Whose voices are these, I wonder each fall as submissions for the Insider Prize begin accumulating in my office. Four years on as director of Texas’s annual literary award for incarcerated writers, some of the names written across the bloated white and manila envelopes have grown familiar—essayists, short story writers, and the places they are relegated to calling “home.” The farm-to-market roads leading in and out of the towns of Rosharon, Kenedy, and Hondo, the units and prisons named after landowners, politicians, and judges, are the routes and locations that make up the many landmarks mapping out this state’s massive carceral network—a hulking, multi-billion-dollar entity that at one point in my life would’ve been entirely invisible to me.
Nowadays, these routes and addresses can sometimes call to my mind the Camino Real—the old Spanish road lost and buried but commuted upon daily—or that mythic expanse of the Mediterranean where Odysseus lost his way and people live and work to this day. Except for nearly the 133,000 inmates and their families and loved ones none of these places have been obscured. None of it has been lost to time—the decades- or lifelong sentences our writers are serving. Another 30,000 Texans work for the prison system; for some, prison must feel like a second home.
Since 2017, the Insider Prize has been sharing the unique voices of incarcerated writers with those of us on the outside, awarding them cash prizes, and publishing their work alongside our partners at Lit Hub. The two winners and two runners-up in the categories of fiction and nonfiction this year divide their subjects across genre lines, though this is typically not the case.
The 2025 honorees in fiction, Deana Carney and Walter Sam, provide us with stories from outside of the carceral state, while essayists Steven Perez and Luzalbert Hernandez offer up tales of life on the inside and the winding roads that lead to incarceration. Still, Carney’s lyrical piece, a sort of prose poem-flash fiction hybrid, written from the point of view of an unborn baby, illustrates a womb space at once protective and cage-like. Sam’s science fiction action adventure spotlights life on the margins if also on the fringes of deep space, its two main characters a pair of well-meaning outcasts outrunning the law. Less imaginary but no less imaginative is Perez’s “If I Were Late,” an object study on a prison garden, a site of such bounty it might read like an oxymoron if it weren’t for the guard towers visible from every corner of the plot and if it weren’t for the narrator’s generosity and attentiveness toward the possibility of beauty in all things. Hernandez, chronicling the delusions that drove him into the arms of the law, demonstrates how imprisonment can begin far before sentencing. And so, with these four short works, the divide between the fantastical and the real, the inside and the outside collapses, laying bare this colossal network connecting us all.
The voices mount and the team at American Short Fiction and the Insider Prize assembles: volunteer readers who rank the submissions and provide each writer with written feedback and a guest judge who selects our winners from ten finalists. This year’s judge, the MacArthur-winning short story writer and novelist Manuel Muñoz, was met with a wide array of finalists from around the state. His insightful commentary is provided below. The writer Tommy Mouton and the good people at Huston-Tillotson University, underwriters for this year’s prize, host an event to share our winners with the public. Finally, our partners at Lit Hub co-publish the stories so that you, dear reader, can join in this connection, too.
Whose voices are these? They’re our voices, whispering and screaming back to us. Thank you for listening.
–Adam Soto, Insider Prize Director
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First Place, Fiction: Deanna Carney, “Breach”
“Breach” compels us through its language. It keeps reaching for a way to describe something powerful and abstract and, like birdsong itself, allows us to hear snippets of beauty here and there. Once we are in earshot of the music of its story, “Breach” keeps us listening for more… Deanna has a poet’s ear for sure and that always has a welcome home in fiction.
–Manuel Muñoz
Breach
by Deanna Carney
I am spoken of in warning. A “thing” my mother should not have done. “Your life will become a painful struggle,” my grandmother flings the prophecy at my mother. It falls to the floor, scattering like stale breadcrumbs.
The quickening of time will soon expose a partial, temporary truth, lodged within my grandmother’s premonition.
Silently, l eavesdrop, capturing conversations and digesting the slithering omens cast by my grandmother.
l am an observant owl, claiming residence in the rafters of my mother’s body.
I bide my time as frostbitten wool is shorn from the February sky.
“You will see… mark my word.” My grandmother’s chants pile up like the snow outside.
I am a naive sparrow sheltering in the concealing shadows of an ever-warming chimney. My grandmother’s voice carries; stirs up soot.
Beneath me, one by one, logs are added to a nest of kindling in the hearth. Deliberately, l avert my gaze as thick woody fingers interlace like calloused hands in prayer.
I am a feather, floating, unaware.
Night approaches morning, whispering a rousing greeting. The shift change shatters my sleep like a robin’s egg crashing against pavement.
Spring has come to dine at winter’s table, responding to the glow of climbing fire.
Pious wooden hands send up smoky prayers, but it is my mother kneeling at the altar. Racked with pain, she rocks us both wildly.
I am an albatross caught in a monsoon.
My grandmother’s admonishment is a lightning bolt, electrifying my mother’s skin. Fear reaches me through the current.
I lose my direction, become turned around, headed the wrong way.
The universe and my mother bear down. I will not correct my course. I will not be moved.
I am an ostrich, firmly planted feet, head buried deeply in the sand.
Metal “clinks”, words about “stress” and urgency, slip through the granules of earth and into my ears.
I am a canary deep in a mine, signaling danger, unable to escape.
My mother’s voice has gone silent. The drum that plays inside her measures out a growing distance between us.
Unrelenting pressure, punctuated by greedy gloved hands darting inside my enclosure, startles me.
I am the rush of one thousand tiny finches landing against my mother’s ribs in failed retreat.
There is nowhere to go.
I am a pet store parakeet, plucked from my entrapment, forced through a trap door cut into my mother’s stomach.
Briefly, I am held aloft for my mother to see.
Her dark hair fans out in slick discordant plumes, like mine.
Ravenously, l begin collecting the gleaming shimmer of love in her eyes, devouring the rapidly decaying pain of my arrival, and trying to mimic the song she sings for me.
I know the “thing ” l am.
Like my mother, l am a raven.
*
First Place, Nonfiction: Steven Perez, “If I Were Late”
“If I Were Late” is a moving piece of witness: it gathers everything this “I” can see—including his own reflection—and refracts it to us with honesty and wonder. It reminds us that we have the ability to see and appreciate many, many things in the world, but that we must also learn to see what others feel in loss, distance, and separation… So many of the best and powerful moments in Steven’s piece happened because the “I” was reacting to someone else.
–Manuel Muñoz
If I Were Late
by Steven Perez
On the way to class I saw a garden in front of the law library. I could smell the leaves and the dirt. Thirty-two rows of squash, garlic, onions, sage, jalapeño peppers, cayenne peppers, and banana peppers. I saw zucchini plants, cucumber plants, bell pepper plants, and cherry tomato plants. Wooden stakes and cords held up the cucumber and cherry tomato plants. I saw habanero peppers and cilantro and chile pequins. I couldn’t
walk through the garden even though I wanted to. I wanted to pick from all the different pepper plants, fill my shirt with peppers, and take some to Victoria. But the two-story high chain-link fence stood in the way.
I saw dozens of men in white uniforms, with paper trays in their hands, walking to and from the chow halls. I saw razor wire fences and concrete all around me. Sparrows, pigeons, and buzzards in the sky watching me. I heard the sparrows cheeliping. I heard the pigeons cooing. I heard the buzzards on the slop barrels behind the chow halls ripping apart chicken bones.
I saw my reflection in the chow hall windows. My shaved head. My brown skin. My clean white uniform. Creative writing folders and books under my arm. I saw gun towers just outside the fences. Behind the gun towers I saw a water tower. I saw an officer in his gray uniform. He looked at my tray and asked me, ”What do they got on the regular?”
I saw maintenance workers in their dirty white uniforms walking back to the maintenance shop with paper trays in their hands. Chicken and rice on the regular trays. Pizza squares on the diet-for-health trays. Like the pizza squares in elementary school. Sammy, with his pony tail and wedge cut, was behind the pill window handing out pill packets. His 49ers cup on the desk next to the computer. I saw gates and giant keys dangling from officers’ belt loops. I heard the gates crashing and the keys clanging. I smelled the food in the air.
I wasn’t late to class today, but if I were late, it woulda been because I stayed on my bunk with my earbuds on my tablet phone talking to my daughter, who’s now twenty-three, telling her that I love her with all my heart. That she’s the other half of my soul. Coaching her on how to get her life together. On ways to get off the meth.
I recently told her I could never cut her off because I love her too much. I told her to go to all her group meetings. To report to her probation officer and go to counseling. To get a job and keep it. To go to school and get her GED. She told me she loves me more. She wants to see me. She’s gonna try her best to get off the meth. I cried. But she didn’t know it. I choked up. And she heard it.
The garlic plants in the garden looked like mini underground palm trees with the top of the trees coming out of the ground. Palm trees remind me of home. The beach. The bay. The smell of fish, shrimp, and salt water. The dozens and dozens of fish and shrimp boats. The concrete stair seawall. The still, small, splash of salt water against the concrete. The taste of smoked turkey legs while sitting at the top of the concrete stairs with my daughter, who was five then. Selena’s “Fotos y recuerdos” playing in
the background. My feet sinking in the sand. Seagulls chiming in the air. The sun shimmering and setting at the same time. The sky and the sea filled with purples, oranges, reds, and blues. The wind blowing in our faces. My baby girl’s hair chasing the wind. The clear dark night. The stars in the sky.
The yellow squash and green zucchinis looked like water balloons. Their leaves looked like elephant ears. Those plants were some of the fullest of the garden plants. The cherry tomatoes were full grown. They were bright red and tight round, and I imagined them exploding in my mouth as soon as I took a bite. Some of the tomatoes were green like apples and the size of baseballs. The cucumber vines dangled over the stakes and cords.
I wasn’t late to class today, but if I were late it woulda been because I got stuck behind a locked door. Like the last time, when Ms. Bravo didn’t let us outta the dorm till almost twelve thirty. I sat on the bench and watched the news. On the news, Ukraine was ravaged. Israel bombarded with missiles. Migrants flocked to the U.S.-Mexico border, where drug cartels were beheading their own people and injecting the U.S. with deadly doses of heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines. But who are we to talk, when our own government backs pharmaceutical companies who are doing the same thing. While I sat watching the news, Ms. Bravo sat in the picket behind glass windows stalking the doors and the camera monitors. She went from sitting to standing up and gesticulating like an angry mob, if we happened to slip out of the front door of the dorm when she opened the door with a button to let someone in. Curse words flew out of her mouth like closed fists, but no one could hear her because the picket is sound-proof. She sat in that picket behind glass windows at that desk with the phone in her hand, the curly phone cord stretched across the desk. Her eyeglasses below the bridge of her nose. Her nails done on her man hands.
When the door finally did open, I had to go to the mailroom to pick up legal mail. I tried to eat at the chow hall after I picked up the mail, but the officers weren’t ready yet. So I walked to class, looking at the garden behind the chain-link fence across from the chow halls and medi, at the wonder of the garden and hoping to catch a glimpse of Victoria.
Or like yesterday, when count didn’t clear on time. I waited and waited. The officers counted and counted. I was supposed to be at Mass, gnawing on the flesh and blood of Christ. Instead, I got stuck scrubbing toilets and sinks and showers and washing the stink of rotten food outta dirty plastic trash bags and scrubbing the stink of rotten food outta rusted metal trash cans.
The vegetable plants have their own personalities. Today they fluttered in the sun, as if saying, Look at me, it rained yesterday, l’m with all my friends, and I’m here to feed you. They laugh in the wind and smile in the sun. They’re so magical that the other day Victoria came outta the law library, where she was working, just to admire them. She was wearing skinny jeans and a dark blue smock. Her rosy cheeks, bronze-colored
eyes, and heart-shaped smile way more magical than the vegetables. Her laughter and her soft voice way more brilliant. Until now, we’ve never had a garden in front of the law library. And we’ve never had such a beautiful woman working in the law library.
Nineteen years of my life have been in prison. My murder conviction
and sixty-year sentence are a fraud on the court. The trial was a kangaroo circus packed with sophism, subterfuge, and courtroom chicanery. My mother and daughter are suffering and so close to being homeless that we don’t know how we’re gonna get the rent money that’s due in three weeks. Cell doors slam shut. It’s hot and we can’t breathe in here. It’s cold and we wake up shivering in the night, over and over again. Ten years passes. Twenty. Thirty. How much longer till somebody sets us free?
My daughter told me today on the phone that the judge didn’t wanna let her mom outta jail. That her mom cried in the courtroom because the judge wouldn’t give her probation. That she’s gotta go to prison on the five-year sentence. The judge and the DA kept bringing up the murder charge that was dropped. The dude found dead in the ranch with his throat slit.
I could see my daughter in the courtroom with the purple roses tattooed on her hands. The word Misunderstood on her chest. Her black hair. Her light brown skin. Her mom with her creamy complexion, her oval face, the beauty mark next to her ear, and the slight hunch in her shoulders that nobody can see but me.
I should be at home right now. Tending my own garden. Breathing in the Gulf wind. Showing Victoria what it’s like to live on the coast. And saving my daughter from a life of drug addiction and despair. But I’m stuck in here behind locks and chains and razor wire fences. In prison. If I were late to class today, it woulda been because I have no control of anything.
*
Runner-up, Fiction: Walter Sam, “Episode Run”
As a tale that leaves us with a cliffhanger, the thrill of reading “Episode Run” is in watching this writer balance character and conflict. We might be guided by wanting to learn what happens next, but there’s plenty to appreciate in pacing a story of adventure this well. I encourage this writer to keep their eye on the long form and to let the complexity of their story guide them wherever it might want to go. Whatever Walter might be thinking about—a long short story or even a novella—I appreciate that all the parts of a story arc are already taking shape.
–Manuel Muñoz
Episode Run
by Walter Sam
Rusty Silverman’s iron claw bust through the metal of the trade container with the first blow. As he enlarged the opening, a tacky black mineral poured out in viscous clumps. Rusty and Billy fell out of the hole, eyes bulging, coughing, gasping for air, immediately discording the shoddy filters they wore.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” whispered a tar-covered Billy.
“I couldn’t breathe anymore. I almost passed out,” relented Rusty.
“Calvary’s not here yet!” Billy said as he smeared the mineral from the
face of his wrist timer but was still unable to get a clear measure.
“The what?”
“Ahh, shut up.”
The high pitch siren of the casualty bots sounded off in the distance. They detected the spill without hesitation. Billy and Rusty headed in the opposite direction. Their trail of tar tracks would come to an end at a chemical rinse and containment chamber where, upon exiting, Rusty saw for the first time ever his metal parts shine and glisten to an almost mirror quality. He tried to see his own reflection in his forearm but all he could make out was a shadowy figure.
Billy knew that security at fully automated processing plants was minimal at best. If the spill alert prompted anyone remote to take a look at the viewers, chances are they probably wouldn’t and if they did they would probably think Billy and Rusty were just a couple of meandering vagrants just stumbling through. A consortium who buys stolen shipments from known pirates wouldn’t be hasty to alert the authorities. They would possess discretion. Checking the now clear face of his timer, they would need two hours worth.
With a quick survey of the area and without looking in a single direction twice, Billy shouted, “There!” leading Rusty to a cool quiet spot back amongst the infinite rows of stacked containers and away from the clack and clank of the processing floor with its ultra bright lights.
It was in the shadows of the containers that Billy pulled out a plastic package from inside the collar of his jumper. Rusty wondered what it was that Billy had tucked away in his suit. Secretly hoping it was something to eat.
“Here, put this on and sit still and maybe we’ll make it out of this thing peachy,” ordered Bill tearing open the package and handing Rusty a rubbery black poncho to conceal himself.
Rusty was surprised to find that it was big enough to completely cover his bulky figure. “Why can’t we leave now?” he asked, flexing his shoulders, testing the limits of the fabric’s elasticity.
“Walk fifty clicks to the island? Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you if they catch you walking around a Federation Colony like that? They’ll take those arms and lock you up in a filthy prison with nothing to defend yourself with but your pretty little mouth.”
“But we haven’t done anything wrong,” cried Rusty in a tone of hope and
not fact. If Rusty threw himself at the mercy of the authorities and gave his arms up without incident, it was plausible that he would be cited and let go. Billy, however, was a wanted man everywhere there was breathable air. If he were apprehended, the rest of his days would surely be lived under lock and key.
“That’s not how it works.”
Ironically, Rusty’s most charming interpersonal quality, his tendency to trust, was also his greatest self vexation. It was his super human ability to trust that allowed him to sign a contract with a roustabout recruiter, who refused to meet in person, who never once spoke the name of the agency he worked for, which turned out to be the first falling domino in a cascade of misfortune that span from one end of the galaxy to the other. The opportunity was to travel to an ice moon in the far reaches of the sector to perform
“highly valued tasks,” as the recruiter frequently put it. This was a dream come true for Rusty, someone who had no highly specialized skills or vast amounts of inherited wealth, the de rigueur prerequisites of interplanetary travel. He presumed that the year-long voyage aboard the PC ship would be a grueling educational cram session but to his surprise all he and the other recruits were required to do was exercise and have their sleep cycle brain activity recorded.
Once on the methane moon, they were finally shown exactly what the job was. They were to pilot mining machines with, well, their minds. Paired with a human brain via Caplink, a spider-looking device that attached itself to your bald head, these machines could operate four times as fast and as efficiently as they did in fully automatic mode, and speed was of the essence, as there were no such thing as mineral rights that far out in space.
What the recruits weren’t told was that piloting the machines over time would severely damage their appendage motor function responses. After 1,000 hours, you would not be able to make a tight fist. After 2200 hours, your arms would forever hang limp by your sides. After 4000 hours, you could no longer walk.
The PC ship normally came every two years to drop off a new batch of recruits and to cart away the old ones, but after it dropped off Rusty’s class, he never saw the ship again. It had only been seven months into their tenure when the uprising struck. Nobody knew who or how or why but half of the machines on the base were hijacked and directed to destroy. They attacked people, other machines, and even structures. The recruits were not equipped to handle a war with machines and the base quickly fell into chaos.
This part of the story is a story in itself, but the wars and the result left two-thirds of the recruits dead and rendered Rusty’s appendages useless as he selflessly piloted night and day to fight off every rogue machine. Others used their piloting abilities to fight but after the understanding sunk in they gave up piloting, even at the cost of death, once they found it difficult to lift a spoon.
Among the survivors there were some trained engineers who could not bear to witness Rusty struggle in the condition the Caplink left him. The worst part was that he never once complained about any of it. So, they put their heads together and were able to craft a half-ton exo-suit that would restore his mobility using the same technology that crippled him.
That brought a little life back to the base, but they were still unable to communicate with central and with no ships answering their distress call out at the edge of existence they were running out of options. The base lay in ruins and with their supplies dwindling it seemed that they’d survived a war just to die in peace. But a ship arrived and everyone hurried aboard without understanding a word of what the greeter was saying. Once aboard the main ship, they were welcomed with a firing squad pointing blasters at their heads.
Their boss, the only one not carrying a blaster, pointed a long crooked finger at Rusty and all the Blasters were raised at Rusty in unison. That’s when Billy, a conman serving a debt of service to the pirates, burst through the crowd, yelling at the blaster men. “I know this technology. No good. Toda! Toda!” He yelled frantically at the boss. “No good, It chews up your brain. Toda!”
“Ryukile,” was all the boss said and one of the blaster men put down his blaster and ran over to Rusty.
Billy approached Rusty with his hands up.
“Look, kid, they want the suit. If you ain’t chewed up, you better act chewed up or they’re going to kill you.”
He tapped Rusty on the shoulder twice.
“Be smart.”
The survivors watched in terror as their guardian was relieved of his suit. Rusty wanted to do something stupid, but the calming presence of Billy negated all of Rusty’s throbbing impulses. All Rusty could do as Billy unclasped the suit’s torso harness was breathe. When the last clasp was undone, Rusty fell face first to the floor with a great thud. His jumper caught a snag, and in the fall ripped apart for everyone to see the caked brown stains on his underwear as he lay there face down and ass up. They all burst into laughter, even the survivors, everyone but Billy and Rusty.
“There. You want to kill him and take the suit, there, shoot him. Kill the threat!” yelled Billy, and it only made the pirates laugh harder.
“Poikay,” said the boss with a dismissive wave of his hand and Billy helped Rusty back into his suit. The pirates forced the survivors to help load the ship with as many ore containers as the ship could carry before sending them back to the ice moon to agonizingly await whatever would be their fate. The pirate boss kept Rusty aboard figuring he might come in handy. Billy thought the same thing.
Billy awoke to the sound of another alarm going off in the plant. He couldn’t believe he had dozed off in the middle of a getaway. This alarm was piercing. This was no spill alert. It was time to go. Just then, Rusty came turning the corner, moving faster than Billy had ever seen him move.
“What the hell did you do?” demanded Billy.
“Youre gonna laugh when I tell you.”
“Shut up! Ah. This way.”
Billy took off towards the processing floor where there were tight spaces, plates that slammed shut with crushing force, and hot whistling steam spouts. Here, Billy was nimble and quick and Rusty struggled to keep up, as he was too big for the space. They made it to a clearing that had a grate in the floor. “There she is,” Billy said with a smile.
Rusty plucked the iron grate from the concrete like he was removing a picture hung on a wall. They both tried to peer into the darkness of the opening to see if they could spot the bottom. Whatever was awaiting them down there they would surely find out, as the sewer was the only way forward.
“Go on. You first.”
*
Runner-up, Nonfiction: Luzalbert Hernandez, “A Glorious Delusion”
“A Glorious Delusion” reminds us that memoir is not only for recalling bad times, but it can also help us see “brilliant flashes of genuine joy, truth, and inspiration.” The writer can dare to look at the past but also embraces what it means to keep yearning and reaching for our future. I encourage this writer to maintain the balance of past and present—Luzalbert is so skilled at recalling the past and knows already that part of the work of memoir is to draw conclusions from what we choose to remember.
–Manuel Muñoz
A Glorious Delusion
by Luzalbert Hernandez
It was a glorious delusion, 2016. Darkness spiraled around me. Lights appeared up ahead, radiating energy like celestial bodies. The stereo and gauges glowed still and soft in my Cadillac as I sped down the highway.
I roamed to and fro then and drove many late night highway runs between Houston and my hometown, Victoria.
The frigid air sliced through the open windows, bit the tips of my ears and my runny nose. I took a drag from the cigarette that hung from my chapped lips, the menthol enhanced by the fresh winter air. A cold beer tucked in my lap but I couldn’t catch a buzz, the white lines I snorted through a rolled up dollar bill while parked at a gas station miles back numbed me.
The wind’s howl filled my left ear and the music blasted from my speakers filled my right. I pushed the v8 engine until it shook. I saw a flash up ahead and realized my headlights were off! When I flicked them on, the curve came quick. I yanked the wheel, jerked one way, then the other, fishtailed, and spun. Darkness spiraled around me.
My delusion found its nascent beginning in my early adolescence, and manifested then, in part, through the lyrics of a Sir Dyno rap song:
Have you ever sold dope cuz you had to?
I didn’t want to, ese, but I had to.
Music always resonated with me and certain songs define epochs from days gone by. And in that era, as I stood at the crossroads, I discovered that Sir Dyno song.
In the beginning of 2016 I lived in Houston. I had moved there about a year before for work and to remove myself from the web of violence I was getting trapped within in Victoria—for a fresh start.
I worked every day up to then, but then work halted. I started to go broke and felt it like a strangle hold. I took on jobs slaving myself away for pennies, but I knew I couldn’t continue like that.
The more poverty tightened its grip on me, the more I loosened my grip on myself and gradually spiraled into decadence.
I’ve heard that the devil roams to and fro seeking to destroy, and I read that when one determines to do something a hidden guide arrives to test that determination.
I failed gloriously and the devil found me with a knock on the door.
I opened the door and my older cousin stood there. Tattoos covered his arms and head, his ride parked outside, rattling from all the bass the speakers hooked up in the trunk pushed. The sparkling candy paint and big rims enticed me.
I invited him in. We sat down on beige couches, drank beers that I had tucked in the fridge, conversed, threw our heads back in laughter, and then he arranged the white lines on the small glass table between the couches and we snorted.
I rode with him that night. We zig-zagged through the streets stopping here and there so he could serve various people. He introduced me to his homies and just like that I thirsted for the life again.
It all culminated at that night’s end under its shadows, the bass lightly humming as my cousin asked me, “You need to make some money?”
The craving roared like a great lion and I gave myself over to the beast to be devoured. My justification: I needed the money, my delusion budding.
I took up a false crusade and made myself its martyr. A crusade against poverty. I extracted a feigned reluctance from those Sir Dyno lyrics because I didn’t want to sell drugs and return to the life, but I deluded myself into it. I didn’t want to, ese, but I had to.
I didn’t have to, I could’ve struggled for awhile, put my head down and tried harder to find employment, but because I lacked purpose and identity when adversity struck, I faltered.
But through the darkness, I glimpsed brilliant flashes of genuine joy, truth, and inspiration.
My favorite NFL team, the Denver Broncos, made it to the Super Bowl that year. As a kid, I dreamed of chucking the ball like John Elway and Jake “The Snake” Plummer.
The night before the big game, my uncle and I stayed up all night replacing the roof on the family house he inherited in Victoria. The alcohol and white lines fueled us. I witnessed the sky lighten to grey then glow with blue and finally shine when the sun’s rays grazed it.
I awoke that Sunday on my older sister’s pearl-white leather sofa in the living room. The wall behind the front door she’d painted black and mounted a black light at the top illuminating different photos of Marilyn Monroe. It was like a shrine.
Back then my sister lived in her own delusion, too, as an exotic dancer.
I switched on the game. It was halftime. I watched the rest with a headache and when the game clock struck zero, I witnessed for the first time my team hoist the Lombardi Trophy under the confetti rain. I celebrated with a white line.
I lived then in real time in my glorious delusion, but I lived as a free man. See, I was twenty-one, but from seventeen to the ripe age of twenty, I wasted away, confined between four walls, wishing I could go back to high school.
High school, a place where I had last retained a vigor for life. At sixteen, I violated my juvenile probation, got sent away to placement, and went AWOL from there. I spent the next year-and-a-half on the run, wasting away into a state of enervation.
During that era, I lost myself after a close relative crippled me with criticism. I questioned myself, doubted myself, and then the fall came. I didn’t know then exactly what I relinquished or why. When I relinquished it, I felt empty. All I knew was that as a precious fifteen-year-old, I’d felt on the brink of greatness, even if I couldn’t identify what greatness meant, and then my spirit atrophied.
I was unkempt, my hair grew shaggy, I quit exercising, and took pride in baggy, faded, and tattered clothes.
A sadness dawned on me and I drank gulps of alcohol to forget my miserable life. I resided in Houston then but I couldn’t live there because I always felt the long arm of the law about to seize me. My only aim was to live on the run until I turned eighteen, when probation could no longer reach me.
I couldn’t attend school and so I worked in remodeling. Once I stood outside an old ghetto house I remodeled, white powder from the sheetrock covering my torn pants and palms, the fiberglass from the insulation stabbing my skin, and watched a group teens walking home from school, cliqued up, laughing, filled with youth and hope, and found myself pining for that.
Then I went to prison and my sadness deepened and the darkness darkened.
I was too young to drag around the corpse of regret. Instead of looking ahead, I gazed backwards and continued to self-destruct. I stayed lost for so long and all of this contributed to my grand delusion.
I became so lost and doubted myself so much that I caved in on myself and hesitated to venture outside of my own garden plot. In 2016, I stuck my foot outside the box and dragged myself into a new world.
I connected with my sister’s old friend, a woman who back in high school I thought I had no chance with. We exchanged numbers and texted each other. I sold to her. When I expressed myself to her, she called me Mr. Casanova. After that, we hooked up all the time. I remember her long wavy black hair, her bubbly smile, and her willingness. We used to ride under the bronze orange streetlights at night and converse about life and the meaning of it. She showed me her Instagram and Snapchat. It was a glorious experience.
My homies then were deluded, too. We all lived wrong, but behind the gang signs and tattoos, we were just dudes. Back then we all hung out at one guy’s house, a small but nice duplex—carpet, tile floor, and a pool table we set up in the garage.
We hung in the living room and played Madden ‘15 and Mortal Kombat on the PS4. The money flowed in and we all contributed to the spot, bought new games, a bigger TV, and pitched in for bills. The fridge stayed packed with brew and fast food bags and pizza boxes littered the countertops and table.
Those who liked football bet money on Madden and everyone bet on Mortal Kombat. It was like a frat house. We went fishing, barbecued at the park, but for the most part we lived under the shadow of darkness: shadows from the dark sky, darkened bars and clubs, the many nights spent under many neon moons.
I was bound by nothing, free to wake up whenever I wanted, free to go wherever I wanted, free to go shoot pool whenever and so that’s what I did. I loved the bars. I loved driving, stopping at the corner store with money to purchase whatever I wanted, to fill my tank with gas. I felt free.
But what I felt more was that yearning for something bigger. What that something was I couldn’t grasp, it remained elusive, a mirage on the horizon of consciousness. Something I felt when Too Short rapped: So, if you don’t listen, it’s not my fault/ I’ll be getting paid, you’ll be paying the cost/ sittin’ in a jail house runnin’ your mouth/ while me and my people trying to get out. When SPM rapped: I used to be broke but I ain’t trippin’ on that; and when Flatline asked: Where did I go wrong?
These rappers were like oracles that spoke to me. Listening to them, I felt that desire well up within me, seeking a form of expression I couldn’t find, my delusion being in full bloom.
The woman my sister eventually introduced me to, the dancer, drove me further out, though what intrigued me most about her was her drive to succeed. She danced at night and attended high school during the day, still striving to graduate.
Once, I messaged her and asked if I could pick her up from school. To her, this held significance—I don’t know why. But those small gestures always did. Later, when we lived together, she cherished when I threw out the trash or when I carried her to our bedroom when she fell asleep on the sofa.
I felt exhilaration churn in my gut every time we were together. To see those brown eyes, long brown hair, and those freckles sprinkled across her nose. We went to the beach together and dined out. I told her that I’d never done these things with a woman before, but she didn’t believe me.
She inspired me and my mind seemed so receptive to ideas I’d never thought before. I felt on the brink of greatness again because she made me want to do something with myself.
We made plans—also something I’d never done with a woman before. My only delusion: that one person could personify the elusive yearning I felt. She could not. Nobody could. I was my own savior but I didn’t know it then. The long arm of the law came and separated us. What we would have been I will never know.
But my incarceration now, like my glorious delusion then, cannot quell that yearning for something more. And so with my feet stuck in the clay, I still reach up, arms extended, fingers outstretched, and I dream.
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Biographies
Manuel Muñoz is the author of a novel, What You See in the Dark, and the short-story collections Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the MacArthur Foundation. He has been recognized with a Whiting Writer’s Award, three O. Henry Awards, and two selections in Best American Short Stories, and was awarded the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. His most recent collection, The Consequences, was published by Graywolf Press and in the UK by The Indigo Press in October 2022
Deanna L. Carney is a writer in Texas.
Steven Perez is a fellow of the University of Texas at Austin English Department. He’s been studying creative writing under the author and professor Deb Olin Unferth for nine years. He’s a member of the Pen City Writers. He’s assigned to the Connally Unit maximum security prison in Kenedy, Texas. He’s currently awaiting transfer to earn a BA degree and an MA degree in humanities at the University of Houston Clear Lake.
Walter Sam believes in the magical power of accurately wielding words as well as the bad juju that comes with spouting them all willy-nilly. He is not ready to use the A-word (author) to describe himself just yet, but his work has appeared in the Fort Worth Star Telegram (short story) and PEN America’s 2022 prison writing anthology, Variations on an Undisclosed Location (screenplay). He was born in Galveston, raised in Fort Worth, and received an education in finance and accounting from the University of Houston.
Luzalbert Hernandez writes for redemption. To redeem all the suffering he forced upon himself and caused to those that love him and have stood by him through his glorious delusions and incarceration. To redeem the time, as the old school Chicanos used to say, the “tiempo perdido y tiempo pasado.”
Adam Soto is the author of This Weightless World and Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: Ghost Stories (Astra House 2021/ 2022). A former Michener-Copernicus Foundation Fellow, he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives with his wife in Austin, TX, where he is a teacher and a senior editor at American Short Fiction. He is currently working on his second novel.
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About HT’s Institute for Justice and Equity
Huston-Tillotson University’s Institute for Justice and Equity (IJE) is dedicated to advancing and applying justice and equity knowledge. IJE aims to infuse equity principles and practices into what we do at HT—teaching, learning, research, administration, service, and community engagement.
About Huston-Tillotson University
Huston–Tillotson University is a private historically black university in Austin, Texas. Established in 1875, Huston–Tillotson University was the first institution of higher learning in Austin.
