Behind Bars | Larry Stylinson

My shoes clicked across the hard tile, skidding every once in a while as I made my way down the hallway. I looked inside every cell, making sure each prisoner was inside and occupied with doing something. Particularly sleeping. But then again, if I was a prisoner I would be doing the same thing. Sleeping, that is. Only a small percentage of prisoners were in their cells, the others were on break in the break room. It was something this prison allowed where the prisoners could stretch out their legs or talk to fellow prisoners.

I was far from being a prisoner, although. In fact I was the exact opposite. I was a guard here. My daily routine consisted of watching over prisoners, taking them on their breaks, and taking them to eat their lunch. It was our job to be with the prisoners practically every second of the day.

"Hey, Louis," I heard a voice call out from behind me.                     

Turning around, I noticed a fellow guard running toward me. He was a newbie, and I remember my pals saying that he went by Tim. "Yeah?" I replied, a little late considering he had already made it to me and was now eye level with me.

He was quite out of breath. "T-The prisoners," he said, stuttering his words a bit to try and regain his normal breaths. "They've started another riot in the break room."

Letting out a frustrated groan, I nodded and followed him out of the hallway we were currently on. Once we were out I pushed the red alert system on the wall, notifying everyone that all the doors would be closing and no one could get out.

"Who started it this time?" I asked, following Tim down where the break room was. We stood outside of it and looked through the windows, noticing everyone going completely mad and throwing the lunch tables around.

"Beats me," Tim said, still breathing a little heavy. He must be really out of shape.

"This is the third time this week," I said flatly. "I'm getting pretty fucking tired of this. Really, I am."

I could see Tim nodding out of the corner of my eye. "I think the new guy started this one... um, what's his name again?" Tim asked, making me look over at him and take my eyes off the riot that was going on right in front of us.

"New guy? Didn't even know we had a new guy," I shrugged.

"He's in the new wing. You know, the new set of cells that were added on during the summer? Yeah, that's where he's located. Left side I think." He said, of course I knew where that was at. I walk this whole prison daily. "He's a bad guy, that's all I know. They kept it pretty hush when they brought him in."

My eyebrows furrowed a bit at his comment as I turned to look at the break room once more. I wanted to see the new guy, it interested me to no end to see a new guy here after months.

"Y'know what he looks like?" I finally asked after giving up my search through the crowd. It was too hard to locate someone knew while everyone was running around like mad men.

I could see Tim shaking his head out of the corner of my eye, "Nope. I don't think so. I bet if I told you it would be wrong, so, yeah. No I don't."

Just then the riot that was going on in front of us came to an end, a few guards had walked in and held up their guns making the prisoners surrender themselves. The guards went through the crowd of people, everyone was shuffling around until I saw the guards pull out a single person. He had chocolate brown curls and the top of it stood up in a quiff. The devilish look on his face could be seen miles away, his orange prison-suit sticking to his perfect frame of a body.

"That's the new guy," I heard Tim mutter beside me, breaking me from my trance.

I nodded, "I'm gonna go find out a little more about him."