-Frederick Mason, USP Tucson in Tucson, AZ
To this point, I’ve written nearly six hundred essays from USP Tucson, but before I was sent here, I was writing at other places. In fact, I’ve been writing since about the third or forth grade, on through high school, through college and beyond.
But I remember writing a scary story and I did it as a co-op project with a juvenile while in county jail. I didn’t realize how it affected others, but it is a reminder that writers can have an impact on others, even if it’s of the horror genre.
Before I was sent here to a federal prison, before I went to trial, I was held in county jail. I was in a single cell, separated from the rest of the population. While there, they brought in a troubled teenager, about sixteen years old. He wasn’t a bad kid, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was there for petty theft.
We got along very well, since our cells were side by side. During October, we were talking about our favorite horror stories and had the idea of us writing a horror story. The kid had no experience in writing, a pure novice, so I suggested he started a few pages, send it to me, and I’ll pick up from there. I would add a few pages, then send it back to him, and we’d trade back and forth.
Well, it started ok, I read his start, and you could tell which horror movies he saw. I didn’t fault him at all. I was asking a kid, a beginner, to be creative, and unless nurtured, most write about what they’ve seen. So, to encourage him, I started a unique story, titled, “Scarecrow.” I wrote about five or six pages and sent it to him.
He gave up.
It was not my intention at all to discourage him. I really wanted to co-write with him. But he said that my start was so good, his was no comparison. He felt he wasn’t a writer, and to be honest, most people aren’t. But to be sure, I am no Stephen King or Clive Barker. I just liked writing, and we needed something constructive to do.
I tried to talk to him back into writing, but his mind was made up. He actually wanted me to continue the story and had to encourage me to continue because I wasn’t going to continue without him. But because he insisted, I promised him that I’d continue. So, I picked up on the story, “Scarecrow.”
The horror story takes place in Northwestern town, involving a number of teenagers who unwittingly finds a treasure chest in a field with coins in it. They take it, not realizing that the items are cursed awakening evil spirits determined to make each one of those teens pay…dearly.
I wrote dozens of pages sharing it with the kid and he loved it. His appreciation gave me a strong desire to write more and more. I had an audience, and I wanted to entertain him.
After close to one hundred pages, the kid had to be moved back to the Juvenile dorm, and I felt like my only support was leaving me. I relied on his enthusiasm and I enjoyed writing the story. Make no mistake, it was “hitting the fan” for those characters in my story. I told my lawyer about the story, and he asked, “is there any lawyers getting killed?”
I assured him that lawyers had nothing to do with the story. I let the kid keep the story. I didn’t have the desire to write on it. The kid took it back with him and promised to send it back. Whether he did or not didn’t really matter, but he said he’s share it with others.
I didn’t think much for it for weeks, until I was out on the jail yard (an enclosure inside the jail). There’s like twenty guys out there and a guy I didn’t know comes to me and says, “You that guy writing that scary story?”
He told me the kid was sharing it, as he said he would. The guy on the yard told me a lot of guys passed it around. He said it scared the crap out of him, and he was afraid to read it at night.