Bear stares at the pool of blood, chest so tight he can barely breathe. They’d told him piking lumpers would be no big thing, that serving his sentence would be like hashmarks on a wall. Now that he’s standing over the woman’s crumpled body, he can’t stop seeing the person beneath the Lumps, and the weight just about crushes him.

Killing lumpers wears on all the inmates, each guy trying to cope with the harsh reality of serving time in their own way. Decker shatters into a million pieces just looking at the sorry things but manages to find a way back after a good cry. Earl locks parts of himself away to do the dirty deed, like two separate men live inside him. Bear is still too new to this life, still reeling from the horror of it, to find his own way through. With each kill, the crew sinks deeper into darkness, and Bear can’t imagine returning to anything resembling a normal life when his ten years are up.

Lumpers is a raw exploration of the scars left by society’s labels, and the bonds forged in the aftermath of shared trauma.