While the priest’s optimism in the face of the brutality human beings could render unto one another had never been entirely quashed, it had been repeatedly squeezed and pummeled by a demoralizing range of harsh realism until it bore little resemblance to what one could expect to hear asserted on The Outside.

His faith was punch-drunk.

“Yea,” he intoned mechanically, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

Stupid, Marcus Wright thought. Stupid and redundant. Why would I be afraid of myself? Wasn’t he evil incarnate? Hadn’t that asshole of a judge told him so, and hadn’t he had it confirmed by a smarmy, quivering public? If that was their verdict on him, then it had to be true, didn’t it? He’d long ago lost any desire to dispute society’s judgment. That much he had in common with the concrete wall at which he was presently staring. Both of them were solid, impenetrable, blank-faced, and mute. If the wall could accept its fate in silence, so could he.

“...for thou art beside me.”

The priest droned on. Why couldn’t the man just shut up? Wright wondered silently to himself. Why would he, why would anyone, spend one minute longer in the bowels of this gray cesspool of decomposing humanity than they had to?

“Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”

Now that was a homily Wright felt he could get behind. Give me a rod and a staff, he thought with grim humor, and then you better get out of my way. Give me a chance...

One thing about hard polished floors and solid enclosed corridors: they make for excellent acoustics. This can be unpleasant when someone is screaming incessantly, an activity not uncommon at Longview. The construction can also magnify ordinary footsteps, and this was the sound that caused Wright to give a cursory glance in the direction of the outside.