Chapter 12

For now, he needed to blow off some steam.

Joe stood and stretched his legs. He reached up and grabbed the iron beam traversing the cell’s ceiling. He pulled himself up and held on for fifteen seconds, then relaxed. He pulled himself up again and relaxed. After ten minutes, he started to sweat and licked it off his lips. Warm sweat was something rare in here. Joe stripped himself of his sweater and shirt, and went at it again. He could do this for another hour. Up and down. Up and then down. Later, when he was done with working his arms out, he’d swing his feet over the bar and hang there upside down, with his hands folded behind his head, lifting himself up from the waist, crunching his abdomen muscles until they burned. The rest of his body, he worked out there, swinging the ax. He’d been fit when he’d walked into this place, three years ago, but now, he was a machine.

Joe felt like a machine too. All hollow inside.