Then she'd hustle out back for a desperately needed smoke, rattled without being one hundred percent certain why.

He would like to see her face then. More than anything else in the past quarter century, he'd missed the look of a young girl's face filling with fear. The way her eyes would dilate, pupils growing dark as the rest of her face turned to ash. And then that moment, that sublimely erotic moment, when the true horror would wash across her features, when she would realize it was no longer a vague, unidentified sense of fear. When she would realize that he really was going to kill her. That she belonged to him now and there was nothing she could do.

The man had been locked up eight thousand three hundred and sixty-three days. He'd gone into the slammer barely a day over twenty. Sure, he'd been oversized, freakishly strong, and, as his neighbors had testified at his trial, "frighteningly strange." But, he'd still been a kid.

Now, as of a few hours ago, at the ripe old age of forty-four, he'd become a bona fide civilian again. He knew the parole board assumed that age would mellow him, just as quality time within concrete walls had supposedly eradicated his baser instincts. Surely, after nearly twenty-five years in prison, he'd be a good boy now.

He thought about it. Nah. Truth be told, he mostly felt like killing someone.

Two girls walked by. Eighteen, nineteen years old. One of the girls caught him watching. She flipped him off, then gave a little twitch of her hips as she sauntered by, jeans so low and tight they appeared painted on her ass. He muttered a single word under his breath, and the girl suddenly picked up her pace, dragging her started friend behind her. Smiling, the man let them go. It almost made up for the bad coffee.

He'd started his Walpole stint in PC, protective custody, for Pitches and bitches." It was a double-bunked dorm-room-like Situation, technically medium security. "Don't screw this up," his court-appointed attorney had told him sternly.

"For a guy like you, this is as good as it's going to get."

First night, his bunk mate had curled up in the corner and begged him not to rape him. The man had stared at the sniveling mass in disgust. He did not jitterbug.

Second night, the bunk mate started crying and the man gave in to his baser impulses and beat the little shit unconscious. That at least shut him up. It also gained the man an infraction. And a reputation.

He didn't know it then, but the hawks were already watching, the prison scuttlebutt working overtime. His act of hostility got him kicked into general pop, then the real adventure began. A white guy had two choices in prison: join the Aryan brotherhood for protection against the blacks and the Hispanics or find God. God's protection was a little less certain inside the cement walls of Walpole. The man (boy) became a neoNazi.

He got an education. How to poke holes in the drywall of his cell, then patch them up with toothpaste and modeling paint to hide the drugs. How to pass off cigarettes, cocaine, heroin, you name it, using the rolled cuffs of his pants. How to fasten razor blades to the metal frame of his bunk, or inside the tank of his toilet, to catch the fingers of inexperienced guards.

How to live surrounded by dirty, filthy, angry men. How to piss in front of an audience. How to take a dump in front of an audience. How to sleep through certain half-realized screams, while knowing to wake for others. How to pass day after excruciating day inhaling stale, overprocessed air that stank of urine and Windex.

He still didn't learn quite enough. They caught him the second year. Boston Red Sox were trying to make the World Series and the guards were glued to the TV. The Hispanics came out of nowhere and "bungled" him good. Guards said they never saw a thing. So did his two fellow neo-Nazis, who never took their eyes off the game.

He was big, he was strong, he was mean. He managed to break various ribs, noses, and wrists of his eight attackers. They got his kidney with a homemade shank, dropping him like a stuck rhino and leaving him to bleed out on the floor.

One of the white guys came over then.

"Baby rapist," the neo-Nazi said and spat on the man's face.

He began his plotting, lying twisted on a cement floor, his blood pooling up around his face.

The prison officials weren't stupid. Put him back in general pop and he was as good as dead. Put him back in PC and someone else was as good as dead. So what to do?

Stick him in solitary confinement, the only place left. It took the man only one week to realize his sack-of-shit lawyer had been right after all-medium security had been as good as it was ever going to get for a guy like him.

Now he passed his time alone in a six-by-eight cell. He was allowed out one hour a day, to exercise in a penned-in yard the size of a dog kennel or attend to personal hygiene. From a rectangular window about the same size as his face, he could watch leaves turn from green to gold to brown. Watch trees go from full to bare to covered with snow. Watch the seasons pass painfully slow, month after month, year after year.

Best he could look forward to now was to become a "runner," a prisoner who tends to the housekeeping for the cell block, in return for a slightly larger cell. Yeah, it was the goddamn glamorous life for him. Biggest thrill in the world was turning on the TV to stare at Britney Spears.

So much time. To sit. To brood. To plot what should happen next.

Prisons were about power. Power was about money. He was hated, he was feared, and now, he was patient. Hoarding cigarettes, building his stash. Waiting for new blood to enter the cement walls, someone who would care less about what he did and more about what could be done.

It took him eight years. The lucky candidate was a kid, not much older than the man had been in the beginning, except this kid was all skinny limbs and acne-spotted face. Turned out he'd been making indecent movies starring the little girls in his mother's day-care. The kid went straight to PC, where he sat bug-eyed each night, knowing he didn't stand a chance and waiting for the bogeyman to get him.

The man got to him first. Slipped some money to a guard who in turn slipped the kid the man's note, signed by "Mr. Bosu." A bit more money, a few more notes, and the kid was greased and ready to go. Mr. Bosu had convinced him. If the kid was planning on surviving, he needed to strike first and strike hard. Build a rep, now these first few weeks, and everyone would leave him alone.

The kid bought the preaching; Mr. Bosu graciously offered more mentoring. How to make a shank, how to conceal it. How to extract the sharpened piece of metal quickly and strike with surprise. Oh, and how to pick a target.

The man didn't care about the Hispanics. Fuck 'em, they'd kill any white guy just for sport. Mr. Bosu had bigger game in his sights It went down on a Thursday. In the cafeteria. Porno Kid was serving the meal to the other maximum security inmates. The right two white guys got in line. Kid said wait, he needed to get fresh food. He went around, no one really paying attention.

He dropped the first neo-Nazi before the guy ever made a sound. Second had just brought up his tray in bewilderment and the kid was at his throat.

The man heard stories later. How the kid, one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, was surprisingly strong. How he sprung on the two white supremacists like a spider monkey, teeth bared, eyes feral while he slashed away at their necks. The arterial spray shot eight feet. Guys already sitting down didn't know if the red on their shirts was from the two flailing white guys or the marinara sauce on their overcooked spaghetti.

Pandemonium ensued. Fellow neo-Nazis springing from their tables and, like the thick-headed Neanderthals they were, going after the nearest Hispanic, versus doing anything about the long-armed kid still carving up their fellow gang members.