Prisoner 489 is a horror novella written by American author Joe R. Lansdale. It tells the story of prison workers who help staff a fictional island prison where only the worst of the worst are housed. Most are on death row scheduled to be executed in the electric chair. In the potter's field graveyard the headstones are only marked with numbers in the order in which they were put to death. So prisoner 489 is the four hundred and eighty ninth to be executed.