When I get back to the cell after showering, my cellmate is waiting for me, standing in the middle of the room, pointing at our desk with a pad of paper and a pencil sitting on top of it.
“After you get dressed, sit down and write one of your damn stories. And when you’re finished, I’ll read it,” he says.
I’m surprised, to say the least, and he must be really concerned about me because I usually have to pay him to read anything I write. It’s at this point I admit that I am deeply moved by his attempt to pull me out of my funk. I didn’t know he cared. So I figure I’ll at least give it a try.
I get dressed in my orange scrubs and sit down at the desk. After a moment, I begin to write, starting with the perfect idea. And the words tumble out of the end of my pencil like spells from a magic wand. I write an adventure/comedy with my cellmate as the protagonist. In it, he’s a mental illness super hero flying around the city saving depressives from suicide. I call him SSRI Man. The name is a bit long but I like the way it sounds: It has a certain ring to it.
In the story, he has a big, bulky helmet like a fish bowl, and he trips over his cape a lot, and for one of his superpowers he shoots lasers made of antidepressants from his eyes into your head and fixes all your misfiring synapses. At the end of the story is a fight scene between SSRI Man and his archenemy, the supervillain Melancholy Man. And all the residents of the city gather outside to watch each of them thinking happy thoughts and helping SSRI man defeat Melancholy Man with their collective efforts.
Once defeated, Melancholy Man is banished forever from the city, and it never rains during parades or birthday parties or picnics ever again. And everyone always smiles.
My cellmate laughs after he reads it and tells me that I’m stupid. And I laugh too. My first time in weeks.
Charles Davis was released in July 2023 and is thriving on the outside.
