Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

as Chuckles and another known as “the hobo” modified their channel checkers in order to cause maximum damage. They used empty soda cans to fashion sharp metal tips, and then proceeded to stab each other in the face through the bars. They kept at it for at least an hour and both had shed blood before they finally tired. When someone asked what had started the whole thing, Chuckles pointed at the hobo and said, “He was trying to derogatize me.” No one knew quite what that meant, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Usually no one cared enough about Chuckles’s conversation to try to follow along anyway.
    I applied that moniker to him myself and it stuck. Soon the entire population of Death Row recognized him as such, and he even began to refer to himself by that name. It just seemed to suit him perfectly. Chuckles is about five and a half feet tall, of average build, and looks exactly like a possum. In fact, his alias is “Kid Possum.” He has only one tooth left in his mouth, and it’s situated right in front. He claims that drugs rotted his teeth, though I’m more inclined to believe it was the simple lack of good oral hygiene. I say this because Chuckles has the breath of a baby dragon and has never been seen in the presence of a toothbrush. I once tried to use the phone after him and the smell he left on the mouthpiece made me gag. I washed it for several minutes with soap and water, but the smell remained. In the end I had to pour cheap cologne over it. He was overheard making the statement “I don’t drink coffee because it will stain my tooth.”
    It’s not only his mouth that stinks, as Chuckles chronically avoids all forms of cleanliness. He’s the only person on earth who smells worse when he gets out of the shower than he did before he got in. He doesn’t actually wash himself, he just sort of splashes around while trying to talk to other people. The guards argue about who has to escort him, because no one wants to get close.
    Chuckles arrived on Death Row after he was convicted of chopping two old ladies to death with a hatchet. Other inmates used to drive him into a frenzy by tormenting him with hatchets made out of construction paper. While making chopping motions they would imitate an old lady’s voice and cry, “No, Chuckles! Please don’t kill me! You’ll catch a capital murder charge!” Chuckles would go insane with rage and threaten to kill everyone in sight.
    Chuckles and the hobo had more than one altercation over the years, and most involved throwing either feces or urine at each other. I once witnessed the hobo dash a coffee cup of urine in Chuckles’s face, after which Chuckles didn’t even bother to wash up. He simply dried his face with a towel and went back to business.
    Men who cultivate filth are a regular occurrence in prison. They justify it by saying, “I’m not going anywhere soon, so why bother?” They’re referred to as either barbarians or Vikings. Although those called Vikings are crude, those considered to be barbarians have given up any pretense of civilized humanity.
    Each day men are selected to work in the fields. They swing a hoe from daybreak to suppertime, and when they come back inside they are sweaty, filthy, and mud-caked. A Viking will strip off his clothes and go to bed without even showering. A barbarian, though—well, a barbarian will crawl straight into bed without even taking off his mud-encrusted boots. You can smell a barbarian from the next cell. I know from firsthand experience. I once lived in the cell next to a barbarian for about three months. I couldn’t even sit at the door to watch television without holding a washcloth over my nose and mouth. This particular barbarian even had his teeth pulled so he could avoid the formality of brushing them. Dentures would save him the effort. The thing that struck me as being the most odd was the barbarian’s insistence that he did not stink despite everyone in the barracks telling him otherwise.
    I also had the misfortune of living next to another barbarian whom everyone called “Big Blue.” This name was in reference to the fact that he wore the same pair of underwear every single day until they turned a dingy bluish-gray color. In truth it wasn’t even underwear, but long johns that he had cut the legs off of. After about a year they were nothing but a tattered rag filled with holes and dangling fringe. Unlike Chuckles or the barbarian, Big Blue had a valid excuse—he was