The prison block smelled of rusted iron, sweat, and fear.
The air was so thick it felt like you could cut it with a knife.
They brought a new inmate to cell number 17 — a grey-haired man around sixty-five who walked slowly, without raising his eyes, with the calm of someone who had already accepted his fate.
His hands trembled, but not from weakness — it was the tremor of someone who had learned to control every movement.
His name: Simon Slate.
In his file: murder under special circumstances. Life sentence.
There were seven men in the cell. All of them turned to look at him.
It was easy to judge him: an old man, weak, without connections, no threat.
But there was something in his eyes… something icy. A calm that unsettled everyone.
The leader of the block, known as “Bug”, a bulky twenty-five-year-old with tattoos crawling up his neck, watched him with a crooked smile.
He was the king of the place. He controlled the bunks, the food, the rules. His power came from fear, not respect.
— Well, grandpa, — he mocked, stepping closer. — Every newcomer serves the others. You understand the rules?
Simon set his bowl on the table and answered softly:
— The rules… always depend on who writes them.
Bug laughed and shoved him.
— Here, I write them.
The old man didn’t respond. He simply sat on the bottom bunk and closed his eyes.
The others laughed. For them, it was nothing new: another old man who would soon learn his place.
But something about Simon’s stillness didn’t fit.
The next day, Bug spilled a bowl of hot porridge onto his blanket.
Simon didn’t react. He just looked at him — a cold, impenetrable stare.
— What’s wrong, old man? Frozen? — Bug laughed.
Silence.
Then he grabbed the old man by the neck.
Simon didn’t resist. He only said:
— Don’t touch me, boy.
— And if I do? What will you do, old man? — Bug growled.
Simon looked at him. A brief, cutting flash crossed his eyes.
— I warned you.
The punch came.
Bug struck him in the face.
Simon didn’t fall. He simply wiped the blood with a finger, studied it as if it didn’t belong to him, and murmured:
— Now it begins.
That night, Bug couldn’t sleep.
He heard soft steps, whispers, a faint movement in the darkness.
He sat up, but all he saw was the old man, sitting on his bed, awake, staring into nothing.
— Not sleeping, grandpa? — he asked.
Silence.
Then a calm voice:
— Sleep is a luxury for those with a clean conscience.
The next morning, Bug provoked him again.
Nothing.
On the third day, he snapped. He pulled a homemade blade from under his mattress and stabbed it into the wall next to Simon.
— Either you do what I say or I cut your ears off.
Then everything changed.
Simon lifted his hand with a motion so smooth no one saw how it happened.
In an instant, the blade was in his hand, held backwards, like he had been born using it.
Bug stepped back.
— What the hell are you?
— Not hell — said the old man. — Just experience.
He placed the blade on the table.
— Choose your battles wisely, son. Sometimes there is no second chance.
From that moment, silence ruled the cell.
No one bothered him again. Rumors spread:
“That old man isn’t ordinary.”
“They say he used to be an agent… a government assassin.”
Bug pretended to laugh, but his hands shook.
At night he dreamed of the old man’s eyes: grey, motionless, like death itself.
Days later, an inmate from a neighboring block was found dead. “Heart attack,” they said.
But those who saw him knew the truth: a thin red line circled his neck.
That night, Bug approached the old man.
— Was it you? — he whispered.
Simon slowly lifted his gaze.
— And if it was? Would it change anything?
— Tell me! — Bug shouted, slamming the table.
— I didn’t kill anyone, — Simon said calmly. — I simply observe. Sometimes men destroy themselves.
— You scare them! — Bug roared.
— No, — said Simon, looking at him with a serenity that chilled him to the bone. — I only show them their demons. Yours lives under your skin.
Bug stepped back, a shiver crawling down his spine.
The old man grabbed his wrist with strength impossible for his age. A sharp cracking sound.
Bug screamed.
— I told you not to touch me, — the old man whispered. — If you want to live, stay away.
From then on, the “king of the block” was king no longer.
He became a ghost, consumed by paranoia.
Three days later, they found him hanging from a bedsheet. Suicide, they said.
Simon simply nodded when he heard the news.
— He lived in fear too long, — he murmured. — It was only a matter of time.
Cell 17 was never the same after that.
No more fights. No more shouting. Only a thick, respectful silence.
Even the guards hurried past the bars, avoiding eye contact.
The old man remained the same: calm, writing in an old notebook every night.
When he died months later — without pain, without noise — they found him with the pencil still in his hand.
On the last page it read:
“Every beast wears a human mask.
What matters is knowing when to take it off.”
— Simon Slate, Agent No. 47. Case closed.
From then on, nobody wanted to sleep in cell 17.
New inmates requested transfers at dawn, muttering the same thing:
“I feel like someone is watching me.”
And on the wall, carved in almost invisible letters, remained the words:
“Silence is the best witness.”
They say that on moonlit nights, you can still hear the sound of a pencil scratching paper —
as if Death itself were still taking notes.