These Pranks are Getting Out of Hand

This story is based upon true events.

...Okay. The first 100 words are based upon true events.

*****

These Pranks are Getting Out of Hand

I’ll admit that once I got over my initial embarrassment, I got a kick out of you placing the plush bear on my shoulder and making me pose for photos.  It was the kind of silly fun I hadn’t enjoyed since… well, I suppose since I last saw you.

                When the gift shop manager—all gun-metal hair and withered skin—appeared out of nowhere with her weird roundabout reprimanding (“Can I help you?” “No, we’re fine.” “Can I help you!”), I was struck dumb.  I hadn’t been subjected to that kind of passive-aggressive dressing-down since Catholic school.

                “I’m leaving,” you said loudly, as if it was your idea.

                As you brushed past me I felt your fingers slip into and out of my front pocket.  For a confusing, thrilling moment, I thought our friendship was moving in some new erotic trajectory.

                When I turned to follow you out of the shop door the manager barked, “Hey!  Turn out your pockets!”  Confounded but amused, I did as I was told.  It was then that I found the key chain (Mostly Moose! –Ely, MN) you had so discreetly planted on me.

                The old woman already had the police on the phone as our eyes met through the store front window.

                Mine: stunned and confused.

                Yours: streaming tears of laughter.

  * * *

                I had never been arrested before, and so despite my natural nervous tendencies, part of me found the fingerprinting process novel.  Even as my inky hands were pressed to the cardboard I thought about what a fun story it would make once this misunderstanding was straightened out.

                My face must have lit up when you burst into the police station.

                You can only imagine my surprise when—instead of clearing my name—you pointed at me across the booking room and shouted, “That’s him!  That’s the man who stole my baby!”

                The entire room erupted in shocked exclamations.  I guess I was the only one who caught your knowing wink.

 * * *

                In retrospect it seems strange that I could be convicted of stealing your baby when you have never had a baby.  And though your testimony was compelling, I think that if the jury knew you as well as I do, they would have recognized that on the witness stand, you were struggling to hold back your laughter, and not your tears.

  * * *

                I’m not going to lie to you.  My first few days in prison were pretty rough.

                You told me that on my first day I should pick a fight with the biggest guy I could find in order to prove to the rest of the cons that I was too tough to push around.

                My cellmate, Derrick, was pretty big, so even though he had been nothing but cordial to me, I took a swing at him in the cafeteria.  The guards broke things up before anyone got hurt, but after Lights Out that night, Derrick beat me savagely with a bar of soap stuffed in the end of a sock, and then burned a swastika onto my buttock with a lighter and a bent paper clip.

                The next morning, as Derrick turned his front pocket inside out and demanded that I hold on to the fabric as he paraded me around the exercise yard, I smiled to myself a bit, reminded of the moment we shared that afternoon in the Mostly Moose gift shop, just before you got me arrested.

  * * *

                When you came to visit, I appreciated your outrage over the liberties Derrick had taken with me.  You said, “That is outrageous,” and shook your head.  “Something needs to be done.”  I breathed a sigh of relief as you stood to leave, assuming your indignation would propel you to the judge.  Perhaps if you told him you’d never had a baby, he would throw out my conviction of stealing it…

                I had no idea that you would pause on your way out of the visit room to have a word with Reggie, the head of the Black Guerilla Family prison gang.

                “Hey,” you said, gesturing to me (still stupidly waving goodbye).  “That guy’s a racist.  If you don’t believe me, check him out in the showers.  He totally has a swastika on his ass.”

                Reggie’s eyes narrowed on me, and my bowels went liquid.  Behind him, you made a face and jerked your thumb, as if to say “Get a load of this guy!”

  * * *

                You told me once that being “just funny” is not good enough.  Being “just funny” is lazy, you said.  It’s not honest.

                That’s what I kept coming back to as I drifted in and out of consciousness during all of those days in the prison infirmary:

                There must be something heavier behind all of your hilarious punch lines.

 * * *

                Over the years that I’ve been in prison, you have been my confidant, always eager to listen.

                You were supportive when I told you I was thinking of writing a prison memoir, though you cautioned against “rushing the process,” telling me to take a year or so to gather my thoughts before committing anything to paper.

                Imagine my surprise when eleven months later I received an advance copy of your jailhouse novel, about a man falsely imprisoned for baby theft after being arrested for shoplifting a gift shop keychain. 

                “This seems a little familiar,” I told you over the phone.  But you insisted that the book had nothing to do with me, despite the protagonist being named “Brian Bieber.”

                I’m taking my time reading, because if there’s one thing I have plenty of these days, it’s time.

                So I didn’t find the snapshot you slipped between the pages until I was nearly done with your book.  I almost didn’t recognize myself as I was in the photo, before the beatings, the stab wounds, the anal fissures.

                But there I was: toy bear resting on my shoulder, goofy smile plastered on my face.  No scars. Eyes young and hopeful, and still planted firmly in their sockets…

                I stared at the photo until Lights Out.  Then I slipped it back between the pages, where I found it, and slid the book beneath my bunk.  I only have one chapter left, but my latest parole hearing is coming up, so I’m going to wait until afterward to see how you’ll have this end for me.