Over Him ✔

|Chapter Twelve|

Copyright © 2022_ Over Him ✔ written by OluchiHelen.
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Frustration and Weariness.

That was all Ben was experiencing. He was fed up of being here. After the court had given their verdict, he had been transferred to the biggest prison in the state, with a much better security.

At first, when he was told 'maximum security' the first thing that had come to mind was that he would be safe from the other inmates but that wasn't the case. His first week there had been hell. If it wasn't for his cell mate, a young black man, named Jack, who was probably in his early thirties he wouldn't have made it past that first week.

Early that morning, he was already up but never getting off his bed. His bed was his safe place, it was the only way he could escape the madness going on outside his cell. Jack on the other hand was completely used to it and from what Ben had been told, Jack had thirty long years to go before he would be released. Sometimes it made him wander what Jack had been put in here for.

"Alright, wake up! Y'all have got work to do. C'mon get up!" a guard down the hall yells, striking his metal baton against the metal bars of each prison cell, irritating the inmates. Soon strings of curses are being hurled at him but the guard ignores them all.

Jumping off his bunk bed, Ben strolls towards the metal bars of his cell caging them in and Jack joins him looking as tired and dishevelled as he usually did every morning.

The guard stops on seeing them and gets out a bunch keys.

"First ones to get up. Remember you've got only ten minutes before breakfast, " he says for the eleventh time since Ben had gotten there and unlocks their door.

"You have the anklet on?" he asks, pausing to stare at them and Jack pulls up a leg of his orange jumpsuit, displaying a black band with a green light blinking on the side and Ben does the same.

Satisfied, he opens the cell and let's them through. Every morning they'd only have just ten minutes to use the shower and that we it it for the rest of the day and no one complained about it.

The bathroom was a room wide enough to fit about twenty inmates. All parts of the room was tiled from top to bottom and at a corner of the bathroom were two small windows, wide enough to fit only a new born.

Hanging from the bathroom ceiling were four shower heads and at a corner of the room was four toilet stalls.

Judging from how dry and neat the place, it was clear that they were the first ones to use here. With Jack facing one side of the bathroom, to give himself and Ben some privacy, both men strip of their clothes and take a rushed bath.

Halfway in, two other inmates come rushing in. They only five more minutes left and one of them makes a rush for one of the toilet stalls whilst the other goes ahead to use a free shower head.

Once done, Ben puts on his jumpsuit which he draped over a clothesline which ran across the room. Jack later joins him and they head down to the dining hall where a bunch of Jack's friends were all seated round a table next to the vending machine.

"Hey old man, what's good?" one of them greets, as all heads turn to their direction.

Soon after Ben had responded to them, they had all gone back to their usual discussions which mainly circled around drugs, gangs and the latest news circulating around the yard.

"You okay mehn? You've been quiet," another Ben had known to be Rico asks and his response shocks everyone.

"Mehn, I gotta leave here."