Since the day Daniel Hyden crashed his car into a crowd of NYC partygoers on July 4th, killing four people, he says the only relief he’s had from the nightmare he’s living is when he’s asleep.  

I. This Can’t Be LIFE.

My eyes open, to a Manhattan Superior Court judge who resembles the Quaker Oats man. “Bail denied,’ the judge sternly announces. “I remand you to the custody of the New York City Department of Correction,” he states, with no trace of lips.

This can’t be. Life.

But, all my senses appear operational. I hear what the judge is saying, but I comprehend different words. ‘’Daniel Hyden, you have won an all expenses paid trip to an island… Rikers Island, New York City!” the judge declares.

Being accused of four counts of second degree murder with deprived indifference, held without bail, then sent to one of the worst jails in America, Land of the Unfree and Home of the Incarcerated, can not really be my life. I see the looks in the eyes of all the people around me in court; disgust, dismay, disdain. I feel the handcuffs cutting off circulation to my wrists. I smell the melting pot of people stewing in the July heat of a New York City courtroom. I taste dehydration, my mouth and throat parched as I abstain from the holding cell sink, inhabited by gnats and dried mucus.

This can’t be life.

Then what is this? I believe there are three states of being, Life, Dream and Death. These states are neither positive nor negative, friendly nor hostile. These states are paradigms, shifting seamlessly into each other. Things fall apart when we cannot differentiate between the states of The Trichotomy of Existence.

Life, Dream and Death, like the three states of matter; solid, liquid and gas – all the same thing, just in different forms. I do not know what form I am experiencing.

Things are falling apart. Yesterday my reality was being a full-time Program Director for three drug treatment residential facilities in Manhattan, while being a part-time father to two daughters and an on-call Sober Addict, pridefully relapsing whenever alcohol called. Now, this reality is alien to me. In this reality, I am an accused murder, guilty until proven innocent.

This can’t be life. My eyes close.

II. This Can’t Be a DREAM.

My eyes open, and I see a ceiling that must be at least twenty feet high, but, with the right percussive volume, it looks as if it could crumble, like the roof of a gingerbread house.

I hear the bass accompaniment in an orchestra of snoring and flatulence, hoping the performers do not bring the roof down.

This can’t be a dream.

Because all my senses are keen. I smell the rotten egg odor expelled from the anuses of sleeping men within 4Lower of the Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC). One of ten jails on Rikers Island, “Ole-Boy” as it is called, houses a diverse cast of detainees awaiting trial or who are sentenced and awaiting transfer to a prison up-top. Sixty men, in a barracks style dorm, sleeping one arm’s length away from each other. If I stretch out my arm to my right side, I can touch someone — and the same with my left side. This is not the environment to reach out and touch people.

This can’t be a dream.

I am the only one awake, even the C.O. is dreaming. How could I be the only one with disbelieving insomnia that he is here? But, I cannot remember now long I have been here. Maybe it has been three months, but it feels as fresh as three hours and as hopeless as having spent three decades in.

This can’t be a dream.

Or maybe it is. In dreams, scenes do not change but transition, like water to vapor, then evaporating away. Life, Dream and Death. Awake or asleep, there is always a dreary fog amongst us. I feel the despair, a heavy atmospheric pressure, which only seems to dissipate with the dreams in sleep. 4Lower is similar to most correctional institutions, where dreams are The Great Escape, a cheap yet effective getaway from the misery of an incarcerated reality.

In these environments, any drug which induces sleep is a coveted commodity. I taste the fuel of my getaway, two doses of Benadryl and 75mg of melatonin, yet my trip to dream land appears to have stalled. Now, I am just vicariously experiencing the dreams of others, listening to their unconscious conversations, whimpers and groans.

This six-foot tall, dark, solidly built and opposing detainee, who slumbers in the first row, five beds from me, sounds like a little scared boy, murmuring while he dreams.

Then, in the first row, two beds from me, there is a young white guy, who looks like every white rapper. He is even comfortable with saying the N-word in his waking hours. In his dreaming hours, he cries like a baby. His crying may be correlated to his alleged crime — of killing his pregnant girlfriend by operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants resulting in a crash. Are these men confronting their victims, reliving their trauma or reconciling their regrets?

I want reconciliation, in Life or in Dream. The. term ”my victims” induces both daymares and nightmares. I wonder if I cry out when I dream. Maybe someone will tell me, someday.

I close my eyes.

III. Is This Death?

My eyes open, I hear the sound of carnage, screams in high pitches of horror and pain — screams of the damned in the eternal-soul- melting-inferno of Hell would be the only sound comparable. I see the carnage, its sight, a harsh nauseating reality, veiled in a blood red disbelief.

As I sit in front of my silver F-150 truck, bloodied from the angry mob yanking me out the driver’s seat then beating me semi-conscious, I taste, I smell, and I feel my warm blood like it is perspiration. Sitting in front of my truck, I see Death and the image gets imprinted into my mind for eternity:  blood runs into my eyes, I see black, then I black-out.

For every black-out, there is a white-in. My white-in returns me to the Hell of Rikers, where I am Dante descending through the grim realms of the inferno. I started on the Rikers bus, with a C.O. driving through NYC traffic like the bus was his 2003 Honda Accord. Then I was in P.C. (Protective Custody), due to the publicity of my case. I then descended to the M.O. (Mental Observation) ward as a step-down from P.C. And now, I reside in Ole-Boy, with the orchestra or snoring and flatulence, serenading my reoccurring nightmare and insomnia. I read somewhere that Hell is a recurring loop of your worst sin, biggest regret and darkest moment. So this must be Hell, as I cycle through a loop of dreaming a recurring nightmare then living a recurring daymare.

If I am in Hell, then this must be Death!

Correctional institutions, such as Rikers Island, are perfect incubators for nightmares and daymares, where dilapidation and degradation promote heated stimulation for suicidal ideation.

This can’t be death.

Life is ephemeral. Death is eternal. So this must be limbo, an in-between like purgatory and I, like millions of incarcerated individuals, are the living-slowly-dying. We are alive, but are dead to our victims, dead to society and dead to our past lives. I am a dead man walking, just dreaming that he is alive. Shapeless, formless and voiceless — it is dreams which fill my void.

Jails and prisons are designed to make voids out of the incarcerated, so those voids are easier to jail and imprison. The most effective way to kill a person, without killing a person, is to dehumanize that person. Across this great country of ours, correctional departments are governed by AI (Apathy and Incompetence). Correctional facilities are essentially dehumanization centers, where incarcerated individuals are corralled, fed “feed” instead of food, and pepper-sprayed or electronically prodded if they refuse their cage.

For those of us currently incarcerated, there is powerlessness in both Life and in Death, but in Dream there is reprieve. We incarcerated individuals live for our dreams and will die for our dreams, because dreams are the only piece of our existence which cannot be dehumanized away.

By nightmare or daymare, by daydream or midnight REM sleep dream — reconciliation, redemption and vindication are birthed in Dream.

Daniel (DC) Hyden

#3492402667

Rikers Island 

1500 Hazen Street

East Elmhurst, NY 11370

The post Daniel Hyden: On the Accident, His Victims and His Nightmares first appeared on Prison Writers.