the convict

A man is framed by his wife, survives prison hell, escapes, and makes her pay.

The Convict

A short story by Johny Griffith — Architect of Chaos. Builder of Truth.

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It fell like judgment, soaking the streets, the rooftops, the bones of the city. Damon Reyes stood in his kitchen, staring at the knife in the sink. It was clean. Too clean. He didn’t remember cleaning it. He didn’t remember using it.

Then came the knock.

Three officers. No words. Just steel cuffs and a shove into the mud.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Julian Crane.”

“What?” Damon blinked. “Julian? Murder?”

Behind the officers, Celeste stood in her robe, mascara streaked like war paint. Her voice was soft, trembling.

“I saw him do it,” she said.

Damon’s world collapsed in silence.

The trial was a slaughterhouse.

Photos of Julian’s body — throat opened, chest carved, blood pooled like ink. Damon’s fingerprints on the knife. His shirt, soaked in gore, found in the trash. Celeste’s testimony was the final nail.

“He was angry,” she said. “He found out about me and Julian. He snapped.”

Damon stared at her, hollow-eyed.

“You’re lying,” he said. “You killed him. You set me up.”

The jury didn’t care. The judge didn’t blink.

Fifteen years. Blackridge Penitentiary. No parole.

Blackridge was a tomb.

The walls bled rust. The air reeked of sweat, mold, and despair. Damon’s cell was a box of rot. His mattress was soaked in mildew. His cellmate, a twitchy meth-head named Roach, whispered to himself at night.

“You’re the wife-killer,” Roach hissed. “I heard about you. She cried on TV. You’re famous.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Damon said.

Roach laughed. “Doesn’t matter. You’re meat now.”

The first week, Damon was jumped in the showers. Three men. One blade. They carved a smile into his ribs.

“You scream, you die,” one said.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t die. But something inside him did.

He stopped talking. Stopped eating. Stopped dreaming.

He stared at the ceiling, whispering to himself.

“She framed me. She killed him. She will pay.”

He read law books. Surveillance manuals. Prison schematics. He sketched escape routes on toilet paper. He traded architectural drawings for favors — extra food, protection, information.

He became a ghost. A machine. A blueprint of vengeance.

One night, Roach tried to slit his throat with a sharpened toothbrush.

“You talk in your sleep,” Roach hissed. “You say her name. You cry.”

Damon grabbed the toothbrush, slammed Roach’s head into the wall. Blood sprayed. Roach collapsed, twitching.

The guards dragged Damon to solitary. No light. No sound. Just the smell of his own blood.

He laughed in the dark.

Year thirteen. Damon lit the fuse.

He built a firebomb from bleach and wire. Hid it in a hollow table leg in the woodshop. When it blew, chaos erupted.

Smoke. Screams. Sirens.

He slipped into a laundry cart. A dying inmate named Lenny wheeled him out.

“You’re insane,” Lenny coughed.

“No,” Damon said. “I’m awake.”

The truck rolled out of Blackridge. Damon rolled into the world.

He became Marcus Vale. Dyed hair. New voice. New gait.

He rented a room across from Celeste’s mansion — Julian’s old house. She’d married Gregory Crane, Julian’s brother. Rich. Dumb. Disposable.

Damon watched her through binoculars. She laughed. She drank wine. She lived.

He hacked her emails. Bugged her phone. Followed her to yoga, to brunch, to bed.

He found the voicemail — a drunken message to Julian:

“If you tell anyone, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll make Damon take the fall. He’s stupid enough to believe me.”

He played it on loop. Over and over. Like a lullaby.

He sent Gregory photos — Celeste and Julian in bed. Emails. The voicemail.

Gregory cracked. Filed for divorce. Hired a PI. The walls began to close.

Then Damon invited Celeste to dinner. A private journalist, he claimed. A story about wrongful convictions.

She arrived in black silk. Confident. Untouchable.

He sat across from her. Pale. Calm. Eyes like razors.

“Hello, Celeste.”

She froze. “You’re dead.”

“No. Just buried. But I dug myself out.”

“You won’t get away with this.”

“I already have.”

He slid the folder across the table. She opened it. Photos. Maps. The voicemail.

Her hands trembled.

“You framed me,” he said. “You killed him. You lied.”

“I had no choice,” she whispered. “He was going to ruin everything.”

“So you ruined me instead.”

“I loved you.”

“No. You loved control.”

The next morning, the folder was in the hands of the police. The voicemail leaked online. Celeste was arrested for obstruction, perjury, and conspiracy to commit murder.

Gregory vanished. The mansion was sold. The Crane name was dirt.

Damon disappeared again. Some say he fled to Suriname. Others say he walks the streets, watching, waiting.

Celeste rots in Blackridge now. Damon’s old cell. She stares at the ceiling, whispering his name.

And maybe he hears her.

Because Damon Reyes was never just a man. He was a storm. A truth too sharp to ignore.

The Convict.   A short story by Johny Griffith — Architect of Chaos. Builder of Truth. Author’s Note

This story is not fiction. It is a reconstruction of pain, betrayal, and the slow erosion of sanity. The Convict is based on true events — twisted by time, buried by silence, and resurrected through scars. Every scream behind concrete walls, every sleepless night soaked in guilt and rage, every lie whispered by someone once called “wife” — they are real.

This is not a tale of justice. It is a descent into psychological torment, where truth is a blade and memory is a prison. The man at the center of this story was not broken by the system — he was reforged in its fire. What you’ve read is not redemption. It is reckoning.

Some names have been changed. The blood has not.

— Johny Griffith   The Architect of Chaos. Builder of Truth.