I had my first experience in Room 7 the second day of my stay in this prison. My cellie, an older man who was doing ‘all day’(prison lingo for a life sentence), had told me everything about the prison and the cell known as Room 7.

‘Son, don’t ever pray to go there. It’s real bad!’ He told me.

‘I won’t.’ I nodded my head as the words slipped out of my mouth.

‘Just stay outta trouble. Mind your business; sell no crack, mind ‘em billies and watcha back.’

I digested his words to my memory. I dreamt of everything he had told me the night before I was taken for ‘meditation’. I dreamt that night that I was thrown into a dungeon with no light, save the moving eyes of rodents; Skeletons littered every corner of the cell, and I heard mummies calling me to dine with them.

I woke with a start, only to hear my cellie shouting: ‘Them bulls are coming! Oh no, not again!’ He was shivering.

‘Odii!’ One of the two warders said. I nodded. I turned, looked at my aging cellie and saw the fear disappear from his face. Perhaps, he had been scared that they had come for him. He stood still by the side of the bunk looking at me as the cell was opened and I walked out.

‘Son, be strong. You’ll be alright.’ Cellie said as I was accompanied to my den: solitary confinement… Room No 7.

I was thrown there for disciplinary actions; ‘to take the thieving spirit outta me’. I was thrown there to die. I walked with them without struggling but I kept on shouting to the warders that I was innocent and should not be in jail. No one listened to my cries and pleas. Fear caused my courage to rise when I stood in front of one of the seven doors that would usher me into my mediation room. I looked at the two warders that accompanied me to the cell, tears tickling down my face, and I spat at the average height, dark warder. He stared at me blankly, then smiled, cleaned the mess off his face and struck me hard on my right leg with a club. The other warder took my hands in his and cuffed them.

The cell opened his arms wide to accept me. He had no smile on his face, he simply stared at me, as if wondering if I would run away from his presence. He waited as I delayed. His eyes opened wider as I stepped in. My heart was heavy, but it was not his business – his business was to welcome me the way he wanted, and not the way I wished. I had no right to make decisions. To him, I was a ‘badass’ that needed to be dealt with. Once I was fully in his arms, he shut his eyes. The cell became dark. I looked up and saw the seven holes and the ‘seven everything’ that makes that goddamn room what it is known as today.

Eve, inside that room one can lose all sense of dates and time passing. There is no day and there is no night. One has mosquitoes and rats as companions. To make my point, I spent only one night in Room 7 and when I came out, I was told that I had actually been locked up there for two weeks!

Inside Room 7, I was denied food for many hours. At first, I thought it would soon be over. I would shout at myself for being crazy. Why did I ever spit on that bull of a guard? I had no pen to write to enliven my spirit, and even if I had, my hands were cuffed. Finally, light came shining from a bulb that had been frowning down on me since I entered. To the bulb, I was another type of shit, found in the gutters, thrown into this fucking place to disturb his peace. He needed to light up and expose my sins.

It was fucking crazy!

How could all these objects make me feel inane and puny? You see, sometimes, I would get angry and start shouting at anything, even things that had no life in them. I took comfort from that bulb, though. The warmness of it hugged me all night. We spoke to each other…laughed and cried together. Soon though, he too died, and I was left alone.

***

Tell us: Do you know people who suffer like Odii and his “cellies”?