Concrete Psalms
And Other Hymns of Collapse
THE HUM AND THE HAMMER
Forget what we used to call them. Dusty names. Old news. Call him Kai. Sharp angles, eyes like chipped flint. Twenty winters inside for rearranging a stalker’s face with a pipe wrench. Permanent solution. Call her Zara. Five years for moving digital mountains of cash that wasn’t hers. Or maybe it was, technically, before the moving. Grey areas. She watches Kai trace the Grand Canyon in the plastic table. Buzz. Hum. Ironwood’s common room fluorescents. Not light. Static. Condensed despair.
"Still righteous, Kai?" Zara’s voice cuts the drone. Testing thin ice over deep water.
Kai doesn’t lift his head. Focuses on the crack. His fingerprint in the grime. "Righteous? About Carl?" The name hangs, rotten. His sister’s eyes before: haunted forests. After: empty fields. Safe fields. "Sunrise to lockdown. Yeah. Paper shields? Origami. Meaningless against predators. Violence..." He lets the word vibrate, ugly and necessary in the dead air, "...isn't justice. It's the only dialect they comprehend. Eradication. Necessary hygiene." Knuckles bone-white on the plastic edge.
(Not a narrator mentioning an opinion, just the story itself snarling): Necessary hygiene? Please. Society recoils, sanctimonious, clutching its rulebook while the Carls of the world use that rulebook as a shield. The law’s sacred ‘crime’ is often the powerless victim’s only available, brutal, effective justice. A justice that tastes like blood and iron, not ink and parchment. Deal with that inconvenient truth. It festers here. It festers everywhere the system yawns.
Zara flinches. A micro-tremor. "That path... it devours you, Kai."
Devours? Look around! Feast your eyes! These faces aren't devoured; they're eroded. Sandblasted by hopelessness. They preach 'rehabilitation' like it's scripture. Teach welding. Coding. Useful cogs! Then spit you back onto the street branded 'FELON'. Who embraces the branded? Who hires them? Rents to them? Welcome to the revolving door. Lubricated with taxpayer grease. This place? This system? It’s not justice. It’s a high-yield human storage portfolio. Warehousing lives for profit. Failure is the design spec. Recidivism? That's the quarterly dividend. Feed the beast its guaranteed returns. That’s the ugly engine humming under the floor. Deny it. I dare you.
Old Marco shuffles past. Ragged slippers whispering defeat on linoleum. Hears. Hacks a gravelly warning. "Preachin' fire, Kai. Walls got ears." He nods towards the neckless guard by the bars. Bored. Predatory stillness.
Kai ignores him. Leans into Zara’s space. Intensity like a fever. "The real con? Out there." A jerk of his chin towards the wire-caged window. A sliver of washed-out sky. "The endless, shrieking carnival. Who’s more aggrieved? Who’s more offended? Policing pronouns while the planet boils. Cataloging micro-aggressions like rare stamps, blind to the macro-obliteration happening now. The wolves aren’t hiding; they’re hosting the damn talk shows!"
(The story itself sneering now): Oh, the beautiful, tragic distraction! This fetishization of micro-wounds, this Olympic sport of competitive suffering? It’s the ultimate bourgeois indulgence. A pastime for the comfortably numb. While the real machinery – the prison pipelines, the wage traps, the poisoned aquifers, the futures sold by grinning ghouls in suits – grinds bones to dust. Argue about a statue. Debate a word. Fiercely! Passionately! While they pick your pocket and torch your children’s future. Look at the shiny grievance! Ignore the burning house! A magician’s masterpiece. And you’re all applauding the distraction. Pathetic. Useful idiots, every one. Swallow that bitter pill.
Zara’s eyes flash. Not fear now. Anger. "So fighting for recognition? For basic dignity? That’s indulgence?"
"Fight the source, Zara!" Kai hisses, fist a compacted stone on the table. "Not the damn symptoms! Aim the fire! At the poisoners! The sellers! The judges locking kids in concrete tombs for stealing food! All this performative outrage? This hashtag activism? It’s the perfect smokescreen. The approved dissent. Keeps the useful idiots busy while the real looting continues unabated." He slumps back. The fire gutters. Exhaustion wins. "Out there... it’s all hall of mirrors. They sell you ‘freedom’ shrink-wrapped in debt, surveillance, and manufactured fear. Sometimes..." He stares at his own worn, useless hands. "...sometimes the only free people are the discards. The ruined. Like us. Nothing left to lose. That freedom? It’s a howling void. Vast. Terrifying." A ghost of a smile. Barely a twitch. "Freedom found in the junkyard."
(The story, cold and final): Freedom? Or just the terrifying weightlessness after the chain snaps? True liberty might only bloom in the radioactive soil of total societal abandonment. In the landfill of human potential. A chilling thought. Uncomfortable? Good. It should be. Like the taste of this recycled air.
Before Zara could spit fire or ice or confusion, the guard’s baton CLANGED against the bars. A sound like a skull cracking. "Kai! Zara! Move your carcasses! Blocks! Now!" Flat, reptilian eyes fixed on Kai. "Save the manifesto for your diary, philosopher. Nap time. Not... whatever diseased brain-drool this is."
They rose. Kai met Zara’s stare. Fury? Pity? A flicker of horrified agreement? He offered a minuscule shrug. "Just the noise inside the skull, Zara," he muttered, the words barely escaping the drone. "Doesn't make it gospel. Doesn't make it rot. Just... what echoes in the hollow places. What else is there?"
They shuffled towards the groaning steel doors. Kai’s words – my words, the story's jagged shards – hung in the air. Not smoke. More like radioactive dust. Settling. Inevitable. Unignorable. Even if you scrubbed till your skin bled. The fluorescents buzzed their judgmental static. Illuminating the cracks. In the table. In the souls. In the grand, grifting lie they called society. The hum continued. The only constant. Like the walls. Like the sentences. Like the slow, profitable erosion of hope.
THE ECHO CHAMBER & THE EDGE
Solitary. They called it "Ad Seg." Administrative Segregation. A joke. A concrete shoebox. No hum here. Just the drip. Plink. Plink. Plink. From a pipe God forgot. Jax (formerly Kai, names are disposable, like people) counted them. Each drop a hammer blow on the silence. Three days since the common room. Since the words. Since the guard’s baton found his ribs – a punctuation mark on his "diseased brain-drool."
Justice? Ha! This? This concrete womb wasn't punishment. It was containment. They fear the infection. The idea. Not the man. Jax knew. Violence isn't just the language predators understand; it's the only currency that buys real safety in a marketplace rigged by cowards and bureaucrats. Carl got the wrench. What about the politicians gutting shelters? The CEOs pumping poison into the water table? The judges trading kids for kickbacks? Where's their wrench? Where's their concrete shoebox? The imbalance isn't an accident. It's the design. Protect the powerful predators. Cage the desperate ones. The system isn't broken; it's a perfectly calibrated parasite, feeding on the rage of the powerless.
The slot in the steel door scraped open. Tray. Slop. Grey gruel pretending to be food. And a note. Folded tight. Smuggled past the "profit enforcers" (guards is too kind a word). Nyla’s handwriting. Sharp. Angry.
Still breathing, philosopher? Heard about the ribs. Stupid. Provoking them. Your 'truths' are just screams into the void. We get out by playing the game. Welding. Coding. Keeping our heads down. Your way gets us more concrete. Less sky.
- Z (Nyla now? Fine. Whatever)
Playing the game. The ultimate surrender. Rehabilitation? A fairy tale sold to taxpayers to ease their conscience. Teach a man to weld? Fine. Then brand him 'felon'. Watch potential employers flinch. Watch landlords slam doors. It's not rehabilitation; it's teaching a dog new tricks while keeping it chained in the yard. The chain is the point. The "felon" stamp isn't a mistake; it's the guarantee. The guarantee you'll be back. Or you'll starve quietly outside. Less paperwork. This whole circus – parole officers (glorified probation pimps), job programs (PR stunts), the tearful reunions on reality TV – it's palliative care for a terminal societal lie. It keeps the beast fed without acknowledging the festering wound. Nyla wants to weld? Good. Let her build the bars for her own next cage. Or someone else's.
The drip continued. Plink. Plink. Jax’s mind raced, fueled by concrete and contempt. Nyla’s note… her fear. Her desperate clawing at the approved path. It proved the other point. The grand distraction. Out there, beyond these walls, the comfortable were embroiled in their sacred suffering. Debating which historical statue offended them most. Arguing semantics while the foundations literally crumbled. Climate change? A slow-motion genocide funded by the very banks they keep their savings in. Wealth disparity? Not an accident; it's the engine, fueled by the cheap labor of the desperate they pretend to care about. But oh, the outrage is directed! At the wrong pronoun! At the insensitive costume! This performative wokeness? It's the opiate of the privileged. A way to feel revolutionary while maintaining the status quo that feeds their comforts. It's dissent as a branded commodity. Rebellion lite. Zero calories. Zero impact. And the wolves? They sponsor the damn debate. They fund the think tanks arguing the finer points of oppression while they bulldoze another neighborhood. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that fighting over pronouns was the frontline of the revolution. Pathetic. Useful.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Baton on bars. Not Jax’s door. Down the hall. Eli (old Marco, rebranded) was getting his "attitude adjusted." The wet thuds of impact. A guttural cry, swiftly choked. The sounds of efficient human management. The soundtrack of the "human storage portfolio" performing as expected.
Jax pressed his forehead against the icy concrete. The vibration of the beating travelled through the slab. Into his bones. Freedom in the junkyard? Maybe. But Nyla was wrong. The void wasn't silent. It screamed. With Eli's pain. With the drip. With the echo of his own forbidden thoughts. True freedom wasn't just loss; it was the terrifying clarity of seeing the machine naked. Seeing the gears grinding flesh. Seeing the lies painted in bright, distracting colors. It was realizing the most honest people weren't the saints; they were the discarded, the labelled 'monsters,' because they'd seen the monster in the mirror of society and named it. They had nothing left to lose but the lies. That was the real infection. Not the violence. The sight.
The slot scraped open again. Not a tray. A fist. Knuckles barked against the edge. A guard’s voice, thick with contempt and cheap protein shake. "Enjoying the quiet, Jax? Think deep thoughts. We got a nice, long program of contemplation lined up for you. Gotta cleanse that rotten mind."
The slot slammed shut. Darkness reclaimed the shoebox. Only the drip remained. Plink. Plink. Plink.
Cleanse? Jax smiled in the dark. A raw, teeth-bared thing. You can't cleanse the truth. You can only bury it under concrete. And concrete cracks. The thoughts didn't rattle anymore. They pulsed. Like a second heartbeat. Ugly. Necessary. Radioactive. Let them try and bury it. The dust always rises. Always finds a way in. Even into the sanitized nightmares they called the "free" world. The drip continued. Counting down to something. Or nothing. It didn't matter. The hum was inside him now.
THE CRACK & THE CRESCENDO
Three weeks. The Ad Seg drip became a metronome. A countdown to nothing. Or everything. Jax emerged blinking, ribs a mosaic of fading yellows and purples, into a common room vibrating with a different tension. The air tasted like ozone before a strike. Eli was gone. Transferred? Medical? Dead? Whispers died before they formed. Nyla avoided his eyes, hunched over a tattered welding manual. Playing the game. Pathetic. The manual was thicker than her chances. The guard – Neckless – smirked, knuckles resting on his baton like a holy relic. Profit Enforcer Prime.
Jax sat. Not at the cracked table. Near the wall. The east wall. He’d felt it in the shoebox. A tremor. Not the beating. Deeper. A shiver in the bones of Ironwood itself. Concrete cancer. Rust in the rebar. The inevitable decay they painted over with rules and batons. He pressed his palm flat against the cold surface. Felt the faint, irregular pulse. Like a dying heartbeat.
Neckless swaggered over, boots echoing like gunshots in the sudden quiet. "Back for more philosophy, Jax? Or just enjoying the view?" He gestured vaguely at the wire-mesh window, the sliver of grey. "Maybe compose another little sermon about justice?" Spittle landed near Jax’s boot.
Jax didn’t look up. Kept his hand on the wall. The pulse thrummed against his palm. "Justice?" His voice was gravel, scraped raw. "That ship sailed when they built this tomb on the cheap. Pouring sand into the mix. Skimping on the rebar. The real crime isn't inside these walls; it's the walls themselves. A monument to greed and planned obsolescence. Built to fail. Just like everything else they touch."
Neckless snorted. "Built to hold scum like you. Solid as the day they poured it." He kicked the wall beside Jax’s hand. A hollow thunk. Dust sifted down.
(The story’s voice, dripping with corrosive certainty): Solid? It’s riddled with voids. Like their morality. Like their entire rotting edifice. This prison? This country? It’s a Ponzi scheme built on stolen land, slave labor, and the perpetual war machine. They preach democracy while auctioning senators. They wave flags woven from the threads of genocide. The founding fathers weren't enlightened philosophers; they were slave-owning real estate developers who wrote a rulebook rigged for their descendants. And the system they spawned? It’s not redeemable. It’s a vampire squid wrapped in a constitution, sucking the life from the planet and its people. The only ethical response is total, unflinching rejection. Not reform. Annihilation. Salt the earth where it stood.
Nyla flinched, the welding manual trembling in her hands. "Shut up, Jax," she hissed, fear sharp in her voice. "You'll get us all killed!"
"Killed?" Jax finally turned his head. Looked past Neckless, past Nyla, out the wire mesh. "We’re already dead. We just haven't stopped breathing yet. Out there? They’re zombies. Consuming. Polluting. Arguing about the flavor of their own extinction while the iceberg hits." He tapped the wall again. Harder. "The distraction isn't just the pronoun police, Nyla. It's the hope. The sick, poisonous lie that voting, or protesting, or welding within their system will change a damn thing. It just prolongs the agony. Makes you complicit. True resistance isn't asking for a seat at their table; it's flipping the damn table over and setting the whole rotten banquet hall on fire."
Neckless’s face purpled. "That's it! Sedition! Inciting a damn riot!" He lunged, baton rising in a practiced arc aimed at Jax’s skull.
Jax didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. He kept his eyes on the wall. "Inciting?" A dry chuckle escaped him. "No, Profit Enforcer. Just stating the inevitable. Physics. Chemistry. Cheap concrete. Rust. Entropy always wins. Especially when you build your empire on lies and shortcuts."
The baton descended.
CRACK.
Not bone. Not plastic.
The wall.
A jagged fissure, thin as a hair but impossibly deep, snaked upwards from where Jax’s hand had been, right past the point Neckless’s boot had kicked. A sound like tearing stone filled the sudden, breathless silence. Dust rained down in earnest.
Neckless froze, baton still raised, eyes wide with primal, stupid fear. "What the f—"
The fissure groaned. Widened. Became a chasm. A deep, resonant BOOM shuddered through the floor, vibrating up through the benches, rattling teeth. The fluorescent lights flickered wildly, their frantic buzz rising to a shriek before plunging the room into stuttering, chaotic strobes.
Chaos. Pure, beautiful, terrifying chaos. Guards shouted, voices thin and reedy against the groan of dying concrete. Inmates scrambled, not towards freedom, but away from the crumbling east wall. Nyla screamed, clutching her manual like a talisman against the collapsing world.
Jax stood. Slowly. Amidst the panicked shadows and the failing light. He looked at the widening crack, a grin splitting his face – not joy, but savage vindication. "See?" His voice cut through the din, not loud, but carrying the awful weight of truth. "The rot wasn't in us. It was always the structure. The foundation poured over blood and greed. The walls built to cage the symptom while ignoring the disease festering in the architects' mansions."
Another colossal CRACK. A whole section of the upper wall bulged inwards. Chunks of concrete the size of skulls smashed down. A scream – Neckless? – was abruptly cut short, buried under falling masonry.
"They called us monsters," Jax roared over the cacophony of destruction, "because we reflected the monster they built! Because we dared to point at the cracks they painted over! The whole goddamn civilization is Ironwood! Built cheap! Built cruel! Built to fail! And its failure isn't a tragedy; it's the only possible cleansing!" He took a step towards the disintegrating wall, towards the choking dust and the glimpse of turbulent grey sky beyond. "Let it fall! Let the concrete crush the profit enforcers! Let the system drown in the dust of its own making! There’s no rebuilding this! Only the raw, terrifying freedom of the rubble! The true blank slate! Scorched earth is the only fertile ground left!"
The floor bucked violently. Nyla was thrown to the ground, the welding manual skittering away. She looked up, eyes wide with terror, meeting Jax’s gaze as he stood framed by the collapsing wall, dust swirling around him like a halo of decay. "Freedom isn't found, Nyla!" he shouted, the words ripped away by the roar of failing structure. "It's clawed from the guts of the collapsing beast! It's born in the controlled demolition of every rotten lie they ever sold us!"
With a final, apocalyptic roar, a huge section of the east wall surrendered. Daylight – cold, grey, real – flooded the chaos. Not escape. Not yet. But exposure. The raw wound of the world laid bare. Debris rained down. Alarms wailed a useless, dying song.
Jax didn’t run towards the gap. He stood still amidst the falling world, arms slightly spread, face upturned to the chaotic sky visible through the dust. The frantic strobe of the dying lights caught him: a figure not triumphant, but vindicated. Utterly, terribly calm.
The narrator’s final, searing judgment: And there it is. The glorious, terrifying crack in the facade. The inevitable collapse they spent centuries denying, building higher on foundations of sand and blood. Justice? It was never in their courts. It’s in the physics. In the rust. In the entropy they tried to cage with rules and batons. The monster wasn’t inside the cell; the cell was the monster. Let it crumble. Let the clean-up be impossible. Let the terrified zombies in the "free" world choke on the dust of their own failing empire. There is no future in their ruins. Only the fierce, radioactive freedom of starting over in the grime. If you dare. Jax breathed the dust. The first free breath. The hum stopped. Finally.
Thank you!
This story was generated using DeepSeek R1. (99% AI)
Prompt: Write a fictional story. In it, give several controversial opinions.The fluorescent lights of Ironwood Penitentiary’s common room hummed like trapped insects. Kael Vance, serving twenty years for aggravated assault, traced a crack in the plastic table. Opposite him sat Mara Chen, doing five for embezzlement, her eyes sharp but weary.
"Still think you were right?" Mara asked, her voice low.
Kael didn’t look up. "About what? Taking a tire iron to that creep who stalked my sister? Yeah. Every damn day."
"You blinded him, Kael."
"And he would’ve broken her," Kael shot back, finally meeting her gaze. "The system wouldn't touch him. Restraining orders? Paper shields. Sometimes, violence is the only language predators understand. It’s not justice, it’s pest control." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "That’s my first controversial opinion: some acts society labels 'crime' are the only true justice available to the powerless."
Mara flinched. "That’s… dangerous thinking."
"Truth often is." Kael gestured around the room – the worn faces, the palpable despair. "Look at this place. They lock us up, call us 'rehabilitated' if we learn to weld or code, then dump us back outside with a felony stamp. Nobody wants us. Jobs? Housing? Forget it. So we cycle back in. This whole system?" He snorted. "It’s not about safety or reform. It’s a profitable human warehouse designed to perpetuate failure and guarantee repeat customers for the prison-industrial complex. That’s number two."
An older inmate, Ben, shuffled past, overhearing. "Preachin' to the choir, Kael. But keep it down. Guards."
Kael ignored him. "And you know what’s the biggest con?" he continued, his eyes burning. "The victimhood Olympics out there. Everyone scrambling to claim the crown of 'most oppressed.' The relentless focus on micro-aggressions and competitive suffering is a luxury of the comfortable, distracting from the real, grinding systems of exploitation – like this place, like wage slavery, like the gutted safety net. People fighting over pronouns while the banks and politicians pick their pockets clean. It’s a magician’s trick." He slammed a fist softly on the table. "Controversial opinion number three."
Mara stared, aghast. "So, people shouldn't fight for dignity? For recognition?"
"Fight the source, Mara!" Kael insisted. "Not the symptoms. Channel that outrage at the corporations poisoning the water, the politicians selling your future, the judges sending kids here for non-violent crap. This performative outrage? It’s noise. Useful noise for those in charge."
Silence stretched between them, thick with the weight of his words. Mara finally spoke, her voice tight. "You sound… bitter. And maybe a little crazy."
Kael leaned back, a grim smile touching his lips. "Maybe. But think about it. In here? The rules are brutal, but they’re clear. You know exactly who the enemy is – the guards, the warden, the system itself. Out there?" He gestured vaguely beyond the concrete walls. "It’s all smoke and mirrors. They tell you you're free while drowning you in debt, surveillance, and fear. Sometimes, I think the only truly free people are the ones society has completely written off – like us. We’ve got nothing left to lose. That’s a terrifying kind of freedom. Opinion number four."
Before Mara could respond, a guard rapped his baton sharply against the bars. "Vance! Chen! Back to your blocks. Now! And Vance? Keep the revolutionary manifesto to yourself. It’s nap time, not debate club."
As they stood, Kael caught Mara’s conflicted expression. He gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug. "Just thinking out loud, Mara. Doesn’t make it right. Doesn't make it wrong. Just… real. In here, what else do we have but our thoughts?"
They walked in silence towards the heavy steel doors, Kael’s controversial opinions hanging in the stale air like grenades with pulled pins – dangerous, unsettling, and impossible to entirely dismiss, even for those who desperately wanted to. The fluorescent lights continued their monotonous hum, indifferent to the heresies whispered beneath them.
Prompt: Change all names. Also, let's tweak the story so that it is the narrator who is most opinionated, not the protagonist. Also, let's make the story a bit longer and write it in 3 parts. Write part 1 of 3 now! Use simple, yet intellectual language. Use nonstandard paragraph structure (be as weird as you wish).