Brother Moss believed he had become the second cousin to the devil himself, transformed into evil, sitting in the prison system with little more than mush to eat wouldmake. you feel this way. Satan would’ve been pissed if he’d been here, but he wasn’t, and Moss became Lucifer’s backup. Now he knew about evil and lived every waking moment of it, and finally, he had a plan. One murky morning, Brother Moss threw himself against the cell door, bloodied his nose and even broke a hand. He wanted to look insane. He succeeded and was placed in the dehumanizing ward with some truly mean bastards. They filled him with narcotics—paranoia-inducing psychotics and whatever the specialty of the week was. While he still had his mind, he found it funny, but it gnawed at his soul. After all, he was Brother Moss. Before long, he lost it and became a drooling fool. Someone yelled, “Hey, Brother Moss,” but he didn’t hear anything. To Brother Moss, it was just another trouble. Some days he knew what was happening, other days he had no idea where he was or what was real. So, they thought. But if he knew anything, he was a ward of the prison wandering the yards. No one cared. But what the prison warden didn’t realize was that, slowly, he was becoming the worst version of himself and his action would prove it.
Moss Heart lived for the night. Sleep was his relief. Concrete, stucco, and silver barbed wire kept him, as all the others, in check. Society put him there, along with many of his kind, away from all the good souls. He was with the misfits, thieves, murderers, and the walking dead.
He was a trader to his parishioners. He was to be their savior. Keep them from straying from the good to the precipice of evil. The trouble that he got caught up in those same troubling times. Committed those same acts of wrongdoing and became just another version of them.
In his cell at night, he suffered mightily. Wept until the early morning wiped the shadows away. The last hour of sleep before roll call, he heard things. Terrible things. Things that before his time in the prison system, not until now. He was one of the damned. He heard his sins and the sins of all others within these walls; he helped these walls breathe evil. He was their brother. He was one of them.
He thought he’d be forgiven. He hoped for this. It turned out there was no forgiveness from the community that loved him. Now, he was part of the inner sanctum of people like him. After a long day hearing their stories, he told the guard he’d had enough. He asked to be moved to an isolation ward. There, he would find some peace. They laughed at him. They told him this wasn’t a luxury hotel. These bunks, and the ones like them, were as plush as it was getting. GET OVER IT, BROTHER!
If he acted like a psycho or sociopath, they’d lock him up in the criminally insane ward. Wouldn’t that be great, he thought. But that didn’t happen either. His band of troublemakers signed up for laundry duty. Even if it hit 100 degrees in the summer, they talk, laugh, and plan.
Outside My Window 