Die Alone

by inches.
The force of the landing had taken the wind out of me but Ramone had come off a lot worse, and his features were contorted with pain. I pulled out of his grip and climbed to my feet but he wasn’t giving up that easily, and with a roar he sat up and made a grab for me.
I jumped back out of the way, grabbed a pool ball and threw it at him as hard as I could, catching him square on the forehead. At the same time I retreated across the floor, counting five other inmates lying there, most of them writhing around in pain, none of them offering an immediate threat. Two other guys, their faces covered, both holding broken pool cues, stared at me. At their feet, next to the overturned TV, lay a bleeding paedophile called Jones, whom they’d clearly just been beating.
The two guys started towards me, moving warily, knowing that, as the only man still standing, I was obviously no pushover. I was bleeding from the arm, and from the cut to my face where the blade had made contact, but I could feel my confidence returning as I grabbed one of the pool table’s broken legs and turned to meet them.
‘Leave him, he’s mine!’ came a shout from my right. It was Ramone. Even after the punishment he’d taken, he was getting to his feet, the shiv still in his hand, a huge lump already appearing on his forehead. I knew he had a reputation as a hard man, and unfortunately for me, he was excelling himself tonight.
The two inmates paused, and once again it felt like the whole place was watching us. I risked a look over my shoulder, but there was no one behind me, just a wall.
‘You’re going to fucking die, Mason,’ snarled Ramone, his muscles rippling under his T-shirt.
‘Well, come and kill me then,’ I said, dropping the table leg, and throwing my arms wide.
It might have seemed like a suicidal gesture, but it was a calculated move. A pool table leg was more of a hindrance than a help in this situation, and I wanted Ramone to lose his wariness and charge me.
And he did. He came straight at me, leading with his free arm so he could grab me by the shirt, pull me in close, and then drive the knife in. It’s the classic knife attacker’s move.
Except it didn’t happen like that. I tensed, waiting, and then launched a snap-kick with my back leg. Ramone might have been younger and stronger than me, but I was six feet two and he was a good six inches shorter and, in this case, height counted, because my foot connected with his groin before he had enough reach to strike me, and it connected perfectly. There are many injuries a man can withstand in a fight without it affecting his performance and, to be fair, Ramone had withstood quite a few of them, but a kick in the groin, particularly when delivered with real force (and mine was), isn’t one of them.
As Ramone bent double, I delivered a second kick, this time straight to the face, and he took an unsteady step backwards, lost his balance, and fell over on his back, dropping the shiv in the process.
The rage took me then and, grabbing a pool ball from the floor, I leapt onto his chest, pinning down his arms, and, before he could recover, I drove the ball into his face again and again, turning it into pulp, unable to stop myself. No longer caring about anyone or anything else as all the frustrations of a year of incarceration came tearing to the surface.
I could hear shouting, a commotion behind me, and then suddenly hands were grabbing my arms and I was being dragged off him.
Still consumed with rage, I struggled furiously, determined now to fight until the end, but a baton came out of nowhere, striking me on the shoulder, and suddenly my vision was filled with the black boots and flameproof trousers of the Tornado Teams, the riot-trained prison officers always brought in to quell jail disturbances.
I let go of the cue ball as I was forced round onto my front with a knee pushing my face into the floor and, as I watched more and more of the riot officers pour in, some of them lashing out with batons and sending the inmates scurrying in all directions, I’d never felt so relieved in my life to be handcuffed.

2
Adrenalin’s an incredible thing. When your body pumps you full of it, you feel no pain at all. Consequently, I hadn’t noticed that when we were falling through the netting, Ramone had managed to slash my belly, leaving a nasty wound about four inches long that had bled all over my prison-issue sweatshirt.
Fifteen minutes had passed and I was in the holding area at the front of the prison where inmates are placed when they’re being transferred or released. The place was bedlam. At least twenty injured staff and inmates were either being examined or waiting their turn, while the three flustered prison doctors on duty tried to calculate who was the most seriously injured. Meanwhile, the two senior managers on duty were trying to organize secure transport vehicles to take prisoners to the nearest hospital, as the prison’s own hospital had been looted and set on fire. One guard looked very bad. He was unconscious and covered in blood, and they were placing him on a gurney with a drip attached. Wallace Burke, the child killer, was sitting nearby, holding a wet towel to his head and complaining loudly that he needed help. Unfortunately, his injuries looked largely superficial. It seemed the men who’d invaded our wing couldn’t get anything right.
A young female doctor in a headscarf approached me, and my handcuffs were taken off while she examined my injuries and did a