We’re living the bug life, Roland said.

Thug life?

No, man, bug life.

You mean that corroded virus, right?

What else?

I don’t want to talk about coronas, man, Boo Boo said.

What else you got you talk about, brother, until we max out one way or the other?

Whatya mean?

We’re lifers, right?

Right.

No parole.

Right.

We die in here.

Yeah.

We’re killers.

You’re a killer. I’m an innocent man.

“Yeah, aright, keep singing that same old song you been singing for what, 23 years?

Twenty-eight.

We been down that long?

Longer.

So what’s the future hold for us?

Shit.

You afraid of the bug?

More afraid of just getting old.

Think the guards are afraid?

Oh, yeah, they’re real afraid. I heard them talking yesterday

So what can we do to make their shifts worse?

Spit on them?

Better.

Piss on them?

Dudes already do that when they throw urine off the tier.

So what do we do?

Leave them handwritten notes.

Notes?

Notes.

What’ll we say?

Lt. Smith slides his hand over the railing outside our cells each time he walks down the block. So we leave him a note that we rubbed the bug on the railing and now he got it. He’ll freak.

Bugout, Boo Boo said.

Yeah, yeah, he’ll bug out.

Ha.

Sgt. Miller?

His note says we rubbed the bug on the television remote. Smeared bug stuff all over the buttons and shit he presses to watch them stupid shows he puts on. Tell him he got the bug, caught it from Whoopie on the View.

Boo Boo choked on his instant hot cocoa.

He hates Whoopie.

Me, too.

Who else?

Betsy.

The drug and alcohol counselor?

She got me rejected from the creative writing course because she said I was writing about her in the story I gave the teacher with my application.

Were you?

I was writing about my wife.

So why would Betsy think you was writing about her?

She told me to write a sex story about her but I wouldn’t.

Damn, Boo Boo said, so what do we put in her note.

We tell her Capt. Jones got the bug and he rubbed it all over her when he picked her up after work Friday and took her home before she went back to her house and her husband and her three kids and the cat.

She’ll go nuts.

So will Capt. Jones when she tells him.

You got any more of that cocoa?

Yeah.

Trade you a noodles.

You didn’t rub the bug on the package did you?

Laughing until they wiped tears from their eyes, Roland and Boo Boo settled down for their Bible study over hot chocolate water and chicken flavored ramen. They wrote letters to their mothers and shared oatmeal cookies left over from last week’s commissary.

Life is what you make it.