The sky had horns, like everything else around me. I had too much blood on my hands, people smell that. Ed Snowden was a teenage model. He looked like an insect, bare-chested, grinning at the camera. No one holds that against him. My burden is heavier to digest.

The pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and intestines have evolved little since we were fish—that’s what I told the judge. But what I really meant to say was that she looked like a fish contemplating the stars while dying. She gave me sixteen months and a cute send off which made my mom and lawyers very happy. Once you cross over and do time it changes you, emotive posture first. I spent the first three months inside playing Resident Evil Code: Veronica on a “chipped” PlayStation 2 like it was the Summer of 2001. I didn’t speak much, slept less, and ate lots of Sour Patch Kids. Years before on a family holiday to a huge waterpark they put a pink parrot on my shoulder, took a photo, and had it printed on a gift shop plate that looked like a McDonalds’ ashtrays. That is to say, I knew humiliation well.

Contrary to what people think, it’s not freedom that you give up in jail, but kindness. I met some nice people in there. I made some enemies, but mostly friends. My cellmate had “XTC” tattooed on his upper arm overlapping a memorial tat of his nephew who had drowned at age two (I always wondered which one he got first but never asked). He also had “XTC” written on his inner bottom lip which he showed me on my first day inside, as an icebreaker. We were close after that. Downers-bloated and passive-aggressive, he was obsessed with walls like the ones around us. He hated those walls and so did I, because they harbor hate. My scapegoat became the prison’s computer system firewall. Beyond my wall there was the world, beyond the prison walls there was absolutely nothing.

The Supervised Internet Research And Learning Sessions room stank of dog. Two yellowing monitors and Windows XP towers on a blue desk atop a fitted beige carpet leading to a window overlooking several dog pens. The walls were bare apart from a small wooden crucifix and a Gadget Hackwrench bumper sticker, the kind you find in a cereal box. “Slender and beautiful mouse, cream fur, pink nose, buck-toothed, thick strawberry blonde hair, light blue eyes, lavender mechanic coveralls, purple goggles,” it read. Some jerk-off had stuck her there on the wall next to COMPUTER 2. I found her reassuring smile and naïve sexuality appealing, so I gave “Gadget Hackwrench hentai” a search, knowing that an animated mouse was better than nothing. Naturally the firewall blocked the search and I was redirected to a Russian homepage for a cult that venerated Gadget. In Russia they don’t use carpets and hang rugs on their walls.

I was back on the street after 16 months. I lived with my parents for a while, moved in with a friend, then back with my parents until I found a place of my own. I carried my belongings in a fake Louis Vuitton duffle bag that my cellmate had given me as a parting gift along with a heavily scratched PlayStation 2 game, Syphon Filter 3, and a CD cleaning kit, “It has s a tiny scratch, clean it before playing it. We’ll meet once I’m out. We’ll party brah.”

We never met on the outside; he never made it to the outside. He died after swallowing a razor with the hope of being taken to the hospital so he could live a lavish life for a week, high on meds and whatever his visitors brought him. But the guard never called the hospital because he thought he was faking it so my prison friend died like a dog a few meters away from the pens, surrounded by the walls he despised.

After that my life progressed steadily. Toxic, masculine, and vacant it sped, while every night before falling asleep I would think of the little life I had lived. The currents in my head were multiple. On some nights the image of Gadget would come back to visit me. Creamy furred and buck-toothed she would stick to the top of my head and from there project images of her slender body, the cult, and Russia.

It was dusk when I decided that I wanted out of the life I was living. I found a flight to Prague, then to Moscow and finally to Nizhny Novgorod, my final destination. Flights were expensive so I waited, trying to make some money without working and staying out of trouble. One afternoon the phone rang with my mom sobbing on the other end: my grandma had died. A couple of days before, in her heated hospital bed, she gave mom an envelope with some belongings she wanted me to have along with some cash. I opened the envelope as soon as I was alone: a gold chain with a small black pendant belonging to her dead brother or something; a photo of her when she was young and beautiful and enough cash to get me closer to my dream. I wore the chain and put her photo in my wallet, opened my laptop, got the tickets, looked in the mirror, lit a cigarette, opened the window and looked up to the sky.

I landed in Prague on a Friday, fake Louis Vuitton duffle bag in hand, hurrying towards my connecting flight to Moscow. I didn’t look back, only forward. I didn’t even go to the funeral. Thanks grandma. I love you.