Letting it Flow

The Walk

Story I wrote for English.

Most people who end up here make the same excuses. They think that if they just keep denying the reality of what they’ve done that they’ll be innocent. After a few steps they already dream about getting out, feeling the sunshine on their face and the wind in their hair. As they’re dragged in and the bars slammed shut behind them a chorus of the same howls would start up.

“I don’t deserve to be in here!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“This is a mistake!”

None of them want to believe that this place is where people like us deserve to go. I wasn’t like them when I first arrived. I knew I belonged here. You can’t just murder four people and not think you belong in here. Today though, I’m getting out. Against my pleadings the judge hadn’t given me an eternity to rot in this horrible place, or even a lifetime.

I sat in my cell, staring at the grey walls. I could tell from the excited hoots and catcalls echoing from deep within the belly of the prison that new meat had just arrived. My cellblock was deadly silent as usual. When you’re locked in a birdcage with no one else to talk to things tend to be quiet.

I had been trapped alone in here for a few months. Not a soul to talk to except for the grunting pig of a guard who would push my tray of sludge under the bars, often spilling much of the contents.

The man in the cell across from is little more than a ghost. He sits there, staring into the floor, eating and breathing. But that’s just a shell. On the inside nothing seems to remain, his soul, spirit, chi or whatever you wanted to call it had already left him long ago. He was a mere memory, pacing around his cage.

Clang!

My thoughts disappeared, I was dragged kicking and screaming out of my head back into the real world. The warden stood in front of my cell, his nightstick in hand and his face hidden by a huge brown beard. He stared at me with cold eyes before he brought the nightstick down on the cell gate again.

“It’s time.”

My body ached all over as I stood up, I had felt so lethargic lately that I just didn’t move, and from the cracking and popping of my bones as they were finally put to use it seems I had atrophied somewhat in the meantime. As little as I deserved it, I was on my way out of this place. I would finally be free.

“Step forward, turn around so that your back faces me and put your hands behind your back.” The warden said sternly.

I did so, as normal for the procedure of a prisoner leaving the cell, I was most likely to be cuffed before I would be going anywhere. As expected, I heard the jingling of the handcuffs before they snapped hungrily at my wrists like starving dogs. I winced as the steel bit into my wrists, but I made no noise.

The gate groaned as the steel bars vanished into the walls and I was dragged out of the cell. I began the slow walk down the corridor as a few of the ghosts in the cell block immediately snapped back to life. They whistled and shouted out insults to me as I walked by, my departure being the first thing to happen in weeks that broke the monotony of staring at a wall and sleeping. I stopped briefly to stretch my muscles before the warden roughly shoved me forward.

“I haven’t got all day, get a move on.” He barked.

 I continued my walk down the corridor, the handcuffs biting further and further into my wrists. I felt the chain with my hand; the cold metal reminded me of the gun that I had felt pressed into my hands. The bullets that flew from the gun were as red hot as the anger that gripped me in that moment. Every pull from the trigger fueled another pull, and it was only when the smoking gun fell from my hand and clattered to the floor that I had realized what I had done.

“Do you think I deserve this?” I hoarsely whispered.

I don’t know what had made me ask. Perhaps it was the need to feel validated that I didn’t deserve to leave here, maybe deep inside I wanted him to tell me I did deserve to leave this cursed place.

“Do you deserve this?” The guard spat out, I could hear the malice in his voice “You don’t deserve any way out. You murdered people in cold blood, if I had my way you’d of been locked up till the prison was nothing but dust.”

I felt validated.

A metal door was closed at the end of the corridor. An intercom sat next to it softly humming. The warden pressed a fat finger into the button and a mechanical voice spoke through the intercom.

“That him?”

“Yeah it’s him, the last one of the day right here.”

With a loud buzz and the appearance of a green light above the door the warden pushed it open. Behind the door was a large room, it was bare except for the wooden chair and bucket that stood in the middle of it and the huge mirror that sat in front of it. Two more men stood in the room, one tall and thin, the other short and fat, both were positioned at the wall to the left of the chair.

I felt the warden breathing on my neck as he began to undo my cuffs, within an instant the two guards had crossed the room and grabbed me by the arms. And as the steel jaws opened, I was forced down into the chair. The warden stepped around me, doing up straps around my feet and hands that I hadn’t noticed before. The sound of water dripping came from my right. I turned my head to see the warden wringing out water from a sponge he must have produced from the bucket.

As the warden put the sponge on my head, the short fat guard stood positioned next to a switch. The Tall thin guard had disappeared somewhere behind me. A creaking sound echoed around the room as I felt a metal bowl get put over the wet sponge.

I didn’t deserve this.