Self-Redemption
Coromandel scribbled furiously in the small black notebook, pressing his pencil hard enough to emboss the words onto the surface of the page. He remained intent, pausing only to switch his laser focus onto the pages of the law book open on the table. In a breath he snapped the pages over, then returned to his notes once again. The only other man in the room the librarian – a worn, aged lifer - holding silent vigil over the sparse, industrial prison library. He never spoke; just took requests jotted on scraps of paper, shuffled to a shelf, and pointed his spindly, rheumatic hand to the book. The librarian sensed that this man’s very existence depended on this reading, this writing. Indeed, it had become so.
