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SLEEPING PILLS

After falling out of bed and stumbling down the stairs, it was easy to pass the actual roll call. All you had to do was wait, hidden among the other prisoners, listen for your name and then call out ¡Presente! before heading back to your room. The guards sometimes looked at me suspiciously because I could hardly keep my eyes open. Once or twice they checked my breath for alcohol, but nothing ever happened. They all knew that the governor was my friend.

After lista, I would take another sleeping pill. And when I woke up, I would take another one. With the pills, sometimes I could sleep for sixteen hours straight, although at other times I hardly slept for days and nights on end, even if I took three or four. It was dark in my room and I began to lose track of time. Eventually, my whole body clock became completely disoriented. Sometimes I would look at the clock, just out of habit, but after reading it I wouldn't have known whether it was three o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock in the morning.

I began ordering more and more pills from the doctor to help me get back into a normal sleeping routine. There was no limit to the number of boxes he could order from the prison clinic, and they were very cheap because the pills were copies manufactured in the factories in El Alto. When I needed stronger dosages, one of the inmates knew of a farmacia on the outside that didn't ask for prescriptions. These pills were more expensive and I had to pay someone else a propina to get them, but it was worth it because I didn't need to take so many doses in one go.

I don't recall much of what happened during those few weeks, but it wasn't much, I know that. When I wasn't asleep, I often got drunk on my own. One afternoon, I woke up and felt that my lips were caked with dry blood. When I looked in the mirror, I had cuts and bruises all over my face. I didn't know if I had been in a fight or if I had simply fallen over. I never found out. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone.

The few times that my head was clear, I remember the main feeling I had was simply that I wanted to die. I thought about death a lot, but I was afraid to kill myself. I was a coward. Every time I thought of suicide, the image of that rapist's head being stomped on came into my mind. So, I started fantasising about a little red button in the middle of my wooden table that I could press to end my life in an instant, without pain. I could press it and just disappear.

One thing I noticed about sleeping pills is that they rob you of your dreams. I think I stopped having dreams completely, or maybe I just

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