why the electricity had been turned

off.  He was the Herb. That’s how it worked. The inmate was

always wrong. Always and without question. Always under

threat of physical harm. No real reason. None whatsoever.

That’s just how it was, how it had been, and how it was

going to stay. Guilty Guilty Guilty. Stonewalled.

That afternoon Hero received legal mail from the DOCS

chief medical officer in Albany. He’d sent him a Freedom

of Information Law(FOIL) request for the NYSDOCS Hepatitis C treatment protocol after the medical department at Attica

had ignored the 3 FOILs he’d written them. Some clown in

Albany told him to write to Attica. Hero wrote the guy back

and told him, simply, that he knew that Attica had the fucking

protocol and that if they’d answered him the first time …

and to cut the bullshit and answer. Hero had

been asking for the protocol for over 6 months; it allegedly

detailed the DOCS therapy guidelines for Hep-C: labs, biopsies

and interferon/ribaviron chemotherapy (which costs the state

$10,000 an inmate in need). All the Grievance responses kept referring to this protocol in their denials.

Hero wrote to the NIH for their protocol. Once he saw it

he would compare it against DOCS and take them to court

for negligence, arbitrary and capricious. That’s what the

law books said: to make a case for medical negligence the

plaintiff had to prove that the defendant(s) had not provided

adequate medical attention, failing to act even though they

had knowledge that a danger to the plaintiff’s health existed.

Hero figured his suit might see the light of day long after

he was free – and probably near dead – but he had to at

least try. Every single request that he had made, from the

liver biopsy to a non-animal high protein diet would

each be a separate issue; each its own battle that would

begin with a visit to sick call and not end until after

10 very long and time consuming steps – to some courtroom

– and that wasn’t counting the appeals. Hero couldn’t go

out without having done anything. Just getting beat without

ever having an opportunity to confront the people who had

placed no value on his life would not do. They were cowards

and liars of the worst kind and did it all while hiding

behind the flag with their bully-bitch-ass moves that were

the trademark of politicking cowards. Closet fascists. No

balls at all. Pussies who wasted so many lives for nothing.

Inadequate and fearful. Hostile and poor with a need to

blame and punish, to hide. They treated even their own badly,

these modern taskmasters. They were slave traders who had never had any real vested interest in their own property; a new

and greater system of slavery 10 X’s removed from net worth,

infected by welfare rolls and roused with the sale of a

nightmare dream that was sold to consumers for survival

within their perceived freedoms to ultimately do even less

than choke them to death on over-priced lies purchased with

black market food stamps: The barely voting moron-constituents

of those who always opposed a raise in the minimum wage on the basis that it really wasn’t good for the poor to have more.

 

 

CHAPTER 19

 

Q plugged Hero’s extension cord into his own after running

it between their cells and Hero connected his radio and lamp

but thought that it would be too awkward to cook, especially

if the cop saw it and shut Q’s power off, too. Hero always

cooked the “gravy” as Q liked to call it, but it was really

a sauce. Rigatoni, sauce from a can, mushrooms from another

can, pepperoni in plastic and onion from a weird red

plastic net bag that was extremely strong: That was the

gravy. This afternoon it was a couple of tuna fish samichs for

lunch and he passed on dinner giving Sham his feed-up tray

instead. Outside the sun might have gone down but Hero couldn’t

tell for the spotty gray and white cloud cover over the sky that was still dimly back lit.

“My head hurts,” he said, and thought he felt a quiver

in his liver. Tired and icky for the shower they should

have let him have that morning; twice a week for pop-dog

and 3 times for keep-lock. All his life Hero had soiled

his underwear with urine because no matter how much he shook

his dick it always released some more as soon as he put

it back inside his pants – especially when he went to go

sit down. The only time it didn’t happen was when he was

high on dope. No doctor he’d asked had ever had an answer,

He thought doctors were funny. (Funny “strange” – not funny

“ha, ha.”) When he was a boy they had operated on him twice

for the same un-descended testicle and instead of removing

it because it was atrophic the surgeons had left it inside

of him for no good reason that he could ever figure out

except so that maybe they could perform a third operation

on him to install a prosthetic nut they’d sell him. That

never took place though and a few years later he was advised

that he should have the testicle checked regularly for lumps

as when they are atrophic they exhibit high rates of cancer.

One in ninety to be exact. Whenever he’d arrived in a new

jail the doctor would give him the usual examination

and then they always stopped at his nuts to feel his right

testicle for lumps so that in one year alone five different

doctors had their squeezing latex glove covered fingers

all over his scrotum. He began to get suspicious. When the

sixth one tried Hero blew a gasket, “Since you read that

I have an atrophic right testicle I’d imagine that you

also read that I’ve already seen five doctors this year

all of who felt my nuts – so you  can just forget it –

ok? Just leave my fucking nuts alone – I check’em daily

– trust me – they’re fine!”

“But I was just trrying to help you!” a Haitian refugee

with a Mexican medical degree whined back at him.

“Help yourself, Doc,” Hero replied, “get your hands off

of my motherfucking nuts before I catch a flashback and

crack you one across the jibs!”

“Ok! Ok!”

 

The cell felt like it had moved or really the bed and

at sick call the nurse told him he’d be seeing the physicians

assistant. He didn’t trust her. Hero read the word “motive??”

upside-down where she’d written it in his ambulatory health

record. No matter what he told anyone in this system

it was mind snapping because they

all did it: the C.O.s, the Sergeants, the brass all the

way up the line to the governor and back down to the

counselors, the nurses, the doctors and they all treated

him like he was nothing more than a lying, troublesome,

14 year old trying to get out of going to school – or an

idiot – and sometimes both.

At the dentist, Hero was having all his cavities checked

and x-rayed when the hygienist stopped early.

“What about this one?” Hero said pointing to one of his

two most upper front teeth.

“Ch, that’s just the enamel at the top of the tooth,”

she answered him.

“If there’s a black hole and no enamel isn’t that a

cavity, you asshole?”

Instead he’d saved it for the dentist who, it seemed, was

only half as dumb as the hygienist.

“It’s all in your head,” they’d told Mike. Eighteen months

later he died from a headache that turned out to be brain cancer. And to just think, Hero reflected, that some states were actually charging their inmates for aspirin. That must’ve been some fucking headache alright.

 

Separations of dark and light, the shadow’s objects they

kept ending. The very light orange of Hero’s clip on lamp

plugged into his extension cord running from Q’s cell. The

edges of these objects: a yellow plastic coffee cup, a

container of skin cream, a wax paper state bread bag and

even his earplugs; all of them had begun to push a shine

of reflected light where his eyes collided with it. Tired,

sick, and unusually worried about his lights being off,

this was added attention Hero did not want and certainly

did not need. If they went on tonight it would be just before

shift change. The parting shot.

The bedspread that they called a blanket hadn’t been washed

in over 6 months. Hero slept in his state-greens and a hoody

that cost him $27. He’d bought it from a mail order

catalog company that specialized in gouging prisoners. He

put on his “wooly” hat. Hero was sad. It was all such a

losing battle tonight. His throat was scratchy and his eyes

would not hold their focus, shifting quickly with a form

of colored shape that obstructed his view for the split

seconds. He thought he might be getting a cold. Jail colds

were a very strange and distinct phenomenon in that once

one got started – it seemed like everybody caught at

least a little bit of it and, although you’d get better,

chances were that before the thing had run its course

you would catch it again. Some colds were rumored to have

never left the penal system having come over with European prisoners. These were the colds that were still being transferred all over the state with guys on the draft. There had been a large number of flu patients at Groovyland the previous year. That and some kind of weird stomach virus. Feeling shittier, Hero washed

up for another early bed.

 

“What’s up, Hero?” Marcos had asked him as they passed

each other on the hill that night.

“I’m sick.”

“You’re always sick,” Marcos said with what sounded like

a foul taste hidden deep down inside the back of his mouth

somewhere.

Hero remembered that no one liked sick people. They don’t

look good. They didn’t function well. They were the opposite

of healthy. Healthy was good. Sick was bad. They were often

treated as though they were incapable and dependent. They

were sick. Healthy people feared sick ones.

“That’s right, Marcos, I’m sick. I’m sick and I’m probably

dying really, really slowly and you asked me how I was so

I told you. Ok? I’m sick – is that alright with you, Marcos?

Is it? Because I can’t do anything about it, sorry. I would

if  I could but I can’t. I sleep on my left side ’cause

my sick swollen liver irritates the fucking shit out of

me otherwise. In fact, I can feel it right now. You savvy,

compadre? That’s how it is. I went through 3 rolls of toilet paper last week. That’s how it is. See you later if I can still walk, pal.”

And Hero got away from them taking more hate with him

than he’d brought.

“What’s the matter with him?” Marcos asked Joe.

“I don’t know,” lied Joe with his usual twinge of convict’s

sarcasm which had been 22 years in the making, “he don’t

look sick,” was just as well because Hero didn’t trust either one

of them as far as he could throw them. Jailhouse dope fiends

– the absolutely worst kind there was.

The world was not a television commercial and we weren’t

always going to be able to solve all our problems in the

laboratory. That’s why religion still sold: if people couldn’t

be happy – here – then they’d be happy – there – where Big

Daddy makes it all better and even that version was entirely

speculative, infected with exploitation, subjugation, doubt,

and brainwashing that was influenced by this – here – and

the circumstances of life’s misery. Forgotten the magic

of freedom, a dirty emptiness without promise; remove these

threads and treat us to sweet salvation, oh Lord n’ Failures,

oh pain pimp so fashionably high in the sky waiting for

us when we die. If we can imagine it then it is at least

possible, isn’t it? In the great scope of known human experience

who will explore love? Who denies themselves and would

aspire enlightened to wisdom like that of The Psalms? And

could you say you were an atheist someplace like the Vatican?

Or Jerusalem? Or Mecca? Or on the banks of the Ganges? Or

under the Bo tree? Everyone around you – and all that had

been made with human hands in honor of God – would you not

be swept up in belief  by eyes so trusting, so full of faith

and knowing? And would the car bombs convince you or convert

you? The suicide bomber’s bus explosions, children’s  limbs

and blood and crying inside horizontal showers of

broken glass on streets that only a moment ago were God’s;

would you believe that we have designed Him to explain,

and carry, all of our woes until He we would meet when we

leave? Then will you have tired eyes and aching backs rewarded

by an idea that sits hollow, unapproachable and diabolic? Murder mime superstition changes in what you see when you go looking for those who look like you and find that you are mistaken.

They said the lights would go back on at 10 P.M., but they

didn’t. They’d said that someone was playing rap music too

loudly. Hero thought logically: Jughead and Mike were at

the commissary and he had been listening to his headphones.

It reminded him of what Ed Meese had said in response to

allegations of suspects’ rights being violated when he was

the U.S. Attorney General under Ronald Reagan:

“They wouldn’t be suspects if they hadn’t done something

wrong.”

Of course Meese was later indicted and “invited” to resign.

Like most of Reagan’s crew he was one of the preppy marshmallow liars in Izod shirts with too white teeth and bad

dye jobs up top. Reagan Savings and Loan. The people checked

their chavol in – and the cheating, Keating, carpet baggers

checked it out. Then it was Poppie’s Pawn shop after that.

A whispy white feather in The White House, government

smaller, see?

“Oh, the little brown ones?”

And then later it was, “I love those kids, dammit!” And

what had been an otherwise innocent statement, even for

that liar, became the nails and hammer which were used to

crucify the man who owned the cross.

After all, he was guilty. That was rich. Hero down there

at the absolute very bottom forgiving Poppie all the way

up there at the very top or right next to it anyway or

maybe even above it. A Thousand points of Light but not

one of them reached into Hero’s cell. And, as an afterthought,

he guessed that maybe Poppie hadn’t forgiven him as readily

as he’d forgiven Poppie.

At chow time Hero realized that Mike had moved to C-block

while he’d been napping and some Puerto Rican dude was

now in 35 cell with no lights.

“Now that’s really fucked up,” said Hero. The cop who

had done this was, in his opinion, a real pussy. A real

bully-bitch. So abusive and so, so wrong. So very, very

wrong. He did the math in his head and didn’t think there

was anything wrong with this mystery pig that a bullet in

the back of his head wouldn’t cure.

“That Goldie Hawn is a devil, man,” said General.

“Look at her, “ Shahmeek offered, obviously referring to

her race.

“No, I mean in the movie.”

“If that’s jus” her real self comin ‘out,” Shahmeek shot back.

Hero saw how he could kill them, too. They were nothing

but a couple of petty racists. Is that how it starts he

asked himself? Was he any better than any of them, the cop

included, now that he’d been infected by them? Pressurized

compassion bottled empty full cartridges sprayed with WD-40

for guaranteed smooth operation. The lights went on and

Jughead’s precious cable, too. It was five of eleven. Hero

unhooked his cord and lamp and went bed.

“Headache – infirm – I want to sleep,” he said to the

toilet as he pissed.

osable income because increased spending would only

fuel inflation.

“Why, you dirty motherfuckers!” Hero growled pushing his

jaw out and wrinkling his brow in the near dark of his cell.

“Motherfuckers and bloody tears.”

 

CA Seller


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