Home Sweet Home

Go to your bathroom door and kick a hole in it. Now lock yourself in tight. Throw all your hygiene items, except a toothbrush and toothpaste tube, out the hole. Everything. Now go sit. The light switch disappears and the shower splits. A little speaker replaces them. It listens and sometimes speaks to you, laughs at you, taunts you, tells you your sufferings entertaining. You can’t shut off the light with no switch and you’ll have to shower using the sink. As you sit you hear ten or so voices outside the door. That’s funny, sounds like that guy who robbed my mother’s house last year and put her in a wheelchair after brutally beating and raping her. It can’t be! Is that the judge that let the man run free too? And his twisted attorney? Why they here?

The worst enemies you could imagine, or put a face to, have just moved into your house as you sit in the bathroom. These people wish you harm of the utmost, and your death would be nothing but joy to them. All your food, and any mail you might be expecting, will have to come from these “squatter-enemies.” Good luck!

To make matters worse, these enemies of yours control all your heating, air conditioning, water form your sink and to your toilet. And to top it off, if they see you sleeping they’ll kick the door and yell at you, then laugh.

You can hear these men day and night right outside your door. You smell them Bar-B-Qing and smoking. You’re hungry. You can hear these men torturing people. Sometimes other people in similar bathrooms next to yours are pulled out and placed in body bags. To these “squatter’s” amusement.

A day passes this way.

“My god,” you say “what have I done to deserve this?”
A week passes
You cry
A month
You attempt suicide but your vein closes up before death
A year

You are now talking to yourself and running around naked. You are convinced the food you seldom receive, that’s halfway edible, is poisoned. As you eat the rotten “meat” your beard and mustache get in the way of the teeth chewing. You couldn’t cry if life depended on it. And it used to. But you’ve forgotten why.

Two years.

You can’t remember. You’ve forgotten. Forgotten what? You don’ know. The “squatter-enemies” come around and you look at them. They look at you. They laugh. You start to laugh too. You forgot why. But you do.

Three years.

You sleep 20 hours a day. You can’t help it. But your floor’s clean. You keep it spotless. You don’t know why. But you do. You’re skinny. You’ve lost an easy 60 pounds. Your skin’s turning yellow and your legs cramp up and atrophy. You don’t want to die anymore. Why bother? You’d rather sleep and dream. The dreams are so vivid. More real than these walls.

Five years

You go home, you leave your bathroom, this year they tell you that. But why? Where do I go? I don’t want to leave now. I like my tub and sink…

MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade vividly describes the torture that is found in control units in prisons across the U.$. The criminal injustice system uses the torture chambers as tools to break the will of politically conscious prisoners. It is one more weapon in the criminal injustice system’s work of social control. For more information about these units and what you can do to join the fight, see our campaign against prison control units.