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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/thegodcircuit on 2026-05-26 21:48:32+00:00.

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The prison riot started over twenty dollars of debt. I don’t know who stabbed who first, but I blinked my eyes and then everybody had their knives out.

The block filled with tear gas. The guards fired off rubber bullets while they yelled at us to lie on the ground. For hours, people kept screaming, though. I didn’t think the riot was ever going to end.

By the time the guards finally had the prison under control again, fifteen people were dead. Two guards and thirteen inmates. Another thirty people were injured.

The Warden blamed the riot on the gangs and gang politics. Florida’s Department of Corrections agreed and started sending known gang members to different prisons around the state, hoping that would ease the tension.

I’d ended up in a prison in North Florida that everyone called The Plantation. The guards there were all white and racist. The Warden bragged about being a member of the KKK. The prison was owned by a private company that didn’t spend a penny more on its inmates than it had to.

The Warden made a point of introducing himself to every new inmate. After the guards de-loused me and searched me for weapons and drugs, The Warden called me into his office. He was a short, sunburnt man who wore a cowboy hat with his suit.

“You’ve made a lot of bad decisions to end up here in my prison, Anthony,” he told me.

“Yes, sir. I have.”

“In and out of jail since you were twelve years old. Arrested for armed robbery and then drug trafficking and then murder. Your mother must be real proud of you. Does she still visit you?”

“Not very often.”

“I didn’t think so.”

He slid a government form across his desk.

“My whole life, I’ve been working in prisons,” he said. “I used to believe in rehabilitation, but I’ve learned it doesn’t work on men like you. To change, you need to want to change, but men like you don’t want to act better. If you wouldn’t do it for your own mother, why’d you do it for the state? You spare the rod, you spoil the child. That’s the truth. A boy who faces no consequences turns into a man who thinks he can get away with doing whatever he wants. Consequences are the only real cure for bad behavior.”

I picked up the form. The title read, Informed Consent Document for Research. I skimmed the first few paragraphs. It was an agreement to participate in a trial for a new drug called Hyper-Cognexol.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“This is the consequence in my prison. If you don’t follow the rules, you go to solitary. Hyper-Cognexol makes a week in solitary feel like a month. It makes sure you have lots of time to re-think your decisions.”

“I’m not signing this.”

“You are, though, Anthony.”  The two guards in the hallway walked into his office. “Before you leave here, you’re signing it.”

***

The nurse gave me two Tylenols to help with the pain of my broken finger. Then she taped my fingers together and said that was good enough.

The guards brought me to my new cell on the second level of D Block.

The prison was old. A hundred and fifty years, I’d heard. Each inmate got a cell to themselves, but the cells were in bad shape. Rusted bars, molded ceilings, cracked brick walls that sweat in the Florida heat.

In the cell next to mine was an older inmate named Reggie. As soon as I’d gotten settled in, he introduced himself. He was part of the same gang as me. He already knew who I was, who my friends were, and what I was in for.

He pointed at a tattooed inmate in a cell across from us.

“That’s Carter,” he said. “He runs the block right now. As long as you do what he tells you, you’ll be fine.”

“Is it pretty quiet here? Or have things been popping off?”

“Quiet as hell. The Warden told you about the new drug he’s been trying out on us?”

“I just signed the consent form.”

“Everybody he’s sent to solitary has come back with their head all fucked up, ranting about a witch in the walls. Last time I got my hands on a phone, I emailed a few reporters and told them what The Warden’s been doing to us, but so far nobody’s done anything about it.”

Reggie put a deck of cards on the walkway between us.

“You know how to play gin rummy?” he asked me.

“I can figure it out.”

***

Out of all the guards, Hodges was the meanest. He was built like a linebacker. Ugly as hell. Bright red hair and freckled cheeks.

As soon as he saw me, he hated me.

“I heard about that riot at your old prison,” he told me. “Two guards dead. If I find out you’re one of the sons of bitches who cut their heads off, I’m going to make sure you have a real bad time here.”

He pointed at the window above my toilet.

“The last guy in this cell hung himself,” he told me. “Tied one end of his bedsheet to the window bars, the other end of the sheet around his neck, and then lay on the floor until he blacked out.”

Hodges laughed and then kept walking through the block, making his rounds.

I lay on my bed and watched TV.

I couldn’t fall asleep. The first few nights in a new prison are always the worst. I wasn’t used to all the new sounds yet. The pipes creaking, the crickets chirping, the guards’ footsteps on the metal walkways.

Then, around one am, I heard fingernails scraping across the brick walls of my cell.

I thought it was a rat. I looked around my cell, but I didn’t see one.

I kept watching the TV, but then I heard the scraping again. When I turned my head, I saw two yellow eyes watching me from a crack in the wall near my toilet.

I jumped off my bed and nearly screamed.

But then the eyes disappeared.

***

The next morning, I told Reggie what I’d seen, but he didn’t believe me.

“You must have been dreaming,” he said. “But there are rats all over this place. I wouldn’t be surprised if one ran through your cell.”

At eight am, the guards brought us our breakfast trays. A load of rock-hard “nutrient bread”.

After eating, I watched a bit more TV, and then at ten, the guards took us outside for our hour of fresh air and exercise.

In the yard, the guards locked me in a cage next to an inmate with a head full of grey hair. At first, I thought he was in his sixties, but when I got closer to him, his face looked younger than mine.

“I’m Gaines,” he said, introducing himself.

“My name’s Tony.”

“I saw her watching you last night. She always watches the new inmates. She wants to see if they break.”

“Who was watching me?”

“The witch.”

He looked down at the grass.

He must be crazy, I thought. I decided he wasn’t worth talking to more than I already had.

I tried to do a bit of exercise. Burpees, sit-ups, push-ups. The heat was horrible, though. Before long, I was soaked with sweat and panting instead of breathing.

I sat on the grass near Reggie.

“What’s Gaines in for?” I asked.

“He used to be a bank robber, if you can believe it,” Reggie said.

“He seems a little off.”

“Last year, he stabbed a guard. The Warden gave him a big shot of Hyper-Cognexol and threw him into solitary. He did a year that I heard felt like a hundred.”

I looked back over at Gaines. He sat with his arms around his knees, rocking back and forth while he mumbled to himself.

“He hasn’t been the same since,” Reggie told me.

***

That night, I was still having trouble getting to sleep. I lay in bed, watching TV, when—right at one am again—I heard fingernails scraping on the walls.

“Anthony,” someone whispered. “You awake?”

I looked back at my toilet, expecting to see those yellow eyes looking back at me, but the crack in my wall was empty.

“Anthony,” they whispered.

It was Reggie, I realized.

I walked to my bars.

“What?” I asked him.

“Carter needs you to hide this in your cell for a few days.”

He swung a tube sock over to me. I pulled it into my cell. Inside the sock was a chunk of metal filed into a knife.

I thought about Gaines, rocking back and forth in the yard.

“How long do I have to keep this here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Reggie said. “For as long as Carter needs you to.”

I looked around my cell, trying to think of somewhere I could hide it.

A book? That was too obvious. Inside my toilet drain? But what if I lost it?

I ended up cutting a small hole in the side of my mattress and shoving the knife inside.

Then I lay down on my mattress again and kept watching TV.

“Anthony,” someone whispered.

I went to my bars. “What?”

“What?” Reggie asked.

“Did you just say my name?”

“No.”

I looked at my toilet. Those yellow eyes blinked twice from inside the crack in my wall, and then they disappeared.

I went to the crack and shoved my fingers inside it. They felt wet. When I took them back out, I saw they were covered with black mold.

***

The next day in the yard, the guards put me in a cage next to Gaines again.

“I saw her again last night,” I said.

Gaines nodded as he rocked himself back and forth on the grass.

“What does she want?” I asked.

“I told you. She’s waiting to see if you crack.”

I tried to do a bit of exercise, but it was still too hot. I ended up just walking in circles around my cage for the rest of the hour.

The guards cuffed us and brought us back to our cells. When I got back into D Block, I saw that while we’d been outside, the guards had tossed our cells.

Hodges was still in the middle of tossing mine.

He’d already thrown everything I’d bought from commissary onto the floor. Stomped all my chips and honeybuns and tubes of toothpaste into a paste.

He put on a pair of gloves and searched my toilet, shoving his hand up the drain.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“We got a...

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