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

long, hard look at himself.
    A great many of Mudpie’s habits and antics are repugnant, though some of them are hilarious. There have been many times when I’ve laughed at him until I couldn’t breathe. One such time was at the end of 1999, when he was making Y2K preparations.
    Mudpie listened nonstop to a radio station that was home to a string of shows all focusing on conspiracy theories. At least once a year they do a show insisting that a giant asteroid is heading straight toward Earth, and all of creation will be wiped from existence on a given date. That date comes and goes with no dire consequences, but that never stops them from doing another such story in a year or so. It also doesn’t stop Mudpie from accepting every word as the gospel truth. Bigfoot sightings, UFO crashes, alien abductions, Chinese plots to take over the world, et cetera. Mudpie couldn’t get enough of it. Once they began doing shows predicting the Y2K computer crash, it was all he could talk about. He nearly drove us all insane with his constant prophecies of doom. The second that the calendar flipped over to the year 2000 we were all going to die, he told us.
    One day as I was on my way to the yard I noticed a large stack in Mudpie’s cell. He had several cases of ramen noodles, a pyramid of sodas, boxes of saltine crackers, and about fifteen rolls of toilet paper. He explained that he was stockpiling supplies because once Y2K arrived we would no longer have food or water. I gave this a moment’s thought before asking, “If there’s no water, how are you going to cook all those noodles?” He described to me his secret recipe—he would boil the noodles in Dr Pepper while holding them over burning toilet paper. He had already been sampling the concoction in order to accustom himself to eating it. Alas, the delectable enterprise turned out to be in vain, as our imminent destruction was postponed.
    The Y2K debacle wasn’t Mudpie’s only questionable culinary habit. Mudpie is a cheapskate of the highest order. Once, after he had eaten the last of the peanut butter from a jar, I saw him fill it with hot water and set it aside. I thought perhaps he was washing it out to use as a storage container. Instead he went back and drank the cloudy water in which the peanut butter scum was floating. Just getting his money’s worth. Others witnessed him do the same with a “squeeze cheese” bottle. From that day on, anytime he would argue with people, they would fire back with “At least I don’t drink cheese water.”
    Mudpie was often seen wearing what he called “fart masks.” He fashioned these contraptions out of cologne samples he would tear out of magazines and position over his nose and mouth with rubber bands that stretched over his ears. They resembled surgeons’ masks. He wore them, breathing in pure cologne, at least twice a week, during the times he said the hobo had gas so bad it was gagging him.
    In prison, pornography is more valuable than money. You can trade it for anything you may want. Mudpie collects pornography so that he can swap it to dealers who are capable of feeding his habits. I once had the chance to view his collection and found it more disturbing than erotic. One large sheet of paper featured nothing but row upon row of breasts. Another sheet was covered with vaginas. Yet a third featured anuses. There were no heads, arms, or legs. They had all been cut off. When I inquired about this, his response was that he did not need to see an elbow in order to “get off.” Although I found his taste to be crude and not very aesthetically pleasing, it made a certain amount of sense. Or at least it seemed to make sense until I saw that he also had a matchbox full of eyes. He had gone through a stack of magazines and meticulously cut the eyes out of every picture with a razor blade. He seemed deeply offended when I suggested that this might be abnormal, and insisted it related to a work of art he was creating. The tiny box of eyes then disappeared and was never seen again.
    You can tell the long-term users by sight because of the toll it takes on their bodies. The most obvious are the ones whose teeth are crumbling in their mouths. Sometimes their breath smells like they’re rotting from the inside out. They smile with ruined teeth as they tell you how good dope is. No, thank you. I’m far too vain to indulge in anything that’s going to damage the way I look.
    Just because they’re in prison doesn’t