CUCK, by Dr Liam Macdowall
The Nineteenth Letter
Dearest Bella,
Rab is masturbating in the bottom bunk. I believe he prefers to do it when I am lying above him. I am trying hard to distract myself, hence another letter to you.
I feared prison before I was sentenced, but I don’t anymore. I made an excellent decision on day one, which gave me immediate status and has kept me safe. I beat up a paedophile. I knew coming in how I would be treated here – a woman killer, and with money too, not that I have that anymore. I was sitting in line at the health centre when two officers began questioning the man beside me, rather loudly I must say. There is no privacy in prison. The first officer asked him if he felt like killing himself, and it surprised me that he answered honestly. The other officer asked if he had made a plan, which was also a yes.
‘No wonder,’ said the first officer, ‘after what you did, you paedophile prick.’
I was next in line, because I too would have liked to kill myself at that time, and word had somehow got out. The officers went into the office and closed the door, leaving me alone with the beast, and I took the opportunity to crack his clavicle. He fought only with paedo tears, even when I moved his jaw an inch left with my prison-issue trainer. Staff members took their time to intervene. It was a defining moment, Bella, the first time in my mature life that I’d been violent, and the best decision I ever made.
God, no, it was the second time. Obviously. It’s amazing how little I still know myself, after three years working on it in here. Amazing. Beating the beast was the second time I had been violent as an adult. The first was when I killed you.
The upshot is that Rab is scared of me. Will he ever finish? He needs a better memory. I almost feel I should give him mine, which is of you, Bella, the first time I saw you. Student Union, 2.00 a.m., intoxicated and dancing to ‘Rasputin’. Your outstretched arms made your little dress head to the skies, and I saw your pants and for some reason had to tell you immediately. ‘I’ve seen your pants,’ I whispered, and you giggled and kept dancing. I leaned in to breathe on you: ‘We have to kiss, you have no choice.’
You liked my tattoos, I know you did. And my accent – same as yours but poorer. And my dancing, which, as you know, is excellent, me swinging you about as if you weighed nothing. You liked the working-class lad made good, my overpowering audaciousness.
‘Because if we don’t kiss immediately…’ I placed your hand on my chest ‘…I will set off the device that is wrapped around my chest, underneath this shirt. Can you feel it?’ Risky strategy, I know. You told me later that even though you couldn’t feel anything under my shirt, you should have run for your life rather than kiss me.
I wish you had.
I’m afraid Rab and I climaxed at the same moment. I do hope it’s not because I made noises thinking about you, but, Belle, how can I be quiet when I think about you? My regret is noisy, my grief is noisy, my desire for you is noisy.